rhn's continued adventures: a build journal, guide collection etc.

[rhn]

Needed a bit of a break from the space station. So went back to overworld and worked on the foundry:

The idea for the foundry came from the rolling machine needing a source of metal:

So decided to add a foundry section:

Which would also house TiCo smelters.

RPing that the smelter is powered directly from the MOX reactor beside it:

Raw materials for the smelter comes from the ore processing plant, up the conveyor seen on the first picture, and then get sorted:

This doesn't really supply stuff to the TiCo smelters. Those are automated with AE.

And deposited into the blue hoppers above the smelter:

One of the four smelters then supply metal for the extruder that supplies the rolling machine:

The other 3 supply molten metals for the metal casting area:

Vats get filled from the taps of the smelters, and then cranes move them over to the various moulds in the side wings:

On the opposite side a worker has just extracted a cast product from a sand mould:

The smelter structure houses two automated TiCo smelterys respectively making mixed alloy gears and ingots. To avoid cross alloying and speed smelting up a great deal, I am using Magma Crucibles to smelt ingots, and then alloying them in a small smeltery. A third Magma Crucible melts single metal ingots for gears.
I had some extra room inside the structure, so decided to put in a third Smeltery for manual work. Turned it into a secret little TiCo workshop:

You can see a bit of the automation for the gear production in this pic. Also the controller of of one of the automated smelterys.
The space is so cramped inside here, bit it feel so cozy to work in


Since the whole foundry is inside a mountain, it also really needed a way of extracting fumes and other gaseous byproducts from the smelting:

The foundry is approximately 40 blocks below the base of the smokestack.

 

[Pyure]

my fps takes a hit rendering your screenshots

 

[Psychicash]

My god man, every time I look I'm always so amazed. I always think you've done it, that's it you can't top yourself... then you post again. Good job

 

[rhn]

So, last time I was playing I decided to run an Opis scan to check that everything was running as it should. TPS wise everything was still running surprisingly well at 22ms per tick. Considering years of building stuff in more than 170 loaded chunks, I was quite pleased with this.

While I had Opis open I decided to try and do some rendering scans as well, in the hopes of finding a way to improve FPS in the most congested areas. To my great shock I discovered that a LOT of "Production Table" entries vastly dominated the rendering time lists. All of them requiring 4-5 times as long to render than the second highest entries. I investigated what these items were, and the coordinates of one took me to a Malisis' Doors door. Oh dear...

These doors are amazing, so I have been using them everywhere. The can be made to look unique and they work really well with auto-close, custom sounds etc. I decided to test it out on an isolated location, so removed all the doors from the space station. It immediately took my FPS from 15-20 to 45-60. Oh dear...

With a heavy heart I began the great crusade on the Malisis' doors. I have slowly been replacing all that I could find with Carpenter's Doors and Garage Doors.

Spoiler: Spoils

So far I have replaced more than 573 doors from around the world. Many areas have experienced a decent improvement in performance because of this. But the more congested areas(read Tower) only saw a marginal improvement to FPS. But at least it now shows predominately double digit FPS in these places, and it seems to run smoother with less spikes when moving around.

Really sad to have to remove all these, but if I am to "finish" the world, I felt it necessary to do something to try and improve performance in some regions.

 

[InterPlay]

Hey, RHN!
REALLY nice adventures you have here. I mean... REALLY awesome, to see all those buildings.
But what is the deal about that Opis Scan, you've talked about?
I've searching on Google, but didn't find anything about that. Can you post a link?
Sometimes I have these fps isues that everybody has, and I would really apreciate if you share with us this kind of tool.
It appers to help a lot solving these problems. Can you?

 

[Pyure]

yeah I don't blame you for the malisis thing. I was thinking of adding it to a 1.12.2 pack but I couldn't because I remembered all the grief they caused in 1.7.10.

 

[rhn]

Hey, RHN!
REALLY nice adventures you have here. I mean... REALLY awesome, to see all those buildings.
But what is the deal about that Opis Scan, you've talked about?
I've searching on Google, but didn't find anything about that. Can you post a link?
Sometimes I have these fps isues that everybody has, and I would really apreciate if you share with us this kind of tool.
It appers to help a lot solving these problems. Can you?

Opis was a Server Profiler for MC 1.6.4 and 1.7.10(which I am still playing).
It allowed a OP to run a scan of all items currently loaded, to find and fix TPS problems before they started causing issues. It also had an option to profile things that the client was rendering, so you could see if some items were taking longer to render.
https://minecraft.curseforge.com/projects/opis/files
Here is an example of me using it, showing the doors(named "Production Table"):

Spoiler

I think "Lag Goggles" does somewhat the same in newer MC versions, just in a slightly more immersive way(not sure if that is a good or bad thing tbh): https://minecraft.curseforge.com/projects/laggoggles

 

[Middleclaw]

I go away for a while and things happen. Great work as always Rhn. The Nostalgia of it all and tempting me back.

 

[rhn]

So, there is a considerably large backlog of stuff that I have built slowly on and off over many months. Perhaps even years for some of the stuff. I think I am gonna try and catch up a bit on some of it today, so many pictures incoming


Went to the moon(galacticraft) a while back to check something. I forget what. Saw my sad and very rudimentary little base I had set up there. Something had to be done, so it turned into a little mini project:

Gave it a bit of a face lift and set up proper airlocks etc.

Bye bye:

More recently I was considering where to build a brewery type thing. Mostly it is inspired by the desire for automations of potions for Magnum Torches(suppressing mob spawns). I had always envisioned it on one of the still empty floors of the tower, but performance really sucks there so I am reluctant to add more automation to that location. So, decided to build a proper brewery out near the apiary and farms:

Goods entrance for raw materials and finished products:

Inside the main attraction is a pair of stills:

I hid an EnderIO Vat inside each of them. One produces Nutrient Distillation for various Killer Joes etc. The other turns Poisonous potatoes into Hootch, when is then processed into Fire water(not actual use for it yet).

In the corner I put a bottling and packing setup:

Inside I hid an automated Botania Botanical Brewery. Because "why not?"

Spoiler: Internal mechanism

I am using Technomancy to transport Mana Condensate through the ME network. More on the production of mana later.

In the other wing I put some storage tanks(purely cosmetic so far) and a row of 5 MFR Auto-Brewers:

The Auto-Brewers are hidden inside the structure to the right(sort of RPed as a sort of mixing station).

I had initially dug out a basement under the brewery purely for running automation, power and AE stuff. But it kinda turned into a proper basement for storing ageing barrels, tanks and various piping:

Automation under the stills:

RC tanks with different fluids:

EDIT: Meh, just realised I took all the screenshots of the brewery with nightvision on. That is why everything looks so bright and oversaturated.

 

[rhn]

I have also been able to finish the library section of the main tower:

It is locate just below the armoury and above what I think will be a school/university/laboratory thing.

One side of the library is a public information kinda of thing:

It has some public terminals for accessing various data:

Don't ask me about the logic behind the glowy "books"/data archives thingies. I just thought it would look cool
Also don't ask about why you would need public terminals to access data in the future, rather than any internet based device...

It also have a few general study areas:

You can actually see the Brewery building from previous post out the window to the right

On the second floor there is a reading/study atrium area:

On the second floor on the other side is a physical medium storage area:

It is basically just normal book cases. Gotta preserve the past

Below that is the enchanting lab:

I am storing Enchanted Books in a ME subnetwork.

A little work area for restoring old books perhaps?

Also had the EnderIO Enchanter, with easy access to reagents.

Behind that the Experience Obelisk storing XP:

As well as a little booth for extracting XP from the player.

On the other side, a little anvil station:

One OpenBlocks Auto Anvil, as well as vanilla Anvils. The black button spawns a replacement Anvil should the old one break. Terminal for access to stored Enchanted Books.
The darker coloured machine to the left is automated MFR Auto-Enchanter and Auto-Disenchanter. I use the disenchanter primarily to split up enchanted books with multiple enchants on them.

Finally a vanilla style enchanting area:

Vanilla and Openblocks enchanting tables. Sadly the OpenBlocks table does not recognise the botania pylons, so had to keep normal bookshelves.

 

[rhn]

In an attempt to improve performance in the main tower, I decided to try and relocate all the item storage.
This was previously done with Storage Drawers in the top of the ME hub area. For aesthetic reasons it was divided up into several smaller drawer networks, each attached to a Drawer Controller with a ME storage bus on it.
My fears was that the now quite large ME network was constantly polling the drawers, and thereby causing a bunch of updates that impacted performance. I previously had this be very noticeable, back when I built it using custom frames Drawers.

So I removed all the drawers from the tower:

For now I replaced them with more banks of glowy electronic books

I have instead moved them all to my Spectre dimension(Random Things):

Quantum bridge to connect to rest of the network. A CustomNPCs transporter NPC because I got tired of using the key

Lots of drawers:

Relocating all of this did have a somewhat noticeable effect on performance in the tower. It is a bit less choppy now. On the FPS front it did not do a whole lot. Maybe 3-7 FPS more. But that is more than welcome when it was dipping down to 9 FPS before

 

[rhn]

Something that has been a long time coming is the inside of the space station. Many of the things there were build so long ago I hardly remember the details of it. So better do something about it.
Much of it is still a work in progress, so some rooms are still empty and some others might not be fully decorated.

The space station consists of 6 floors

I have colour coded the floors to better keep track on what is where:
6. Orange: Residential. (top floor)
5. Purple: Mess hall, recreation, gym, infirmary, interplanetary ship dock, cargo tug docks, residential.
4. Green: Thaumcraft labs, environmental control.
3. Yellow: Thaumcraft labs, shuttle bay.
2. Red: ME hub, Botania labs, garden domes, maintenance airlock.
1. Blue: Elevator arrival/departure, power gen/management, cargo handling. (bottom floor)
Each floor should have its colours clearly marked, both at junctions on the floor and in the elevators:

Spoiler: Elevator

OpenBlocks elevators really dont work very well on the space station due to the custom gravity mechanic. So I am using two "shafts" like this which are easily traversed by simply pushing off.

I will try and work my way to each floor in posts of about 1-2 floors at the time. It might take me some days to get through them all.


1. Floor: Blue
The main feature of this floor is the access to the space elevator cab:

The inner observation deck provides a clear view of the elevator and a view of Overworld:

A few waiting areas for travellers or crewmembers enjoying the view:

One of the rooms along the outer edge holds some power generation:

A bunch of IC2 Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators generating low but constant and reliable backup power.

This floor also holds some power management:

As well as Mekanism Electrolytic Separators providing part of the oxygen for the station.

Around the back of the elevator cab is the cargo area:

It has two bays for the modular containers brought up with the elevator cab or from the interplanetary ships.

One bay currently has a container docked:

Currently having goods exchanged.

Along the side of this area is also some misc storage of fluids as well as... CO2 scrubbers?

There are still a few empty rooms on this floor for which I have not yet decided a purpose. Maybe locker rooms for travellers. Maybe a little cafe. Or maybe just some random tech.

 

[rhn]

2. Floor: Red

The second floor located with a view down on the top of the elevator cab:

It houses the stations ME hub:

The Quantum tunnel ring connects the space station up with main ME network back in Overworld.
The ME Drives to the left hold pre-formatted Essentia Storage Cells, one for each Thaumcraft Essentia.

The room next door has storage of Mana Beans and Ethereal Essences:

To the left you can also see one of the Botania labs situated on this floor.

This Botania lab hold automation for various crafts:

This single machine has a fully automated Terrestial Aglomeration Plate, Conjuration and Alchemy Mana pools.
The Conjuration pool is set up to duplicate (tall)Grass and Netherrack, two items for which I have no other automated sources.
All four Mana pools work for the Terrasteal setup, and they get replenished from below by Mana Exchangers(more on that further down) and Sparks.
In the back you can also spot a normal Mana Pool setup for items that cannot or doesn't need to be made in the Conjuration or Alchemy pools, like Mana Glass and Pasture Seeds.

This lab also holds two Runic Altar automations:

I set up two of them so they could work parallel when creating top tier Runes for increased speed. Only after did I remember that this version of Botania does not consume the lower tier Runes... Oh well

In another lab is automation for a Petal Apothecary and a Pure Daisy:

The Petal Apothecary is automated by used a "stopping item" in the recipe(a torch in this case), which only is removed once craft is complete. This prevents the ME Interface set to Blocking Mode from exporting items for more than one craft at the time. The Apothecary is refilled by just exporting a bucket of water with the normal recipe items and Seeds.
The Pure Daisy setup is the usual one. Formation place the ingredients and Annihilation planes remove the finished products. It is the same setup as I used in the castle world.

Since it really did not fit into the theme of the space station, I decided to not use Generating Flora for Mana. Instead I looked to Technomancy:

Up on the next floor I placed a Mana Fabricator that creates Mana from RF. Sure, might not be entirely balanced or in the spirit of the author. But it allows me to actually use Botania in a tech theme, so I can live with it
The Mana is sent down with spreaders into a Mana Pool with a Mana Exchanger below it. This turns the Mana into a Mana Condensate fluid, which can then be shared through through the ME network(even to Overworld where it is used in the brewery for example).

All the Botania "machines" on this floor will of course in time get a proper facade/scene build up around them. Just wanted to thoroughly test it out and show it to you guys before covering it all up.


This floor also has the main maintenance airlock for the space station:

Changing room and EVA suits.
The missing suit is of course the worker helping exchange the cargo container in the elevator cab, as seen in the post for the 1. floor(Blue)

The airlock leads out into the hollow centre of the space station:

(You can also notice the empty lab to the right. I intend to put a botany style lab there, possibly with some actual Botania flowers)
Outside:

Again the door is marked with red to indicate the floor. This airlock also gives easy access to the elevator cab, should it need maintenance etc.


The 2. floor also gives access to the four garden domes on the exterior side of the station:

View of solar panels:

View of interplanetary ship dock:

Finally I had a bit of space left over, so made a little lounge area:

Pretty nice spot to sit and watch the ships come in and have their cargo exchanged

 

[rhn]

3. and 4. Floor: Yellow and Green.

I will describe floor 3 and 4 together in one post, mainly because they are directly connected in several places and some of its features occupy both floors.

Starting on the 3. floors:

This floor has a view of one of the anchor points between the space station and the elevator cable:

You can also see the top of the elevator cab in the bottom of the picture.

The main feature of these two floors is this machine:

This is my disguised Thaumcraft Infusion Altar.

To operate the altar while it is encased like this, I use these controls:

The crystal chest on the right holds ingredients for the surrounding pedestals. The middle chest holds the ingredient for the main pedestal. The left chest is the output.
Flicking the Lever extracts the items from the chests and deposit them onto the respective pedestals. This is done using EnderIO Item Conduits with different priorities, so it always places items on opposite sides first.
The red Button activates an Infusion Claw that triggers the altars Matrix and starts infusion. The Essentia is provided from the ME network through an Infusion Provider.
After ended infusion(or if you make a mistake with item placement) you can just flick the Lever back again and all items get extracted into the output chest.
The Ender chest is the supply for an Advanced Alchemical Furnace(more later), making it easy to make more Essentia(get items from ME terminal, dump into chest). Additionally there is an Arcane Crafting Terminal as well as an Essentia Terminal.

Here are the items loaded into the Altar:

You can just spot the bottom tip of the Infusion Matrix over the Silverwood block.
The altar has 8 pedestals surrounding it, but I also hid 2 more pedestals inside the main structure for larger recipes.

I am running out of pictures per post, so here is a shot of the Essentia trickling down into the Altar: https://i.imgur.com/uvlxmHN.png

Next to the altar I also have a little crafting area:

With some autocrafting of Thaumcraft items in the Arcane Assemblers.

Up on the "balcony" I also have a Focal Manipulator for wand focus enchanting:

In the room next door(clockwise around the station) I have 4 Alchemical Constructs:

Again set up for automated crafting of various items.

Continuing clockwise we find the shuttle hangar bay:

A couple shuttles ready for departure:

Another shuttle stowed away:

There is room for 3-4 more shuttles stowed away up above(RP that they are currently out).
In the distance I also added a little repair/maintenance area for shuttles. It is mostly empty still, so not gonna show it here. But is meant to service both the crew shuttles as well as the cargo tugs(berthed outside).

Going clockwise once more:

To the left you can just make out the Mana production setup. It shoots down bursts to the 2. floor, where the mana is condensed into a fluid. See post for floor 2: Red. It is pretty much still a WiP, so not gonna show more of it now.
To the right is the main node room.

Node room:

The room holds 3 Energized nodes, respectively for autocrafting in the Arcane Assemblers, the Advanced Alchemical Furnace and Arcane Terminals(recharging of wands in the terminals).
The 4. node is a regular node for wand/staff recharging. I "buffed" it to a few hundred essentia with bees. Inside the "machine" frame I also have a pair of Apiaries with Rejuvenating bees to rapidly recharge the node.

Up on the 4. floor: Green we find the Advanced Alchemical Furnace:

This is located just above the shuttle repair shop(next to the Alchemical constructs, which one can be seen to the right in the shot).
The furnace is fed with items remotely through the Ender chest mentioned earlier.
You can also just see a little lounge area outside this room, which overlooks the shuttle bay.

Going clockwise over to the other side we find the majority of the stations oxygen supply:

This holds about half of the Oxygen Sealers on the station. I used to have a smaller setup on each floor, but it turned out that it caused too many issues in doors/elevators between the floors. So now most floors are linked(hidden ducts or directly through part of the design).
The oxygen for the Oxygen Sealers is primarily provided by 20 Oxygen Collectors in the garden domes of floor 2: Red.The rest comes from Mekanism Electrolytic Separators on floor 1: Blue.

Finally I added a little bath/spa room to this floor:

I needed a place for washing off Warp, so turned it into a little hot tub area with a shower.

 

[rhn]

5. Floor: Purple.

The 5. floor is mostly dedicated to the personnel living on the station.

It houses the Infirmary:

This is not a full blown hospital, but merely meant to deal with smaller injuries and stabilizing patients before transport to other facilities back in Overworld.

Doctors office and 1 of 3 beds:

Patient being treated for fractured arm and leg:

Operating theatre:

This floor also houses the main mess hall:

Which joins up with a little recreational/game area:

Next door is the gym:

The gym also has a row of lockers to the left, as well as two shower rooms(decorated but not particularly interesting )

The gym also has a zero-G arena, which spans both this and the above floor:

Used for various zero-G training for workers doing space walks, as well as various zero-G games.

Over on the other side next to the interplanetary docks is the cinema:

Good for movie nights as well as general briefing of personnel.
Out the window you can see the front of the currently docked interplanetary space ship.

Speaking of the space ship, here is the docking area:

Air locks give access to the interior of the ship. Seating for passengers:

In the front: Seating for crew and entry into the cockpit:

Door in the back gives access to a small walkway between the containers:

This leads to the engine compartment. Engine room is somewhat simple atm. so not showing anything from there. Not sure I can be bothered to actually improve on it, might just "lock" the door to it.

A quarter(1/4) of the 5. floor is used for residential space:

Six crew quarters with a little common area outside.
All the crew quarters are just empty for now. I have not decided yet if I want to at least decorate the ones with exterior windows.

Lastly this floor has the docks for the cargo tugs:

 

[rhn]

6. Floor: Orange.

The final floor is dedicated almost entirely to residential quarters for the crew, so it is mostly just empty rooms(cannot really be bothered to decorate them all).
But for good measure here is a few pics.

Hallways with crew quarters:

Pretty nice view of the docked ship and the cargo system from up here:

And a view of the solar panels:

View of the upper anchor point with the elevator tether:

View of the zero-G arena:

That is about all there is to show from the space station for now. Might revisit parts of it again once I finish more stuff(like facades for the Botania machines etc.).

 

[Inaeo]

Just finished looking back through this thread. Still amazed at your work. Been a while since we've heard from you. Still building amazing things?

 

[rhn]

Just finished looking back through this thread. Still amazed at your work. Been a while since we've heard from you. Still building amazing things?

Thank you for the kind words

I have occasionally gone back to finish up the old world now and then, but nothing major, just some decorations left on the todo-list. But I have been struggling with motivation to do so. But I do intend to finish it and possibly do a walk-through/pic series of the stuff like previously. I did however just loose a harddrive that had all my backups of the world. So hoping badly that the original save/install still works

I wont deny the possibility that I might do something again with an updated pack/version. I just haven't had the courage and drive to research all the new mods and changes, specially if I have to build/modify a pack to my personal likings. But I do still occasionally browse the reddit to keep up on overall trends

 

[ICountFrom0]

I feel you Rhn, I'm doing a lot of MHW lately, but I've got some pictures i should be putting up...

 

[etfocontrol]

Thank you for the kind words

I have occasionally gone back to finish up the old world now and then, but nothing major, just some decorations left on the todo-list. But I have been struggling with motivation to do so. But I do intend to finish it and possibly do a walk-through/pic series of the stuff like previously. I did however just loose a harddrive that had all my backups of the world. So hoping badly that the original save/install still works

I wont deny the possibility that I might do something again with an updated pack/version. I just haven't had the courage and drive to research all the new mods and changes, specially if I have to build/modify a pack to my personal likings. But I do still occasionally browse the reddit to keep up on overall trends

That sucks about the harddrive, I've had that happen before. Any chance you'd have time to maybe make a world download if the save still works? It would be much appreciated Just taking the save folder and putting it into a .zip file with something like WinRar should be all that's needed, and it can just be uploaded to something like Google Drive.

Would be awesome, but no rush. I've got weeks of school closure from Covid