UNLIMITED POWER!!! Well... now what?

[rungok]

Okay so my girlfriend and I are still puttering around on the server our friends are running until I iron out all the compatibility issues with the pack I was working on, and at this point with help from the digital miner and many sleepless nights, I have gotten to the point I can afford to expend stupid amounts of resources to build for interesting projects.

Up until recently I was using a simple 7x7x7, five rod big reactor for power. It was neat, clean, efficient and powered our base (and moon/mars bases) just fine. However I set out to build a bigger reactor. I asked my GF how big I should build it, and she shouted out 51x51... We instead settled on a 15x15x15 reactor instead. (It's still frigging huge for a survival mode project.

I finished building it, using a checker pattern for rods, totalling 61 13 block long rods. I then spent a few hours in the twilight forest with my digital miner and pulled in enough yellorite to fill two better barrels of the stuff, and then turned her on.

O_O Holy crap. with the cooling rods inserted 90% of the way I'm generating 62,000 RF/t... and when I flip up the switch... 180+ (500% radioactivity too).

So now... I'm trying to find out if there's even anything that can USE this much power output. I mean heck, my Ender energy conduits can only transfer 20k RF/t... so I put in 4 power taps. I also hooked up 9 ultimate energy cubes and 20 capacitors to store extra power so now I hold about 250 million RF in case something happens to the reactor. (which most likely will be running out of fuel)

I was wondering if there was anything that would require that much power.
Here's the tech mods on the server (for once I have the list in front of me)
Forge (duh)
Applied Energistics
Big reactors
Open blocks+components+computers
extra utilities
Aethercraft
Buildcraft
thermal foundation/expansion
Genetics
computercraft
enhanced portals
flaxbeard's steam power
Galacticraft core+planets
railcraft
minefactory reloaded
redstone aresenal
mekanism + generators+tools
projectRed
steves carts 2
tinkers mechworks
translocator

If anyone has any ideas/suggestions with what to do now, I'd love to hear it.

 

[HeilMewTwo]

Building a city with dozens of little houses all with basic machines and bases set up is fun. Especially if you use the RoC reactor because it feels like an actual city run off of a nuclear power plant.

 

[rungok]

Building a city with dozens of little houses all with basic machines and bases set up is fun. Especially if you use the RoC reactor because it feels like an actual city run off of a nuclear power plant.

That would be cool, but we don't have Rotary on the server. I am not entirely sure why either. I was always interested in trying it out.

 

[HeilMewTwo]

That would be cool, but we don't have Rotary on the server. I am not entirely sure why either. I was always interested in trying it out.

I just said that as something I like to do, from the sounds of it you could easily build a city off of your big reactor.

 

[Mattasdqwe]

A few mfr laser drills with yellow lenses will make that set up self sustainable. As for uses: powering massive amounts of resonant machines with speed upgrades maxed out, mekanism ore processing,enhanced portals everywhere... idk how much power they use. Still even with that idk if theres anything that needs that much Rf/t in your modpack. I like the reactor/rotarycraft combo because with insane power gen comes insane amounts of power use. I am thinking right now that in my world 1.5 million Rf/t will not be enough in the long run

 

[Shakie666]

Unfortunately, while IC2 gets the mass fabricator as a lategame power sink, there isn't an equivalent that runs on RF AFAIK. Of course, if there's an easy way to convert RF to EU that I don't know about then you can still do a mass fabricator.

 

[Mattasdqwe]

Unfortunately, while IC2 gets the mass fabricator as a lategame power sink, there isn't an equivalent that runs on RF AFAIK. Of course, if there's an easy way to convert RF to EU that I don't know about then you can still do a mass fabricator.

can't see IC2 on the mod list so it can't be used
and mekanism universal cable converts from rf to eu

 

[Shakie666]

can't see IC2 on the mod list so it can't be used
and mekanism universal cable converts from rf to eu

Well, I was just using the mass fabricator as an example of a lategame energy sink. I'm sure there are others, that was just the first one that came to mind.

Also; I wish I'd known about the universal cable thing before now. I knew they could carry EU, but I didn't realise they would automatically convert RF into EU. That'll make my power generation a lot less painful to set up.

 

[Mattasdqwe]

Well, I was just using the mass fabricator as an example of a lategame energy sink. I'm sure there are others, that was just the first one that came to mind.

Also; I wish I'd known about the universal cable thing before now. I knew they could carry EU, but I didn't realise they would automatically convert RF into EU. That'll make my power generation a lot less painful to set up.

I think the problem is that there are no power sinks in his modpack save for mfr laser drills.

 

[jordsta95]

Well I believe GregTech can now run on RF (don't quote me on this) so MAYBE you could install GregTech. It'll give you a load to do, and waste a lot of your resources

 

[Loufmier]

modded MC is that kind of game where you have a lot of solutions but not a lot of problems to solve. and power is probably the most glaring issue.
so you just have to come up with a project which will utilize a lot of power(most of which will be utilized by bunch of relatively minuscule consumers) and deal with it.

 

[Evillevi]

If anyone has any ideas/suggestions with what to do now, I'd love to hear it.

MFR mining lasers take 10,000 RF per tick per laser.

Applied Energistics is a powerhog if you expand it large enough (Use it for everything!!! Even things you don't need to use it for).

Extra utilities energy transfer node can transfer something like 40,960 RF per tic per node Significantly better than the normal cables, and with speed upgrades you can make it devently long.

Make a city of machines.

Get Steve Factory Manager and mess around with it's brilliant Autocrafting function and find a way to combine it with your AE system

Start making a tree house about 60 diameter wide

 

[Loxinnightwalker]

If you have more power then you know what to do with then I would use mfr laser drills for some space mining. it is not cheep, but it is fun.

 

[xyzzy75]

Yeah, the MFR laser drill is really the only reason to have constant mad power unless you're into bees. The bee machines from Gendustry and Binnie are power hungry little things, and if you build a lot of them they can push your power system pretty hard. However, that power requirement for bees is pretty streaky--once you're done breeding and just in production mode, the requirements settle down quite a bit. A reasonably large Mekanism ore processing facility can be a bit power hungry if you do the 5x and duplicate processes at bottlenecks, but it's not a constant drain like the MFR laser drill is. I've seen an MFR laser drill build that required 4 turbines attached to an efficient BigReactor just to be self-sustaining.

 

[Evillevi]

Actually with MFR you can have an auto switch thing that adjust the fuel rods by 1% increments as the internal battery is filled.

Using to Rednet ports and two rednet cables, set the first port to output based on the internal buffer and the second port to lower fuel rods based on the receiving input

 

[xyzzy75]

Actually with MFR you can have an auto switch thing that adjust the fuel rods by 1% increments as the internal battery is filled.

This is the best way to manage a BR, imho. I set up a BR going to a battery bank of some kind (capacitors, energy cubes, energy cells, whatever) and use rednet to manage the fuel rods when the batteries/internal storage is full. The batteries help with streaky power needs and the rednet keeps you from needing a constant supply of yellorium.

 

[Skyqula]

Actually with MFR you can have an auto switch thing that adjust the fuel rods by 1% increments as the internal battery is filled.

Using to Rednet ports and two rednet cables, set the first port to output based on the internal buffer and the second port to lower fuel rods based on the receiving input

You dont actually need MFR to manage a Reactor. Anny redstone can turn a Reactor on/off. Considering the reactor has an internal buffer aswell as a way to output a redstone signal depending on how full that buffer is you can do some pretty nice stuff. For example, you can toggle your reactor between 2 levels of control rod insertion. Making it possible to toggle between off, low power generation and high power generation depending on how full the internal buffer is. Likewise, TE energy cells can be read with a comparatr and EnderIO has some methods for this aswell.

Thats not all, a reactor can also output a redstone signal depending on how hot it is. Wich in turn can also be used to turn a reactor on/off, greatly increasing potential efficiency. This is because those reactors tend to heat up fast and take time to cool down. Its pretty amazing. (I am experimenting with it and managed to nearly quadruple a reactors efficiency)

 

[rungok]

I saw one of my server friends was using computercraft to build a reactor controller that changed the settings based on the drains/needs and detailed the draws on power. How would i do that?

 

[Evillevi]

I saw one of my server friends was using computercraft to build a reactor controller that changed the settings based on the drains/needs and detailed the draws on power. How would i do that?

Very complicatedly,

The easiest way is again set up two rednet port side by side, Connect them with two pieces of rednet, set the first port to output a signal based on it's internal battery. Set the second port to move the fuel rods based on the signal input.

End result is that if your external batteries are filled, your internal battery will rise, For every % it rises it releases a signal equivalent to said % which the input port will receive and will subsequently lower the fuel rods by % amount

 

[rungok]

Very complicatedly,

The easiest way is again set up two rednet port side by side, Connect them with two pieces of rednet, set the first port to output a signal based on it's internal battery. Set the second port to move the fuel rods based on the signal input.

End result is that if your external batteries are filled, your internal battery will rise, For every % it rises it releases a signal equivalent to said % which the input port will receive and will subsequently lower the fuel rods by % amount

... Dear god, that does sound difficult.