Sorting & Ore Processing

[MoosyDoosy]

This has probably been discussed in the past, but I'd just like to ask a few things:

What mods make the best sorting system? Please keep in mind that cost, availability, and efficiency should all factor into what one thinks makes the best sorting system. You can also classify the different sorting systems as the best early game, mid game, etc.

On the same note, what mods make up the best ore processing system? Also keep in mind cost, availability, and efficiency.

 

[SynfulChaot]

Sorting? AE, as soon as you can afford it. Mebbe early-mid game if you're focused on it. Aside from that, I'd say TE itemducts paired with JABBA or Factorization barrels, Extra Utilities FIling Cabinets, and IronChests chests.

For ore processing? Still unsure on that. Still working on the relative efficiency of RotaryCraft.

 

[ScottulusMaximus]

How long is a piece of string? You'll get the same answers, it's all opinions... I use Logistics Pipes and IC2 Advanced Machines.

 

[Grimnights]

While I personally like it, I still thinks it need way more balancing but Mekanism for ore processing. Sorting to me will always be a whatever floats your boat kinda thing. I use AE mainly because I don't like the look of BC type pipes.

 

[MoosyDoosy]

How long is a piece of string? You'll get the same answers, it's all opinions... I use Logistics Pipes and IC2 Advanced Machines.

Of course, but in the long run some ways are definitely better than others. Late game when you have a quarry set up you do NOT want to devote ten chests to ores and gems.

Right now I'm using a very basic Extra Utilities sorting system and a Thermal Expansion ore processing system.

 

[SatanicSanta]

Whichever is the most fun to you = the best option for you

 

[Protocurity]

There is a whole lot of sorting options in different mods. So many that I've lost count, and even in the upcoming expansive list I've most likely forgotten something:

• Extrautils adds pipes that behave like hoppers over long distances, are fairly cheap to make (32 at a time), and also have a rather simplistic sorting system to use. They can sort items and fluids, and I think energy as well.

• Mekanism has logistic pipes and the logistical sorter. This is the most complicated system, however it is quite powerful in that it is free, fast, and with its coloring system you can create an extremely complex method of sorting all of your different items.

• EnderIO adds compact sorting systems, which operate similar to extrautils, but faster and instead of requiring multiple nodes, can be paired with multiple pipes to transmit power, fluid, energy, and redstone signals of incredible complexity all in the same block. It has the ability to ignore metadata and NBT data as well.

• Railcraft has a rather fun but complicated and expensive sorting system using chest carts, holding rails, and extractors. The buffer for this system is huge in that it is a chest cart, but its sorting abilities are limited due to the number of inventory slots on most railcraft machines being limited. For small scale operations that don't require a lot of items, but nonetheless can have large outputs, the cart system is a unique way to go.

• The fan favorite lately is Thermal Expansion 3. TE3's item conduits provide adjustable control (requires dynamo or redstone signal), along with a similar logic system to mekanism logistical sorters, but don't require nearly as much knowhow in order to operate. They are simple and strong in this regard, so for an adequate system you may never need to o past TE3.

• The most powerful is unquestionably Applied Energistics. AE's sorting system doesn't "sort" insomuch as it stores all item data digitally in drives, allowing you to access and even auto craft any item you want from any chests hooked up to the system instantly and freely. No delay, no "sorting", and not even a complicated pipe system is needed. Just hook up to AE system and go. The problem with AE is that it is expensive: large networks have a high constant power draw, and to make these systems effectively you need large amounts of certus quartz, diamonds, redstone, and gold. Because of this, many payers will go with one of the above systems, and then once they have enough infrastructure to constantly put out 10 MJ/T, it is then that they'll convert to an AE system.

• The most "out of box" goes to Thaumcraft 4 golems. The golems can be given a set of logic cores, which give them a set of options that allow them perform various tasks, many of which include sorting, buffering, overflowing, and interacting with machine from nearly any mod. This is an attractive option, since the ability of golems to do nearly everything allows them to work well together, and while it is not the most efficient system it is aided by the fact that golems can't overload.

• The most epic, unquestionably, is the vanilla sorting system. It is very hard to make and hard to explain, so I'll let a video do most of the work. But basically it uses a series of hoppers and droppers, alongside of a complicated clock and chests pre-filled with items to automatically arrange items where you would want to put them.

As for ore processing...

Thermal Expansion 3, Tinker's Construct, IC2 (I think...), and EnderIO (I think) all provide easy ore doubling that is cheap. Mekanism provides easy ore doubling and tripling that is a bit more involved and expensive, but it isn't too bad. Factorizaiton provides ore quadruplication, but it takes forever and requires expensive and advanced setups. The most powerful ore doubling is in Rotarycraft, which provides anywhere from 5x to 13x for certain "rare" ores, to even more with certain dusts. However, the processing in Rotarycraft is either extremely involved with manually manipulating a CVT to change a gas engine's output, extremely long in requiring an Industrial Coil to wind up, or extremely expensive in needing two microturbines and jet fuel to be done automatically.

For "out of the box" ore doubling, thaumcraft 4 has the pickaxe of the core that, once researched, can return ore clusters that double ore output when cooked. This can be increased further in an arcane furnace, and how often the Pickaxe of the core gets a cluster depends on the fortune enchantment. But, with TC4 in a pack, the pickaxe of the core with fortune can provide a rather low maintenance method of ore doubling.

I'm pretty sure there is many more I've neglected to mention.

 

[SatanicSanta]

I'm pretty sure there is many more I've neglected to mention.

Yep, and one of them is the simplest: Buildcraft Dia. pipes

Logistics Pipes has... Logistics Pipes

And the block you were thinking of with the Railcraft sorting machine is the Item Unloader, not extractor And the buffer is both a single vanilla chest and a 3x3 internal buffer of the unloaders.

 

[Protocurity]

Well, that's what I get for running a pack that doesn't have the BC core mods or IC mods... I tend to forget that everyone uses those things.

 

[Golrith]

In one playthrough I decided not to use any sort of pipe, instead, my entire sorting system consisted of Ender Chests and Translocators and a few golems. Jeez, that was expensive (each destination needs at least 2 ender pearls and 4 blaze rods), but also a nice challenge to ensure everything went where it was supposed to, was only good for a small supply of materials.

Before that, AE, never again. Too boring and insanely expensive for some components.

Before that, Red Power and Barrels.

Before that, Buildcraft and Diamond Pipes.

Currently, TE Ducts, Barrels and Chests.


Best system I've used is RedPower. TE Ducts are a close 2nd, but without the fine control of painting tubes and changing an items destination colour, there's a few things that are a little more awkward.
Worst system is definitely AE. For me it removes the "fun" of getting a system that you've built to work. It just basically works, as long as you have the right connection and GUI configuration, you hardly get any unexpected surprises. Part of a sorting system is dealing with when things go wrong. It can be easy to overlook something.

I remember once connecting one RP tube up wrongly in a small subsystem. A little while later, wondered why some resources where not getting through, checked, and my entire base was backstuffed with cobble and dirt from my quarry, all due to one tube. Clearing out every machine & buffer chest was a lot of "fun"...

For me, puzzling things out is part of the fun of MC. You lose that with AE. I like it, and would use it again, just for specific situations where non-stacking items are used, such as bees, enchanting, etc.

 

[Sidorion]

For Storage: AE (fast, no space; you can make a full system with three blocks), Barrels and DSUs from MFR
For Sorting (production supply): As long as AE doesn't handle liquids, I'll always go for logistic pipes. LP simply routes liquids through the normal item pipes in little energy-capsules. This way you don't loose your liquids to the pipes and you have one kind less to consider about (and save a lot of cactus green).
Additionally LP is the only way I know of to have exact 5 Items in a certain invenory without making subsystems or complex contraptions.
In production: TE3 item- and fluid ducts. It's bit cheaper than LP and for simple setups (as e.g. ore-processing) the best choice.
Ore processing: TE3. During the phase of TE's unavailability I used Engineer's toolbox (actually, i luv dat Kiln-thingie).
Long range item/liquid transport: Carts with RC loaders/unloaders or Tesseracts in late-game

In the end the best sorting system is a mix of all sorting systems.

 

[Redius]

For single player, I love seeing stuff whizzing around in pipes; but for server play, I usually stick to AE to reduce the footprint on the server.

For Sorting (production supply): As long as AE doesn't handle liquids, I'll always go for logistic pipes.quote]

ExtraCells has fluid storage for Applied Energistics

 

[SynfulChaot]

For single player, I love seeing stuff whizzing around in pipes; but for server play, I usually stick to AE to reduce the footprint on the server.

A well-designed TE or Extra Utilities tube/pipe system I find preferable for pre-storage processing. They can be very light on server load if made properly.

As powerful and good as AE is, I honestly question whether or not it's the lightest on server load for ore processing as you need a lot of level emitters to fully automate and the tube/pipe systems just auto-process anything in your 'input' chest, regardless of how many are already in AE.

 

[Odovbold]

There is a whole lot of sorting options in different mods. So many that I've lost count, and even in the upcoming expansive list I've most likely forgotten something:

• Extrautils adds pipes that behave like hoppers over long distances, are fairly cheap to make (32 at a time), and also have a rather simplistic sorting system to use. They can sort items and fluids, and I think energy as well.

• Mekanism has logistic pipes and the logistical sorter. This is the most complicated system, however it is quite powerful in that it is free, fast, and with its coloring system you can create an extremely complex method of sorting all of your different items.

• EnderIO adds compact sorting systems, which operate similar to extrautils, but faster and instead of requiring multiple nodes, can be paired with multiple pipes to transmit power, fluid, energy, and redstone signals of incredible complexity all in the same block. It has the ability to ignore metadata and NBT data as well.

• Railcraft has a rather fun but complicated and expensive sorting system using chest carts, holding rails, and extractors. The buffer for this system is huge in that it is a chest cart, but its sorting abilities are limited due to the number of inventory slots on most railcraft machines being limited. For small scale operations that don't require a lot of items, but nonetheless can have large outputs, the cart system is a unique way to go.

• The fan favorite lately is Thermal Expansion 3. TE3's item conduits provide adjustable control (requires dynamo or redstone signal), along with a similar logic system to mekanism logistical sorters, but don't require nearly as much knowhow in order to operate. They are simple and strong in this regard, so for an adequate system you may never need to o past TE3.

• The most powerful is unquestionably Applied Energistics. AE's sorting system doesn't "sort" insomuch as it stores all item data digitally in drives, allowing you to access and even auto craft any item you want from any chests hooked up to the system instantly and freely. No delay, no "sorting", and not even a complicated pipe system is needed. Just hook up to AE system and go. The problem with AE is that it is expensive: large networks have a high constant power draw, and to make these systems effectively you need large amounts of certus quartz, diamonds, redstone, and gold. Because of this, many payers will go with one of the above systems, and then once they have enough infrastructure to constantly put out 10 MJ/T, it is then that they'll convert to an AE system.

• The most "out of box" goes to Thaumcraft 4 golems. The golems can be given a set of logic cores, which give them a set of options that allow them perform various tasks, many of which include sorting, buffering, overflowing, and interacting with machine from nearly any mod. This is an attractive option, since the ability of golems to do nearly everything allows them to work well together, and while it is not the most efficient system it is aided by the fact that golems can't overload.

• The most epic, unquestionably, is the vanilla sorting system. It is very hard to make and hard to explain, so I'll let a video do most of the work. But basically it uses a series of hoppers and droppers, alongside of a complicated clock and chests pre-filled with items to automatically arrange items where you would want to put them.

{snip}

I'm pretty sure there is many more I've neglected to mention.

Thanks for a great summary, already added some to my next-to-do list.

Just one thing, I'll avoid the vanilla sorting systems like hell, that's the biggest reason I'm not playing vanilla any more.

Sent from my HTC One using Tapatalk

 

[Sidorion]

ExtraCells has fluid storage for Applied Energistics

Yes, I know. But still it has no (practicable) option to have a certain amount of something somewhere.
If you want to have 2 stacks of glass available all the time, in LP you simply hook a supplier pipe to an inventory (in additon to the item sink and provider module) and make it request 128 pieces of glass. As soon as there are less than 128 glass in the chest this pipe will send sand to your furnace to reproduce glass. In AE you will have to build a whole subnet including controller and everything.

In my world I have an AE storage column (controller, terminal and disk storage) used as one giant chest for my LP system. If i need more space to hook my pipes on to I simply add IO-ports or additional access terminals.

 

[Nooska]

That sounds overly complicated for AE; Just add an (forget which is output) Import or export bus set to supply/craft mod, and a levelemitter that turns it off when you have the amount of glass you need in the inventory (thats 1 extra block space).

I usually go with manual sorting in the early game (even up to mid game sometimes), and go with whatever I decide loooks to be the most 'precise', though after having done AE, I will likely se it extensively going forward, though probably with storage busses on barrels for actual storage - I like the storage room / warehouse feel of going in somewhere and see my items.

 

[KingTriaxx]

Fully automate processing? How? Isn't it just pump ores into processor of choice, such as the Pulverizer, and get ingots back out? Unless you're running metallurgy, it's surprisingly simple to put all processable ores on one export bus. I use Fuzzy so it covers all mod variants using the OreDict, but that's me.

 

[Sidorion]

That sounds overly complicated for AE; Just add an (forget which is output) Import or export bus set to supply/craft mod, and a levelemitter that turns it off when you have the amount of glass you need in the inventory (thats 1 extra block space).

Yep. You could do that kinda simmilar approach, but it's not quite the same:
In LP, you take 20 glass, 20 sand is sent to the furnace and you get 20 new glass.
In AE, you take 20 glass and the export bus keeps stuffing the furnace with sand until it cooked 20 glass. This way you get 20+64 new glass blocks (with a steam oven you even get extra nine! stacks of glass).

You could say: one (or nine) extra stacks of glass do not matter a lot, but if you want to keep something more expensive stocked, like the chipsets from AE? Getting sixty-eight advanced circuits instead of the four you initially wanted DOES make a difference

 

[MoosyDoosy]

Yep. You could do that kinda simmilar approach, but it's not quite the same:
In LP, you take 20 glass, 20 sand is sent to the furnace and you get 20 new glass.
In AE, you take 20 glass and the export bus keeps stuffing the furnace with sand until it cooked 20 glass. This way you get 20+64 new glass blocks (with a steam oven you even get extra nine! stacks of glass).

You could say: one (or nine) extra stacks of glass do not matter a lot, but if you want to keep something more expensive stocked, like the chipsets from AE? Getting sixty-eight advanced circuits instead of the four you initially wanted DOES make a difference

So it keeps on making until it reads that the item is actually present? But if that were the case, after making however many circuits, wouldn't the crafting just stop? Also, I've never really had this issue before, my AE system in the past has always given me the amount of whatever I requested from it. Never extra.

 

[Sidorion]

When you actually request one circuit from the crafting core yourself, it crafts one assembly, sends it to the furnace and delivers the result.

The problem is not, that the system keeps crafting, but that it keeps requesting:
The export bus places item x in adjacent inventory until it's full (or turned off by a redstone signal).
The level emitter turns the redsone signal off if there is less than a specific amount of that item in the whole system (another difference to LP) and on if there are more.
Now if you fetch said four circuits from the system, the emitter switches state and the export bus starts exporting (and thus requesting) one circuit at a time (or stackwise, depending on config) until the level emitter again switches state back.
So every time the bus ticks, one advanced circuit assembly is crafted and sent to the furnace. Every time the emitter ticks, it check if now are enough circuits on stock (which are not, so the signal stays off).
This keeps repeating until the first four are cooked up.

I tested this with a rock crusher and obsidian gravel. I wanted 64 on stock so I set the level emitter to 64 and got about 10 stacks! The export bus stuffed the crusher with obsidian (9 stacks) and kept restocking it until 64 gravel were produced. After that, the crusher kept crushing the remaining 9 stacks already in it.