<Solved> [1.6.4] MFR Auto Spawner Odd Behavior

[llloyd]

Ok. So I decided it was time to make an emerald farm the Direwolf 20 way. So I set up a second room (already have a spawner room with an auto spawner for specific drops and cursed earth floor to generating mob essence and other essentials) with an auto spawner spawning villagers and a TC smeltery, the pipes, basin, etc and it works, mostly. This second auto spawner has an odd behavior, the idle counter counts down to 1 then cycles between 1 and 10 for a bit before it hits 0 and the work counter can count down. It's not server lag, first, /cofh tps shows 100% all across the board, second the other auto spawner isn't doing this. This auto spawner has a single tesseract under it feeding it both power and mob essence, neither of these is fluctuating, so it has plenty of both. The signal bus next to it is only getting a single steady signal from a switch used to turn it on and off, and for testing purposes I broke that to be sure, and same behavior. The timer for the molten iron loop fluiduct, like Dire's, is way on the other side of the smeltery near the door so it is too far away to influence it. So I am at a loss. Let me see... The server is running MFR 2.7.9 Final. Anyone might know why?

 

[rhn]

Ok. So I decided it was time to make an emerald farm the Direwolf 20 way. So I set up a second room (already have a spawner room with an auto spawner for specific drops and cursed earth floor to generating mob essence and other essentials) with an auto spawner spawning villagers and a TC smeltery, the pipes, basin, etc and it works, mostly. This second auto spawner has an odd behavior, the idle counter counts down to 1 then cycles between 1 and 10 for a bit before it hits 0 and the work counter can count down. It's not server lag, first, /cofh tps shows 100% all across the board, second the other auto spawner isn't doing this. This auto spawner has a single tesseract under it feeding it both power and mob essence, neither of these is fluctuating, so it has plenty of both. The signal bus next to it is only getting a single steady signal from a switch used to turn it on and off, and for testing purposes I broke that to be sure, and same behavior. The timer for the molten iron loop fluiduct, like Dire's, is way on the other side of the smeltery near the door so it is too far away to influence it. So I am at a loss. Let me see... The server is running MFR 2.7.9 Final. Anyone might know why?

Bit hard to speculate on without a screenshot/decription of the spawning setup, but what you describe sounds a lot like the spawner doesnt have full clearance to spawn mobs. If this is the case, then once the idle/cooldown timer reaches zero it will try and place a mob at a random location. If that location is not a valid one it will have to try another. This will result in the bar cycling up and down until it finds a valid spawning location.

You will see this a lot when spawning Ghasts in an enclosure for example due to their space requirement for spawning(basically need 5x5x5 free space to spawn). If the spawner tries to spawn the ghast too close to a wall or the spawner itself, the spawn will fail.

To fix it make your spawning room larger, 9x5x9 with the spawner in the middle should do.

 

[llloyd]

Ok, taking cues from that I removed the conveyor belts I was using to move them neatly, cleanly, and I thought efficiently into the smeltery and, well, what do you know, mobs can't spawn on conveyors. >.< Problem fixed, well, sort of, now I got to design a fan system that will do the same thing. Though I'm failing at that, even though I built it like Dire did it, they are still getting stuck on the edges. Even put three fans on each side facing each other and they still get hung up on the sides.

 

[mike spy]

Fan needs to go up 2 blocks to push them not at the end.

Edit to add I would move the auto spawner back 1 or 2 blocks and add conveyors on the front blocks. The back fans have a limited range of pushing
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[epidemia78]

Ive never had any problem spawning mobs on conveyors. its my go-to method actually. Maybe mine are spawning in the air and dropping to the floor. Make your ceiling higher.

Oh, and Twilight forest hollow hill = emeralds for days. I love hollow hills.

 

[Cptqrk]

Ive never had any problem spawning mobs on conveyors. its my go-to method actually. Maybe mine are spawning in the air and dropping to the floor. Make your ceiling higher.

Oh, and Twilight forest hollow hill = emeralds for days. I love hollow hills.

I think that may be what's happening with me here (mobs spawning in the air). I moved a skeleton spawner to a dark room with conveyor belts to push the mobs to a hole for a grinder to do it's dirty work, and noticed the skeletons are not spawning as fast as they normally do. Maybe it's the conveyor belts.

I also have a wisp spawner in a fairly small space but they don't seem to spawn anywhere near as fast as normal spawners do. No conveyor belts there, as the damned things fly.

 

[rhn]

yes mobs can be spawned in the air just fine. Problem is most likely that the conveyor belts is taking up the block and when the spawning algorithm looks for a suitable spawning location it is no longer empty=not valid.

Just keep the 9x5x9 with the spawner in the middle completely empty, and let the mobs drop down onto conveyors. If your killing method is not averagely fast you might want to make them drop down a bit of a distance, since the spawner will stop spawning once there is a set number of mobs in range I think. If you make something like a 9x11x9 spawner room with the spawner hanging from the ceiling(you need 2 blocks free space above the spawner for normal mobs, 3 for endermen), and conveyors on the floor you should have no problems.

 

[llloyd]

yes mobs can be spawned in the air just fine. Problem is most likely that the conveyor belts is taking up the block and when the spawning algorithm looks for a suitable spawning location it is no longer empty=not valid.

Just keep the 9x5x9 with the spawner in the middle completely empty, and let the mobs drop down onto conveyors. If your killing method is not averagely fast you might want to make them drop down a bit of a distance, since the spawner will stop spawning once there is a set number of mobs in range I think. If you make something like a 9x11x9 spawner room with the spawner hanging from the ceiling(you need 2 blocks free space above the spawner for normal mobs, 3 for endermen), and conveyors on the floor you should have no problems.

Except the ceiling height is three so villagers, being 2, should have no problem. But the air idea is interesting, I'll have to dig the ceiling up a little higher to do it but that shouldn't be difficult. I am using a tesseract to supply both power and mob essence so no piping to reroute.

 

[rhn]

Except the ceiling height is three so villagers, being 2, should have no problem.

What you don't take into account is that the MFR autospawner will spawn the mob in any of 3 vertical block layers randomly(1 above, 1 adjacent and one below.). This block chosen is where the feet of the mob is going to be, but in order for the full mob to spawn it needs to have adequate height as well. So in order to spawn an enderman on the top layer(layer above the spawner) sucessfully, you need additional 2 blocks free space above that layer.

Seen from side:

_________
 E   
 E
#E#######
####S####
#########
_________

S=spawner, E=enderman, #=valid spawn locations, _=ceiling/conveyors

So for endermen you will need a minimum spawner room height of 6 blocks(if using MFR conveyors), and normal 2 high mobs 5 blocks high. To avoid the spawner idle pulsing that is, it will still work in smaller rooms, just not as fast.

 

[llloyd]

What you don't take into account is that the MFR autospawner will spawn the mob in any of 3 vertical block layers randomly(1 above, 1 adjacent and one below.). This block chosen is where the feet of the mob is going to be, but in order for the full mob to spawn it needs to have adequate height as well. So in order to spawn an enderman on the top layer(layer above the spawner) sucessfully, you need additional 2 blocks free space above that layer.

Seen from side:

_________
E 
E
#E#######
####S####
#########
_________

S=spawner, E=enderman, #=valid spawn locations, _=ceiling/conveyors

So for endermen you will need a minimum spawner room height of 6 blocks(if using MFR conveyors), and normal 2 high mobs 5 blocks high. To avoid the spawner idle pulsing that is, it will still work in smaller rooms, just not as fast.

Except I'm spawning villagers so not as much space is needed. I dug up a few more layers and put the spawner 2 below the ceiling and the conveyors now work for neat efficient conversion of villagers into emeralds. Well, not efficient yet, I need to dig the ceiling much higher so they drop about 20 blocks before hitting the conveyors so they die in one cycle in the smeltery instead of 4. Then it'll be the most efficient.

Update: Something is quirky, fall damage is being pretty random, some Villagers are down to 1 hp others only drop to 15 hp according to Damage Indicators and the fact some die in one cycle others take 2 or 3 cycles to die in the smeltery. That's pretty weird unless some mod added Villagers have more armor than others.