What's the point of RotaryCraft?

[malicious_bloke]

This might sound daft, but where has the gearbox GUI gone? Used to be I could shift-right click with a screwdriver and open it up. Apparently this changes the mode of the gearbox in the new version, but it doesn't give me any visual indication that it's done it.

Derp, NVM found it. I was being spaz as usual XD

 

[Pyure]

Also about jet fuel: this has to be the most insanely complicated recipe of any fuel type in modded minecraft - including reactor fuel - requiring mob drops, processed resources and non-renewable mined resources, each from both the Nether and the Overworld. I'd do almost anything to avoid the need for it, except that I need it on my way to reactors.

To clarify: I do not mind complicated processing or building. What I do mind is having to collect so many different component types and that some are non-renewable on top of that. As far as I'm aware of (I haven't built one yet) I "only" need pitchblende, fluorite and water to keep a reactor running, two of which are regrettably non-renewable, but I need neither farms nor a variety of mob drops. Thus, in spite of the multi-step processing, a reactor is drastically less complicated to run than a gas turbine. That there are no data about how much jet fuel is consumed by various machines does not help.

All in all, I must say that RotaryCraft fuel production has turned out to be a huge PITA. Solar power has its own disadvantages, but at least once you've found a workable solar tower configuration (and have a Mystcraft age with eternal dayligh) things keep running smoothly without intervention. Any fuel production setup that can't eventually make things run as smoothly may not be worth the effort except as a temporary solution.

Agree with most of this. Particularly "silly" items from the nether.

But its partially offset by the fact that you get an awful lot of energy out of just a few ingredients. They're all farmable and you don't need to hoard much to get some serious power. (They're not consumed each cycle)

That said, it might also be an incentive to progress to nuclear power. Otherwise some folks might be tempted to spam gas turbines once they have the fuel automated (similar to how people preferred treefarm-coal over nuclear power in years past)

 

[Ieldra]

Agree with most of this. Particularly "silly" items from the nether.

But its partially offset by the fact that you get an awful lot of energy out of just a few ingredients. They're all farmable and you don't need to hoard much to get some serious power. (They're not consumed each cycle)

That said, it might also be an incentive to progress to nuclear power. Otherwise some folks might be tempted to spam gas turbines once they have the fuel automated (similar to how people preferred treefarm-coal over nuclear power in years past)

People say jet fuel is powerful, but.....exactly how powerful? When I read (in the handbook) that the pulse jet furnace "requires jet fuel, and a lot of it", I hear "hoard as much as possible before embarking on any serious project that requires it". So far the only RoC engine I've used which requires fuel (if you can call it that) is the steam engine, and I take the fact that one of those consumes more water than my maximum-size HP steam boiler from Railcraft as an indication that RoC engines aren't exactly modest in their requirements. Maybe it's a balancing feature since the RoC steam engine doesn't need wood or coal, but together with statements like the above, it sets the tone for the rest of RoC.

So really, knowing some numbers would be *really* nice. If I don't have numbers to plan with, I tend to go into serious overkill. There's little more annoying than having to interrupt a big project because it rests on an unstable foundation. I'd rather make the foundation rock-stable and start the big project after.

 

[Wagon153]

People say jet fuel is powerful, but.....exactly how powerful? When I read (in the handbook) that the pulse jet furnace "requires jet fuel, and a lot of it", I hear "hoard as much as possible before embarking on any serious project that requires it". So far the only RoC engine I've used which requires fuel (if you can call it that) is the steam engine, and I take the fact that one of those consumes more water than my maximum-size HP steam boiler from Railcraft as an indication that RoC engines aren't exactly modest in their requirements. Maybe it's a balancing feature since the RoC steam engine doesn't need wood or coal, but together with statements like the above, it sets the tone for the rest of RoC.

So really, knowing some numbers would be *really* nice. If I don't have numbers to plan with, I tend to go into serious overkill. There's little more annoying than having to interrupt a big project because it rests on an unstable foundation. I'd rather make the foundation rock-stable and start the big project after.

Actually, you can supply 10 steam engines with one aqueous accumulator. And jetfuel can net you over 10k rf/t using a gas turbine.

 

[McJty]

People say jet fuel is powerful, but.....exactly how powerful? When I read (in the handbook) that the pulse jet furnace "requires jet fuel, and a lot of it", I hear "hoard as much as possible before embarking on any serious project that requires it". So far the only RoC engine I've used which requires fuel (if you can call it that) is the steam engine, and I take the fact that one of those consumes more water than my maximum-size HP steam boiler from Railcraft as an indication that RoC engines aren't exactly modest in their requirements. Maybe it's a balancing feature since the RoC steam engine doesn't need wood or coal, but together with statements like the above, it sets the tone for the rest of RoC.

So really, knowing some numbers would be *really* nice. If I don't have numbers to plan with, I tend to go into serious overkill. There's little more annoying than having to interrupt a big project because it rests on an unstable foundation. I'd rather make the foundation rock-stable and start the big project after.

Actually the steam engine really doesn't take that much water. At least not if you feed it with a RoC pump. I can feed at least three steam engines with a single RoC pump.

As to the other fuel sources. I've only used the microturbine which uses jet fuel and that one runs pretty long with a bit of jet fuel. Ethanol is also something that goes on long enough to do useful things. At least in my experience.

 

[Pyure]

People say jet fuel is powerful, but.....exactly how powerful? When I read (in the handbook) that the pulse jet furnace "requires jet fuel, and a lot of it", I hear "hoard as much as possible before embarking on any serious project that requires it". So far the only RoC engine I've used which requires fuel (if you can call it that) is the steam engine, and I take the fact that one of those consumes more water than my maximum-size HP steam boiler from Railcraft as an indication that RoC engines aren't exactly modest in their requirements. Maybe it's a balancing feature since the RoC steam engine doesn't need wood or coal, but together with statements like the above, it sets the tone for the rest of RoC.

So really, knowing some numbers would be *really* nice. If I don't have numbers to plan with, I tend to go into serious overkill. There's little more annoying than having to interrupt a big project because it rests on an unstable foundation. I'd rather make the foundation rock-stable and start the big project after.

I wish I could give you good numbers. I want to say a few buckets should take care of your early game pulse-jet-furnace operations, but don't quote me on that. You definitely WILL NOT NEED a full drum of it. ( I forget what mod drums come from, but they hold a ton of fuel)

Off the top of my head, a gas turbine outputs at 67MW. This alone is pretty awesome. But it gets better: you can increase your total MJ output of the same bucket of fuel by a large margin if you fuel the engine via an ECU (Engine Control Unit.). If you don't mind lower point output, you get far more efficiency from your fuel by running the engine at increasingly slower paces. (The ECU lets you run at something like 7%, 25%, 50% and 100%).

This isn't always idea: sometimes you want 67MW and you want it NOW. But there are many ways to leverage this efficiency (including storing the power in industrial coils/batteries for mass output when you need it)

 

[Ieldra]

I wish I could give you good numbers. I want to say a few buckets should take care of your early game pulse-jet-furnace operations, but don't quote me on that. You definitely WILL NOT NEED a full drum of it. ( I forget what mod drums come from, but they hold a ton of fuel)

Off the top of my head, a gas turbine outputs at 67MW. This alone is pretty awesome. But it gets better: you can increase your total MJ output of the same bucket of fuel by a large margin if you fuel the engine via an ECU (Engine Control Unit.). If you don't mind lower point output, you get far more efficiency from your fuel by running the engine at increasingly slower paces. (The ECU lets you run at something like 7%, 25%, 50% and 100%).

This isn't always idea: sometimes you want 67MW and you want it NOW. But there are many ways to leverage this efficiency (including storing the power in industrial coils/batteries for mass output when you need it)

Hmm....I could use some auxiliary power for my Extractors. At 4MW, they take days to process what I mine up in an hour. Can you estimate how much jet fuel it would take to run a gas turbine at 50% for a real-time day?

BTW, drums are from Extra Utilities

 

[Pyure]

Hmm....I could use some auxiliary power for my Extractors. At 4MW, they take days to process what I mine up in an hour. Can you estimate how much jet fuel it would take to run a gas turbine at 50% for a real-time day?

BTW, drums are from Extra Utilities

I've never tried unfortunately. There are folks here who know how many mb per second a gas turbine will consume; I'm not one of them.

If you put a gun to my head I'd say a 2 drums at 50% would probably last you 24 hours. Give or take a drum...

But if once you've hooked up, say, an extractor to a gas turbine, you won't need to be running it quite that much. Consider the following:

* At 67MW, an extractor can process an entire stack of ores in just a few seconds, (so long as you do next step) {Edit: Not sure about 67MW @ 50%)
* You can flip the extractor from "optimal stage 1,4" to "optimal stage 2,3" via a redstone signal to a CVT.
* Given a redstone signal, an ECU can shut off a gas turbine (or microturbine) without loss of fuel (notwithstanding spin-up vs spin-down time as it restarts)
* You can gauge whether your extractor "has work" via comparators or inventory-checkers and flip the ECU redstone state accordingly on need

So unless you're feeding the extractor constant stacks from a quarry of some sort, power shouldn't be a problem. And if you are, I'd just choose to extract a bit more carefully (don't extract useless ores during this phase of your development)

 

[Ieldra]

@Pyure:
A few seconds per stack? That would be impressive. At 20 seconds per stack, I'd be done with everything I've mined up in an hour...in an hour. I don't need continuous mining. I take it you'd need to switch constantly between stage 1/4 setting and stage 2/3 setting. What would be a good time interval for that, and does every stage benefit from excess speed or do 1 and 4 benefit from excess torque?

BTW, I've always had the impression that increasing power increases performance on a logarithmic scale. I'd need to double performance 4-5 times to get to "a few seconds per stack", and 67 MW is less than that even if performance scaled 1:1 with power.

I'm not constantly mining, but I'm feeding my extractor with ME export buses from my ore collection subnetwork.

 

[Pyure]

@Pyure:
A few seconds per stack? That would be impressive. At 20 seconds per stack, I'd be done with everything I've mined up in an hour...in an hour. I don't need continuous mining. I take it you'd need to switch constantly between stage 1/4 setting and stage 2/3 setting. What would be a good time interval for that, and does every stage benefit from excess speed or do 1 and 4 benefit from excess torque?

BTW, I've always had the impression that increasing power increases performance on a logarithmic scale. I'd need to double performance 4-5 times to get to "a few seconds per stack", and 67 MW is less than that even if performance scaled 1:1 with power.

I'm not constantly mining, but I'm feeding my extractor with ME export buses from my ore collection subnetwork.

I think my interval is around 2-3 seconds. You sort of watch it for a while and get a feel.

All the stages benefit from the most speed you can get. Obviously 1,4 have minimum torque, so you satisfy that requirement but otherwise get the best speed you can get.

For 2,3 you ideally have 1 torque, and the rest as speed.

And yes, a few seconds per stack is probably pessimistic: it mostly depends on your timing and whether your ores are "ordered" as they're fed into the system (otherwise they can clog up the timing a tiny bit due to insufficient slots)

edit: I should add that "a few seconds per stack" would be on "average" rather than the time it takes to process a single stack (based on the fact that a given stage takes less than 2 seconds to process 1 full stack)

 

[Ieldra]

@Pyure:
How you do create the interval switch? I've tried using Project Red's Timer, but in spite of understanding the logic rather well I think, I've had serious trouble creating a "turn a pulse into a toggle" logic. I feel I'm overlooking something simple.

 

[Pyure]

While I don't know Project Red specifically, all redstone circuit mods have something along the lines of a T-Latch or Latch circuit. The way it works is, every time it receives a pulse, it flips from "on" to "off".

You want your timer to pulse the Latch every X seconds. So first it will sending a signal. X seconds later it will receive a pulse from the timer, then it will not be sending a signal. X seconds later, pulse again, sending a signal again.

The signal from the latch needs to go into the CVT. The CVT can be configured to do X torque/speed depending on whether or not it has a redstone signal (top right corner I believe)

 

[Ieldra]

*Bangs head against wall*

To think I'd been using toggle latches from RP2 in the past and now, somehow the description of the new one from PR got into my head as saying something totally different than what it actually says. I did overlook something simple. In a most embarrassing way. Thank you for the reminder.

 

[Reika]

My base is located on the coast, in Forest and Gravel Beach biomes, but I keep my industrial stuff underground (and want to keep it that way), which may have an adverse effect.

It does. Temperatures rise as you descend.

Agree with most of this. Particularly "silly" items from the nether.

Every item in jet fuel corresponds to a real-world additive. For example, magma cream (due to its relation to fire resistance) is the analogue to 2,6 ditertiary-butyl-4-methyl-phenol, an anti-autoignition agent to help ensure safety in the event of a spill or crash.

I've never tried unfortunately. There are folks here who know how many mb per second a gas turbine will consume; I'm not one of them.

178mB/s, I think.

 

[belgabor]

*Bangs head against wall*

To think I'd been using toggle latches from RP2 in the past and now, somehow the description of the new one from PR got into my head as saying something totally different than what it actually says. I did overlook something simple. In a most embarrassing way. Thank you for the reminder.

Note that this is not the optimal way. The steps vary in the time they need to process an item so you might need the the on/off stages of different length. The way I have done it (copied from @Ako_the_Builder ) is a timer + a state cell. That way you can set the length of the on and off state individually.
All in all I have for now decided to just throw power at it and not switch at all. With different ores with different multiplication chances it is kinda impossible to find an optimum (and failing to do so might even reduce overall performance).

 

[Ieldra]

It does. Temperatures rise as you descend.

I see. Going far down is a hassle, but acceptable. Going up is not.

Every item in jet fuel corresponds to a real-world additive. For example, magma cream (due to its relation to fire resistance) is the analogue to 2,6 ditertiary-butyl-4-methyl-phenol, an anti-autoignition agent to help ensure safety in the event of a spill or crash.

You know, I like the semi-realistic approach of RotaryCraft, but I think sometimes things are going a little far.

178mB/s, I think.

Six seconds per bucket.... Three hours for one of my standard 2016B tanks. How much does fuel usage go down if you throttle the engine down to 50%`?

 

[Pyure]

How much does fuel usage go down if you throttle the engine down to 50%`?

0% according to http://rotarycraft.wikia.com/wiki/Engine_Control_Unit

I make no claims as to how accurate that is.
However you double your efficiency by going to 25% apparently, which is amazing.

 

[Reika]

0% according to http://rotarycraft.wikia.com/wiki/Engine_Control_Unit

I make no claims as to how accurate that is.
However you double your efficiency by going to 25% apparently, which is amazing.

Fuel usage is halved, but no, there is no efficiency gain.

 

[Pyure]

Fuel usage is halved, but no, there is no efficiency gain.

Some individual posted a few days ago that he saw an efficiency increase. Either he botched it or there's an "unintential feature."

And if there's no efficiency increase dropping to 25%, that means there's a (halving) decrease going to 50%...according to that wiki (which states 1x efficiency for both 100% and 50% speed)

Edited:

According to the Rotarycraft Handbook it should only consume half the fuel to produce the same amount of power overall. It halves again when set to 6.25% output (producing 4 times the Energy with the same amount of fuel)
I tested it and the numbers match

Call me nuts but that would be an efficiency gain. I suspect this is a miscommunication.

 

[Reika]

Some individual posted a few days ago that he saw an efficiency increase. Either he botched it or there's an "unintential feature."

And if there's no efficiency increase dropping to 25%, that means there's a (halving) decrease going to 50%...according to that wiki (which states 1x efficiency for both 100% and 50% speed)

Edited:

Call me nuts but that would be an efficiency gain. I suspect this is a miscommunication.

This is incorrect. It consumes half the fuel to produce half the power.