Railcraft Commercial Steam engine quirks

[MobiusOne]

So, i have been wondering this for some time, but how do i hook up a commercial steam engine to a power system like so?

My goal is to get the power from this steam engine to run my Buildcraft Lasers to the right, but...

When enabled the engine just builds up power inside itself until it turns orange (then i turn it off, cause don't want to risk blowing up my expensive stuff adjacent to it.

I have tried hitting it and the wooden conductive pipe with both a wrench and a crowbar, but nothing changes.

Why is this? What is the easiest workaround so i can power my lasers?

 

[Bagman817]

It's a bit difficult to answer without knowing what pack or at least what version of MC you're playing on, but one solution might be to try some other mod's power cable.

 

[MobiusOne]

I am on the Direwolf20 1.7.10 pack, sorry about that.

 

[Bagman817]

Right, then. For troubleshooting, I'd recommend duplicating your set up on a test world in creative. First thing I'd try is replacing the BC pipes with Ender IO energy conduits. If that works, that would suggest there's an issue with the BC pipes. If it doesn't, try replacing the engines with TE steam dynamos. if none of that works, I'm at a loss.

 

[MobiusOne]

Ok, thanks for the help, ill tell you how it goes tomorrow.

 

[asiekierka]

Update to DW20 1.0.3+

 

[Captain_Oats]

I had a similar problem to yours with industrial steam engines. I tried several tiers of energy conduits (EIO) and it didn't make a difference.

I found that the internal buffer is now the "heat" of the engine, and in order for the steam engines to produce their stated output, they must be in the red heat zone. In previous versions red meant overheating, now it means it's running at full efficiency. Also they don't explode anymore. So in my example the industrial steam engine would output 30-40 RF/t until it's buffer was full and it reached the "red heat", at which point it would finally output 60 RF/t safely.

Make sure you're on the latest version of RC/BC, I know engine explosions have been removed. For the steam engines red means good now. For other BC engines red means it's overheating, and after they have been red for some time they will shutdown and require a smack with a wrench in order to resume functioning (again no explosion).

 

[MobiusOne]

I had a similar problem to yours with industrial steam engines. I tried several tiers of energy conduits (EIO) and it didn't make a difference.

I found that the internal buffer is now the "heat" of the engine, and in order for the steam engines to produce their stated output, they must be in the red heat zone. In previous versions red meant overheating, now it means it's running at full efficiency. Also they don't explode anymore. So in my example the industrial steam engine would output 30-40 RF/t until it's buffer was full and it reached the "red heat", at which point it would finally output 60 RF/t safely.

Make sure you're on the latest version of RC/BC, I know engine explosions have been removed. For the steam engines red means good now. For other BC engines red means it's overheating, and after they have been red for some time they will shutdown and require a smack with a wrench in order to resume functioning (again no explosion).

I am on 1.0.2 and it will not seem to get past 6600 stored energy (MJ). This is only the green state. I guess I will just have to try upgrading to the most recent version.

 

[MobiusOne]

Ok, the updating worked. I checked the changelog and i believe it was probably the changes to Railcraft with the MJ vs RF api. Thanks for all the help.

Also, for anyone's reference, The amount of RF needed to be stored is around 132000 for the commercial steam engine before it starts outputting power (RF).