Who needs pipes when you've got railcraft? :)

[ATJ]

So, still running the 1.4.2 beta pack here which of course means no RP2. Now I'm quite a fan of RP as it's much easier to work with than BC - particularly for pipe stuff like automated ore processing - but we don't have it so we made our ore processing factory using BC pipes. Yes, it works, sort of, but quickly gets very expensive with diamond pipes and also laser chips to control what the pipes are doing.

I'd never used railcraft before until we made a lava transfer system from the nether using tank carts with loaders and unloaders. Very simple concept, but so cool and so useful - really liked it, so went in search of other cool stuff from the mod and that was when I stumbled across quetzi's spotlight video for the loaders & unloaders (due credit)

The basic examples of it in action in the 2nd half really give you a good idea of what it can do on a larger scale.

I've just been playing around with it in SSP and instantly loved it! It is so cool. Works flawlessly automatically transferring to any chest connected to the un/loaders (as you would expect) but surely it won't be intelligent enough to transfer directly into barrels as well? Yes, yes it will! Then I wondered if it would consider machines to be a valid inventory or whether it would need a chest and pipe to the machine? I didn't think it would be that intelligent, but let's see! :

Yes, yes it does! Unloader at top drops filtered items of your choice into the macerator and then loops down to the loader, picks up the macerated items and takes them off to wherever you want. As Mr. Direwolf would say - "how cool, is that?! Nice!"

Who needs pipes everywhere when you have railcraft carts!

Now off to build a new ore processing facility...

 

[tedyhere]

Dude I love RC! I am in the process of working out a sorting system using Railcraft as the backbone. Going to have to do it in creative to get it the way I want it but it will be awesome!

 

[ATJ]

Dude I love RC! I am in the process of working out a sorting system using Railcraft as the backbone. Going to have to do it in creative to get it the way I want it but it will be awesome!

Awesome! Post it here when you've finished please, I could do with some inspiration!

 

[Wizaerd]

I built the railcraft nether lava transport line, and liked it well enough, but pipes do take up less room and are a bit more compact for some things. So I wouldn't replace pipes altogether with railcraft, but it is neat a neat mod.

 

[MrZwij]

Railcraft is awesome because it has personality.

 

[ATJ]

I built the railcraft nether lava transport line, and liked it well enough, but pipes do take up less room and are a bit more compact for some things. So I wouldn't replace pipes altogether with railcraft, but it is neat a neat mod.

You know, I've been looking at a better way of doing this and believe I have found it. Instead of pumping lava out of the nether via tank carts or magmatic thingies or whatever else people use, it is much simpler to have an array of GTGs in the nether that are hooked up to an MFSU. You pump the lava out as before but pipe it straight into the GTGs. Then, to get the EU to your overworld, hook up a track from your nether MFSU to your overworld MFSU with a mystcraft portal, then put an energy loader at your nether MFSU and an energy unloader at your overworld MFSU, and stick an energy cart on the track. You don't even need to bother with lava tanks or liquid transposers or any of that crap.

I've just rigged one up on our server and it works flawlessly.

 

[Wizaerd]

You know, I've been looking at a better way of doing this and believe I have found it. Instead of pumping lava out of the nether via tank carts or magmatic thingies or whatever else people use, it is much simpler to have an array of GTGs in the nether that are hooked up to an MFSU. You pump the lava out as before but pipe it straight into the GTGs. Then, to get the EU to your overworld, hook up a track from your nether MFSU to your overworld MFSU with a mystcraft portal, then put an energy loader at your nether MFSU and an energy unloader at your overworld MFSU, and stick an energy cart on the track. You don't even need to bother with lava tanks or liquid transposers or any of that crap.

I've just rigged one up on our server and it works flawlessly.

I may take a look at something like this, although truth be told it's way cooler (to me) to have tanks of lava in my overworld base. They just look so much cooler.

 

[whythisname]

Cool stuff, I might make a sorting system with RC as well.

I also had a plan for an automatic cow/animal farm using RC, it's mostly just an idea in my head atm though. I think most things can be detected, I just need a way to check if an animal is an adult or not though, just so I don't take baby animals out of my stable/barn/animal storage. It's not so hard to separate the baby from the parents, but it is pretty much impossible to detect when a baby matures (as far as I know at least).

 

[ATJ]

Yes, I like the potential of being able to do a lot of cool stuff with this mod and unlike RP, there is very little on YT showcasing any cool contraptions using it. People say that RC is pointless because of PortalGun and Mystcraft, and they could be right about that if the mod only focused on long distance rail travel, but there are so many other possibilities with it such as auto sorting systems which people seem to overlook.

Just reading back over the many "how to get lava out of nether" threads I've not seen anyone mention using the energy carts. Everyone seems to focus on getting the physical lava out in some form or another, but the energy cart with Mystcraft portals is a much simpler solution. Who needs GT IDSUs !!

 

[tedyhere]

Awesome! Post it here when you've finished please, I could do with some inspiration!

Okay here is a quicky, it takes your ores and sorts them into pulverizers and powered furnaces from Thermal Expansion which makes for a very small layout. Just a quick creative proof of concept.

 

[un worry]

I like all of the ideas above, but went for Nether Quarry -> Netherrack -> Ender Chest to Overworld Magma Crucible/Magmatics (with surplus MJ ) and Lava -> Iron Tank -> GTG (EU on demand)

My main concern were reports of major lag resulting from all that flowing lava that would be generated in the Nether. Well, at least until its pumped dry.

True or Myth?