Redstone Energy Cells (Mindcrack 8.3.2)

[LittleMike]

Hello all,

I've been doing some testing with RECs and I'm very confused by some of the results I'm getting. I have 8 magmatic engines hooked up to a single redstone energy conduit output. That *should* be 32MJ/t. I had a REC placed after some machines to charge and take with me places, but I decided to redesign things and put it in front as a buffer. At first, I connected it to the conduit and then put a magma crucible next to it and ran more conduit behind. This meant the magma crucible was being fed conduit as well as touching the conduit and the REC was draining like crazy, even with nothing else on. So as a test, I moved the crucible one block over so it only had one connection via conduit. Kind of like this:

Engines--REC--MC--

Note, 2 dashes equals one conduit

So the engines are outputting 4MJ/t each x 8 = 32MJ/t. I set the REC to output 30MJ/t because that's the max the crucible can handle. Once again, the crucible would max out internal storage, operate at 30MJ/t and start draining the REC. What gives?

So as another experiment, I tried moving things around some more and have 5 sides of the REC as output and the 1 side as input from the engines.



When I set the output to 30MJ/t again, the energy drained right out of the REC like water. I assume the output setting is per side? So I did some more testing and set it to 5MJ/t. 5 x 5 sides = 25MJ/t. So I figured that would run the crucible at a decent speed and the REC would still be able to keep charged from the engines (which in theory are supposed to be charging at 32MJ/t.)



This is where it starts to get really weird 0.o

The magmatic engines start throttling down!



0.4 MJ/t?!?!



2.2 MJ/t?!?! what gives?!

Now it gets weirder. At this point, the REC should be draining because the engines aren't keeping up with the demand, right? Nope! The crucible throttles down too!



23.7 MJ/t. And that's about where it stops. It won't take any more energy.

So at this point the engines are outputting 26.6MJ/t into a REC set to input 100MJ/t and output 5MJ/t. The crucible is *slowly* charging its internal buffer so that could account for the 1.6MJ/t difference... but my question is... why is the crucible acting as if the REC isn't there? It seems to be performing at the exact rate the engines are going. And for that matter, why are the engines throttling down?

Okay, one more experiment. I set the output on the REC to 6MJ/t. 5 sides, that should be 30MJ/t right? Something very similar happened. First, the engines ramped up, but one stayed throttled at 3.5MJ/t to 3.6MJ/t



So that's about 31.6MJ/t. The crucible upped its output a little to 28.4MJ/t. It started filling up more of its internal buffer as it went from 23.7 to 28.4 and then stopped. It is not gaining nor losing any more and is staying at exactly the same amount. The REC is also staying completely filled, not losing or gaining anything.

Last experiment - I bump the REC to 7MJ/t. That's 35MJ/t - more than the crucible can handle. What happens?

The crucible goes to 30MJ/t and starts draining the REC AND the internal buffer. At this point it created enough lava to fill the internal buffer of the crucible (all the engines always stay topped off) so I had to kill my experiment.

So some questions I have:

Why was the REC completely "ignored" by the crucible?

Why did the engines throttle down?

Why did the crucible throttle down?

When I set it to 7MJ/t on the REC, why was the internal buffer of the crucible being used? That should have been 35/t out from the REC - 5MJ/t surplus. The REC should have drained, yes, but not the buffer of the crucible.

Sorry for the long-winded post. I just thought this was acting totally strange and thought maybe someone could help me figure out what the heck went on here.

 

[Exe19]

30MJ/t - 5% Conduit loss = 28,5 MJ/t

 

[LittleMike]

30MJ/t - 5% Conduit loss = 28,5 MJ/t

Okay.... but that doesn't answer any of my questions. The engines are putting out 32MJ/t. Even with 5% loss, that's 30.4MJ/t, not 28.5.

 

[namiasdf]

Magma crucibles have weird behaviour. I have the same problem. I think it might be because they have long warm-up periods. i.e. They wait to hit 24000 MJ before attempting to melt a block of cobble, simply as a security measure against half cycle disruptions.

That's what I think anyways. So if you have less than 30 MJ/t, your magma crucible will have periodic warmup periods.

That's what I think anyways.

 

[LittleMike]

Magma crucibles have weird behaviour. I have the same problem. I think it might be because they have long warm-up periods. i.e. They wait to hit 24000 MJ before attempting to melt a block of cobble, simply as a security measure against half cycle disruptions.

That's what I think anyways. So if you have less than 30 MJ/t, your magma crucible will have periodic warmup periods.

That's what I think anyways.

That is true and could be part of the problem. Why wasn't the energy being taken directly from the REC, though? It was as if the REC wasn't even there. The engines and the crucible all seemed to throttle according to their own usage. Shouldn't the REC have been drained, and the crucible been at max output no matter what?

 

[namiasdf]

It might be a bug in the programming.

The magma crucible is demanding 30 MJ/t, but it depends on what receives that. If the REC receives that, it may not account for the loss through piping, i.e. it sends out 30 MJ/t and it is reduced. Though I can't explain the throttling.

If the crucible demands 30 MJ/t from the piece of pipe it is connected to, then that pipe demands 30MJ/t from the subsequent one, so on so forth until it gets back to the REC where it might be something like 31 MJ/t, compensation for the loss. (i.e. piping is aware of this loss and sends extra energy to the subsequent piece of pipe to make up for this.)

 

[LittleMike]

It might be a bug in the programming.

The magma crucible is demanding 30 MJ/t, but it depends on what receives that. If the REC receives that, it may not account for the loss through piping, i.e. it sends out 30 MJ/t and it is reduced. Though I can't explain the throttling.

If the crucible demands 30 MJ/t from the piece of pipe it is connected to, then that pipe demands 30MJ/t from the subsequent one, so on so forth until it gets back to the REC where it might be something like 31 MJ/t, compensation for the loss. (i.e. piping is aware of this loss and sends extra energy to the subsequent piece of pipe to make up for this.)

That's where it got funny - the magma crucible wasn't demanding 30MJ/t, though it should have. The crucible should run at whatever you throw at it up until 30MJ/t kind of like a quarry does. The REC was throwing 30MJ/t at it, yet it throttled down. Then the engines throttled down, even though the REC was requesting 100MJ/t, so the engines should have been full bore no matter what.

 

[namiasdf]

It's the sequence to which the MJ packet is requested by the machine, from the REC, through the piping that matters.

 

[LittleMike]

It's the sequence to which the MJ packet is requested by the machine, from the REC, through the piping that matters.

Not true - if I have a REC hooked up to a quarry - the quarry will take whatever I set the REC to, not the other way around. So if I set the REC to output 20MJ/t, the quarry will only do 20. If I set the REC to 100MJ/t, the quarry will do 30 (or whatever the max is). If I set the REC to 25MJ/t, the crucible should not be doing 23.x. Also, why would the engines throttle? The REC is requesting 100MJ/t from the engines. They should not throttle at all.

 

[namiasdf]

Quarries and magma crucibles are from different modpacks and might have different programming. I don't know if this is true, but each of the two modpacks they're from respectively, also have MJ conductive piping unique to that modpack as well.

 

[LittleMike]

Quarries and magma crucibles are from different modpacks and might have different programming. I don't know if this is true, but each of the two modpacks they're from respectively, also have MJ conductive piping unique to that modpack as well.

Yes, but a REC and conduit are from Thermal Expansion and should react the same no matter what.

Maybe King Lemming can chime in here and tell me what's going on. I know in newer versions of TE, there is no more loss in the conduits, but I think Mindcrack 8.3.2 has an older version before that was changed.

Even still - the engines should not throttle. Period. If a REC is requesting 100MJ/t, why would the engines throttle? Forget about the rest.

 

[fergcraft]

also magmatic engines tend to have a cooling down phase so that might be why it's not generating enough mj.

 

[LittleMike]

also magmatic engines tend to have a cooling down phase so that might be why it's not generating enough mj.

These were fully heated up then throttled down and stayed there. This was throttling - not heating up/cooling down.