I like to have a 64x64 quarry constantly running while i do everything else in my FTB world. I was looking into ways to power it and have it run at fast speeds, and started using a fully powered redstone energy cell to power it with an output max of 100MJ. i was pleased to see the speed of the quarry, but it drains each cell very quickly and I was wondering if there is a way to keep it powered until it is finished. Or maybe some other way to keep it running at that top speed without me having to go back to it every five minutes.
Powering a Quarry...
- Thread starter Jacobsk
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I usually set up a power system at the quarry. If you check the chunks and try to keep the power system in the same chunk as the quarry block it will stay chunk loaded and you won't need to hand around of place another chunk loading block.
My first quarry is usually powered by 12 magmatic engines with lava from my base through a liquid tesseract (Not so much power loss this way).
My first quarry is usually powered by 12 magmatic engines with lava from my base through a liquid tesseract (Not so much power loss this way).
A few magmatics hooked up to some cells should do the trick. Or you can always hook up some solars to an oil fab and run the oil fab to either a bunch of combustions or a bunch of refineries, and then to some combustions.
If you are looking for a more long-term permanent solution, any MJ producing strategy + energy tesseract would be the best solution. If you are looking for an "on-site" solution, solars into electrical would probably be the most "portable" solution. Everything else requiring a bit of infrastructure to be established, where as you can just plop down the solars and connect the electrical engines.
Not using Mystcraft, ender chests or tesseracts this time around, so how about this ...
Find an oil well, well away from your base.
Build oil tank on site.
Combustion engine/pump to fill it up.
Select nearby sites for quarrying. Build rail link to each Quarry site, then the locomotive, liquid and mine carts, loaders and unloaders etc. A small tree farm will provide a ton of charcoal for the loco
Rail the fuel to quarry, returning with ores.
Make the fuel depot the hub of your mining operations, then either take field trips to collect your ores (I void cobble etc) and explore your world, or eventually create one of those massive AE singularity-thingys to link the mining operations with your base.
Profit
Find an oil well, well away from your base.
Build oil tank on site.
Combustion engine/pump to fill it up.
Select nearby sites for quarrying. Build rail link to each Quarry site, then the locomotive, liquid and mine carts, loaders and unloaders etc. A small tree farm will provide a ton of charcoal for the loco
Rail the fuel to quarry, returning with ores.
Make the fuel depot the hub of your mining operations, then either take field trips to collect your ores (I void cobble etc) and explore your world, or eventually create one of those massive AE singularity-thingys to link the mining operations with your base.
Profit
Any permanent, non-tesseracting or any other similar solutions to quarrying are impractical. It only takes a few hours for a full-speed quarry to mine out a 64x64 block area. This means extending your energy/item transport lines by 64 blocks every few hours. It's so time consuming that it almost makes it impractical. You are better off using igneous extruders for your cobble needs and then shooting a few MFR mining lasers for your ores. Supplementing that with your own mining and you might have something. It would be a more productive use of your time.
Though it is possible to automate this kind of thing, it seems highly impractical/needlessly elaborate.
Though it is possible to automate this kind of thing, it seems highly impractical/needlessly elaborate.
Indeed. I had 4 64x64 quarries running in our quarry age in our last world and it's simply not practical to keep moving them AND a whole energy setup every couple of hours. It's much simpler to just slap 2 tesseracts on them.
How often do you actually need to move such a setup though? 4 full sized quarries should provide you with all the materials for atleast a few weeks, for me that is usually enough to get better systems up if I even need more resources at that point.
That would depend on:
1) What you are using. Solar panel production is very copper heavy (coincidentally also one of the few ores that cannot be focussed by the mining laser), and diamonds are usually in short supply at some point. Gold is handy to have, too.
2) The driving force behind moving the quarries. If you are wanting to limit the amount of resources that you have to what you need, then you don't need to relocate your quarry, however, if you are just wanting to keep a constant stream running, then you need as little downtime as possible.
Personally, I usually use force engines (yes, people don't like them), powered by force with a milk throttle. Manual in the beginning (usually before I'm squeezing things). When I start working it in liquid form, I'll start endertanking it or similar (I used logistics pipes this time around with an enderchest).
Usually there's not a hug amount of time between auto-milking (Can't be bothered with the MFR setup) and steam boilers, so they don't run unattended for too long.
I used to use quarries lol... Now i use mining turtles with mining wells and a tesseract. (yes based on DW build but I have changed the code myself and added an option to turn around and mine new blocks coming back...) He has a video going into detail about how it works and how to setup the turtles. But even if you only use 4 mining turtles they produce WAY more resources then a quarry. Just know that you will need 100MJs per tick to make those run at max speed. But you can do this at your base and have it all automated. You will also need an ender chest setup with a ton of charcoal. But with AE these are all easily automated.
Unfortunately in the latest versions I tend to run short of stuff like quartz and gold a lot.
Quarries aren't so good for specific items. The MFR mining laser is probably best for specific items since it can be tuned using filters.
If you silk-touch your ores, I found that the RC rock crusher is the best to use for certes quartz, as you get 5 dust from each quartz block. The dust can be put through a compressor and turned back into a crystal when needed. For gold, oreberry bushes are quite nice as well as MFR skeleton spawners/grinder. You get quite a few armor pieces that can be melted down into ingots. the swords from zombie pigmen are also a good source of gold.
I myself early-game just plop 2-3 Force Engines using Liquid Force and Water for 8 MJ/t per engine (Or milk for 10 MJ/T). Late game, I'd assume you have an enormous Bio Generator array, or boilers with steam engines, and tesseract power over to your quarry.
This instance, I'm going quarry-less and using Turtles with my own code. It took several hours of debugging and optimization, but the finished product is nice. With just 1 Mining Turtle, a few stacks of charcoal for power, and a couple of chests and some piping (void pipe filtering cobble, dirt, and gravel), I can set it up to do 64x64 (or larger) starting at exactly the layer I want. My current turtle is at height 15, for instance. The last 64x64x15 quarry he did produced a good amount of diamond, gold, and other useful ores. He doesn't quire wireless for GPS and instead tries very hard to go where he's supposed to go.
Gravel/sand were a challenge to figure out as was water. The final challenge was gravel/sand with water on top.
If I hadn't have been a coder in a previous career, I would have no problems downloading someone else's public Turtle quarry code, but finding an excuse to do coding again has been fun.
The current version of my quarry code is here:
http://pastebin.com/hejgCauq
ex:
1. Place facing the direction you want him to quarry. He will quarry a 3D area ahead, to his right, and down to bedrock
2. Place his drop-chest immediately on his left side with whatever piping/filter/Tesseracts you want
3. Load charcoal (4 to 10 stacks is usually enough), download program, and run it
4. Place chunk loader if you're going to be out of the area for a while
> refuel all
> pastebin get hejgCauq quarry
> quarry 64 64
If you aren't sure if you have enough charcoal or other turtle solid fuel, place a chest behind him with only fuel in it. He will refuel from that as necessary when he comes back to unload his inventory.
Just remember to plop down a Chunk Loader if you're leaving the area !
The last few quarries have been bug-free and very efficient in terms of energy usage and resources gathered. Late-game, I will do a mining laser, but for only 3 diamonds for the pick-axe and very little charcoal used, a mining turtle is hard to beat for early-game efficiency. Just this 1 little turtle has kept me supplied with most everything I need at the rate I need it.
I use another turtle as my "mining buddy" when I gather Obsidian. I dump water over lava and tell him to gather a rectangle or line of Obsidian while I gather other stuff in the immediate area. The simpler line and rectangle Lua code is here:
Line : http://pastebin.com/Pz4CJxZt
Rectangle : http://pastebin.com/ZrEpQW7z
Up next are simple programs to build stairs down to bedrock, laying proper stairs along the way and putting up torches for lighting. Using the equation for the surface of a sphere should be fun as well to help build a dome. A glass dome over my tree farm or Thaum + Pure Node has a certain appeal.
Gravel/sand were a challenge to figure out as was water. The final challenge was gravel/sand with water on top.
If I hadn't have been a coder in a previous career, I would have no problems downloading someone else's public Turtle quarry code, but finding an excuse to do coding again has been fun.
The current version of my quarry code is here:
http://pastebin.com/hejgCauq
ex:
1. Place facing the direction you want him to quarry. He will quarry a 3D area ahead, to his right, and down to bedrock
2. Place his drop-chest immediately on his left side with whatever piping/filter/Tesseracts you want
3. Load charcoal (4 to 10 stacks is usually enough), download program, and run it
4. Place chunk loader if you're going to be out of the area for a while
> refuel all
> pastebin get hejgCauq quarry
> quarry 64 64
If you aren't sure if you have enough charcoal or other turtle solid fuel, place a chest behind him with only fuel in it. He will refuel from that as necessary when he comes back to unload his inventory.
Just remember to plop down a Chunk Loader if you're leaving the area !
The last few quarries have been bug-free and very efficient in terms of energy usage and resources gathered. Late-game, I will do a mining laser, but for only 3 diamonds for the pick-axe and very little charcoal used, a mining turtle is hard to beat for early-game efficiency. Just this 1 little turtle has kept me supplied with most everything I need at the rate I need it.
I use another turtle as my "mining buddy" when I gather Obsidian. I dump water over lava and tell him to gather a rectangle or line of Obsidian while I gather other stuff in the immediate area. The simpler line and rectangle Lua code is here:
Line : http://pastebin.com/Pz4CJxZt
Rectangle : http://pastebin.com/ZrEpQW7z
Up next are simple programs to build stairs down to bedrock, laying proper stairs along the way and putting up torches for lighting. Using the equation for the surface of a sphere should be fun as well to help build a dome. A glass dome over my tree farm or Thaum + Pure Node has a certain appeal.
Impractical and Time consuming, lol.
In addition to laying out and placing your quarries, extending
So, Yes its elaborate, but my goal (as stated) was to not teleport items in this world. Trying out Railcraft was a lotta fun.
replying to original poster
The quarry mines at a speed that depend on the charge level of its internal storage which is 15000MJ total. if E is the stored energy The head moves at a rate of 0.1+(2+E/500)/200 blocks/tick which means the speed ranges from 0.1 block per tick to 0.26 blocks per tick. the energy use is 2+E/500 which means that keeping the charge high will cause the quarry to use more energy per block. Digging a block take 60 MJ and that's constant, the frame is about 20mj/block (negligable)
Putting everything together the Quarry mines at a cost that range between 82.5~MJ/block to 291~ MJ per block. This basically mean that if you keep the quarry feed low to around 9-10 MJ/t it will take less than 1/3 of the energy but the time it will take it to finish will be about 2.3 times longer. a 64^3 quarry at max speed take 14 hours and at min speed takes about 32 hours. if you use a 9x9x64 quarry it will take 16.5 minutes at fastest speed and 38 minutes at slow speed.
If you know the formula you can pretty much plan what kind of yield you want and at what cost. you can also calculate how much energy you need to pump into the quarry. generally if you run four 32x32x64 quarry at lowest speed they will finish in about 8 hours and take 23.3 million MJ while running 1 64^3 will take 14 hours and take about 76.3~ million MJ.
Take into account that my math is not that accurate but I think the ratios are correct . In term of powering methods I'd recommend the energy cell to control the feed and then either tesseract to charge it or just a few engines. If you use engines you'll have to figure out how much fuel you need when it's unattended . If your fuel is limited you can calculate when to come and refuel the engines.
The quarry mines at a speed that depend on the charge level of its internal storage which is 15000MJ total. if E is the stored energy The head moves at a rate of 0.1+(2+E/500)/200 blocks/tick which means the speed ranges from 0.1 block per tick to 0.26 blocks per tick. the energy use is 2+E/500 which means that keeping the charge high will cause the quarry to use more energy per block. Digging a block take 60 MJ and that's constant, the frame is about 20mj/block (negligable)
Putting everything together the Quarry mines at a cost that range between 82.5~MJ/block to 291~ MJ per block. This basically mean that if you keep the quarry feed low to around 9-10 MJ/t it will take less than 1/3 of the energy but the time it will take it to finish will be about 2.3 times longer. a 64^3 quarry at max speed take 14 hours and at min speed takes about 32 hours. if you use a 9x9x64 quarry it will take 16.5 minutes at fastest speed and 38 minutes at slow speed.
If you know the formula you can pretty much plan what kind of yield you want and at what cost. you can also calculate how much energy you need to pump into the quarry. generally if you run four 32x32x64 quarry at lowest speed they will finish in about 8 hours and take 23.3 million MJ while running 1 64^3 will take 14 hours and take about 76.3~ million MJ.
Take into account that my math is not that accurate but I think the ratios are correct . In term of powering methods I'd recommend the energy cell to control the feed and then either tesseract to charge it or just a few engines. If you use engines you'll have to figure out how much fuel you need when it's unattended . If your fuel is limited you can calculate when to come and refuel the engines.