Pulverizer is better than Macerator In GregTec

[DoctorOr]

If you're not concerned with processing speed, and an additional 5% out of your ore is important to you (that's 1 extra ingot every 25 ores, ie. paltry), then you're doing it wrong.

If you're going to necro a thread this long dead, at least use current stats. Pulverizer currently has a 10% return on the third dust. Thats 1 in 10.

If I used pulverizer in my ore processing system, it would cause a backlog of massive proportions

Then you're doing it wrong. Nothing says you can only have one pulverizer. In fact, if you only have one, you're doing it wrong. To quote a phrase heard from you.

There is legitimately no reason to ever build a macerator in a modpack with TE installed.

 

[jumpfight5]

Well...there is *almost* absolutely no reason. You can macerate wool into string

 

[BanzaiBlitz]

Well...there is *almost* absolutely no reason. You can macerate wool into string

There is a config setting for that. Pulverizer can do the same thing.

 

[jumpfight5]

Hmm... didn't work for me, but that was V7. Well, guess macerators ARE useless! Some like the speed, but I'd much rather have 10 pulverizers outputting more stuff.

 

[bwillb]

There is legitimately no reason to ever build a macerator in a modpack with TE installed.

I don't think you can pulverize to get coal dust... At least, NEI doesn't think so.

 

[Exasperation]

You can pulverize to get coal dust. What you can't get from a pulverizer is netherrack dust (you get cobble instead). Better gold yield if you use an industrial grinder, though.

 

[Xeonen]

Since we are talking about IC 2 and TE, not GregTech which is not even a mod just an add on, we should consider pros and cons of machines;

Price - Macerator is actually much cheaper, it is far faster to find 4 redstone than to find 2 gold, hardest to find thing in that recipe might be rubber still pretty cheap.

Power Management - TE uses MJ as power and nearly all kind of MJ using machines suffer from same problem, they have to heat up to provide optimum efficiency and on early game you have to rely on BC power systems which has a tendancy to blow up if you have too much unused power build up in the pipes. IC 2 offers a bit of problem at the very beginning but with addition of a mere batbox you can put go through ores without turning system off and on.

Efficiency - Although MJ power systems require time to heat up and not suitable for turning on and off for short bursts, it is more efficient in terms of resource consuption. If you like to mine for a bit then run the machines for a few minecraft day at the early beginning, you are set up for TE Pulverizer. Morever, pulverizer drops small amount of bonus materials which is a life saver at the early game.

Speed - At the early game both machines have the same speed but at later levels Macerator becomes a speedy destroyer and in that stage your need for small bonuses will be nullified with extreme amount of resources.

Automation - At early game, using a macerator for automation is asking for trouble, RP2 systems are best problematic and BC systems are prone to spilling your ores out. TE machies in this case are superb, and with RP integration they do not spill your ores they can even pass items from one system to other, making a basic automatic system a breeze at early game and at late game they make slow but fool proof auto sorting systems.

In the end, I find IC2 Macerator a fine machine, a cheap one and at late game a perfect machine to do some manual work. TE Pulverizer a safe but slow machine that has capabilities for early game manual work as well as automation and late game automation.

There is no better or worse in this comparison but strong and weak points.

 

[Exasperation]

That's a bit arbitrary; GT is an add-on to IC2 in pretty much the same way as TE is to BC. Also, the rest of the discussion has been in the context of a modpack with GT installed (see the first post).

The price argument depends entirely on what config settings you use, but their recipes are fairly equivalent if both set to the same difficulty; that mindcrack uses cheap pulverizers but expensive macerators has been pointed out as odd by numerous people. I have to disagree about redstone vs. gold, though; I usually find gold before redstone.

Power management: I find that the large internal storage of TE machines and their behavior (ie not starting an operation without the energy to complete it) makes it easier to manage TE machines before you have enough energy production/storage to run everything at once. IC2 generators do compensate for that somewhat by being a little more foolproof than BC engines (although I've seen people mess up with both), and it is definitely easier to add external EU storage than MJ storage early on.

Efficiency: I mostly agree with you on this. Additionally, without overclockers they take about the same amount of fuel to perform an operation (unless you're using lava, BC fuel, biomass, biofuel, or basically anything in a railcraft boiler - those tend to produce MJ more efficiently than EU).

Speed: a fully charged pulverizer is much faster than a macerator with no overclockers. I've thrown a stack of something into a pulverizer and another stack into a macerator, then when the pulverizer is done taken half of what's left in the macerator and thrown that in the pulverizer. Then when it's done again, taken all but a couple of the items remaining in the macerator, and thrown them into the pulverizer too. On the other hand the macerator can be upgraded to be much faster (at the cost of energy efficiency).

Automation: you basically said it all here.[DOUBLEPOST=1361098663][/DOUBLEPOST]
Edit - got a server error on posting this and wound up with a double post.

 

[WTFFFS]

Sorry but when talking ore processing you have to consider all available methods and frankly for me my Ind Grinders take the cake for automated use, they feed into either a blast furnace or a row of a few Induction Furnaces with some product going into a set of Electric Crafting tables with Golems retrieving the full size piles and feeding those back in. For single quick uses, pulveriser\powered furnace is slower than a fully overclocked macerator w\ induction furnace (which is very cheap to run and stupidly fast) but it is easier to set up a limited production line for short runs of rarer items with the TE machines than the IC2 ones. The ease of automation of the TE machines as well as the ability to triple the output of very required materials wins hands down for me for the early game, a couple of RC Hobbyists steam engines work wonderfully for early power they are cheapish to make, easy to fuel and incredibly efficient of fuel. The only bad early thing is blowing up your stone\gold conductives but meh those are fairly cheap

 

[Armitige]

If you're going to necro a thread this long dead, at least use current stats. Pulverizer currently has a 10% return on the third dust. Thats 1 in 10.



Then you're doing it wrong. Nothing says you can only have one pulverizer. In fact, if you only have one, you're doing it wrong. To quote a phrase heard from you.

There is legitimately no reason to ever build a macerator in a modpack with TE installed.

Last post before mine was mid january. You're clearly new to the internet if you think that's "necroing a thread".
Read my post. I'd need a tonne of pulverizers to keep up with my ore production, where a dozen fully overclocked macerators does the job. It's not my fault you can't comprehend something that's well beyond your capabilities though, so perhaps I should just go easy on you 8)

 

[Bigglesworth]

If you're not concerned with processing speed, and an additional 5% out of your ore is important to you (that's 1 extra ingot every 25 ores, ie. paltry), then you're doing it wrong. If I used pulverizer in my ore processing system, it would cause a backlog of massive proportions, we're talking the kind that killed Elvis here. That, or I'd need to build about 60 pulverizers and a pipe network that would make a plumber's crack bleed. Speed is far from irrelevant. Pulverizers might be the shizzle for your single quarry powered by a stirling engine. But when you have 8 quarries, connected to power and item tesseracts, each powered by 9 fully upgraded electric engines, you need speed over an extra ingot every 2 minutes.

The pipe network for 60 pulvs would be no more complex than one with 6, or 600 or 1 for that matter. Thats the whole point of patterns in a factory; ease of upgrading. Your take looks like you are fine with trading effeciantcy for speed. Thats fine, but a lot of people find it more fun to put more thought into a system to get the absolute most output return no matter the input. Some machines do that better than others. Speed is irrelevant unless you have a slow computer and a pulv room would grind it to a hault. Not any one machine is best at everything when it comes to dust/ore processing.

 

[Enigmius1]

If you're not concerned with processing speed, and an additional 5% out of your ore is important to you (that's 1 extra ingot every 25 ores, ie. paltry), then you're doing it wrong. If I used pulverizer in my ore processing system, it would cause a backlog of massive proportions, we're talking the kind that killed Elvis here. That, or I'd need to build about 60 pulverizers and a pipe network that would make a plumber's crack bleed. Speed is far from irrelevant. Pulverizers might be the shizzle for your single quarry powered by a stirling engine. But when you have 8 quarries, connected to power and item tesseracts, each powered by 9 fully upgraded electric engines, you need speed over an extra ingot every 2 minutes.

You're exaggerating quite badly. Even with 8 fast quarries, the vast majority of what you pull up is going to be cobble. And then in between streams of cobble you're going to get sporadic blocks of other materials, but it's not like you've got 8 high speed quarries pulling nothing but iron ore with every block. I've run multiple quarries before. My system is set up with one pulverizer for each type of material I want to pulverize, just as I would have it set up with macerators. And because of that, the only way to jam it up is to intentionally send stacks of ore through at a time. Individual blocks, even arriving regularly, are a non-issue. And because it's a non-issue, extra speed is also a non-issue, because it doesn't do anything for me. It doesn't prevent bottllenecking at the machines. So yes, that wee little extra bonus of ore is better than the speed, because something is better than nothing. A little extra ore is a small benefit. Speed I don't need is no benefit. Something. Nothing.

If your ore processing system can't handle the input from 8 fast quarries without upgraded macerators, you're doin' it wrong.

 

[Bigglesworth]

His way is the quick and dirty way. His mentality is, he gets so much crap coming in he doesn't care if its wasteful and doesn't care to test how far you can make a pulv go if you just put a bit of thought into a design rather than tossing speed at it and calling it a day. Sadly there are actual engineers like that as well. Wasteful unintelligent design that is good enough for people that dont know better. It takes a lot of fully powered quarries to even max out my 8 pulvs.

 

[Hydra]

Or you just use 2 pulverizers with hoppers and a buffer chest. Has no problems whatsoever keeping up with 3 quarries.

 

[Bigglesworth]

Or you just use 2 pulverizers with hoppers and a buffer chest. Has no problems whatsoever keeping up with 3 quarries.

True that. I like mixing in Redpower though. Relays have 9 slot cache, so ontop of my main incoming ore ender chest, they get immediately sent out to the relays. The relays sit on my pulvs and get injected with ore instantly when the pulv is ready for the next batch.

All in all a single pulv will most certainly keep up with a fully powered (5bps) quarry. Probably even two.

I'll still use the macerator for things that the pulv doesnt really need to do. Like getting no extra things from gravel->flint if i had no flint and absolutely needed 6 stacks right nao!1

 

[Xeonen]

True that. I like mixing in Redpower though. Relays have 9 slot cache, so ontop of my main incoming ore ender chest, they get immediately sent out to the relays. The relays sit on my pulvs and get injected with ore instantly when the pulv is ready for the next batch.

All in all a single pulv will most certainly keep up with a fully powered (5bps) quarry. Probably even two.

I'll still use the macerator for things that the pulv doesnt really need to do. Like getting no extra things from gravel->flint if i had no flint and absolutely needed 6 stacks right nao!1

I have had 2x pulverizers and 4x powered furnaces; they could happily run beside a quarry at max speed (48mj/tick) and buffer chest was mostly empty. I think with only one pulverizer and one powered furnace it can definitely be done.

 

[Bigglesworth]

Lets do some basic math I wonder about how many quarry one pulv could support on average..

Lets say 3% of each chunk is ore you want to pulverize.
Quarry full speed mines 5 blocks per second.
Pulv smooshes ore every 5 seconds.

So, a quarry will go though a chunk in 16^3/5 seconds or 820 sec
1 pulv can get through 820/5 ore in that time. Thats 164 ore.
Average ore present in that same chunk is 16^3*3%. Or 123 ore.

Therefor a pulv can sustain 123/164 quarry. Or 1.3.
With a small cache/buffer system (like ONE wooden chest or a single relay) it wont matter if you hit a huge ore vein either.

What happened to the idiot talking about 60 pulvs for his cute lil 8 quarry? He'd need 78 quarry going to keep all those pulvs up!

Macerator is good for a TON of other things. Pulv is way way better for your ore.

I use Induction smelter for all my ore as it is the absolute best machine for it and it is as fast as the pulv. rich slag is way too good.

 

[KirinDave]

I'm so confused what the point of this argument is. Why can't IC2 just be an older mod with a different idea of "balance?"

If you want to give a compelling argument about the Macerator, it's simple: it's way easier to get early game. Way, way, way, way easier. The total cost of ownership and management of a macerator is a tiny fraction of the huge hassle that early game buildcraft power management is. Buildcraft power before conduits is terrible. It isn't just difficult by design... energy pipes have very weird and sometimes difficult-to-reproduce behaviors that frequently result in explosions, whereas EU is an almost absurdly forgiving power source.

And it used to be the end of the story. TE changed that, and IC2's response seems so far to be, "Well yeah but most people who care play with Advanced Machines or Gregtech and these all use the macerator as step one in a bigger tech tree." Which is a good response, actually. It's just those of us playing DW20 don't have said machines, and those of us that watch DW20's latest seasons may note that he does the bare minimum to get a gravity suit and then leaves it all behind. So if you're feeling like IC2 is a bit of a derelict in that pack, I suspect that is true.

Of course, Modular Powersuits may change that. I just spent the whole evening on a tinker table and man is that mod fun (<-- Strategically placed thread derailer).

 

[DoctorOr]

If you want to give a compelling argument about the Macerator, it's simple: it's way easier to get early game. Way, way, way, way easier.

What? The difference is minimal. The macerator takes more metal, and the pulverizer needs a wider variety. It's such a small difference that a any brand spanking new world can make their choice of either after a single caving run. And somebody who searched out villages instead of digging is more likely to have the lower quantity and wider variety for a pulverizer than all that iron for a macerator

Construction costs:
Pulverizer: 5 Iron, 2 Gold, 2 Copper, 3 Redstone plus 1 iron 1 redstone per engine.
Macerator: 9 iron, plus 8 iron, 3 copper, 4 tin for the generator. (And hope you find that rubber tree)

The difference is 2 gold, 4 redstone on one side or 11 iron, 1 copper, 4 tin and rubber on the other. It's possible to be able to build the macerator and not the pulverizer, I guess, but it would take dedicated surface skimming to do it.

The total cost of ownership and management of a macerator is a tiny fraction of the huge hassle that early game buildcraft power management is.

"Power management" for a single pulverizer is a single sterling engine. Just like a macerator is a single generator. The pulverizer wouldn't be full power but _that's_not_necessary_ for Steves First Machines. And you can keep adding sterling engines up to 4 all pointing at different faces, when the pulverizer would be full speed, at zero risk for any explosions, and crushing the macerator in speed tests.

You can even run a macerator off a redstone engine, if you don't intend to stare and watch it - running the redstone while you're off caving for a 2nd run is in fact a free way to get a full energy buffer and a handful of ore processes for free when you're back

Conduits or conductive pipe are both simply unnecessary for "early" game, which is your stated argument. And the bonus dust is at its most valuable at that early stage of the game.[DOUBLEPOST=1361283438][/DOUBLEPOST]

I use Induction smelter for all my ore as it is the absolute best machine for it and it is as fast as the pulv. rich slag is way too good.

At 5% bonus instead of 20%, it's a pretty sad choice actually. Early game, that extra bonus from a pulverizer is going to make more impact and later with automation available, Factorization or GregTech will give you the 3x for every single ore.

 

[King Lemming]

Of course, Modular Powersuits may change that. I just spent the whole evening on a tinker table and man is that mod fun (<-- Strategically placed thread derailer).

While MPS is really awesome, I'm not sure how it will favor one mod over any other mod. Muse and I both walk in the same circles - MPS already has some TE integration and it's only gonna get better.