Perhaps a chunk loader that unloads if there haven't been any players detected nearby for a period of time?
Hoppers facing into a chunk border do indeed do that, or at least they did last time I checked. There doesn't even need to be anything in the hopper, or any inventory in the other chunk to put it into- an empty hopper will ensure that the chunk the block it's pointing into is in will be loaded as long as the hopper itself is loaded.Is there a mod out there that adds... I guess you could call them chunk correlators? Essentially, what I'm after is a way to say "If this chunk is loaded, force load these other five chunks as well. If none of them would be loaded, don't force load them."
It would be very useful for base-spanning machinery and automation, where if (say) your machinery is loaded but your power generation isn't, you run into problems. Standard chunk loaders work, but are less server friendly - you don't necessarily need your base to be loaded while you're not there, you just need to make sure that at no point does it ever only have half your base loaded.
Does anything like this exist?
I have heard bad stuff about hoppers but that was about them not liking it when the inventory they feed into is full.Hoppers facing into a chunk border do indeed do that, or at least they did last time I checked. There doesn't even need to be anything in the hopper, or any inventory in the other chunk to put it into- an empty hopper will ensure that the chunk the block it's pointing into is in will be loaded as long as the hopper itself is loaded.
As for potential TPS issues, I doubt they're as bad as Chris Becke seems to think, at least as long as you don't go overkill and keep hundreds of chunks loaded this way. Lag associated with the individual hoppers being derps might possibly be mitigated, at least partially, by placing a block of cobblestone on top of them- if they're coded even slightly sanely, this would prevent the hopper from doing an Axis Aligned Bounding Box check on the space above it every tick, since there wouldn't be any entities there to look for. But even that may not help; Mojang is pretty well known for poor coding practices.
Is there a mod out there that adds... I guess you could call them chunk correlators? Essentially, what I'm after is a way to say "If this chunk is loaded, force load these other five chunks as well. If none of them would be loaded, don't force load them."
It would be very useful for base-spanning machinery and automation, where if (say) your machinery is loaded but your power generation isn't, you run into problems. Standard chunk loaders work, but are less server friendly - you don't necessarily need your base to be loaded while you're not there, you just need to make sure that at no point does it ever only have half your base loaded.
Does anything like this exist?
Wasn't there a config option with chicken chunks that would turn off loaders if the owner player wasn't online? Would this not give you what you need?
You could build it with buildcraft. Just start with a chest full of - say - cobble - in the sentinel chunk, pumping into BC item pipe. Run the pipe through all required chunks - but crucially not back into the initial chunk. Now - as long as the first chunk is loaded, items will be pushed into the pipe. As long as items are flowing through pipes, the chunks those pipes pass through will be loaded.
I don't know if the first chunk will ever unload however - I hope that, as items are not being pushed across its boundary into it it will unload normally, the items will thus stop flowing, and the remaining chunks might unload too.
Or not.
You could probably use AE to route the items back into the first chunk from the last - AE is generally quite good at not force loading any chunks. Which, despite its other performance issues, earns it major points and a place on my server.
The "problem" is that the chicken chunks chunk loader (or the personal anchor) is bound to the person who placed it. So if a base is shared, or a 2nd player wanders past, a personal anchor would not protect from partially loaded bases - which can be catastrophic with mods like Rotarycraft or Railcraft that can explode devices that are deprived of things like coolant.
It's called Mystcraft.A mod that allows the creation of dimensions using template files - where the template files can use blocks and items from other mods.
So I could add a template file that would add a
* Wasteland dimension using vanilla desert and mesa biomes to create a neverending desert with occasional oasis.
* A tainted dimension that consists entirely of Thaumcraft tainted lands, surrounding a patch of magical forest at spawn.
* An under-the-sea dimension that is mostly filled with water, using BoP biomes and plants if available.
* An eternal twilight dimension, using biomes from vanilla, custom trees, items and mobs from Thaumcraft and Witchery to create a magical exploration experience.
* deep space / skyblock dimensions.
Because it adds no blocks items of mobs of its own, this mod could ideally be server sided allowing admins to add content to existing modpacks.
And RFTools.It's called Mystcraft.