Sorting & Ore Processing

[Sidorion]

Since when can LP access autocrafting from AE? I thought it only works the other way round. This opens a ton of new possibilities. I'll have to check that later.

@Niels: You were talking 'bout craft on demand and that is working very well in AE. But we discussed about automatically keeping a certain amount stocked and this is something, AE simply cannot do (at least not without a subsystem).

@Nooska: I'm not saying, LP is better, it just meets my requirements better respectively fits my own playstyle more. Both mods have their ups and downs and the combination of both make the winner.

 

[KingTriaxx]

Essentially you just place the request pipe up against the ender chest, and instead of spitting out onto the ground, it drops it into the chest. It was very useful when I had my Mage Tower for Thaumcraft some distance from my main house, because I could request materials for research, without having to take the train all the way back.

@Sidorion: I could have sworn it could have to try that then.

 

[Niels Henriksen]

Essentially you just place the request pipe up against the ender chest, and instead of spitting out onto the ground, it drops it into the chest. It was very useful when I had my Mage Tower for Thaumcraft some distance from my main house, because I could request materials for research, without having to take the train all the way back.

Yes but how can you request things from out-of-base? Or you tell the system what there has to be in the chest from beginning?

 

[Golrith]

Not sure exactly how it works, but I think the ender chests just link the LP systems together. Quite clever. Just imagine it's an invisible pipe of near infinite length.
Friend on my server back in 1.5.2 setup one up for me (never used LP before) so I could access the community base/warehouse from my mystcraft age.

 

[Niels Henriksen]

Ah nice... i need to try that

 

[Sidorion]

@KingTriaxx: last statement of the LP-dev was that there are still things to think through, because LP and AE handle autocrafting completely different. AE does one by one and LP calculates the whole process first. Another significant difference between the both: LP can tell you immediately if a requested craft is possible and doesn't even start if not. AE simply gets stuck in the middle of the process and you have to refer to that monitor-thingie.

@Niels: You use a remote orderer for that (the little PDA-thingy that turns every LP to a request pipe). You can link the orderer to a logistics remote order pipe attached to your ender chest. You then can pick the items from an ender pouch with the same color-code. To store items back you can use another pouch/chest combo with an extractor or quicksort pipe on.
This one is a plus on the AE-side: you only need one item to remotely access your stuff (though the range is imho far too limited)

 

[MoosyDoosy]

This works as long as the recipe for making the desired items are insta-craft (eg. by the crafting core). As soon as there is time involved in the crafting process (cooking, macerating, extracting, filling up something), the export bus will run amok and do the crafting request again and agian and again.

Another thing you can't do properly with AE: Autocrafting redstone conduits. For this you need two redstones in machine A (magma crucible) and an empty conduit in machine B (liquid transposer). The only way I can imageine is having A stuffed with redstone and thus filling the tanks of both machines with liquid redstone rendering both useless for other liquids.

In LP you set up a crafting ppipe on B and a satlellite pipe on A, connect these and have the recipe in the crafting pipe send the redstones to the sattelite. This way you can hook up to four different crafting recipes on B, even with different lquids involved and still have both machines free for manual crafting. With a bit of piping and a chest you can expand the number of possible recipes even more.

That has never happened for me. I set all the recipes needed and if I'm requesting say, a Leadstone Energy Circuit and I need glass, and the recipe requests glass, it'll request six sand from my inventory and smelt six glass to make the circuits while grabbing the redstone and lead needed. How could something like overcrafting happen?

 

[KingTriaxx]

Ah. I hadn't seen that.

The best part of the remote orderer is that you can then store the return bag in the requested item chest and only have to carry one of them around.

@MoosyDoosy: That happens only when AE is told to maintain an amount of item in the network. Because it sends the items to create it continually until it meets the demand.

 

[Badger]

Ancient warfare and better furnaces. It runs on food (which you can automate). The setup is inexpensive, although the research can be...irritating. The best part is all the couriers running around doing what you were doing before you had them 'automate' it. AW's warehouse is useable but sucks for manual access, so I tend to use stacked crates from better storage instead. If you are not running a 'high tech' pack, don't want pipes or tracks running through everything, or just want to have an active town, it rocks.

It is also easily self-sustaining. No necessity to tap lava supplies or limited resources, simple space for farming is all you need. Although you will use up a few diamonds getting your furnaces and tree farms (for fuel) going, and you will need to be familiar with using vanilla automation in some places. also, you will need to set up all the automation... a well-designed system will likely allow unexpected resources to clog it. (My quarry miner hit a patch of marble I forgot was in the pack, and when I came back, my clean processing was overflowing with marble)

It only runs during the day (or daytime dimensions like the nether) and you have to keep chunkloaders active unless you are clever about using elevation. You also need to keep the workers protected, It is clearly not the most elegant system, but it works if you like having a real civilization in your game.

One thing that is extremely cool is if you have archimedes ships installed. when you 'redock' your ship with the real world, if you have everything set up correctly, workers can swarm your ship and carry off the resources you gained and stuffed in chests while you were exploring.

 

[MoosyDoosy]

Steve's Factory Manager, while not as pretty as most of these systems, absolutely crushes every single one of these mods. The utility and flexibility isn't even close in terms of precision and speed. The server load is almost nothing even compared to TE3 itemducts.

SFM is a little complex to get into, but not much more so than LP. Once you climb the learning curve, you will never, ever go back to any other sorting or automation system. It is literally that good. The only drawbacks are the learning curve and asthetics. Even the learning curve is non-existant to people who have any experience with programming.

Is there a guide online or somewhere describing SFM? I've always seen Vswe make some crazy stuff, but have no idea how to use his things. Always wanted to give it a go.

 

[immibis]

After having watched LP in direwolfs SSP, I'm even more put off them than I was before - they drop things (yes I saw somewhere that you can have a chest on the end)

What would you expect to happen if you request items and there's nowhere for them to go? Should they be destroyed?

 

[Nooska]

What would you expect to happen if you request items and there's nowhere for them to go? Should they be destroyed?

Ohh I wasn't talking about overflow, though I was obviously unclear. I was talking about the request pipe functionality that just dumps the items out on the floor for you to pick up.

 

[immibis]

Ohh I wasn't talking about overflow, though I was obviously unclear. I was talking about the request pipe functionality that just dumps the items out on the floor for you to pick up.

That is overflow, though.

 

[Racemol]

Well yeah that is just how DW20 made the LP system work in his base. It doesn't have to be that way, you already said that you know a chest would work too. Now does it still put you off? If so, I wonder what made you so spoiled (AE?)

 

[Sidorion]

I'd count that as a plus (at least for a non-instant system. In AE this would be not so nice).
That way you don't have to open another inventory to access the ordered items or wait for the items to arrive. I use this very often, because you can already continue crafting or do something else until your stuff is there and then pick it up automatically.
If you want, you can put an inventory next to the pipe and the requested items land there.

 

[KingTriaxx]

There is actually an item called a request table, which functions as a request pipe, has it's own internal inventory, and functions as a crafting grid, similar to the AE crafting monitor. And it's all on one GUI.

 

[Nooska]

That is overflow, though.

We may have different definitions of overflow. For me overflow is when there isn't room. What I'm talking about is the designed working of the pipe (or so it seems in DWs SSP, granted that may not be the best setup, but has put me off it).

Well yeah that is just how DW20 made the LP system work in his base. It doesn't have to be that way, you already said that you know a chest would work too. Now does it still put you off? If so, I wonder what made you so spoiled (AE?)

Not really AE, but systemic organisation - chests and barrels (and yes, AE for mass storage) - granted barrels drop stuff on the ground too, so I may have to think about why thats okay, only thing I can think of there is immediate response and not delayed - I'll get back on that (if I remember and find out why one is okay and the other isnt)

I'd count that as a plus (at least for a non-instant system. In AE this would be not so nice).
That way you don't have to open another inventory to access the ordered items or wait for the items to arrive. I use this very often, because you can already continue crafting or do something else until your stuff is there and then pick it up automatically.
If you want, you can put an inventory next to the pipe and the requested items land there.

But if I was to use an inventory, why not just walk over to each inventory and get stuff? (yeah, I know, mass storage is convenient, that wasn't a real question)

There is actually an item called a request table, which functions as a request pipe, has it's own internal inventory, and functions as a crafting grid, similar to the AE crafting monitor. And it's all on one GUI.

That I was not aware of (shame on dire for not shwoing it already when teasing the system ), that could possibly be.

As is, I could see myself using LP for some processing or sorting (from input to storage), but I'm still pretty sure I dislike it for actual access - well lets see if I get to it. The most offputting thing is (percieved) cost of getting it set up and working (in a useful setup that makes it more rational than doing it manually), especially in the context of needing other pipes (speed) too.

 

[KingTriaxx]

I actually learned about it when Saice used it on his Lets Play. Episodes 5-6 I believe.

I really don't like LP for processing, because it tends to keep trying to pull, even when the machines are full. I much prefer AE for that.

 

[Nooska]

What do you use for processing with LP? (I was thinking provider pipes for dedicated processing machines, that seemed to only request if there was space)

 

[AlanEsh]

That has never happened for me. I set all the recipes needed and if I'm requesting say, a Leadstone Energy Circuit and I need glass, and the recipe requests glass, it'll request six sand from my inventory and smelt six glass to make the circuits while grabbing the redstone and lead needed. How could something like overcrafting happen?

You're talking about on-demand cooking of the sand to make glass, and yes that works fine. But if I need glass for another more complex recipe and I don't want to wait for the glass to cook at that time, I would instead set up a way to keep X number of glass in stock at all times.
This is where you run into problems of overcrafting. If you have an emitter set to "emit redstone signal whenver there is less than 64 glass in the network" pointed at an export bus attached to a furnace, then you request the MAC craft something that uses all of your glass, the emitter will let your furnace fill will sand and won't turn off the export bus until that furnace has ejected 64 glass into your network. BUT, your furnace still has 64 sand in it and will continue to cook that until empty.

Of course there are some ways to mitigate this... such as having your emitter turn off the furnace so it stops cooking, but then your furnace has a stack of uncooked sand in it. That's a small concern when it's sand, but it's a bigger concern when your furnace ends up being full of Advanced Processors made with a diamond and silicon each