[Organization] FtB Ultimate 'Ultimate' Storage help

[Crownz04]

Alright, sorry if this seems a little long-winded for a first post. Trying to find a way to put it into words. Here's my issue.

I'm about to have two quarries going with Advanced Solar panels, electrical engines, and tesseracts. I'm shooting for the moon here and want everything automated. My Ideal setup is Two quarries, one tesseract input, one tesseract output feeding into either pulverizers(more complicated with the extra output) or macerators, and then feeding into some electric furnaces.

All well and dandy right? Not too complicated a setup. Well, I also want it auto sorted into the best storage room I can build. I like barrels, but they're a pain to try and configure with a router. I haven't got into applied energistics yet, but not ruling it out. But basically, I'm stuck.

How do you guys automate your systems and/or how would I best store these items for fast, easy, simple access without hardly any input on my end?

(After all that, I am still a noob to FtB. If I'm making things way too complicated, smack me and set me straight. I'm married. I'm used to it.)

 

[whizzball1]

Ok, first, STOP USING TESSERACTS. Not good for a sorting system. Send the items into an Ender Chest, not the vanilla one. You can use barrels, routers are unneeded. Pull objects out of the enderchest using Filters and send them to the barrels using pneumatic tubes. Pneumatic tubes are smart and will insert objects into the closest inventory that can hold them, so they will send diamonds into the first empty barrel they find, and when that has at least one diamond, all further diamonds will be sent there.

 

[Crownz04]

Thank you. Crossing tesseracts off the list. I'm using gold transport pipes on the quarries, and things shoot out fast. A filter and the ender chest going to be fast enough, or should I redo the pipes?

 

[whizzball1]

The fastest a filter can tick at is .35 seconds. If that isn't fast enough, you can attach more filters or make 2 ender chests for your base and pull out of both of those. Basically: 1 ender chest at the quarries. 2 enderchests at home. Filters pulling out of these. Anything not picked up by the first filter will be picked out by the second.

 

[netmc]

If you are going to be running quarries, I would probably filter out the ores for processing before you dump them into your storage system. Probably the best storage system at the moment is AE. If you haven't already, watch the AE mod spotlight by Direwolf 20 - part1 and part2.


AE costs energy for every item you add or remove from the AE network, so you will want to process as much as you can before the items come into the network.

You can also marry RP2 with barrels for storage which has been done many times before. basically, you place down a row of barrels and place tubes on top of them, then another row of barrels, then more tubes on top, and interconnect the tubes. Since barrels can only store 1 type of item, the tubes will smartly find the right barrel. You will probably want to pre-populate the barrels with what you want stored so you don't have random items all over the place. Some have had issues with tubes and barrels and needed to place covers under the barrels so the tubes only connect to the top of the barrels, but I've haven't had any problems leaving the tubes connected to the top and bottom of the barrels.

You could also marry the two together using barrels to store the mass quantity stuff like cobble and dirt, then bring the rest of the items into AE. You can place the AE storage bus on the bottom of the barrels to allow the AE network to pull from barrels and present seamless inventory management.

 

[twisto51]

Ok, first, STOP USING TESSERACTS. Not good for a sorting system. Send the items into an Ender Chest, not the vanilla one.

Tesseracts actually work fine for this, not sure what you're talking about. The only time you'd need an enderchest over a tesseract is when you want to selectively pull items out of the inventory on the enderchest. Something you don't need to do in the first place since there are any number of other ways to skin that particular cat.

Quarry/frame quarry/tunnelbore -> input tesseract -> output tesseract -> diamond/gold/void piping -> intermediate processing -> input tesseract -> output tesseract -> Chest -> Import Bus works fine. This example is for somebody with intermediate processing some distance from their base/AE storage network.

As far as storage systems go for the original poster, AE has the most features, the most "power", but is also the most expensive up front and ongoing. Tube-fed barrel walls are cheap, require periodic maintenance/monitoring. Router-fed barrel walls are a bit more expensive, but also a bit more compact. If you can't go with AE I'd go with a mix of tube/router-fed barrels/iron chest mod chests.

 

[Fuzzlewhumper]

My typical setup involves a minimum of two item tesseracts, a relay, pneumatic tubing, a deep storage room (explained later), a barrel room, and an overflow room filled with several chests.

Here's the path of how stuff works as viewed from a piece of cobble, a gold ore block, and an enchanted book of smite V.

Cobble: Woot! This mining laser just clobbered me and I'm traveling through this here quarry thingy! Woot! Wow, this tesseract is so darn cool - I'm passing through this really weird space! Oh, what's this thing? It's a relay! Wow! Oh cool beans, these are pneumatic pipes! Wow, moving along so fast now, my life is so awesome! Oh hey, why did this filter just divert me away from the main tube?!?! Oh wow, I'm going down a really short run of about 9 pneumatic tubes and there are these...BRRR@!@! It's damn cold in this deep storage unit!!! Woah! Hey! There's enough room in here for about a bajillion of my buddies in here! Damn it's cold! The end.

Gold Ore: Cheerio Buddy! Well, a lovely shade of blue laser we are aren't we. Okay, fine, all business I see, no time to chat with me, fine. Hmm, this appears to be some sort of interdimension space. Okay, I've heard about these relays and pneumatic tubes, never seen one up close though. Hey, why don't any of these filters want anything to do with me? I say, how rude. Oh, wonderful, a room filled with barrels and barrels and how many barrels do you need you damn hording little. Oh great, stuff me in a damn wooden barrel with a single of my brothers showing out the front side. You know, I deserve so much better! The end.

Finally, you've all been waiting for this one, the book of Smite V.
DUH DUH DUH! Freed from that chest by an automated iron box! Finally, my domination of the universe can begin! I shall smite this Iron box and proceed to take out the Dragon! My sworn enemy! Oh he hath my ire! But wait! What be this?!? The iron box is dumping me into an unworthy Item Tesseract! How dare! Fine, whatever, I will smile both of them as soon as I escape from this relay! Oh fine, add this damn pneumatic tubing and these lowly little filters and this room filled with these damn vile evil unworthy highly smite-able barrels! Yes! Take that, I'm far too good for the likes of all of you! Take me hence unto the dragon for it's glorious smitage!!! Oh, what be this?!?!? A transparent box with other floating twirly books and bobs and odd and ends?!?!? They do not share my allmighty presence! Let me unto the beast that I may slay!!! (Power I Book says: Hey! How's it going? Before ya ask, I only like bows.)

Anyhow, I really like those deep storage units, so much better than the interdimensional storage upgrade. But that's just my opinion.

No routers, no dark iron, no timers, no ender chests, just good ole fashion relay, tesseracts, filters, and storage things.

 

[Crownz04]

I appreciate the help on this guys. You all gave me a lot to think about. Thinking of combining tesseracts and ender chests. Here's what I'm planing:

2 Quarries, using advanced solar panels and gold tubing -> Input Tesseract.
Output Tesseract -> Gold/Diamond tubing. Ores into Macerators, then Electric Furnaces -> Ender chest.
Aluminum and other direct smelting into a row of other furnaces > Ender Chest.
Misc not smelting stuff into an Ender Chest. Ender Chest > Filter > Router > Barrel walls for the stuff I want to keep.
Also linked Ender Pouch for dungeon-ing and misc stuff I want.

Dirt, Cobble, Gravel ect - > Different Ender Chest > Filter > Router > Barrel wall. Eventually pipe thsoe items into some recyclers linked to standard chests.

Writing it is easy...building it is not, but fun.

 

[Berserkenstein]

The fastest a filter can tick at is .35 seconds. If that isn't fast enough, you can attach more filters or make 2 ender chests for your base and pull out of both of those. Basically: 1 ender chest at the quarries. 2 enderchests at home. Filters pulling out of these. Anything not picked up by the first filter will be picked out by the second.

Filters shouldn't be used for this, this is what sorting machines are used for.

Sorting machines set to automatic, and any item whole stack mode is what should be used.

It will pull whole stacks faster than the filters automatically with much less lag.

 

[Malkuth]

wanna go real cheap you can use buildcraft pipes to pull things too... People make the mistake to think that a wooden pipe is slow... But a wooden pipe is slow with a redstone engine... But much faster with 4 of them... And even faster if you use a higher MJ engine... You could pull 1 stack per tick if you use the right engine.. Which can keep up with pretty much anything.. And with a Emerald pipe you can filter different sides if your loading into and enderchest or chest or whatever..

Of course the downside is the engine and running it... But everything has a downside in FTB. You don't need smart pipes for Barrels.. The smart part happens with the barrels themselves.. Load em from top though.

Im not sure what the issue with the tesseract is either.... Not sure why someone would suggest not to use it.... Seems kinda odd.. Maybe you the poster that said that can clue us in on what the issue with an item tesseract is that makes it so bad?

 

[Fuzzlewhumper]

I think there are several stages for peoples storage rooms.

1st is the two or five chests they manually sort while getting established.
2nd is the barrel room with possibly enderchest or item tesseract setup.
3rd (and newest) applied energetics drive storage and access terminal/crafting.

I don't know what the negative about tesseract was either, might be a personal preference of his. I know that I also add an enderchest so I can dump stuff into a pouch while I'm off doing stuff from base. So I tend to go for a combination.
Heck, if I have a portal gun I'll sometimes make a 1x1 room with a transposer as the floor aimed at an item tesseract. Then I just destroy my old storage chests and have the portal suck everything up and send it to the storage room for me that way. It's a lot of fun, but only lasts for a short while since the method is so quick.

 

[twisto51]

Filters shouldn't be used for this, this is what sorting machines are used for.

Sorting machines set to automatic, and any item whole stack mode is what should be used.

It will pull whole stacks faster than the filters automatically with much less lag.

This isn't true. A sorting machine can't pull from an enderchest faster than 3-6 filters on a timer. You don't have to set the timer that fast either since each filter is pulling a stack on each pulse. Most of your lag is going to come from all the items in the tube in either case, not from pulsing the filters once a second.

A sorting machine stuck to an enderchest cannot keep up with a frame tunnelbore. Filters on the chest that then feed an inline sorting machine can.

This setup can handle far more than a sorting machine stuck to an enderchest.

Spoiler

If you're worried about lag you shouldn't be mining/sorting that much stuff that quickly in the first place.

 

[Berserkenstein]

This isn't true. A sorting machine can't pull from an enderchest faster than 3-6 filters on a timer. You don't have to set the timer that fast either since each filter is pulling a stack on each pulse. Most of your lag is going to come from all the items in the tube in either case, not from pulsing the filters once a second.

A sorting machine stuck to an enderchest cannot keep up with a frame tunnelbore. Filters on the chest that then feed an inline sorting machine can.

This setup can handle far more than a sorting machine stuck to an enderchest.

Spoiler

If you're worried about lag you shouldn't be mining/sorting that much stuff that quickly in the first place.

You can't be serious...

That was my old mining machine output, my new one is 4 times faster, 5,760 blocks in 6 seconds.

There are different modes on a sorting machine you know.

 

[twisto51]

You can't be serious...

That was my old mining machine output, my new one is 4 times faster, 5,760 blocks in 6 seconds.

There are different modes on a sorting machine you know.

You're using more than one sorting machine. DUH.

If you put filters on those chests to feed the sorting machines it would be even faster.

Multiple filters on a chest pull from that chest faster than a sorting machine does. I'm not sure how hard it is to understand. Regardless of how fast a sorting machine pulses itself, a filter can be set to pulse just as fast and you can apply multiple filters to the chest.

It has nothing to do with what modes you use on the Sorting Machine.

I suggest you actually try it. I've used both methods and I know which one is faster.

Now you could also apply multiple sorting machines to one chest and get close to the filter speed but then you'd have to configure every one of those sorting machines and get blutricity to them. It is much easier---and much cheaper in terms of power and resources---to use filters on the chest and have those filters feed an inline sorting machine.

Your old setup was so slow you had to upgrade it. I've run two tunnelbores and two quarries at once and haven't overloaded 6 filters into one sorting machine.

I could duplicate the speed in your old setup with 8 filters, 2 chests, and 1 sorting machine. I'd also have space to simply expand with 4 more filters.

The secret to Sorting Machines is that they can sort/paint items much faster than they can pull them from an inventory. To take advantage of that you have to feed them with something else.

The funniest part of your video is that you appear to be using enderchests to spread the output of tesseracts evenly between your sorting machines. If you got away from the mindset of pulling with sorting machines you'd realize that you could just have those tesseracts dumping directly into the tube network via relays and might not even need more than one sorting machine---at least for speed, you'd still need however many you need for whatever logical sorting colors/destinations you have. There is always the specter of relay lag, but still worth a try.

Seriously, try an inline sorting machine, I think you'll be surprised by how much faster it can sort than one attached to an inventory.

 

[Berserkenstein]

You're using more than one sorting machine. DUH.

If you put filters on those chests to feed the sorting machines it would be even faster.

Multiple filters on a chest pull from that chest faster than a sorting machine does. I'm not sure how hard it is to understand. Regardless of how fast a sorting machine pulses itself, a filter can be set to pulse just as fast and you can apply multiple filters to the chest.

It has nothing to do with what modes you use on the Sorting Machine.

I suggest you actually try it. I've used both methods and I know which one is faster.

Now you could also apply multiple sorting machines to one chest and get close to the filter speed but then you'd have to configure every one of those sorting machines and get blutricity to them. It is much easier---and much cheaper in terms of power and resources---to use filters on the chest and have those filters feed an inline sorting machine.

Your old setup was so slow you had to upgrade it. I've run two tunnelbores and two quarries at once and haven't overloaded 6 filters into one sorting machine.

I could duplicate the speed in your old setup with 8 filters, 2 chests, and 1 sorting machine. I'd also have space to simply expand with 4 more filters.

The secret to Sorting Machines is that they can sort/paint items much faster than they can pull them from an inventory. To take advantage of that you have to feed them with something else.

The funniest part of your video is that you appear to be using enderchests to spread the output of tesseracts evenly between your sorting machines. If you got away from the mindset of pulling with sorting machines you'd realize that you could just have those tesseracts dumping directly into the tube network via relays and might not even need more than one sorting machine---at least for speed, you'd still need however many you need for whatever logical sorting colors/destinations you have. There is always the specter of relay lag, but still worth a try.

Seriously, try an inline sorting machine, I think you'll be surprised by how much faster it can sort than one attached to an inventory.

Your example was also using more than one filter and yet you were making a comparison versus one sorting machine.

I have used filters before, ever since redpower 2 came out, I also know which one is better of the two.

My old setup:

Which is faster than 4 simultaneous quarries, and my new one is 4 times faster than that one. It also gets all output from mob farms and

The funniest part of your video is that you appear to be using enderchests to spread the output of tesseracts evenly between your sorting machines. If you got away from the mindset of pulling with sorting machines you'd realize that you could just have those tesseracts dumping directly into the tube network via relays and might not even need more than one sorting machine---at least for speed, you'd still need however many you need for whatever logical sorting colors/destinations you have.

You have this really wrong, they are all the same enderchest (white, white, white), it doesn't spread it evenly, they are pulling in parallellc those tesseracts are all the same frequency.

You don't seem to realize why I am using an enderchest as an input chest instead of relays? Really? You don't notice that ENDERPOUCH in my hand?

Why do I need to use an inline sorting machine? My storage system is sorted automatically, if I need anything I pull with a retriever or get it out of my AE storage.