Overwhelmed with AE2 sorting system!

[Culprit]

As I keep getting more and more sheer volumes of STUFF my chests can't keep up with it. I would like to start working towards getting a working AE2 sorting system but I don't know what kind of materials I need or how to set it up. Any help is appreciated.

 

[malicious_bloke]

As I keep getting more and more sheer volumes of STUFF my chests can't keep up with it. I would like to start working towards getting a working AE2 sorting system but I don't know what kind of materials I need or how to set it up. Any help is appreciated.

You can look up the recipes in NEI, but for a brief explanation of how it works, see below.

The most basic storage system itself consists of:
- An ME Drive (the block). This is the starting point, but you need to put in actual storage cells (up to 10 per Drive block).
- ME 1k, 4k, 16k or 64k storage cells (plus the bigger varieties from ExtraCells).

That's the actual storage space, but you can't just add and remove items like that, so you need
- An ME Terminal. This is the block you actually interact with like a chest. You can shift+rightclick or drag and drop from your inventory into it. Just connect it to the drive with a bit of ME Cable and it'll be able to read the contents.

You'll also need an Energy Acceptor hooked up to this system, just run RF/EU/whatever else your base power supply uses into it and it'll convert it into AE units to be used internally by your network.

To get items into your system automatically, stick an ME Import Bus on the chest containing them and connect it to the system with a bit of ME Cable, it'll get pulled from the chest and added to your storage cells.

As for materials, to get started you will need lots of certus quartz (you'll find plenty of this through digging), one *charged* certus quartz (once you make a Charger, you can turn normal quartz into charged quartz, but you need one unit of charged to start out with

To make the Logic, Engineering and Calculation processors needed to craft virtually everything in ME you also need to find the four different presses for the Inscriber. These can be found in Skystone chests inside meteors dotted about the landscape, you can make a Compass which will direct you towards the nearest one. You will also need silicon to make these. You can get this by putting sand through Thermal Expansion's Pulverizer or EnderIO's SAG Mill.

Hope this helps, let us know if you have any other questions

 

[Pyure]

You can look up the recipes in NEI, but for a brief explanation of how it works, see below.

The most basic storage system itself consists of:
- An ME Drive (the block). This is the starting point, but you need to put in actual storage cells (up to 10 per Drive block).
- ME 1k, 4k, 16k or 64k storage cells (plus the bigger varieties from ExtraCells).

That's the actual storage space, but you can't just add and remove items like that, so you need
- An ME Terminal. This is the block you actually interact with like a chest. You can shift+rightclick or drag and drop from your inventory into it. Just connect it to the drive with a bit of ME Cable and it'll be able to read the contents.

You'll also need an Energy Acceptor hooked up to this system, just run RF/EU/whatever else your base power supply uses into it and it'll convert it into AE units to be used internally by your network.

To get items into your system automatically, stick an ME Import Bus on the chest containing them and connect it to the system with a bit of ME Cable, it'll get pulled from the chest and added to your storage cells.

As for materials, to get started you will need lots of certus quartz (you'll find plenty of this through digging), one *charged* certus quartz (once you make a Charger, you can turn normal quartz into charged quartz, but you need one unit of charged to start out with

To make the Logic, Engineering and Calculation processors needed to craft virtually everything in ME you also need to find the four different presses for the Inscriber. These can be found in Skystone chests inside meteors dotted about the landscape, you can make a Compass which will direct you towards the nearest one. You will also need silicon to make these. You can get this by putting sand through Thermal Expansion's Pulverizer or EnderIO's SAG Mill.

Hope this helps, let us know if you have any other questions

Did you exclude mention of the ME Controller deliberately? Everything above will function for an ad hoc storage system, so its plausible the omission was deliberate. It just won't scale towards autocrafting etc very well if the OP ever wants to go down that road.

 

[malicious_bloke]

Did you exclude mention of the ME Controller deliberately? Everything above will function for an ad hoc storage system, so its plausible the omission was deliberate. It just won't scale towards autocrafting etc very well if the OP ever wants to go down that road.

It was more meant as a basic primer on how to set up an entry-level ME storage network. If needed we can go into channels, ME controllers and Super Soaryn Drives a bit later but I thought it may be a bit information overload to do it right from the start

 

[Henry Link]

I agree with the path bloke pointed out. Start with the basics. Then add to it. Also, start with just the 1k cells until later. Here would be my basic goals when I do a play through.

1. Setup a basic ME system (see Bloke's 1st post).
2. Get inscribers going and a cyrstal growth system (manual at this point unless you can automate with some other mod).
3. Get an import bus to start import chests into the system.
4. Get a crafting terminal (this is a world changer here).
5. Get a network controller going. Once you have this it opens up the ability to use more than 8 devices and you can remove the energy acceptor.
6. Automate the components needed to expand AE more (processors, crystal growth).
7. Get auto crafting (molecular assemblers & interfaces)
8. Increase your storage as needed (other storage media & an I/O port)

The last few steps will require you to learn about channels. I highly recommend the use of smart and dense cables. Also stay away from P2P (peer to peer) device your 1st play through until you fully understand channels.

 

[Culprit]

Soooo, I need to make my ME drive, my storage cells, my ME terminal, which is it what I click like a chest and then can search everything right? And connect it to my drive. I will need to put my storage cells in the drive correct? Where do I put the energy acceptor onto? The ME drive or the ME terminal? Or both? And if I do not want auto crafting right now, just a way a way to store everything I don't need all this extra stuff? I dont think i will do the ME bus because i'm actually transferring my base from the bottom of a Natura redwood to the top so that would take a LOT of cable . But do I need to go ahead and find the four presses to craft the drive, storage cells, and terminal? Or is that just for auto crafting.

 

[Pyure]

Soooo, I need to make my ME drive, my storage cells, my ME terminal, which is it what I click like a chest and then can search everything right? And connect it to my drive. I will need to put my storage cells in the drive correct? Where do I put the energy acceptor onto? The ME drive or the ME terminal? Or both? And if I do not want auto crafting right now, just a way a way to store everything I don't need all this extra stuff? I dont think i will do the ME bus because i'm actually transferring my base from the bottom of a Natura redwood to the top so that would take a LOT of cable . But do I need to go ahead and find the four presses to craft the drive, storage cells, and terminal? Or is that just for auto crafting.

"my ME terminal, which is it what I click like a chest and then can search everything right?"
Yes. There's a couple types of terminals. You are probably particularly interested in the Crafting terminal since it lets you craft directly from your storage (super handy)

"I will need to put my storage cells in the drive correct?"
Yes.

"Where do I put the energy acceptor onto? The ME drive or the ME terminal? Or both? "
Put a single energy acceptor anywhere you like in the network. So long as everything is connected together (via cables or AE2 machines), the whole network will receive energy. Your energy cable (from whatever mod) will go into that acceptor.

"And if I do not want auto crafting right now, just a way a way to store everything I don't need all this extra stuff?"
Everything malicious listed is pretty much important for a basic storage setup, assuming you want to also access that storage occassionally. None of it is related to autocrafting.

"But do I need to go ahead and find the four presses to craft the drive, storage cells, and terminal? Or is that just for auto crafting."
Check NEI for exact recipes, but yes, you'll need most or all of these presses to get started.

 

[Culprit]

Great! If I just have all the machines side by side and putmy energy acceptor onto one of them then will they all transfer power?

 

[Pyure]

Great! If I just have all the machines side by side and putmy energy acceptor onto one of them then will they all transfer power?

That's a good question. I'll let someone else answer it because I don't recall what the rules are for what machines will carry energy forward, or whether each machine that requires a channel also requires a cable connection.

 

[Aetherpirate]

I learned AE2 from Direwolf, his videos are excellent

 

[GreenZombie]

All machines on an AE network are considered powered. You can use this to transfer power through a P2P bridge to the network on the other side, although if the power ever is lost, the bridge will be unable to come back up as the remote P2P interface won't be powered.
Power is NOT transferred through P2P interfaces however, so even if a network is powered, you will need to explicitly bridge a P2P interface to carry power to the cable on the other side (or supply it separately from elsewhere).

All solid block machines can be though of has having an implicit 8 channel cable internally, so a run of more than 8 solid ME blocks will require cabling to cater for the fact that there won't be sufficient channels, but they all will be powered.

 

[Scottly318]

An addendum to cables: quartz cable is strictly power. I usually run that from the acceptor to the rest of the me system so I can keep the acceptor close to the power gen and keep the rest of the system closer to where I'd do crafting/access materials

 

[Culprit]

Would this work to go off of? https://docs.google.com/document/d/16lQMkT9beElH7pX1bZgm0vRsPvLBW7ahlbgHIEnZD7M/mobilebasic

 

[Henry Link]

It isn't bad. But I wouldn't use it. It skips over making the crystal growth accelerators and the charger. Both of which you need. It also requires 5 charged certus quartz ore. Sometimes it is hard enough just to find one to get the process started. Hence the need for the charger so you can create your own charged certus quartz. If you make the charger then only 1 charged certus quartz is needed to make the charger then from there you create the other charged crystal.

Also, he skips making the energy acceptor and jumps straight to an ME controller. I never go this route. I always make the energy acceptor. Once I do have the network controllers I'll remove it and use it later on a smaller network that is for special use (like a mob farm or bees).

 

[Culprit]

So I need to go ahead and grow 8 fluix crystals so I can make the accelerator and the charger, then once I have charged a certus quartz, or if I have enough, go find my presses. Then I need to craft the four different inscribers for the presses. Then I cancan craft my terminal, power acceptor, my drive, and storage cells. Right?

Also if I use a Turtle for my mining of the meteor will will it pick up the chest and everything in it?

 

[Henry Link]

Sounds correct. And the regular Fluix is an instant growth which is what you need to start with. It is the Pure Fluix an Pure Certus that take time to grow (over 5 minutes without the accelerators). But, you will not need to this until later. Most of what you will grow is the Pure Certus for the calculation processors.

 

[GreenZombie]

Wait - you dont need to use a power acceptor with ME controllers?

 

[Pyure]

Wait - you dont need to use a power acceptor with ME controllers?

Nope. Controller acts as an acceptor.

 

[Culprit]

So really all I need to start is one charged certus quartz, with which I can get two fluix crystals, and then I can craft the charger and make more charged certus quartz so I have unlimited charged certus quartz (at least unlimited in the fact that I can change regular crystals to charged)

 

[Henry Link]

So really all I need to start is one charged certus quartz, with which I can get two fluix crystals, and then I can craft the charger and make more charged certus quartz so I have unlimited charged certus quartz (at least unlimited in the fact that I can change regular crystals to charged)

Correct.