Unexpected Tesseract Limits with Steam

[kheeler]

I was beginning to setup 36HP boilers in my new Unleashed world last night and was seeing what looked like input limits with Tesseracts I had not seen before. It could be my setup, but I had used this setup extensively in my Ultimate world. I am guessing something has changed in the 1.5.x versions of Thermal Expansion that I am unaware of. I'll throw my math in with the pictures so maybe someone can point out where I went wrong.

A 36HP boiler produces 20 mB/t per block. So a 36HP boiler produces 720 mB/t. An unpowered extraction on a boiler can pull 80 mB/t. So my usual setup is 8 liquiducts plus the tesseract on top of the boiler as shown below. I would expect that to extract the full 720 mB/t with 9 unpowered connections. Also, to my knowledge, a liquid tesseract can send 160mB/t per side. So with five connected sides, it should be able to send the full 720 mB/t.

Spoiler

However, the freshly reset Power Converter's Energy Bridge shows only 480 mB/t this as the steam input.

Spoiler

Now let me make a small modification to my setup and show you the change in output. I added a second sending tesseract on top of the previous one, and gave it four liquiduct connections attached only to the previous liquiducts. So, no new boiler connections. No change to the Power Coneverters setup.

Spoiler

And now were are getting the full 720 mB/t steam output.

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The only explanation I can think of is the liquiducts are only feeding 100 mB/t per face of the tesseract. That would explain the original 480 mb/t output. The four 100 mB/t liquiduct inputs plus the 80 mB/t boiler-to-tesseract input.

Am I missing something? Thanks for your insight.

 

[Methusalem]

There have been two changes for Liquiducts and Railcraft tanks between 1.4.7 and 1.5.2:

1. Liquiduct nodes are limited to 80 buckets as input and 100 buckets as output. If input or output is shared between multiple sides (for example the same Liquiduct block connected to two different tanks), then it will split the input between the sides. You still won't get more than the 80 buckets combined out of it.
2. A direct connection between Tesseract and tank now only transfers 80 buckets. This was 160 buckets before (80 pushed from the tank and 80 pulled from the Tesseract).

So yep, using Tesseract on steam boilers needs now a slightly different piping.
However, there haven't been any changes on how much a Tesseract can put out per face. You could still connect it to 2 Steam Consumers and it would supply each with the 1.000 bucket maximum that the consumers can take.

 

[kheeler]

Ah, so I was right about the limits I was seeing, but it's with the liquiduct output, not the tesseract input per face. That means only 600 mB/t if you totally wrap a tesseract. Dang. I guess the two tesseract setup in my third picture above is probably the most compact setup, unless someone has other thoughts.

Thanks!

 

[Methusalem]

This would be a really good alternative, especially if you build HP boiler arrays: Liquid Tesseract limits

(The image is copied from the other thread, hope this is ok.)

 

[kheeler]

Thanks for the heads up on that thread. Some designs there got me thinking ... I tend to build in a group of four 36HP boilers. So with a fully liquiduct-surrounded tesseract per boiler, and a fifth tesseract in the center, I should be able to send all the steam, while still being space and resource conservative. Thanks again!

 

[Methusalem]

Thanks for the heads up on that thread. Some designs there got me thinking ... I tend to build in a group of four 36HP boilers. So with a fully liquiduct-surrounded tesseract per boiler, and a fifth tesseract in the center, I should be able to send all the steam, while still being space and resource conservative. Thanks again!

4 HP boilers is 2.880 steam.
You need 36 connections to get the steam out of the boilers, which you have when you put a Tesseract on top and surround it with Liquiducts.

For getting the steam into the Tesseracts: You get 4x80 steam from the Tesseracts sitting on the boilers. This leaves 2560 steam (or 26 face connections) and you've only got 16 from the surrounding Liquiducts. So you need 2 more Tesseracts in the center with 10 out of their 12 faces connected to Liquiducts.

By the way, I also use these 4xBoiler groups.
But I stick to 36LP, which makes it a lot easier. Maybe I'll post a How To for the boiler and Steam Turbine setup later today.

 

[kheeler]

For getting the steam into the Tesseracts: You get 4x80 steam from the Tesseracts sitting on the boilers. This leaves 2560 steam (or 26 face connections) and you've only got 16 from the surrounding Liquiducts. So you need 2 more Tesseracts in the center with 10 out of their 12 faces connected to Liquiducts.

In addition to the pic above, I meant adding another connection to the top of each tesseracts sitting on the boilers. So that would give 20 face connections from the four tesseracts sitting on the boilers. Then I just need the one fully surrounded tesseract in the center to get the other six face connections. Sorry if I wasn't clear.

 

[Methusalem]

Try the following:

Tesseracts in the center block of all four boilers
Two more tesseracts at the inner block of two diagonal boilers
Surround everything with Liquiducts

L L L   L L L
L T L   L T L
L L T L L L L
    L   L
L L L L T L L
L T L   L T L
L L L   L L L

This should give you 6 Tesseract/Boiler connections (480 steam) and 24 Tesseract/Liquiduct connections (2.400 steam). One tesseract more than what you suggest, but everything kept at the same level and the piping should look pretty clean.

 

[kheeler]

That's an interesting layout as well. I'll give that a shot. Thanks!

 

[Runo]

Try the following:

Tesseracts in the center block of all four boilers
Two more tesseracts at the inner block of two diagonal boilers
Surround everything with Liquiducts

L L L   L L L
L T L   L T L
L L T L L L L
    L   L
L L L L T L L
L T L   L T L
L L L   L L L

This should give you 6 Tesseract/Boiler connections (480 steam) and 24 Tesseract/Liquiduct connections (2.400 steam). One tesseract more than what you suggest, but everything kept at the same level and the piping should look pretty clean.

I like this lot too. Its nice because you don't burn a y-slot double stacking, and are able to keep the boilers contained with their liquiducts in a 4x4 set in one chunk.