Pulverizer is better than Macerator In GregTec

[SilvasRuin]

Every Overclocker makes the energy efficiency increasingly bad, and the Pulverizer/Smelter already manages to use Charcoal much more intelligently without babysitting even before you start flushing the power efficiency. (Drop 5 Charcoal in a Stirling Engine and a Generator and you get 20/25 ore depending on the machine compared to the Macerator's 11.) You have to spend much less time cutting trees down at the start with the Pulverizer/Induction Smelter, which is a pretty big deal when you're tired of the first day tedium of tree chopping. Time saves is more important for when you're having to do a lot of things manually, not for when you've managed to automate.

Tell me, are you basing all your statements off of the Direwolf20 pack? (I know you're not using the Mindcrack pack, from your comments so far.) Because if not, then you're polluting the discussion with anecdotes of another pack/installation which is going to have significantly different ore generation. You have 4 Overclockers by the time you build your first Macerator in the Direwolf20 pack? Your Geothermal Generator comment makes me wonder as well. The earliest way to get a lot of lava is with Cells, but consuming Tin for power early on in the up to date FTB packs sounds... like something people would try to avoid.

And as for not starting out, when you have all your infrastructure in place... what's the point of comparing that when you've reached overkill levels of power and materials either way? Once you've reached the point where your production and processing outstrips your need to manually do anything, higher and higher speeds don't matter. You're just going to throw everything into a dump chest and then pull out the metals you need from the sorted storage as you need them, as your stockpiles slowly get bigger and bigger regardless of machine speed.

 

[noah_wolfe]

Which negates the whole purpose of GT.

This is a frequently misguided assumption about GT. The recipe balances are a fraction of a much larger tech implementation. You should also play around with its resource production (grinder, etc) before thinking that TE negates anything in the mod - this certainly isn't an issue, especially in light of the fact that TE is offering a matching tier 1 recipe. In fact, as far as BC-based mods go, TE and GT go very well together, and both devs actively pay attention to each other's work.

 

[Malkuth]

Every Overclocker makes the energy efficiency increasingly bad, and the Pulverizer/Smelter already manages to use Charcoal much more intelligently without babysitting even before you start flushing the power efficiency. (Drop 5 Charcoal in a Stirling Engine and a Generator and you get 20/25 ore depending on the machine compared to the Macerator's 11.) You have to spend much less time cutting trees down at the start with the Pulverizer/Induction Smelter, which is a pretty big deal when you're tired of the first day tedium of tree chopping. Time saves is more important for when you're having to do a lot of things manually, not for when you've managed to automate.

Tell me, are you basing all your statements off of the Direwolf20 pack? (I know you're not using the Mindcrack pack, from your comments so far.) Because if not, then you're polluting the discussion with anecdotes of another pack/installation which is going to have significantly different ore generation. You have 4 Overclockers by the time you build your first Macerator in the Direwolf20 pack? Your Geothermal Generator comment makes me wonder as well. The earliest way to get a lot of lava is with Cells, but consuming Tin for power early on in the up to date FTB packs sounds... like something people would try to avoid.

And as for not starting out, when you have all your infrastructure in place... what's the point of comparing that when you've reached overkill levels of power and materials either way? Once you've reached the point where your production and processing outstrips your need to manually do anything, higher and higher speeds don't matter. You're just going to throw everything into a dump chest and then pull out the metals you need from the sorted storage as you need them, as your stockpiles slowly get bigger and bigger regardless of machine speed.

I don't understand this logic.. It uses more energy as you add more overclockers? Of course it does. If you upgrade it correctly.. and there is a way to do it correctly yes it uses more energy.. But it also gets so much faster in ore proccessing its insane.. Its almost cheat mode.

4 overclocker per level of energy upgrade in IC2 is the norm.. With every upgrade you need Transformer upgrade and a storage upgrade.. There is a balance.. In fact 11 overclockers is plenty. 12 is a little overkill.

Its not too hard to understand.. Once you have a MFSU the energy consuption is a non issue.. I have a Geothermal Pack of genrators about 20 of them running off of nether lava that produces 300+ EU per tick. Thats more then a nuke. We won't get into packet sizes and such that makes nuke a little more understandable then say 20 Geothermal generators.. But still.. Its plenty. And its not that expesensive.. You add Gregtech to the mix and of course its more expensive then TE.. Greg Tech changes IC2 to be harder.. But not TE.. Its a simple concept to understand.[DOUBLEPOST=1357088989][/DOUBLEPOST]

This is a frequently misguided assumption about GT. The recipe balances are a fraction of a much larger tech implementation. You should also play around with its resource production (grinder, etc) before thinking that TE negates anything in the mod - this certainly isn't an issue, especially in light of the fact that TE is offering a matching tier 1 recipe. In fact, as far as BC-based mods go, TE and GT go very well together, and both devs actively pay attention to each other's work.

Hmm interesting.. I understand the Gregtech thing.. But Gregtech is a mod to IC2.. Not TE. TE is a great mod, but if you have people in this thread saying its cheaper to build TE stuff then IC2 stuff then there is a reason. TE and IC2 are = when GregTech is not involved.. You add gregtech and all of a sudden IC2 becomes high tear items and TE becomes the low end stuff.

But you still need to upgrade THE IC2 stuff to beat out the TE stuff in the end.. Which does make it much more expensive then TE to start off with.

Without GT.. Then its comes down to choices.. ANd not cost.

 

[arkangyl]

Or you can ignore the overclockers and all that nonsense, and upgrade it to a Rotary Macerator. The Pulverizer can't even think about coming close to its speed, and it's not terribly expensive. One Rotary Macerator can do the work of three Pulverizers.

IC is for insane efficiency.
TE is for easy start-up.
FC is for high yields.

They all are good mods, and have their own advantages over the other.

 

[Malkuth]

Or you can ignore the overclockers and all that nonsense, and upgrade it to a Rotary Macerator. The Pulverizer can't even think about coming close to its speed, and it's not terribly expensive. One Rotary Macerator can do the work of three Pulverizers.

IC is for insane efficiency.
TE is for easy start-up.
FC is for high yields.

They all are good mods, and have their own advantages over the other.

Dam I forgot about the Rotary..

 

[Toraxa]

Even without geothermal, IC2 is definitely easier in use. Thermal Expansion machines are certainly easier to make and easier to automate, but the ease of use of the IC2 stuff is something nobody seems to be considering. Within a couple hours in a new DW20 pack world I had an MFE, four solar panels, a macerator, a compressor, and an extractor.

Even still, I've been trying to use the thermal expansion stuff, mostly because it's new. To use it though I have to turn on my steam engines, wait for them to build up heat, fill them with coal, and make sure the energy reserves stick around. Buildcraft/Thermal Expansion energy grids/storage are much higher tech than MFEs or BatBoxes. Meanwhile, to use a macerator that's passively gaining EU all the time due to solar panels, I walk up and stick ore in it.

Thermal Expansion is slightly cheaper in total resources to build a pulverizer in, and the pulverizer runs quicker. It also generates additional resources sometimes. However, in my experience the powered furnace is slower than the electric furnace. The speed difference between the two thermal expansion machines annoys me, to be honest, because the total process takes a while, and it results in a bit of a backup in the pulverizer and it's hopper.

IC2 costs a bit more in resources for the macerator, but it's resources you can find higher up, and more commonly in the early parts of the game. Using it is a lot less of a hassle, due to energy being effectively free past the first half hour or so, and it scales throughout the game, which the pulverizer does not.

 

[Zaik]

Pulverizers are more expensive to power, but are faster. MJ is a lot more of a pain in the ass than EU, but with the way ores are set up you pretty much have to run quarries to get everything you need so you end up needing to use MJ anyway. If we had a real electric quarry I think you'd see more use from the EU stuff like the industrial grinder.

If you're looking strictly at what returns the maximum amount of metal per ore, it's probably going to be the gregtech grinder for ores that allow the use of mercury, and induction furnace with rich slag pulled from junk ores for ones that don't.

 

[Greyed]

Actually a fully updated Macerator with Overclockers, power upgrades and Transformer upgrades.. Blows a pulverizer away.. In fact it would take more then one pulverizer to touch an upgraded macerator.

You are defining speed as what makes a machine better then declaring the fastest machine as better.

However speed is not a priority for everyone. Heck, in my current world I've tossed out IC2 because I ended up not using it my last world. Egads, what do I do without the macerator? Well, I define the better machine as one that gives higher yields & interoperates well with my other machines and power system. With that in mind look at the alternatives:

1: Macerator - Requires its own power system, gives the lowest yield of the options.
2: Factorization - Highest yield but requires its own, horrible, power system and is a pain to setup/automate.
3: Pulverizer - Higher yield than the macerator, runs on MJ like the rest of my other machines.

I can hear the wails of your lamentations, but the speed of the macerator, it can process a stack of ore faster than it takes to mine 5 blocks! My response, so what? I'm not standing there waiting for the ore to process. I'm doing other things. I don't care how long it takes to process as long as it isn't something on the order of 20-30 minutes. 5 seconds or 5 minutes is all the same to me, the ore is there in the chest when I look for it either way. That's the point of the sorting system and ore processing system I've put together. The only thing I do by hand is gold, silver and lead smelting because each of them I use in both dust and bar form. And for that a blulectric furnace works nicely.

As for the backlog of ores, hoppers. Instead of having my pipes drop into the single inventory slot of the machine I have it drop into a hopper. That gives me 5 slots that process in sequence.

So in the grand scheme of things, a fully upgraded macerator is, to me, a waste of materials and power. So, no, the macerator isn't better on some objective scale.

MJ is a lot more of a pain in the ass than EU

MJ is not a PITA compared to EU. In fact EU's harder. MJ, hook things into the power grid, done. EU, step power up and down or blow up machines and power runs.

 

[arkangyl]

You are defining speed as what makes a machine better then declaring the fastest machine as better.

However speed is not a priority for everyone. Heck, in my current world I've tossed out IC2 because I ended up not using it my last world. Egads, what do I do without the macerator? Well, I define the better machine as one that gives higher yields & interoperates well with my other machines and power system. With that in mind look at the alternatives:

1: Macerator - Requires its own power system, gives the lowest yield of the options.
2: Factorization - Highest yield but requires its own, horrible, power system and is a pain to setup/automate.
3: Pulverizer - Higher yield than the macerator, runs on MJ like the rest of my other machines.

I can hear the wails of your lamentations, but the speed of the macerator, it can process a stack of ore faster than it takes to mine 5 blocks! My response, so what? I'm not standing there waiting for the ore to process. I'm doing other things. I don't care how long it takes to process as long as it isn't something on the order of 20-30 minutes. 5 seconds or 5 minutes is all the same to me, the ore is there in the chest when I look for it either way. That's the point of the sorting system and ore processing system I've put together. The only thing I do by hand is gold, silver and lead smelting because each of them I use in both dust and bar form. And for that a blulectric furnace works nicely.

As for the backlog of ores, hoppers. Instead of having my pipes drop into the single inventory slot of the machine I have it drop into a hopper. That gives me 5 slots that process in sequence.

So in the grand scheme of things, a fully upgraded macerator is, to me, a waste of materials and power. So, no, the macerator isn't better on some objective scale.


MJ is not a PITA compared to EU. In fact EU's harder. MJ, hook things into the power grid, done. EU, step power up and down or blow up machines and power runs.

How about you dial that back a bit? So what, if your priorities are different than someone else's? It doesn't give you the right to decree what the best way of playing is. That's arrogance on an extreme level, and there's no place for that here. As to MJ vs. EU, you cannot blow up a Generator because it overheats. EU power is far lower maintenance than MJ, plain and simple. Just because you prefer MJ doesn't make it the best power grid. It has numerous flaws, just like EU. Power choice is ultimately irrelevant; each mod has it's own benefits beyond something as transient and insignificant as engines vs. generators. Some people like to use IC2 for it's efficiency and simplicity, and some people like to use TE for it's cheap cost and ease of automation. Me, I like IC2 for it's end-game challenges. There is little else as satisfying as building and maintaining a four or six core nuclear reactor, or leaping insane distances to smite your enemies in an invincible suit of Quantum Armor. There is simply no "right way to play," or even an optimal way to play, because no one has the same goals in playing Minecraft. If you are on an intense PVP server, one could argue that the fastest way to power is the "best" way, but I'd argue even in that situation, cleverness and strategy can win out over a min/max plan.

 

[Malkuth]

You are defining speed as what makes a machine better then declaring the fastest machine as better.

However speed is not a priority for everyone. Heck, in my current world I've tossed out IC2 because I ended up not using it my last world. Egads, what do I do without the macerator? Well, I define the better machine as one that gives higher yields & interoperates well with my other machines and power system. With that in mind look at the alternatives:

1: Macerator - Requires its own power system, gives the lowest yield of the options.
2: Factorization - Highest yield but requires its own, horrible, power system and is a pain to setup/automate.
3: Pulverizer - Higher yield than the macerator, runs on MJ like the rest of my other machines.

I can hear the wails of your lamentations, but the speed of the macerator, it can process a stack of ore faster than it takes to mine 5 blocks! My response, so what? I'm not standing there waiting for the ore to process. I'm doing other things. I don't care how long it takes to process as long as it isn't something on the order of 20-30 minutes. 5 seconds or 5 minutes is all the same to me, the ore is there in the chest when I look for it either way. That's the point of the sorting system and ore processing system I've put together. The only thing I do by hand is gold, silver and lead smelting because each of them I use in both dust and bar form. And for that a blulectric furnace works nicely.

As for the backlog of ores, hoppers. Instead of having my pipes drop into the single inventory slot of the machine I have it drop into a hopper. That gives me 5 slots that process in sequence.

So in the grand scheme of things, a fully upgraded macerator is, to me, a waste of materials and power. So, no, the macerator isn't better on some objective scale.


MJ is not a PITA compared to EU. In fact EU's harder. MJ, hook things into the power grid, done. EU, step power up and down or blow up machines and power runs.

Not really defining anything.. In reality it does not matter who uses what. All Im saying is that a macerator upgraded is a better machine IE faster then TE. Yes it cost a lot to upgrade it.. And with GT installed its insane cost. But in my opinion since the macerator can be upgraded to be faster then TE machine.. Its a better choice.

Now if you wanna start talking about some of the other great machines in TE then thats fine.. Because you would be correct. Liquiduct pipes are the balls, Conductive pipe is the balls, Red Energy Cells are the balls.. TE is a great mod.. I have both machines in my camp.. But I use the upgraded macerator the most. Its faster.. to me speed is everything.. If it takes me 1 Min to macerate 5 Stacks of ore.. That is a lot better in my opinion then 5 mins for TE.

TE is faster then Macerator at start yes... Actually its not that much faster the TE machines get faster with the better Conductive pipes TE has.. But still not faster then an MFSU Run Overclocked Macerator.

Its not really a big deal.. But there is a reason GT made IC2 machines more expensive.

Also its pretty cheap to get a Geothermal gen going.. Its pretty much all I use until I start messing with extreme EU with nukes.

But I do love my Forestry Biomass, Conductive Pipe Red Energy Cell system the most.. That is for sure.. It runs about 90% of my base.. Since most of base is MJ anyway.

Oh and now that Redpower is out with its insane Blutricity Engine... That thing is king of MJ. (but expensive to power)

 

[raiju]

I really like the pulverizer although I am sad I was unaware of this increased difficulty recipe when I started the new mindcrack server, but that's something for next time Now we've been on the server for a couple days we are dipping into multiple MFSU's (IC2 was left till later - it's always been more useful for it's mid-endgame anyway) I am planning on adding a lot more IC2 machinery using overclockers, tier 2 machines, etc.

I enjoy the speed of cooking/pulverizing, since as a group we like to share a base between about 8 of us, it's nice to have lots of fast machinery in case there are a lot online. It's a convenience thing really. I also agree with the general idea that TE is good for start up, IC2 is good for speed mid-late, and factorization for the efficiency through complicated methods. I haven't really tried doing factorization early game so I might try that on the next SMP server we run.

 

[un worry]

There are at least 3 ways to get Glowstone without going to the Nether

Not wishing to derail the debate, but I have started a new TB/Mindcrack world and wanted to stay out of the Nether, if at all possible.

Would someone please list the various ways to acquire Glowstone dust? Thanks.

 

[raiju]

5 redstone and 4 gold will make glowstone, that's the way I know of:

 

[Rikki21]

Glowstone can also spawn like crystals in mystcraft worlds. Not sure about the third way to get it.

 

[Zjarek_S]

Thaumcraft village buildings have one glowstone inside. You can trade with priest. Witches drop glowstone dust.

 

[Greyed]

How about you dial that back a bit?

How about you check your presumptions at the door? Not sure what message you read, but it wasn't mine.

So what, if your priorities are different than someone else's? It doesn't give you the right to decree what the best way of playing is. That's arrogance on an extreme level, and there's no place for that here.

That it is. Now look at my message again. Note what I didn't say in that message? Right, anything about my way of playing better than any other. In fact, I ended with the following sentiment, I'll highlight the important bit since you missed it completely.

"So in the grand scheme of things, a fully upgraded macerator is, to me, a waste of materials and power. So, no, the macerator isn't better on some objective scale."

Now why did I write that message? I was responding to Malkath's message which was quoted, where he specifically stated that a fully upgraded macerator, "Blows a pulverizer away." Not only that but he said in a later message, "Oh and the actual title is the Pulverizer is better then the Macertor.. In which case it is not."

IE, I wrote to point out that when people have different priorities which is better is a relative term, not one that can be declared with such fervor as displayed my Malkath. So that makes your response rather ironic, don'tcha think?

As to MJ vs. EU, you cannot blow up a Generator because it overheats.

MJ has plenty of engines which won't blow up.

EU power is far lower maintenance than MJ, plain and simple.

I disagree. Having played both I find that both are about the same when it comes to maintenance.

Just because you prefer MJ doesn't make it the best power grid.

It amuses me that you quoted my entire message yet are somehow able to argue against things I never said. I didn't say that MJ was the best power grid. I was counting Zaik's assertion that MJ is a PITA compared to EU by pointing out one rather common complexity that EU has which MJ doesn't.

There is simply no "right way to play," or even an optimal way to play, because no one has the same goals in playing Minecraft.

Yeah, kind of the point of my message and why I ended with the notion that an objective scale is irrelevant. The implication being that each person's experience is subjective and, as such, what is "best" varies wildly absent any criteria.

Not really defining anything.. In reality it does not matter who uses what. All Im saying is that a macerator upgraded is a better machine IE faster then TE. Yes it cost a lot to upgrade it.. And with GT installed its insane cost. But in my opinion since the macerator can be upgraded to be faster then TE machine.. Its a better choice.

Yes, you did. See above where I quoted you as saying is is better and here where you are declaring that speed is the defining characteristic.

 

[Bluehorazon]

Well... you need to do some comparisons between IC2 and TE and you need to include the Pack.

Without GregTech the Macerator is pretty similar to the Pulverizer, although it has two large advantages.

1. The Macerator is either a lot faster thanks to overclockers or it uses way less energy.
2. The Macerator uses the cheaper energy-net since Copper-Cables + Batboxes are cheap compared to a BC-EnergyNet

The Pulverizer on the other hand also has it's advantages.

1. It allows very compact designs
2. It has the chance of producing additional dusts

Without GregTech the largest advantage of the Macerator is that you might want IC2-Tools anyway and both machines are so incredibly cheap that there is no reason to not build both, so that you can use the speed of the overclocked macerator (for making Coal-Dust that does not give additional yields) and the pulverizer.

In the Mindcrack-Pack with GregsTech things are different.

1. The Macerator is a lot more expensive (3 Diamonds and an Advanced Circuit).
2. You can only use up to 4 Overclockers
3. You do not have the cheap ways of producing renewable energy (Solar, Wind)

In this scenario the Macerator is not only more expensive it also loses some of it's advantages. On the other hand Gregs makes the Pulverizer worth more by adding advantages to processing silk touched ores like Nikolite. But on the other hand there are more machines to use:

A. The Rockcrusher

Although it costs 12 Diamonds and a lot of MJ to run it is a really nice machine, since it can in theory turn Cobble-Stone into Diamonds (although very, very rare). Like the Pulverizer the Rockcrusher can give you additional dusts (I think at a rate of 10%, instead of 5% with the Pulverizer). But in most cases these recipies are from GregTech. Also the Rockcrusher is quite fast.

B. The Grinder

Well I think Factorization was mentioned before. The largest benefit is the ability to always get 300% yield and although the process is rather slow the bottleneck is the Crystalizer which is rather cheap. So once you have the Grinder the rest is not that expensive. Factorization is a bit more tricky to automate, but a nice thing to do later on.

C. The Industrial Grinder

Although it is a lot of work to get this machine it is propably one of the best solutions for late-game Ore-Processing. Although it does eat tons of EU it is fast and creates a lot of materials. It really shines in combination with the Rockcutter, since it will give you 1 Diamond-Dust for every 4 Nikolite Ore or small amounts of Glowstone for Redstone Ore etc. With Mercury it can also triple-yield Gold-Ore (while still giving Copper and Nickel as byproducts) or can give a full gold-dust for every Copper-Ore.

I normally use Thermal Expansion machines early on and move to the industrial grinder later.

 

[thezeronumber]

Can you guys please stop bickering? It seems every topic Greyed posts in - for one reason or another - results in heated disagreements and arguing. We're all human at the end of the day: We have different opinions, different ideas and different mistakes to make. So let's all calm down, have a drink, play some Minecraft and make glorious FTB contraptions instead of war.

 

[raiju]

2. You can only use up to 4 Overclockers

Was this added to gregtech after the 1.4.2? I had 15~ overclockers in my IC2 machines on my beta pack A server but haven't started using IC2 properly yet. (will be checking changelogs after posting this)

 

[Greyed]

So let's all calm down, have a drink, play some Minecraft and make glorious FTB contraptions instead of war.

But what if the glorious FTB contraptions we want to make are for war?