Sorting Items into Chests / Storage (1.5.x)

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Ahh, I think I see the problem...

You see, before I even THINK about a Quarry, I think about power. Like you, I have my hobbyist steam engines running, get my first Redstone Energy Cell and some Conduits. From there, I make a couple of liquid tesseracts, a magmatic engine, a chunkloader, some liquiducts, and head BACK to the nether. Set up lava pumping station. Come back. Build the tank (xycraft or iron from railcraft) for the storage buffer. Hook up tesseract to it. Engage lava pumping. Build 4x Magmatic Engines. Now I've got 16 MJ/t coming in consistantly, it's time to start my AE network. Set up CPU, disk drive, 4k disk, monitor, and start loading everything up. Set up enderchest with import buses as my general automated input point.

THEN I start with the quarries as I work up to making enough biofuel to startup a boiler and industrial steam engines for a more permanent power system.

 

[Vaygrim]

Ahh, I think I see the problem...

You see, before I even THINK about a Quarry, I think about power. Like you, I have my hobbyist steam engines running, get my first Redstone Energy Cell and some Conduits. From there, I make a couple of liquid tesseracts, a magmatic engine, a chunkloader, some liquiducts, and head BACK to the nether. Set up lava pumping station. Come back. Build the tank (xycraft or iron from railcraft) for the storage buffer. Hook up tesseract to it. Engage lava pumping. Build 4x Magmatic Engines. Now I've got 16 MJ/t coming in consistantly, it's time to start my AE network. Set up CPU, disk drive, 4k disk, monitor, and start loading everything up. Set up enderchest with import buses as my general automated input point.

THEN I start with the quarries as I work up to making enough biofuel to startup a boiler and industrial steam engines for a more permanent power system.

Yeah I kind of have it backwards from that I guess, heh.

As soon as I get the power infrastructure and resources to manage a Quarry, I start one up and use the incoming resources to then back-build everything else.

 

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Yeah I kind of have it backwards from that I guess, heh.

As soon as I get the power infrastructure and resources to manage a Quarry, I start one up and use the incoming resources to then back-build everything else.

I think we differ on what we consider power infrastructure sufficient to manage a quarry.

 

[KirinDave]

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?

Infinitubes. Infinitubes infinitubes infinitubes.

 

[bgh251f2]

I don't understand why no one says anything about MFR conveyor belts, Ejectors(with a redstone clock), Item Routers and Item Collectors as ending?

 

[KirinDave]

I don't understand why no one says anything about MFR conveyor belts, Ejectors(with a redstone clock), Item Routers and Item Collectors as ending?

I think because, as cool as item routers are, they need a lot of work to be as good as the other solutions. I'm preparing a few bugs to send over to powercrystals. They also don't use virtual slots for sorting targets, which is a big black mark. They also interact poorly with vanilla hoppers.

Finally, items can despawn on conveyors.

 

[jasondm]

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.

I just do this because waiting for igneous extruders and using power to obtain something I already had is kind of annoying.

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

Enderchests require ender pearls and blaze rods, if you have enderchests you have access to ender pearls and blaze rods, coincidentally the hardest things to get for DSUs. Quartz, on the other hand, seems to like to be rare for me. I've had to run several max size quarries at times to get enough quartz to just get an ME network started.

I've made a redstone engine cube to pull items as fast as possible out of a chest before, it looks a little ridiculous but it's not expensive and once the engines warm up it's definitely fast enough to hand a full-speed quarry's output.

Blackhole chests are disabled by default and pretty expensive (two diamond blocks) but are nice. Honestly, though, without cobble, gravel and dirt, and some outlying things like apatite and huge coal veins, I doubt you'd fill a single diamond chest with one max-size quarry, and by the time you're running your second quarry you should have enough resources to make a basic ME network or significantly more storage things. A thing I like about these and DSUs (at least in the current versions of MFR) is that they don't drop their inventory when you break the block, so you can transport a ton of items around without lagging everything to death or spending hours pumping/transferring items the hard way.

My favorite power source is a factorization solar array (solar boiler, steam turbine, and as many mirrors as you can make at the time) and a power converter to make MJs. You can make it pretty early and add on to it as you get more silver, by the time you have a full array of mirrors, it's not too hard to keep an array of energy cells charged, a single quarry running at full speed, a large ME network supplied and your basic auto-processing machines constantly running, just gotta make sure to sleep through the nights and set up in a desert so weather doesn't take your system down, but by then you can have some alternative sources of energy (the usual lava pump -> magmatic/geothermal/thermal gens, wood/coal/biomass/fuel fueld boiler arrays or the more advanced stuff, if you're so inclined and capable).

Finally, items can despawn on conveyors.

I thought that was fixed in a recent version?

 

[KirinDave]

I thought that was fixed in a recent version?

Depends how recent you mean. As of Monday's builds I could still make it happen.

 

[jasondm]

Depends how recent you mean. As of Monday's builds I could still make it happen.

Just checked the changelogs, guess it hasn't, I do remember a mod fixing something despawning recently, though. No idea what it was if it wasn't MFR, though.

 

[bgh251f2]

I checked the entire changelog and there is no mention about it(no despawning), I know I have confused the no despawning with players not being able to pick them up.

You could still use the router to redirect item and use a collector to put them into pipes but the no virtual slots for sorting is what made the point to me...

 

[Greyed]

I've had to run several max size quarries at times to get enough quartz to just get an ME network started.

I think we have wildly different ideas of what constitutes a basic ME network.

 

[ShneekeyTheLost]

I think we have wildly different ideas of what constitutes a basic ME network.

Agreed. It only takes about a half stack of quartz to get your CPU/Disk Drive/16k disk/monitor going. Maybe toss in a few 4k drives as well, if you have a lot of different stuff. Maybe an Import Bus as well to pull stuff out.

 

[Log2]

Just to let you know, apparently the Diamond Pipe was changed to be much smarter than it used to be. If you try to send, let's say iron ore, into a furnace using a diamond pupe, but the furnace is already full with something else, then it will reroute the iron ore to a default route, essentially solving the overflow issue.

 

[Emy]

I think because, as cool as item routers are, they need a lot of work to be as good as the other solutions. I'm preparing a few bugs to send over to powercrystals. They also don't use virtual slots for sorting targets, which is a big black mark. They also interact poorly with vanilla hoppers.

Finally, items can despawn on conveyors.

Definitely send in your bugs. Bugs always need fixing.

Funny story though, regarding item routers. They and conveyors have undergone some improvement in the betas over the last few days, so I'm going to take this opportunity to toot my own horn explain what's changed. Item Routers use virtual slots as of 4 days ago. And since yesterday, they also distribute items proportionally instead of just picking a random valid side, so you can use them for crude load balancing.

Conveyors now have a fake inventory that other machines (like Thermal Expansion processing, vanilla hoppers, BC quarries, etc) can output into, and it'll drop the items on top of the conveyors. They also have special behavior when on top of a few other blocks. From left to right:
Above hoppers, they'll put an item in the hopper every 0.4 seconds
Above item routers, items that have a valid route will get pulled off the conveyor belt and sent along that route
Above item collectors, items will get placed adjacent inventories if possible, otherwise they'll continue on their way (like the conveyor equivalent of an insertion pipe).

Depends how recent you mean. As of Monday's builds I could still make it happen.

Not sure what the best way to fix this would be. Making item entities simply not despawn on conveyors seems like it has some serious lag-inducing potential, if they build up somewhere. I'll give it some thought.

 

[Vaygrim]

I am still trying to figure out a viable solution. I've got a bank of barrels and deep storage units that I am putting things into. I have all the DSU's set with "TOP" as "IN".. and I have a line of BuildCraft pipes running across the tops of the DSU's and barrels, using a combination of gold pipes and cobblestone pipes. Well... the issue I've currently got is that about 75% of the stuff in the BuildCraft pipes just wander straight past the barrels they should be going in, stopping at the dump chest on the end of the line. I am forced to run things through the network three or four times in order for it to all go into the barrels and deep storage units. WHY IS THIS HAPPENING?

I've tried making a router (with speed and bandwidth upgrades) and hooking it up to the bank of barrels.. but it kept sticking items in the machines and hoppers 10 blocks away instead of some of the barrels on the far end of the line. Argh!

 

[southernfriedbb]

I am still trying to figure out a viable solution. I've got a bank of barrels and deep storage units that I am putting things into. I have all the DSU's set with "TOP" as "IN".. and I have a line of BuildCraft pipes running across the tops of the DSU's and barrels, using a combination of gold pipes and cobblestone pipes. Well... the issue I've currently got is that about 75% of the stuff in the BuildCraft pipes just wander straight past the barrels they should be going in, stopping at the dump chest on the end of the line. I am forced to run things through the network three or four times in order for it to all go into the barrels and deep storage units. WHY IS THIS HAPPENING?

I've tried making a router (with speed and bandwidth upgrades) and hooking it up to the bank of barrels.. but it kept sticking items in the machines and hoppers 10 blocks away instead of some of the barrels on the far end of the line. Argh!

Because BC pipes don't pick the first valid location, to get the behavior you wan't you need to use diamond pipes.

 

[Grunguk]

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.

Hmm. While I agree with you regarding simple ME systems being rather accessible early-game, I'm a bit confused about ender chests/ender eyes being further along the progression path than AE/Quarries, even if you're using the cheaper gregtech recipes.

 

[Vaygrim]

Because BC pipes don't pick the first valid location, to get the behavior you wan't you need to use diamond pipes.

Ah okay that totally explains the problem. Wow that is going to be a lot of diamond pipes in order to resolve my sorting issues.

 

[KirinDave]

I am still trying to figure out a viable solution. I've got a bank of barrels and deep storage units that I am putting things into. I have all the DSU's set with "TOP" as "IN".. and I have a line of BuildCraft pipes running across the tops of the DSU's and barrels, using a combination of gold pipes and cobblestone pipes. Well... the issue I've currently got is that about 75% of the stuff in the BuildCraft pipes just wander straight past the barrels they should be going in,

When presented with two valid routes for an object, buildcraft pipes will approach this problem probabilistically. If there are two routes, 50/50 chance for either route. The exception to this is when you have a diamond pipe with a specific route AND a generic route, it will prefer the specific route but take the generic route if the specific route would (immediately) fail. So a diamond pipe can be part of an insertion group.

 

[Vaygrim]

I will celebrate the day that KingLemming adds item transport pipes to Thermal Expansion. The current options in 1.5.1 (which means no Red Power sorting machines) is abysmal.