Sorting Items into Chests / Storage (1.5.x)

[Vaygrim]

I fully realize that Applied Energistics is a fantastic system for storing your stuff as well as auto-crafting. I definitely will be working up to that system for my mid- to long game storage solution.

I am here today however to get ideas for EARLY game storage, something that requires little to no power but can still manage a certain level of 'sorting' and self organizing. I have been trying the Transfer Pipes from the "Extra Utilities" mod (http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/1776056-15xforge-extra-utilities-v022a/). They definitely have sorting capabilities.. but because they have been designed to be as server / CPU friendly as possible they are HIDEOUSLY slow! As this is 1.5.1 I do not have access to Red Power, so Sorting Machines are out. Buildcraft pipes do not have delivery assurance (i.e. crap falls out of them) so I'd rather not go that way.

Any other ideas?

 

[Siro]

Knowing what I do now about me networks and power, I'd go straight from chests to an me network (with probably an mfr tree farm to power it).

 

[KriiEiter]

Looks like Diamond chests/Barrels receiving from an enderchest all connected with transfer pipes would work fine for early game.

Why does the slow speed bother you so much? What kind of quantities of items to be sorted are you expecting "early game" ?

 

[Vaygrim]

Looks like Diamond chests/Barrels receiving from an enderchest all connected with transfer pipes would work fine for early game.

Why does the slow speed bother you so much? What kind of quantities of items to be sorted are you expecting "early game" ?

Well the current problem I'm having with the Transfer pipes currently is specifically because of my quarry. If it is running (and I am barely powering it, so this thing is going at less than 50% of top speed) it will EASILY overload the Enderchest that it feeds into. I thought I could solve this by putting more Transfer Nodes on the chest, pulling more things out at once.

I am now up to 4 Transfer Nodes surrounding the Ender Chest and I am still running into clogging issues.

My current solution to the problem is to Diamond Pipe the quarry, and filter all Cobble Dirt and Gravel straight into the Trash Can from Extra Utilities.

 

[jasondm]

If you're able to, some buildcraft wood transfer pipes with gates on them can pull things out of an inventory decently fast. Set up another ender chest with a few wooden pipes with gates on them pulling items out, then have a diamond pipe send the cobble, gravel and dirt to DSUs (why destroy anything when you can store it? DSUs are amazing, the default recipe requires 3 ender pearls and 2 ender eyes and some plastic (which isn't hard to get) but if you have enderchests already, those shouldn't be hard to get, and the recipe (by default) makes four, so that covers the basic overflow items. Have the rest of the stuff that doesn't get thrown into other DSUs go to a regular chest to get sorted by the extra utilities pipes.

If you can't make gates yet, just make a ton of redstone engines to pump items out with the pipes.

An Example of what I mean:

Spoiler

With four pipes pumping stuff out, the chest empties faster than it fills and the quarry is running as fast as I can make it. The first diamond pipe sends the crap off to DSUs in the background where two more diamond pipes make sure they go into the appropriate DSUs, though I don't think that is necessary. Everything else goes to the chest in the middle, then the nodes suck it out and send it to whatever chest has space. I left one extrautil pipe a non-sorter so any unsorted items would go to that chest, and then for the rest you just toss whatever you want going to it into it. So far it seems to be running well.

 

[KriiEiter]

Well the current problem I'm having with the Transfer pipes currently is specifically because of my quarry. If it is running (and I am barely powering it, so this thing is going at less than 50% of top speed) it will EASILY overload the Enderchest that it feeds into. I thought I could solve this by putting more Transfer Nodes on the chest, pulling more things out at once.

I am now up to 4 Transfer Nodes surrounding the Ender Chest and I am still running into clogging issues.

My current solution to the problem is to Diamond Pipe the quarry, and filter all Cobble Dirt and Gravel straight into the Trash Can from Extra Utilities.

Make some more enderchests of the same color code, and add more pulling points from those into your system?

If you're able to, some buildcraft wood transfer pipes with gates on them can pull things out of an inventory decently fast. Set up another ender chest with a few wooden pipes with gates on them pulling items out, then have a diamond pipe send the cobble, gravel and dirt to DSUs (why destroy anything when you can store it? DSUs are amazing, the default recipe requires 3 ender pearls and 2 ender eyes and some plastic (which isn't hard to get) but if you have enderchests already, those shouldn't be hard to get, and the recipe (by default) makes four, so that covers the basic overflow items. Have the rest of the stuff that doesn't get thrown into other DSUs go to a regular chest to get sorted by the extra utilities pipes.

If you can't make gates yet, just make a ton of redstone engines to pump items out with the pipes.

Whole point of OP was that he didn't want to use BC at all unless unavoidable.

 

[jasondm]

Whole point of OP was that he didn't want to use BC at all unless unavoidable.

? He didn't say that, he wanted a low-tech/early-game solution, he didn't want to use AE and BC pipes are fine if you have someplace for things to go, which in my example there's little chance of things being ejected, just gotta make sure you have enough storage space on the receiving end. If you have enderchests, the rest of the items here (besides the gates) aren't really out of reach (I just used diamond chests as an example, but those aren't out of reach either).

But that's also a really good idea, using more enderchests with more nodes, less diamonds required too.

Watching this run, I've noticed one small problem already, the extrautils nodes wait a second before checking if a certain exit node is a valid destination, so the more exit nodes you have, the longer it'll take for it to find one to sort to. Not too much of an issue since 90% of the stuff coming in is getting filtered before it hits the nodes, and they have a single slot to buffer to. I don't think it's really an issue unless you're running fifteen quarries.

Also, it looks like the extrautils pipes check for valid exits in order from closest to farthest (I'm not entirely sure), but so far having the preformatted chests closer to the nodes and the unsorted chests at the end of the line is working perfectly.

Haha, just noticed too, I have an extra wooden pipe there in the middle of the mess not doing anything, without that you could just use 1 iron pipe instead of how many I used. Whatever, there's plenty of things that could be done to optimize it, but it's just an example.

 

[Vaygrim]

I'm currently exploring Deep Storage Units to replace my barrels (I didn't realize a DSU stored 2 million units!), and a combination of Transfer Pipes from Extra Utilities plus Buildcraft pipes. I cannot make gates just yet, do not have the resources or power infrastructure. I think however that if I carefully place buffer chests in the system (so there is always space for things to be routed).. I might be able to use BC Pipes for some of the initial horsepower.

 

[Greyed]

Well the current problem I'm having with the Transfer pipes currently is specifically because of my quarry.

I'm trying to grok "early game" to simultaneously mean unable to power an AE network but able to power a quarry. Generally speaking I find powering an AE network lower on the scale than powering a quarry. Especially one feeding into an ender chest since an ender chest is after being able to power an AE network and a quarry in world progression, to me.

My current solution to the problem is to Diamond Pipe the quarry, and filter all Cobble Dirt and Gravel straight into the Trash Can from Extra Utilities.

A sensible solution, filtering out the cruft.

. . . then have a diamond pipe send the cobble, gravel and dirt to DSUs (why destroy anything when you can store it?

Why store stuff you can recreate an infinite amount of whenever you desire? Cobble, gravel, sand and flint all fall under that category. Cobble from an igneous extractor. Sand/gravel from pulverizing cobble. Flint from pulverizing gravel. Presuming TE is installed, of course.

DSUs are amazing, the default recipe requires 3 ender pearls and 2 ender eyes and some plastic

And ender eyes being even further along after "powering an AE network" than anything above.

 

[Hydra]

I fully realize that Applied Energistics is a fantastic system for storing your stuff as well as auto-crafting. I definitely will be working up to that system for my mid- to long game storage solution.

Because I know that I'll be using AE as my mid- to long game storage soultion I tend not to bother with too complex setups for early game. Generally all my stuff comes in through a central tesseract that outputs to buildcraft pipes. These pipes lead to a few barrels where diamond pipes insert cobble, dirt, gravel and marble. Any 'leftovers' get filtered out by another diamond pipe into a void pipe. The pipe then leads on to a few more chests with the remaining 3 diamond pipes handling some basic sorting.

That's good enough a sorting system for early game. When I have a permanent power setup I just transfer everything from those chests into my AE system.

 

[wolfsilver00]

An ender chest or diamond chest, with some pumping device leading to a router which connects to barrels. No power needed at all if you use autarchic gates

 

[Vaygrim]

I'm trying to grok "early game" to simultaneously mean unable to power an AE network but able to power a quarry. Generally speaking I find powering an AE network lower on the scale than powering a quarry. Especially one feeding into an ender chest since an ender chest is after being able to power an AE network and a quarry in world progression, to me.

And ender eyes being even further along after "powering an AE network" than anything above.

I have a wonderful little mod installed called DartCraft, which adds its own ore in addition to a great early game engine and tons of other things. The engine it adds, the Force Engine, can actually use the Force Ore the mod adds as fuel (in addition to numerous other liquids).. outputting 4 MJ/t early game. You can put a secondary liquid into the engine that acts as a 'Throttle', basically cooling the engine and increasing output efficiency.

So with the setup that DartCraft affords me, I was able to get a fairly decent early game power system up and going. This let me make one or two Thermal Expansion machines (like the Pulverizer, Powered Furnace, Magma Crucible, Liquid Transposer, etc etc). I can't power ALL of these machines running at once, but I can craft with them.. process my ore in large batches, all works out quite wonderfully. Once I got to this point I focused all of my efforts and resources on three things: Redstone Energy Conduits, two Energy Tesseracts and a Quarry. Getting to this point has burned a ton of my resources but I'm there now and using the Quarry to regain what resources I used. My current Force engine setup deals out roughly 32 MJ/t, which all connects to my machine then one of the Energy Tesseracts. This means that if I am running the quarry, it draws SO MUCH power I cannot actually run any of my machines at my workshop while doing so. This means I have to store everything that comes in through the Quarry while it is coming in and I cannot actually process anything until the Quarry has run full course.

I have Extra Utilities installed as well (of course) and I found its Transfer Pipes system to be elegant in simplicity, especially since it has 'assured delivery'. I initially started using it by just connecting a Transfer Node straight to one of two Ender Chests that I have (with the Quarry being on the other end). I found the Ender Chest almost full on numerous occasions and I had to start 'manually' grabbing stuff and running it around. I tried to resolve this by connecting more Transfer Nodes to the Ender Chest, but that still isn't even keeping up to the Quarry while it runs. The only thing I've come up with as a solution at present is to just stick a diamond pipe on the Quarry and run all Dirt, Cobblestone and Gravel straight into a Trash Can. Everything else gets piped into the Ender Chest, and that slows down the 'flood' of things I have coming in.

I have tried multiple wooden pipes with Redstone Engines pulling from the Ender Chest but that is honestly rather slow, grabbing only a single item at a time per pulse. I am pushing towards being able to make Gates but I am not there just yet. While pushing to being Gate capable I am trying to find another solution in the interim as well.

 

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Because I know that I'll be using AE as my mid- to long game storage soultion I tend not to bother with too complex setups for early game. Generally all my stuff comes in through a central tesseract that outputs to buildcraft pipes. These pipes lead to a few barrels where diamond pipes insert cobble, dirt, gravel and marble. Any 'leftovers' get filtered out by another diamond pipe into a void pipe. The pipe then leads on to a few more chests with the remaining 3 diamond pipes handling some basic sorting.

That's good enough a sorting system for early game. When I have a permanent power setup I just transfer everything from those chests into my AE system.

I'm still not seeing it. There's not much complex about "1x CPU, 1x Disk Drive, 1x 4k disk (might want to start with 16x if you've got a quarry going), 1x monitor"? Then you just have your Import Buses hooked up to your EnderChest from your quarry. If they don't pull fast enough, you can actually have multiple EnderChests on the same color, all of whom have Import Buses... but that should only be necessary with either multiple quarries or something like DW20's insane Mining Well Frame Quarry.

I don't see how you can have quarries running without a solid power supply already set up, but that's just me.

You're going to have to run *something*, might as well get your AE setup going now.

 

[Vaygrim]

I'm still not seeing it. There's not much complex about "1x CPU, 1x Disk Drive, 1x 4k disk (might want to start with 16x if you've got a quarry going), 1x monitor"? Then you just have your Import Buses hooked up to your EnderChest from your quarry. If they don't pull fast enough, you can actually have multiple EnderChests on the same color, all of whom have Import Buses... but that should only be necessary with either multiple quarries or something like DW20's insane Mining Well Frame Quarry.

I don't see how you can have quarries running without a solid power supply already set up, but that's just me.

You're going to have to run *something*, might as well get your AE setup going now.

Okay then let's take it from the perspective of a thought exercise: How can we resolve this issue without using Applied Energistics?

 

[Siro]

Okay then let's take it from the perspective of a thought exercise: How can we resolve this issue without using Applied Energistics?

Well, AE is a great system, which is why it keeps getting recommended. Failing that, buildcraft pipes CAN be made 100% reliable (items won't pop out) using loops. If you have a barrel for every type of item you want and preload each one with that type, you can dump the entire output of a quarry into that loop and have it fill the barrels. Once they're all full, or if you put items into the loop that don't have a barrel, they'll just keep going round and round until you overload the pipes and they explode constantly (which will obliterate the global tick rate). I know this because I've done this. It WORKS early game, but I do NOT recommend it as any sort of long term storage solution. You can reduce the likelihood of overload by using a diamond pipe to isolate specific item loops, but generally if you can make diamond pipe you should be looking at better storage solutions. Ones that won't explode forever if you throw too many items at them.

All you need for a loop is x many storage things (barrel, chest, etc), cobble/stone/gold pipe directly on top of them in rows, and loop the pipe back around to the start. Replace a corner with iron pipe, wrench it into going one way into the loop and attach another pipe to the iron pipe and that's your entry point into the loop. If you need more entry points you can replace any section that's not over a storage thing with iron pipe, just make sure you wrench everything to point the same direction. Once an inventory is full, stuff will just continue past it. Storage things will fill mostly from the beginning of the loop toward the end, but it's semi random. So that means that if you have any chest in the loop, it will receive some of all the items that go into the loop regardless of what you've preloaded into barrels before the chest in the loop unless you also specifically preload every slot in the chest with item types you want to store in the chest.

And how to deal with getting stuff out of the ender chest fast enough: put as many wooden pipes as you can fit in the space and as many redstone engines as you can fit on each pipe and then pump all of THAT into a loop until your system can sort it out so that the ender chest stays empty. If redstone engines aren't fast enough, you'll need to upgrade to stirling or better, as more MJ will pull more items out faster (up to a stack I believe). But in addition to being able to explode from too many items, pipes can explode from too much power as well, so be careful.

 

[Greyed]

So with the setup that DartCraft affords me, I was able to get a fairly decent early game power system up and going. This let me make one or two Thermal Expansion machines (like the Pulverizer, Powered Furnace, Magma Crucible, Liquid Transposer, etc etc). I can't power ALL of these machines running at once, but I can craft with them.. process my ore in large batches, all works out quite wonderfully. Once I got to this point I focused all of my efforts and resources on three things: Redstone Energy Conduits, two Energy Tesseracts and a Quarry.

See, this is where we differ. I start up with hobbyists so my power generation is actually lower than yours. You get 4MJ/t out of a single engine, I get 1.8MJ/t per engine and start with 2 for a total of 3.6MJ/t. The funny part is for me to run my engines I need to run water to them which, if memory serves from the DW20 Dartcraft spotlight, is a 2x throttle, turning your 4MJ/t engine into an 8MJ/t engine. I find that 2 Hobbyists are enough to process ore manually through a pulverizer and powered furnace; albeit at a reduced rate. ThankyewKingLemming for self-throttling machines.

Once I have enough gold my next step is an Igneous Extruder. This gets me obsidian. After that comes the induction furnace for hardened glass. Finally the magma crucible and liquid transposer for two important things. Red Energy Conduits and a Red Energy Cell.

Note two things at this point. 1, I still don't need diamonds so no possibility of a quarry. 2, I am building a Cell which you apparently aren't giving that it is not listed above. (EDIT: I slightly misspoke here. I do need 1 diamond for the RECell, which is 6 less than the quarry. In fact the RECell is so important to me that I generally spend my first diamond on it and the next 3 on the pick-like contraption. I meant the no diamonds comment to show that even raiding the Nether for the mats for the Magma Crucible don't take diamonds.)

This is where my ME network comes into play. I start with a basic controller, a drive, a few 1k storage and an ME Crafting Table. Note by this time I am generally running on 4 hobbyist engines (7.2MJ/t) so I am still well below your power draw. However I am also pretty much running at full speed on all my machines at this point. The reason is the RECell. I don't turn off my engines, ever. So that 7.2MJ/t is going as long as I am close enough to my base (no chunk loader yet) which is most of the time. So when I come back to dump my mining haul into my input chest my RECell has 100-200KMJ to spit out. That's enough to pulverize and smelt several stacks of ore without breaking a sweat, all the while maintaining power to my AE network.

By the time I think about making a quarry I've generally upgraded from the 4 stand-alone Hobbyists to a small 12LP solid fuel boiler driving 4 commercial engines for a total of 16MJ/t. I have a Tesseract on one RECell face, my AE network on a second, my TE machines on a third. Once I get the quarry where I need it I plop the 4 Hobbyists back down, bumping me to 23.2MJ/t, throttle the RECell to 12-14MJ/t per side, and carry on. I'm able to run my quarry at 9MJ/t, maintain a steady input of MJ/t into my RECell to be able to process anything the quarry digs up as well as maintain the secondary machines to keep the power flowing (MFR farms).

In fact I just got done with this stage in my current world where my quarry dug up the last of the iron I needed to toss at the blast furnace to finish my 36HP liquid boiler & 18 commercial engines for a total of 72MJ/t. In fact, the problem I am having right now is heating up that 36HP liquid boiler without Forestry.

So to recap, my power generation went from 3.6 -> 7.2 -> 16 -> 23.2 -> 72. AE was introduced at the 7.2MJ/t stage, throttled quarry at the 23.2MJ/t with the full quarry coming at the 72MJ/t stage. The only difference I can deduce given what you've described is the fact that I am using the RECell both as a method of power storage to allow me to spike my power usage past the baseline my engines generate as well as a method of equitable distribution between the different areas of my operation.[DOUBLEPOST=1369143583][/DOUBLEPOST]

Okay then let's take it from the perspective of a thought exercise: How can we resolve this issue without using Applied Energistics?

IE, presuming this isn't an X not Y, which it clearly is?

If it were me I would install LP since it still, IMHO, is the gold standard of logistics.

But, seriously, ya generally sort out sorting and storage before the quarry, not after.

 

[Vaygrim]

Can someone educate me please, what is the single largest storage medium that can handle multiple item types.. outside of Applied Energistics? Barrels and Deep Storage Units are single-item only... while Diamond chests (or Crystal / Obsidian) from the Iron Chests mod seem to be largest multi-item type that does not require any power. Is there something larger?

 

[Greyed]

Storage Crates from http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/1548203-152-betterstorage-061-wip/

Black Hole Chest from http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic...nitubes-5502-liquid-xp-5500-microblocks-5500/

 

[Vaygrim]

I've got Black Hole Chests appranently... never used one before! I'll have to craft one and start experimenting.

Regarding the Storage Crates from the BetterStorage mod, thanks!

 

[Heliomance]

I'm currently exploring Deep Storage Units to replace my barrels (I didn't realize a DSU stored 2 million units!)

2 billion, actually.