RP2 release- thoughts after watching DW coverage.

[KillerRamer]

Soooooo a fair amount of folks on here have been following direwolf's vid's for the sneak peeks of redpower 2 and all of it's lovely features, Howeeeeever in the two part feature of the mod, we saw a haul of awesome additions to the mod.

First thing that made my insides tingle, windmills, oh man I am soooooo excited for windmills. I tried living in the end once, and my largest trouble was redpower two power. I had to have an island of thermopiles dedicated to it. But now we have windpower! Finally I can create a nether fortress that's functional, just need a spider grinder for the string. (easy enough with soul cages)

Second the engine. I can't tell you how excited I am about about engines, something that will also give me more reason to make wind power. I can make a system to recharge those buildcraft batteries to fuel other machines and farms. I know it takes allot of power, but windmills are creatures meant to be placed up in the sky, usually in a tower format. A battery box tower for the engines makes me giddy inside, not only power wise, but also for the sake of looks.

Third would be the seed bag's. FINALLY something for the farmers, I just hate replanting seed's and while a smart straw golem can do it, it will really help untill I could learn to make him, better yet, for those into the oldschool waterfalls of wheat trick, you can easily just restock it in just a few click's. I reeeeeally love this feature Elo, thank you so much for keeping the simple things in mind!

And speaking of simpler things, the lights, OH MAN THE FREAKING AMAZING LIGHTS! Finally I can have colored lights that don't look awkward! we can have cozy little home lamps on the ceiling, or tough military grade siren lights for those nuke reactor systems with lights. It wasn't the most necessary feature, but still I'm soooooooosossoososossososossosososo SOOOOOOOOOO happy about this addition. I won't have to plug those square lights into the walls and ceiling for sources of lights anymore! I'm glad to see that you remember the fan's of aesthetics elo, so many mod's just appear to be about getting stuff, which is lovely, but it's nice to see the subtle things taken care of.

I could continue onward, but It's probably best to spare folks of the endless fanboy rambles, How aout you guys, what new features are you excited about?

 

[canilsen]

Come on man, another thread?

 

[KillerRamer]

Yes, but allot of the topics are being spammed with end of the world nonesense, and theres no actual discussion of the features. So I want to make a thread aimed purely for the discussion of features and what everyone is excited about.

 

[Golrith]

Have you got a link to those vids? I can't find them, so I guess it's buried among other content. (or I'm a useless noob )

 

[KillerRamer]

Part 1:

Part 2:

There you go, man these were exciting to watch!

 

[Omicron]

I'm not so sure I like the windmills, mostly due to their humongous output.

DW20 showed one in his mod spotlight running at just over 50% speed, and it was spitting out some 27 amps. Compare to a thermopile at 0.5 amps, or a solar panel at 2 amps (and since it's off overnight, that averages down to 1). Also keep in mind that sorting machines, retrievers etc. consume power in the 0.001 to 0.01 ampere range. I had a whole factory + sorting system running in 1.2.5 that consumed so little power from its single thermopile that the voltmeter wouldn't even show anything on most tries. Even that extremely weak power generator was way, way more than I would ever need.

So what do you even need a windmill for? Basically, there's only one thing: the blulectric engine. Otherwise they just look cool, but certainly aren't required for supplying power to machines. And I'm generally not a friend of infinite energy devices, after seeing how completely the mere presence of wind/water/solar power breaks IC2's endgame (and entire server economies with it). Now Redpower goes and basically adds "wind powered Buildcraft". That's the exact thing a server admin concerned with balance doesn't want to see.

But eh, I suppose there's enough infinite energy tricks in Buildcraft already, what with Railcraft, Thermal Expansion and especially Forestry present. It probably won't make that much of a difference.

 

[Tylor]

Blulectric furnaces and alloy furnaces consume a lot of energy when you mass produce something.

How many MJ/t is Watt, btw? I.e. how many MJ/t windmill makes?

As for update as a whole, somehow I liked simplest things most - scythe upgrade and seed bags. There are lots of mods for mid-late game, and lots of mods with machines, but with tools, especially erly game tools, there is starvation. Barely anything except IC2.

 

[Golrith]

Well, I like that the sorter has an inbuilt timer. Makes things tidier. Manager is a great little thing too. Never understood most of the RP blocks, but DW does a great job explaining.

The engine is neat (both it's function, and it's appearance), that's why there are windmills. But it's good that it's balanced that the windmill will take damage. So you have the option to power buildcraft stuff using RedPower now, but to do so, you need to maintain your windmills, which is a lot of string. Is there any EU compatibility too?

I also like the unique block designs, better then just more cubes. Nice new lamps, always welcome.

 

[Omicron]

Blulectric furnaces and alloy furnaces consume a lot of energy when you mass produce something.

How many MJ/t is Watt, btw? I.e. how many MJ/t windmill makes?

The blulectric furnace is pretty much a niche item - why would you use it, when you already have the entire IC2 (electric furnace) or Buildcraft (powered furnace/induction smelter) infrastructure set up that your resource processing requires anyway?

The alloy furnace, okay, it uses some power. But for example, smelting a silicon boule, cutting it up into 16 wafers, and doping those wafers barely makes a dent in a single battery box (still with only one thermopile attached). You'll have to produce a lot of wires and wafers if you're trying to drain one, much less two. Following that production is going to be a very long idle time where you're using up everything, during which your batteries can refill. Add two or three solar panels, and I doubt you'll ever run out in normal gameplay while still being way short of the kind of power a single windmill produces.

As for the conversion rate of blutricity to Buildcraft power, I don't think there's any data. We can only make estimates, based on claims made on how blutricity actually works (Eloraam has never shared specifics).

Assuming the engine in fact only outputs as much as is needed, as it is claimed to do, the 1.4.4 quarry DW20 was using in his spotlight would request a constant 10 MJ/t. That's about a third of the blulectric engine's theoretical max output. DW20 showed it running for about one minute, during which it consumed about two thirds of a battery box worth of energy, while that battery box was also connected to 3 solar panels. How much is that? Well, the redpower wiki makes the claim that a user tested the battery box and found that it stores about 83 watt hours. This annoys me greatly, since I slept through most of my physics classes in school (don't be like me, kids!) and now I don't know how to properly handle units like that. Let me try anyway, and feel free to correct me if I'm wrong because I likely am.

If the battery box can store 83 watt hours, that means it can output 83 watts for one hour straight. We only consumed two thirds, so that would be about 55 watts for one hour straight (I'm rounding heavily here, don't mind me). Since we're drawing that kind of power over a minute, not an hour, we're looking at 55*60 = 3300 watts. We know that the three solar panels will be outputting about 600 watts (3 * 2A * 100V); adding this, we get 3900 watts. Since the battery box is a 100V device as well, and watts is a product of volts and amperes, so 3900/100 = 39 amperes. Of course, there's some extra power to be consumed before the discharge process even starts, so let's be generous and say 40A, or 4,000W.

This calculation of course only works if voltage can be regarded as "always 100V" in the math. In my testing of blulectric devices, I have found that the voltage the voltmeter reports is actually equal to the system charge level (in other words, if your device shows its power bar half full, you will get a report of 50V, but if it is completely filled it will read 100V). The question is, does that voltage actually have any effect on energy generation at all, or is it just handwaved to be "always 100V" in the math? If so, the output of, say, a solar panel would be constant over the entire charging process, because I measured it to be always outputting ~2A regardless of voltage. But if it isn't, meaning if voltage actually plays a role in the math, then the output of that same solar panel would be completely dependant on the system's charge level - going extremely slowly when there's almost no power present, and reaching its full wattage only when everything is 100% filled up. It doesn't really make sense but it could be, in turn, a simplification made to ease modeling the electricity mechanics. In such a scenario, the math above is wrong, and everything becomes a whole lot more complicated. Heck, even the storage figure of 83 watt hours for the battery box is suddenly dependant on what it was charged with and how long it took! Thankfully, for most of the minute elapsed, the battery box keeps the system sitting at its discharge point of ca. 90V, so I think we could with some added imprecision substitute 90V for 100V in the above math and end up at roughly 43-44 amps instead of 40. But, we'll need to use watts anyway in this case, since amperes cannot really stand by themselves if voltage isn't constant. Wattage will be ever so slightly lower, due to the drop in voltage which affects the solar panel output, but we can probably still safely round it to 4,000.

Whatever the case may be (all figures here are very much eyeball figures anyway), let's assume that the quarry consumed 12,000MJ over its active time (10 MJ/t for 60 seconds), and the blulectric engine consumed 4,000W to deliver it, we would get a value of 3 MJ per watt. A hugely imprecise value, mind you, with a margin of error probably +/- 0.5 at least, likely more. And even that only assuming I didn't do this completely wrong, which is also a possibility

Also, if the engine did not throttle itself as advertised for some reason, and ran at full speed the entire time - three times as much as needed - the conversion rate would instead be closer to 9 MJ per watt, +/- 1.5. There's unfortunately no way to confirm or deny this.

Real, reliable numbers will only be possible once someone hooks up a blulectric engine to a redstone energy conduit and storage cell, and makes some proper measurements. But even then the nebulous, unconfirmed blutricity mechanics will make sure the result remains imprecise.


EDIT: yeah, just as I expected this is wrong, disregard it.

 

[Omicron]

Have you read my post? I've plenty experience with Redpower, and unless you insist on running a blulectric furnace instead of relying on the easier to set up IC2/TE alternatives for some mysterious reason, you're almost never going to need more than one or two battery boxes and two or three solar panels. I generally make do with a fraction of that in all of my builds.

Also, wind turbines may take damage over time, but do you know how long it runs? I'm willing to bet it's quite long. And aside from three quarters of an iron block (less than 7 iron bars), everything about it is completely and easily renewable. And the vertical windmill takes only a third of the iron for what's claimed to be half the output. Quite cheap if you ask me.

 

[SirStompsalot]

Say what you will about Redpower balance, or usefulness, etc.

But one thing that's always thrilled me is the quality of Eloraam's mod. The animations are slick, the blocks are appealing. Case in point, the Blulectric engine! That is one killer animation!

 

[Omicron]

That's something I can wholeheartedly agree with. Heck, I'm going to build a windmill anyway, even if I'm never going to use the power output, just for decorative purposes! Managers too look incredibly slick and "high tech".

Does Eloraam do her graphics herself? I know that many modders are getting graphics done by other people - especially those modders that are highly specialized coders - but some also do everything themselves.

 

[vasouv]

It's not a mod I'm looking forward to, I have no redstone experience (and never will) since I don't like electronics and such but the graphics and animations alone are sick! I don't think RP2 is coming to Magic World but I could definitely see myself using volcanoes, marble, those splendid lamps and those half-cut blocks and ESPECIALLY that engine! My god, powering a quarry all by itself?

 

[Magicferret]

Looks straight up amazing, I love the new lamps, the sickle, the windmills, the managers. I'm glad she didn't just do a quick port of the old content to 1.4, the new stuff is well worth the wait. Cheers Elo!

 

[eculc]

That's something I can wholeheartedly agree with. Heck, I'm going to build a windmill anyway, even if I'm never going to use the power output, just for decorative purposes! Managers too look incredibly slick and "high tech".

Does Eloraam do her graphics herself? I know that many modders are getting graphics done by other people - especially those modders that are highly specialized coders - but some also do everything themselves.

Yes, Elo does all the graphics herself. She's very good at it, too...certainly better than me, at least.

 

[Golrith]

DW mentions that Elo is going to be adding more content. I reckon that what we have here is the core systems all established, with some new content (just in case you were losing interest - like we would dare!). With all this new power generation, I wouldn't be surprised if Elo adds blocks that process ores and do things like other tech mods. But, Elo being Elo, a single block will be too simple for that tech.

 

[Magicferret]

Yeah bang on Golrith. There's hints at more tools, dyeable windmill sails, more stuff in the compatibility module and high energy consumption machines in the spotlight alone. She's starting to fill out uses for a lot of the world gen stuff, flax has got infinitely more useful in this update and I wouldn't be surprised if we see a use for the rubber trees in the near (that's near in Elo years btw) future.

 

[Mero]

Have you read my post? I've plenty experience with Redpower, and unless you insist on running a blulectric furnace instead of relying on the easier to set up IC2/TE alternatives for some mysterious reason, you're almost never going to need more than one or two battery boxes and two or three solar panels. I generally make do with a fraction of that in all of my builds.

Also, wind turbines may take damage over time, but do you know how long it runs? I'm willing to bet it's quite long. And aside from three quarters of an iron block (less than 7 iron bars), everything about it is completely and easily renewable. And the vertical windmill takes only a third of the iron for what's claimed to be half the output. Quite cheap if you ask me.

Redpower pumps. When I start pumping out every single lava lake I come across to fill in my finished quarry, 2 or 3 solar panels will not power 1 pump, let alone 2, 24/7. I've tried it before, they just couldn't stay ahead of the pump.

 

[b0h]

Pros:
- New Features are awesome. Especially the tube frames.
- Windmills. I really like Better Than Wolves , but FC's denial of Forge made me go away from his userbase. I gave up on Better Than Wolves just because it made impossible to play with many other mods i like. Seeing the Windmills makes my BTW's addiction less painful
- Please, the gates and the wires. I've missed them SO MUCH.

Cons:
- Windmill's animation. It's far too slow in my opinion. At minimum wind it's like completely frozen. If there's a minimum wind, it should differ from the NO WIND state. A little tweak won't hurt, imho.
- Nothing else.


What else can i say? It's Redpower.

 

[ApSciLiara]

I only had to see the sickle improvements to know that I'm going to love this new release of RedPower.