Thermal Expansion 3 is boring (actually just RF)

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snooder

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TE3 doesn't need massive power generation. I'm running my base off 4 steam dynamos.

Not to derail the thread, but I can't even imagine only having 4 dynamos. I'm running 40 steam dynamos and 20 magmatic dynamos. The magmatics are a backup in case my tree farms break down for some reason. My idle energy draw is around 1300 RF at the moment, but I'm about to add another quarry and a set of mob farms, and I like to build my power capacity before I set up the consumption. I've been playing this map for 2 weeks.
 

WTFFFS

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While I disagree that the whole system is "boring" I do understand where the OP is going about RF production in TE3.

See, making 20 steam dynamos and creating a tree farm to power them is great. Making another 20 when you expand your base is fine too. When you get to making 60 of them or 100 and simply repeating the same design over and over again, it can get somTewhat stale. Interesting as a "ooh how much power can I get from spamming this in a bedrock to sky chunk" project. But not very interesting as an upgrade path for increasing power production to meet consumption. Especially if you happen to prefer smaller and more aesthetic bases.
Well make different Dynamo's, reactants and compression give a lot of scope in differing setups\fuel I'd say that the dynamo's have given me more scope in building power systems up until the reactant came on the scene it was charcoal\fuel\ethanol for boiler, bunch of Ind Engines. I still have my charcoal\treefarm and magmatics setups but they just provide the baseline power for my AE network and my few manual machines. For the serious consumers (Enh portals 3, MFR laser Drill) I currently have 80 Reactants fueled by Ghast Tears (requires a system) and Biomass (I've bred up a stupid tree that produces roughly 45 buckets of biomass from one tree) I also have 40 compression dynamo's (with room for another 120 if I need more power) mostly because I had an overflow of biomass so meh lets convert and burn some ethanol.
 

Golrith

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Not to derail the thread, but I can't even imagine only having 4 dynamos. I'm running 40 steam dynamos and 20 magmatic dynamos. The magmatics are a backup in case my tree farms break down for some reason. My idle energy draw is around 1300 RF at the moment, but I'm about to add another quarry and a set of mob farms, and I like to build my power capacity before I set up the consumption. I've been playing this map for 2 weeks.
See, I can't imagine that. I've been running for about 3 weeks now. Got a MFR tree farm for charcoal, MFR farm, sludge boilers, various mob grinders to deal with unwanted visitors, villager spawner if I need them, animal farm, various TE and Mek processing machines, oreberry farm, a quarry (which I only use at default size, and power with a Mek Windmill when I'm off line). Got a diamond chest near full of ingots, lots of barrrels/chests for my different farm produce. At this point I don't really need any more resources. Sure it's not 5-10k of each resource in game, but I don't ever see a need for that sheer volume of resources.

There's nothing that needs a ton of power. Most stuff runs of low power usage constantly, with only a few things that require brief high energy bursts.

But, that's just down to play style. I've never needed a railcraft boiler either. In 1.4.7 and 1.5.x used to start my fuel production using peat and power my base on peat fired engines. 4mj/t would keep my base running smoothly no problem.
Speaking of Peat, my sludge boilers are producing a lot of peat that I'd need to make use off, not that I need the power...
 

Sidorion

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Or simply make the fun of producing the fuel for your dynamos. Sure it's boring to suck the nether free of lava or have the 1001st tree farm set up. Time to break the circle.
On my current world I set up a factorization solar plant for my steam (be prepared to use up a whole lot of silver for the mirrors). The steam is then sent into a 7x7x7 RC tank and from there to steam dynamos. If the tank empties, a 30LP steam boiler (NOOOOOO NOT AGAIN ;)) is activated to support the solar panel. The fuel for the boiler currently is taken from an oil well nearby but once that's empty I'll produce my oil from MFR oil generator powered by biomass.
 

casilleroatr

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Or simply make the fun of producing the fuel for your dynamos. Sure it's boring to suck the nether free of lava or have the 1001st tree farm set up. Time to break the circle.
On my current world I set up a factorization solar plant for my steam (be prepared to use up a whole lot of silver for the mirrors). The steam is then sent into a 7x7x7 RC tank and from there to steam dynamos. If the tank empties, a 30LP steam boiler (NOOOOOO NOT AGAIN ;)) is activated to support the solar panel. The fuel for the boiler currently is taken from an oil well nearby but once that's empty I'll produce my oil from MFR oil generator powered by biomass.
How do you cope with the boiler start up inefficiencies. I have heard of new mechanics in Railcraft that make this process a bit better but I don't know much about them. I really like the FZ solar farms but on medium sized one I struggled to get much surplus RF while still keeping my Leyden Jar full (I did have a lot of FZ machines though so I am not complaining).
 

Alcheya

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-snip-
Magmatic requires Invar, which means getting up at least some power already. It literally cannot be your first power supply.
-snip-

I agree with your post for the most part, but I made invar without power. Magmatic engines were my first energy source. As a standalone, yes, you need power, but in monster I used AE Grindstone to make dust, then crafted invar blend and threw it in a furnace.
 
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KhrFreak

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I agree with your post for the most part, but I made invar without power. Magmatic engines were my first energy source. As a standalone, yes, you need power, but in monster I used AE Grindstone to make dust, then crafted invar blend and threw it in a furnace.
you can also use your TiC smeltery

edit: accidentally a word
 
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SlightlyVisible

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I enjoy TE and RF as a simple tech solution. THAT IS NOT AN INSULT, and I'll explain why. As it does not add complex challenges in machine setup, it makes the it the perfect PVP technology solution. For example, if I'm setting up temp camp in enemy territory I must be able to assemble and disassemble my equipment in seconds. I need a simple battery (redstone energy cell), machines that have excellent performance without upgrades, and pipes that move items with little setup. TE also provides the friends system with makes clans that much easier. What I don't want is to setup a tank filled with fuel. On the other hand, Build-craft and IC2 are better suited for long term, non PVP survival servers. I believe this to because they provide less complete solutions and require you to really plan out your designs.
 
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Not_Steve

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I enjoy TE and RF as a simple tech solution. THAT IS NOT AN INSULT, and I'll explain why. As it does not add complex challenges in machine setup, it makes the it the perfect PVP technology solution. For example, if I'm setting up temp camp in enemy territory I must be able to assemble and disassemble my equipment in seconds. I need a simple battery (redstone energy cell), machines that have excellent performance without upgrades, and pipes that move items with little setup. TE also provides the friends system with makes clans that much easier. What I don't want is to setup a tank filled with fuel. On the other hand, Build-craft and IC2 are better suited for long term, non PVP survival servers. I believe this to because they provide less complete solutions and require you to really plan out your designs.
wait you like bc and ic2 because their incomplete? what?
TE3 HAS a high tech side it just isn't forced upon you. You can triple ores by using cinnibar but you don't have to. te3 has the high tech hard to automate side but it also has early game low tech easily automatable designs. This is known as "Good game design". just because you can be low tech doesn't mean you have to be.
 

Suterusu

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wait you like bc and ic2 because their incomplete? what?
TE3 HAS a high tech side it just isn't forced upon you. You can triple ores by using cinnibar but you don't have to. te3 has the high tech hard to automate side but it also has early game low tech easily automatable designs. This is known as "Good game design". just because you can be low tech doesn't mean you have to be.

Gonna pull the Gtech card on you here when it comes to High Tech. Others have mentioned mod ecosystems, hopefully someone out there will Gtech up TE3. Cinnabar for 3x output is not high tech in the slightest. There isn't enough content in TE3 base to go "high tech", especially when all the machines require mostly vanilla materials.

That's off topic though, this is about RF as an energy source, not TE3 as a tech mod.
 
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casilleroatr

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Gonna pull the Gtech card on you here when it comes to High Tech. Others have mentioned mod ecosystems, hopefully someone out there will Gtech up TE3. Cinnabar for 3x output is not high tech in the slightest. There isn't enough content in TE3 base to go "high tech", especially when all the machines require mostly vanilla materials.

That's off topic though, this is about RF as an energy source, not TE3 as a tech mod.
I don't think there is anything stopping this from happening though. TE3 has set its own design parameters which is fine but the scope and freedom is there for others to take the RF system in plenty of different directions. I know someone on these forums has plans for a higher level of Tech in an RF environment (I wanna say, a la gregtech, but I don't really know what this persons plans are but it sounds like they want to get the aspects of gregtech they like into the RF environment to their own specification). There are probably other people beavering away on some more RF related mods as we speak that we won't know about for a while to. I am excited.
 

SlightlyVisible

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wait you like bc and ic2 because their incomplete? what?
TE3 HAS a high tech side it just isn't forced upon you. You can triple ores by using cinnibar but you don't have to. te3 has the high tech hard to automate side but it also has early game low tech easily automatable designs. This is known as "Good game design". just because you can be low tech doesn't mean you have to be.

I like all three and see the positives and negatives without bias. I didnt say BC and IC2 were incomplete. I said they dont offer tools that provide complete solutions to a problem. Anyways, what does most of what you say have to do with what I said?
 
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ShneekeyTheLost

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I agree with your post for the most part, but I made invar without power. Magmatic engines were my first energy source. As a standalone, yes, you need power, but in monster I used AE Grindstone to make dust, then crafted invar blend and threw it in a furnace.
Wait... you threw Ferrous Ore into your AE Grind Stone? Well then the cost for you is losing out on the Shiny Ingots, which can *ONLY* be obtained by Pulverizing Ferrous Ore and even then you only get 10% chance of it, OR by putting it in an Induction Smelter with Cinnabar and guarantee yourself a Shiny Ingot, but that can only be obtained by getting a Silk Touch pick and pulverizing Redstone Ore.

Personally, I feel that if anyone processes Ferrous Ore other than via Cinnabar, they are just shooting themselves in the foot later on down the tech tree. I know I would never do it.
 

Suterusu

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Wait... you threw Ferrous Ore into your AE Grind Stone? Well then the cost for you is losing out on the Shiny Ingots, which can *ONLY* be obtained by Pulverizing Ferrous Ore and even then you only get 10% chance of it, OR by putting it in an Induction Smelter with Cinnabar and guarantee yourself a Shiny Ingot, but that can only be obtained by getting a Silk Touch pick and pulverizing Redstone Ore.

Personally, I feel that if anyone processes Ferrous Ore other than via Cinnabar, they are just shooting themselves in the foot later on down the tech tree. I know I would never do it.

None of this is relevant tot he discussion of RF.
 

xjjon

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He commented that Magmatic Engines can be made without any prior infrastructure. My response is 'only if you never want to make Tesseracts'. So yes, it is actually relevant.

Even if you follow TE's progression, it's still rather easy to get to magmatic, and rather quickly.

Steam Dynamo -> Pulverizer -> Magmatic Dynamo

So with just two machines worth of materials (A handful of ores really) you are at magmatic. Tesseracts take a little longer to create but Magmatics can be readily made without much infrastructure.


My thoughts on TE3 (I play on a server)[Monster]: I feel that the problem with TE3 that it's much more resource efficient than other mods, especially early game. Because of the speed of the machines, the low material cost, and the low energy requirements, I almost feel I have no choice but to use TE3. My first goal is always ore-processing and TE3 currently is much more resource efficient than other mods. Sure there are other alternatives such as IC2, RotaryCraft, Factorization, Mariculture, Engineers Toolbox, etc. But why hinder myself? I'll admit my play style favors efficiency but the numbers are so far off that it's not even close.

A second concern is the fact that all three dynamos produce the same amount of power. For me the magmatic and steam dynamo are really powerful. A tree farm or two for the steam dynamo and you can stack them to the sky. I feel that an upgrade of some sort to energy output would solve some of those problems. I'm not sure if server owners really want players to stack dynamos to the sky to power their laser.
 

PierceSG

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Imo, for power generation that is needed for things beyond TE3 itself, players could look to addons that provides it. Atomic Science and Big Reactors comes to mind. Even MFR's provides double the amiunt of power in a single block with it's Biogenerator, generating 160 RF/t or 16 MJ/t with Biofuel from it's Bioreactor.

Sent from my GT-N8020 using Tapatalk
 

ShneekeyTheLost

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Even if you follow TE's progression, it's still rather easy to get to magmatic, and rather quickly.

Steam Dynamo -> Pulverizer -> Magmatic Dynamo

So with just two machines worth of materials (A handful of ores really) you are at magmatic. Tesseracts take a little longer to create but Magmatics can be readily made without much infrastructure.
Sure, and I never did say it wasn't a relatively low amount of infrastructure, I just stated that infrastructure WAS required. And really, I don't understand the rush for magmatic anyways. I've never build a single magmatic dynamo yet.

My thoughts on TE3 (I play on a server)[Monster]: I feel that the problem with TE3 that it's much more resource efficient than other mods, especially early game. Because of the speed of the machines, the low material cost, and the low energy requirements, I almost feel I have no choice but to use TE3. My first goal is always ore-processing and TE3 currently is much more resource efficient than other mods. Sure there are other alternatives such as IC2, RotaryCraft, Factorization, Mariculture, Engineers Toolbox, etc. But why hinder myself? I'll admit my play style favors efficiency but the numbers are so far off that it's not even close.
JadedCat already debunked this. TE3 is actually the most expensive infrastructure, both in terms of actual resources and energy consumed, than any of the other options you mentioned.

To give you some power consumption comparisons, the Pulverizer requires 4 MJ/t and the Redstone Furnace requires 2 MJ/t. The Induction Furnace requires 4 MJ/t, and the Magmatic Crucible requires a stunning 40 MJ/t!

However, it doesn't -feel- like it because TE3 is so easy to 'get' that you don't realize you went through all those resources, because it is so intuitive and user-friendly. You think 'okay, just a machine block and a redstone conductive coil' and don't really think about 'okay, so that's 4 iron and 1 gold in the machine block, then another gold in the conductive coil, meaning every machine that requires power needs a minimum of two gold per machine'.

This is probably the crowning achievement of TE3. It is resource-intensive, and still is engaging and entertaining.

A second concern is the fact that all three dynamos produce the same amount of power. For me the magmatic and steam dynamo are really powerful. A tree farm or two for the steam dynamo and you can stack them to the sky. I feel that an upgrade of some sort to energy output would solve some of those problems. I'm not sure if server owners really want players to stack dynamos to the sky to power their laser.
You need to look at fuel consumption again.

The balancing factor of the dynamos are the fuel efficiency of the machine, not the RF/t. This is yet another difference between TE3 and other tech mods. RF/t is always going to be the same, but some fuels are going to be vanishing rapidly, while others will last far longer. You don't really notice how much of a lava hog the magmatic dynamo is because you aren't in the nether watching your enderthermic pump turn half a lake of lava into stone. And you really won't... until your power is out and you go to the Nether and see a parking lot instead of a lava lake.

EDIT: Also, to address the 'stacking dynamos to the sky' problem... I don't see a problem with it. The lag you get from 50 dynamos is still less than the lag you would get from a single IC2 Generator.
 

Badger

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i would like to see a block that can justify using 60,000 RF per tick

Check out Rotarycraft, It's entirely possible.
I actually greatly enjoy the interaction between rotarycraft, railcraft, and TE3... all three are resource-intensive, but GETTING the resources, and USING the resources, is loads of fun, and feels like a game instead of going to work
 
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Suterusu

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EDIT: Also, to address the 'stacking dynamos to the sky' problem... I don't see a problem with it. The lag you get from 50 dynamos is still less than the lag you would get from a single IC2 Generator.

Do you have proof/source for this? Your going to get this thread closed with all your spam.
 
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