Extra Utilities has an interesting take on it (although I haven't tried it). Transfer Nodes connect to inventories, and pipes connect Transfer Nodes to each other. Items never actually exist in the pipes, they go from one Transfer Node to another. A Transfer Node only accepts an item if it can place it in the adjacent inventory. A Transfer Node only sends an item if it knows that the destination Transfer Node will accept it. The transfer itself is instant, although the entire network only transfers 1 item stack per second. And there is only one item stack in transit at any given time.
Thermal Expansion Item Pipes?
- Thread starter IronjawXII
- Start date
Extra Utilities has an interesting take on it (although I haven't tried it). Transfer Nodes connect to inventories, and pipes connect Transfer Nodes to each other. Items never actually exist in the pipes, they go from one Transfer Node to another. A Transfer Node only accepts an item if it can place it in the adjacent inventory. A Transfer Node only sends an item if it knows that the destination Transfer Node will accept it. The transfer itself is instant, although the entire network only transfers 1 item stack per second. And there is only one item stack in transit at any given time.
This is strictly not true. AE is great a good deal of things, but it is far from perfect. In fact, as much as dislike RP2's tubes I have to admit they are nearly ideal for local, small scale inventory operations prior to injecting into a larger system. What do I mean by that?
I have an MFR farm with a harvester off to one side. Further down in my base I have an MFR Bio Reactor that I wand to feed my overflow. Using a strictly AE system I could not easily achieve that result since I could not attach a priority to my export buses. Instead I had to use a dark cable and a level emitter to cut off the export bus on the MFR Bio Reactor when the amount in my network fell below a cutoff to ensure that some items were available to stock the farm. This was klunky at best since toggling the dark cable cut off all the inputs from the bus, not just for any particular item.
Using Tubes extract from the harvester, run the tube past the farm, have a filter pull items from the tube. If there's space, the items get pulled. If not, they continue on to the ME Interface and into the network. Once it hits the network it is fair game to be put into the Bio Reactor since I know the farm will remain full. Presently I am actually doing this but with pipes and the insertion pipe provided by, tadaaaa, Thermal Expansion.
Just for completeness sake, there is a third option. Using Logistics Pipes I can also provide better functionality than with AE. Have Supplier Pipes attached to the farm and reactor. Set the farm to keep X of each item stocked while moving individual items. The Supplier on the rector requests X*2 but only in stacks. So what happens is that the items will be topped off at X in the farm until double that amount. Then the whole stock gets shoved into the reactor. However since it can only move the entire amount, the stocks in the system will slowly build up again, ensuring that the farm remains stocked. This is actually the most efficient of the three options.
This is not true. It is true how low-tier RP2 tubes and BC pipes handle it. However LP does not suffer from that problem. It is because, conceptually, the pipe attached to the inventory is keeping track of the inventory as well as what it has requested from the network. So if you tell it to stock 16 items, and there's 14 in the inventory, it doesn't get dozens of items to fill those 2 and then sends the rest back. It requests 2, gets only 2, puts only 2 in the inventory. Basically LP was doing RP2 Managers before RP2 Managers existed.
I suppose you could use AE as purely an item transfer system, without storing anything on disks. It's not really designed for that though.[DOUBLEPOST=1369384559][/DOUBLEPOST]
Well, you might want to dump your spare iron bars into your metals chest while LP is re-stocking it with fresh ingots.
Why would you have two different systems acting as an input to the same inventory?
Then that is you doing something outside the system's control and not at all like what happens with other systems, especially pre-manager tubes. Heck, I think even managers do it. IE, a remote inventory has space free, so it sends multiple items to fit into that slot which fills up after the first one. If you set up the system to keep a chest stocked with X items, and you take out a subset of X, then replace a smaller subset, you're the one inducing the error, not the system.[DOUBLEPOST=1369386991][/DOUBLEPOST]
Or even the input chest. Actually, his notion of a "metals chest" is foreign to me. Why would one have a chest for metals which is separate from the storage of said metals? Especially in an LP or AE environment? In AE we're using the ME Crafting Table which accesses the entire network's storage. In an LP setting we'd be requesting the ingots via a request pipe which has access to the entire network's storage.
The only situation I can come up with is a remote build using an ender chest/pouch combo to access auto-crafted/supplied items. Even then we get back into the "why not the input chest" as one would presume in addition to the pouch to the auto-crafted/supplied items one would have a pouch with access to the input chest.
I have no idea, depends on what kind of set up works best with LP, which I've never used. I like to have chests in my main workshop though, and I take stuff out of them and put it back in them when I'm finished. I also have a sorting system that puts stuff in them. I can't just throw everything in my sorting enderpouch though because not everything has a programmed destination, e.g. I don't have all the different types of wood and planks and stone bricks and all the microblocks programmed in so I usually just put it in the chests manually. If it's easy to set up LP to sort all 300+ different items, then I would probably consider throwing everything into the sorting system.[DOUBLEPOST=1369388586][/DOUBLEPOST]
I don't use LP because it isn't in the pack, and AE wasn't working for a long time because my hosting provider screwed it up and I haven't got any quartz. My metals are stored in a chest, and that chest is the storage for my metals. Fresh ingots come in via my Redpower sorting system.
Ah, I get it now. And I had an inkling you've never setup, utilized or, and here I am guessing, seen an LP network in action.
Yes, LP can absolutely sort all items easily. The quickest analogy I can give you is that LP is AE without the storage and a better system of item queuing in remote inventories.
Here's the longer explanation. The core of any LP network is the Quicksort module, the Polymorphic Item Sink module and the Provider module. Note that more than one module can be applied to an LP pipe of the proper type.
- Quicksort module - Pulls all items from the attached inventory and sends it to any pipe requesting that item in priority order (more on that later). That's all it does, pull, send to pipe requesting it. This is normally attached to the input chest of the system.
- Polymorphic Item Sink module - Requests any item which is in its attached inventory. That's all it does, looks at the attached inventory and tells any pipe providing items "send these items here." These are normally attached to your storage chests.
- Provider module - Fulfills requests for items from the attached inventory. These, too, get attached to your storage chests.
As you can see, since configuring the system is done by placing items in chests, being able to sort several hundred items is trivial as the default mode is to place items in a chest where other items are already placed. Granted, you have to deposit the first item of any block, but once that is done, you're set.As for the Provider module, that is there to give access to that inventory to the rest of the network. So storage chests often have a pipe with both a Polymorphic and Provider module inserted into it. The provider module even has a mode to ensure your sorting isn't broken; it leaves the last item of a stack in the chest. But what do the Provider modules grant inventory access to?
- Supplier module - This module keeps an attached inventory supplied with the requested amount of items. So if you want your farm to have 16 saplings, when the farm is below that level it requests the required number to restock it from the nearest Provider which has saplings.
- Requester pipe - This pipe allows the player to request a given item from the network. Think of it as similar to the AE access terminal. It delivers to an attached inventory or, if no inventory attached, spits it out on the ground from the pipe where the player is standing.
There are more pipes and modules to LP, but those 5 are the core functions. That's why in another thread about TE item transport I gave the tongue-in-cheek response of "import logisticspipes.java".
That sounds pretty awesome. I'm almost tempted to add it to my pack, although I might wait until the official "final" 1.4.7 Direwolf20 pack before I start adding mods myself as I don't want to trash my world by updating and losing manually-added mods.
I actually stopped using LP a few worlds back because I wanted to give AE a fair shakedown. After 2 worlds without it I think my next world is going to dive right back into having LP. However, I won't be getting rid of AE, either. From what I gather LP is able to request items from AE and vice versa. I want to explore that interoperability largely in part because I like how the two systems compliment one another. LP seems to do a far better job at letting me manage keeping remote inventories stocked as well as a better job of auto-crafting via other mods. On the other hand AE's storage is top notch and its vanilla auto-crafting is far better than what LP has to offer.
All told though, I am also excited to see what KL & gang have in mind. If there is a core mod in my pack it is TE. I like the design decisions that have gone into it and although any form of item transport might not knock AE or LP out of my pack I'm sure there will be some uses to which it can be applied which LP and AE are thus far ill suited to address.
All told though, I am also excited to see what KL & gang have in mind. If there is a core mod in my pack it is TE. I like the design decisions that have gone into it and although any form of item transport might not knock AE or LP out of my pack I'm sure there will be some uses to which it can be applied which LP and AE are thus far ill suited to address.
Honestly, I'm waiting on Krapht's LP2 to come out before trying LP again. In the meantime, AE seems to be supporting all my needs.
Not for me. I like AE, and championed adding it to the server I play on. However, I'm starting to think its overkill for creating small networks, and then powering them. For this I'm pretty sure I'm gonna like Minecraft Utilities.
I'm also pretty sure I'm gonna like what ever TE adds, just based on past history.
AE is a great mod, but if you build spread out the power cost soon adds up and it's annoying that everything has to be connected. For that reason there's always room for a new tube style system, no room for a BC pipe system though as we don't want another pipe system that dumps into the OW.