Are there any pros to using redstone energy conduits over golden conductive pipes? I read that they are more efficient but I cant see by how much more considering that golden conductive pipes already have a 0.01% loss per block traveled. The biggest thing however is you can't use gates with them which that alone prevents me from choosing them over the gold pipes.
Redstone Energy Conduits
- Thread starter Sorok
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The problem with conductive pipes is that they are lossy buffers. Let me explain:
A Buildcraft engine does not output power constantly. It outputs whatever power it generated in one big pulse on every "stroke" of the engine (the moment when the piston reaches the very front). A combustion engine running on fuel, for example, generates 6 MJ/t but strokes only once per 24 ticks (if heated up to green). So on each stroke dumps 6 * 24 = 144 MJ into the connected wooden conductive pipe in an instant. That power then gets distributed by the conductive pipes over time - the transfer isn't instant. This is especially because most Buildcraft power compatible machines have an upper limit of how much energy they can consume per tick.
Let's take a pump: it can accept at most 1 MJ/t. So if you attach the combustion engine directly, it will dump 144 MJ on each stroke but the pump will only consume 1 MJ of that, wasting the remaining 143. If you use conductive pipes, though, the pipe will make sure that the power output by the engine is present for longer than a single tick - it buffers the power and allows the pump to keep drawing 1 MJ/t for many ticks in a row.
But if the pump needs 144 ticks to consume the entire output from one engine stroke, and the engine strokes once per 24 ticks, doesn't that result in far more power coming in than the pump can consume? And where does all that power go? The answer is: it vanishes into thin air. The buffering the pipe does is increadibly lossy - the longer the target machine takes to consume a pulse of energy, the more of that pulse simply goes to waste. The effect is so drastic that it even shows up when measuring in a situation where the target machine can consume far more power per tick than the engine produces. Compared to the buffer losses, distance-based losses are completely negligible.
Here's how you can test this:
Take four redstone energy cells and four magmatic engines. Connect one magmatic engine to each cell; for two, use two energy conduits each, and for the other two, use a wooden and a golden conductive pipe each.
Set cells 1 and 3 to accept 100 MJ/t (the maximum possible; might be 125 MJ/t in FTB's current version of Thermal Expansion). Set cells 2 and 4 to to accept 4 MJ/t (the exact output of the magmatic engines).
Now feed each magmatic engine one bucket of lava. The expected end result in the energy cells is 18,000 MJ.
You will notice the following pattern: Cells 3 and 4 will be at 17,999 to 18,000 MJ. Cell 1 will be slightly less. Cell 2 will be significantly less.
Other advantages of conduits:
- They work as a 1,000 MJ battery, per conduit. A length of 10 conduits will store 10,000 MJ. The charge will dissipate over time, but incredibly slowly - it will take over an hour to lose half its charge if it was full. This feature is useful when your engine outputs more power than your machines consume before you switch it off / it runs out of fuel. All energy pumped towards idle machines connected via conductive pipes goes to waste, but with conduits you can come back to your machines next time and use several thousand MJ worth of buffered power without even turning on your engine. You can see this effect best on machines that have a power storage UI, such as TE's machines.
- Conduits make TE machines and TE engines aware of each other. If you have a magmatic engine (4 MJ/t) connected to a powered furnace (2 MJ/t) via conduits, then that magmatic engine will be able to see if the powered furnace is actually requiring power or not, even without using Buildcraft gates. The magmatic engine will then run at the speed it needs to - if the powered furnace is the only power consumer, the magmatic engine will run at 50% output to preserve fuel. And after the furnace has finished, it will throttle down to a minimum of 10% (0.4 MJ/t) to be even more frugal.
- Conduits are loop agnostic. If you take conductive pipes and build them into even a single loop anywhere in the network, they will start wasting nearly all the entire network's power while creating enormous lag at the same time. Conduits don't care, they work the same in all cases.
- No hassle making two sets of pipes (wooden and golden). Just conduits.
Disadvantages of conduits are, of course:
- They cost a bit more than pipes
- They require infrastructure set up before you can make them
- They don't have that pretty floating blue energy line graphic
- They can't use Buildcraft logic gates, which is probably the one big drawback
A Buildcraft engine does not output power constantly. It outputs whatever power it generated in one big pulse on every "stroke" of the engine (the moment when the piston reaches the very front). A combustion engine running on fuel, for example, generates 6 MJ/t but strokes only once per 24 ticks (if heated up to green). So on each stroke dumps 6 * 24 = 144 MJ into the connected wooden conductive pipe in an instant. That power then gets distributed by the conductive pipes over time - the transfer isn't instant. This is especially because most Buildcraft power compatible machines have an upper limit of how much energy they can consume per tick.
Let's take a pump: it can accept at most 1 MJ/t. So if you attach the combustion engine directly, it will dump 144 MJ on each stroke but the pump will only consume 1 MJ of that, wasting the remaining 143. If you use conductive pipes, though, the pipe will make sure that the power output by the engine is present for longer than a single tick - it buffers the power and allows the pump to keep drawing 1 MJ/t for many ticks in a row.
But if the pump needs 144 ticks to consume the entire output from one engine stroke, and the engine strokes once per 24 ticks, doesn't that result in far more power coming in than the pump can consume? And where does all that power go? The answer is: it vanishes into thin air. The buffering the pipe does is increadibly lossy - the longer the target machine takes to consume a pulse of energy, the more of that pulse simply goes to waste. The effect is so drastic that it even shows up when measuring in a situation where the target machine can consume far more power per tick than the engine produces. Compared to the buffer losses, distance-based losses are completely negligible.
Here's how you can test this:
Take four redstone energy cells and four magmatic engines. Connect one magmatic engine to each cell; for two, use two energy conduits each, and for the other two, use a wooden and a golden conductive pipe each.
Code:
[cell 1] - [golden pipe] - [wooden pipe] - [engine]
[cell 2] - [golden pipe] - [wooden pipe] - [engine]
[cell 3] - [conduit] - [conduit] - [engine]
[cell 4] - [conduit] - [conduit] - [engine]Set cells 1 and 3 to accept 100 MJ/t (the maximum possible; might be 125 MJ/t in FTB's current version of Thermal Expansion). Set cells 2 and 4 to to accept 4 MJ/t (the exact output of the magmatic engines).
Now feed each magmatic engine one bucket of lava. The expected end result in the energy cells is 18,000 MJ.
You will notice the following pattern: Cells 3 and 4 will be at 17,999 to 18,000 MJ. Cell 1 will be slightly less. Cell 2 will be significantly less.
Other advantages of conduits:
- They work as a 1,000 MJ battery, per conduit. A length of 10 conduits will store 10,000 MJ. The charge will dissipate over time, but incredibly slowly - it will take over an hour to lose half its charge if it was full. This feature is useful when your engine outputs more power than your machines consume before you switch it off / it runs out of fuel. All energy pumped towards idle machines connected via conductive pipes goes to waste, but with conduits you can come back to your machines next time and use several thousand MJ worth of buffered power without even turning on your engine. You can see this effect best on machines that have a power storage UI, such as TE's machines.
- Conduits make TE machines and TE engines aware of each other. If you have a magmatic engine (4 MJ/t) connected to a powered furnace (2 MJ/t) via conduits, then that magmatic engine will be able to see if the powered furnace is actually requiring power or not, even without using Buildcraft gates. The magmatic engine will then run at the speed it needs to - if the powered furnace is the only power consumer, the magmatic engine will run at 50% output to preserve fuel. And after the furnace has finished, it will throttle down to a minimum of 10% (0.4 MJ/t) to be even more frugal.
- Conduits are loop agnostic. If you take conductive pipes and build them into even a single loop anywhere in the network, they will start wasting nearly all the entire network's power while creating enormous lag at the same time. Conduits don't care, they work the same in all cases.
- No hassle making two sets of pipes (wooden and golden). Just conduits.
Disadvantages of conduits are, of course:
- They cost a bit more than pipes
- They require infrastructure set up before you can make them
- They don't have that pretty floating blue energy line graphic
- They can't use Buildcraft logic gates, which is probably the one big drawback
Weeeell yeah, but you can still use gates to control conduits, by simply sticking 'em on a normal pipe which doesn't lead anywhere. So that's not much of a loss.
Hey guys
Sorry for digging up this thread again, but I wonder if anybody can give me some more information about the logic behind the conduits.
More specifically: Which logic is used to determine where the power is drawn from?
Example:
1 Quarry connected to two Redstone Energy Cells (Both full, active and set to output 100MJ/t) via conduits.
The quarry is drawing only from one Cell (tested in creative) => how does the conduit decide where to draw the energy from?
thanks, regards
Bone
Sorry for digging up this thread again, but I wonder if anybody can give me some more information about the logic behind the conduits.
More specifically: Which logic is used to determine where the power is drawn from?
Example:
1 Quarry connected to two Redstone Energy Cells (Both full, active and set to output 100MJ/t) via conduits.
The quarry is drawing only from one Cell (tested in creative) => how does the conduit decide where to draw the energy from?
thanks, regards
Bone
Conductive Piping:
Pros:
- More efficient at short distances
- Logic gates
- Cheaper
Cons:
- Explode
- Buggy (1.4.7 at least)
Conduits:
Pros:
- Infinitely efficient at ever-increasing distances (i.e. loss is not distance based)
- "Easier" to deal with
Cons:
- No logic gates
- Expensive
In laments terms:
Conductive piping requires a heck of a lot less infrastructure to build. You don't need the weird glass or any machines to build them. They are better for starting. Later when you have the energy/materials infrastructure, moving to conduits is usually the "right" progression. They are generally easier to deal with and don't require wooden pipes. Though this is unimportant in engine set ups as a redstone signal is usually required and the extra block that the wooden pipe takes up is complemented by the ability to use gates.
Pros:
- More efficient at short distances
- Logic gates
- Cheaper
Cons:
- Explode
- Buggy (1.4.7 at least)
Conduits:
Pros:
- Infinitely efficient at ever-increasing distances (i.e. loss is not distance based)
- "Easier" to deal with
Cons:
- No logic gates
- Expensive
In laments terms:
Conductive piping requires a heck of a lot less infrastructure to build. You don't need the weird glass or any machines to build them. They are better for starting. Later when you have the energy/materials infrastructure, moving to conduits is usually the "right" progression. They are generally easier to deal with and don't require wooden pipes. Though this is unimportant in engine set ups as a redstone signal is usually required and the extra block that the wooden pipe takes up is complemented by the ability to use gates.
Conductive pipes don't explode anymore in the latest versions. They still are pretty crappy compared to conduits though; they don't dissipate energy anymore so now engines might blow up instead when they can't get rid of their power.
So conduits are in my opinion still way better. I tend to move towards them asap because pipes are such a pain. Also: energy in pipes seem to prefer a 'shortest path' which may lead to machines getting starved while others have full power. Conduits more evenly spread available power through the network.
So conduits are in my opinion still way better. I tend to move towards them asap because pipes are such a pain. Also: energy in pipes seem to prefer a 'shortest path' which may lead to machines getting starved while others have full power. Conduits more evenly spread available power through the network.
This explains why my engines exploded randomly without a trace of a problem...
Even with the new versions of the pipes I still make the redstone conduits my first priority.
Another important case for conduits is if you're using Redstone Energy Cells. Conductive pipes put a constant draw on the cell for some reason, even if they aren't connected to contant-draw machines.
Pipes are certainly better than they used to be, but I still push to conduits as soon as I can.
Pipes are certainly better than they used to be, but I still push to conduits as soon as I can.
There are a few neat tricks that can be.done with buildcraft pipes depending on what you are building. Also with the nearest neighbor aspects, you can use it to refill the energy in a harvester before you send energy to the fertilizer. Also, you can use facades on pipes.
Heya
first: thanks for the quick response.
"nearest" means in this situation: "The engine with the smalest delta in terms of coordinates"?
I did the following test in creative:
+ place quarry facing north
+ place a energy cell 2 blocks to the west (starting from the quarry)
+ and one 10 blocks to south
then connecting the west cell to the south cell and the south cell to the quarry.
=> the quarry will draw from the west cell although the "conduit way" would be shorter to the one in the south.
I'm asking because I have a whole system set-up which always draws around 150-200 MJ/t. (Applied energistics...)
Powered by some steam engines (+boilers) + some fuel powered combustion engines to cover the peaks.
=> I would like the system to draw from the steam boilers on first priority and only if needed from the cells of the combustion engines....
I've done both: shortest "conduit way" as well as the smallest coordinates delta.
=> Still the machines are drawing from the cells of the combustion engines and I'm producing steam for nothing....
Any Idea how I can get around that? (I know thats kind a off topic now... sorry for that but it is still the question about the "priority" of the energy conduits...)
thanks for help.
You're better off sharing the same RECs w/ boiler and shutting down the com. engines when all RECs are full.
That is happening because the south REC is giving it's energy to the quarry, but the West REC is then giving it's energy to the South one, effectively filling it back up again at the same rate the energy is being used, so it looks like the West is getting used up when infact it isn't.
Now, assuming your power system is setup in a similar way, it would mean the REC connected to your Combustion engines is just filling up any necessary energy needs of your other REC cells, hence why it's draining.
As for the solution, just have all your power go through the same REC configuration, there is no need for the combustion engines to have their own separate one as they are only needed for the big power draws, so having a separate REC seems pointless when the power is effectively going straight through. So, by taking out the REC for the C-Engines and connecting it to the same point in the conduit network as your steam boilers you won't have an issue.
Now, assuming your power system is setup in a similar way, it would mean the REC connected to your Combustion engines is just filling up any necessary energy needs of your other REC cells, hence why it's draining.
As for the solution, just have all your power go through the same REC configuration, there is no need for the combustion engines to have their own separate one as they are only needed for the big power draws, so having a separate REC seems pointless when the power is effectively going straight through. So, by taking out the REC for the C-Engines and connecting it to the same point in the conduit network as your steam boilers you won't have an issue.
hmm, but where is the point in defining outputs and inputs on energy conduits? (Both Cell connections were set to "output only" = orange arrow)
=> according to my understanding that means the energy can only go one way => OUT of the Cell.
Or do I miss anything? (of course the cell only touched the conduit at only one point and this one was set to orange)
Well, you're suggesting to switch my Cells from "parallel" to "serial" which would be pretty inefficient looking at the 5% power loss at each output connection the conduit has...
On that connection yes. But if a cell touches something directly it can send/recieve energy there. It's hard to tell what's happening exactly if you don't post screenshots.