The energy tesseract

[JoPOw]

Hey everyone..I checked and ran a search, and found nothing for this, and I dont think it justifies a support forum thread but...

Well here goes. So I'm running the Mindcrack pack. I'm using 20 Biogas engines to power a quarry via a teseract. But I can't get the energy to enter the tesseract whilst the engines are running, only whilst they are turned off (as in it builds in the pipes when they're on, then when I turn them off it all discharges through).

I've tried instead running it through redstone cells, and that also doesn't work. I tried running 10 engines into each cell using Golden Conductive, then even tried using Redstone Conduit cable (set orange = output from cell, blue = input into tesseract) to try and send the power. Nothing.

Any suggestions? My friend swears he got it to work fine in his singleplayer test world, and he can't see anything wrong.

Sorry if this is in the wrong place!

 

[JoPOw]

Ah so redstone signals interrupt the flow? That might be an issue...let me fiddle. I've actually got 2 energy cells in the "way" so to speak at the moment.

 

[Poppycocks]

First of I like to ask you to change your avatar purdy please?

Secondly, pictures please. We can't really tell what's wrong when we can't look at it, right?

 

[JoPOw]

Jesus what a simple solution. And to think I have levers EVERYWHERE in my base. You've just solved 30 minutes of frustration with a single line of words. Thank you very much ^^

Edit: I can change my avatar...if you'd like. Any reason? Just grabbed a random pic from my downloads folder.

 

[Poppycocks]

Yeah, one of the mods uses the same one .

 

[JoPOw]

Yeah, one of the mods uses the same one .

Then he/she has splendid taste in artwork ^^

 

[Poppycocks]

Then he/she has splendid taste in artwork ^^

Yeah, she .

 

[Guswut]

Any suggestions?

Just being the person I am, I'd like to mention that energy tesseracts eat 25% of all power, so it does make sense to put all energy into the same buffer to deal with round error. And if you can, avoiding them entirely is a great idea, but it may not always be an option. Good luck, and glad this worked out!

 

[JoPOw]

Just being the person I am, I'd like to mention that energy tesseracts eat 25% of all power, so it does make sense to put all energy into the same buffer to deal with round error. And if you can, avoiding them entirely is a great idea, but it may not always be an option. Good luck, and glad this worked out!

I did notice that yeah. The reason I'm using it is because I want to quarry away from my base, but cartin around Biofuel engines and setting them all up is a bit tricky, especially since half the time I end up with random golden pipe explosions (I've worked out something to do with the chunk load/unload when I move away from my quarry. They seem to be on the boundary of loaded chunks -- some of them anyway)

Its generating 75MJ/t from 20 biofuel engines which, to be frank, is more than I need. I'm used to running my quarry off 50; any more and I'd likely not be able to store it in barrels as fast as Im mining it But thanks for the heads up. It's sure nice to post on forums and get replies that help instead of flaming ^^

 

[Guswut]

I did notice that yeah. The reason I'm using it is because I want to quarry away from my base, but cartin around Biofuel engines and setting them all up is a bit tricky, especially since half the time I end up with random golden pipe explosions (I've worked out something to do with the chunk load/unload when I move away from my quarry. They seem to be on the boundary of loaded chunks -- some of them anyway)

Its generating 75MJ/t from 20 biofuel engines which, to be frank, is more than I need. I'm used to running my quarry off 50; any more and I'd likely not be able to store it in barrels as fast as Im mining it But thanks for the heads up. It's sure nice to post on forums and get replies that help instead of flaming ^^

If you don't mind doing a bit of LUA programming, you can set up a crescent hammer turtle (craft a ComputerCraft computer, then craft a ComputerCraft turtle, then put a crescent hammer in with the turtle to make an engineering turtle) to automatically remove and place cells either timed, or by using some BuildCraft gates to read their power state.

The setup is, evident by the reaction I get when discussing it, not for everyone, but if you want more data on it, I would not mind sharing at all.

 

[Poppycocks]

If you don't mind doing a bit of LUA programming, you can set up a crescent hammer turtle (craft a ComputerCraft computer, then craft a ComputerCraft turtle, then put a crescent hammer in with the turtle to make an engineering turtle) to automatically remove and place cells either timed, or by using some BuildCraft gates to read their power state.

The setup is, evident by the reaction I get when discussing it, not for everyone, but if you want more data on it, I would not mind sharing at all.

Heh, tell me about it, I posted a screenies of such a build and the program for running that, referenced said post twice, it got skipped almost every time .

 

[Guswut]

Heh, tell me about it, I posted a screenies of such a build and the program for running that, referenced said post twice, it got skipped almost every time .

Yeah, it just goes to show that people aren't going to like turtles until we make a player-turtle interface. Heh heh.

 

[Abdiel]

No problem. I had the same problem yesterday with some machines myself. I used a lever on a machine to turn it on, but at the same time it turned the machine next to it off.

As someone who builds extremely compact setups, I have this problem Every. Single. Time. I'm so happy for the redstone control options in TE (including disabling completely), I only wish more mods adopt this convention.

 

[Poppycocks]

As someone who builds extremely compact setups, I have this problem Every. Single. Time. I'm so happy for the redstone control options in TE (including disabling completely), I only wish more mods adopt this convention.

Yeah, me too man, I also wish there was a reverse redstone torch(or something, more like a I dunno, cap or something) which'd only power whatever it's attached to. And could be attached to ceilings and stuff as well.

Also, I hear you on the compact side'a'things. You couldn't stick a hair between some of my contraptions and I like it that way, too bad most modders don't really support that playstile. King Lemming excluded. He's awesome.

 

[Guswut]

Yeah, me too man, I also wish there was a reverse redstone torch(or something, more like a I dunno, cap or something) which'd only power whatever it's attached to. And could be attached to ceilings and stuff as well.

The NOT gate can be used like this, with a redstone alloy wire to go to the machine. Turning it off would mean, mm... Breaking the wire? Yeah, a RP2 lever would be nice.

 

[Poppycocks]

'Directional redstone slab"

 

[King Lemming]

'Directional redstone slab"

Hrm... >.>

 

[JoPOw]

Update! New problem!

So thanks for speedy replies guys Really helped last time. Thought since Im having more similar problems, I'd thread-necro instead of thread-starting

I ran 2 quarries beautifully with this setup:

20 Biogas engines running off biomass -> Gold Conductive -> Tesseract -> Quarry
By my calculations, that was 100MJ/t -> 75MJ/t which is more than enough for a quarry. Fab.

Now I've made a NEW quarry and am having pipe-explosion issues left right and centre. So I've got it running off 4 Biogas Engines. Was going fast. Like...20 engines fast. So I let it run and it slowed down gradually. Great, thought I, it's just running off left-over internal power since I remember reading it doesn't take anywhere NEAR 100MJ/t to set up its frame at the start. So I slowly added more engines to the system to see how it worked.

Now I can't get above 12 engines without my pipes exploding. Which implies the quarry is now only using around half of its previous energy? Maybe even less considering the 25% loss.

Any ideas what I'm doing wrong?

I'll go get a screenshot of my setup and edit this post with it in 2 minutes or so.

Edit1: So I've been watching it on 12 engines (screenshot below) and it seems build-ups happen in the pipes then suddenly discharge through the tesseract to my quarry. I know that's not unusual in itself, but it didn't happen last time and it seems that if I now add more engines (2 at a time for reasons visible in the screenshot) it happens more and more until eventually it doesn't seem to discharge through the tesseract and the pipes blow again.

Edit 2: It seems to be calming down now. But still the massive surges are building and occasionally not dissipating until I punch the lever a couple of times.

And for more information: that portal leads to wherever I am currently quarrying. Idea being it keeps the chunk loaded (in the past I had energy build up in pipes when I ran engines at the site of the quarry and I found the portals prevented it from happening. I guessed (might be wrong) that some of my engines or pipes were JUST outside the loaded chunk section - this seems to have ALSO been the case with my friend. Every time he reloaded his base, certain gold pipes would explode as they failed to work out where the energy used to be going when he left. He fixed it by opening a portal on each side of his engine room)

 

[Guswut]

Any ideas what I'm doing wrong?

Offhand sans screenshots, no idea. But a way to fix it completely and utterly is with, yes, you guessed it: Redstone conduit. They aren't all that expensive, so it may be time to start thinking about using them in place of your conductive piping. Otherwise, get us a screenshot, and we'll see what can be seen.

 

[JoPOw]

Offhand sans screenshots, no idea. But a way to fix it completely and utterly is with, yes, you guessed it: Redstone conduit. They aren't all that expensive, so it may be time to start thinking about using them in place of your conductive piping. Otherwise, get us a screenshot, and we'll see what can be seen.

I've thought about this but I have some questions. Do redstone conduit pipes prevent explosions in any way? I know they force energy to travel in one direction (from orange to blue?) but beyond that, what are their advantages?

Still a bit of a nub with various parts of this pack Probably for the best I'm not attempting nuclear research.

Edit: Oh and it has somewhat stabilised itself. But if conduits will prevent this from re-occuring, brb crafting a bajillion.

Edit 2: Please note in that screenshot: the lever. After your generous assistance last time, and much umming and arring, I moved it down 1 entire block. Took a lot of effort but hey. The simple fixes are sometimes the best right?

Edit 3: Must be an issue with the startup energy of my quarry as after about 10 minutes, it all seems to be back to super-think lasers in my pipes.

Funny it never happened with the other 2 quarries...and one it had to clear a massive area and build a pretty huge 64 x 40 frame before it got started with the mining....