Omicron

Usually the case when you have either a rampant forest fire or a massive item spill somewhere in your loaded chunks. Are you or your friend using Buildcraft pipes for any of your machines?

The title speaks so much for itself that there are about two new threads with this exact title every week. Not to sound rude, but typing your thread title in the search box would have answered your question far more quickly than waiting for other users...

Keep in mind that Solar Panels generate nothing during the night, but Thermopiles do. That means the difference is not as big as it seems. If night and day are exactly the same length (and I have no idea if they are), then Solar Panels would on average generate twice as much as Thermopiles. Also, come to think of it, I failed a bit in testing - the Thermopiles I used were already charging a Battery Box, and the wiki does mention that the stable output is lower than what I measured (0.46A vs. 0.50A). So it would seem that Thermopiles do in fact show the same odd behavior as the solar panels concerning variable output. It's probably by design (or an unintended side effect), I just don't understand why yet. Maybe physics major gavjenks can say something on that topic :p

Alright! Thanks to discovering the Voltmeter (how could I have missed that!), I was able to do some pretty neat testing. Here's what I found out: General Blutricity Voltage corresponds to the charge status of the energy network in percent. For example, connect a single blulectric alloy furnance to a generator (solar or thermopile). The readout will start at 0V when the furnace is empty, it will read 50V when the furnace is half charged, and it will peak at 100V when the furnace is 100% full. I have no idea if Voltage has any other function, f. ex. making you consume less energy for the same action in a network that's near 100% compared to one that's lower. I can't think of a good setup to reliably test such a thing right now. Blulectric machinery will begin working around the 50V mark (or cease, if you're discharging). I did not specifically measure, it might be 45V instead or something. A Battery Box will begin charging around 91V-92V (this I did measure) and discharging not much lower at 80-something (forgot to pay attention to the value). Amperage corresponds to the actual amount of energy generated. This is where the Solar Panel and the Thermopile have different ratings. Each of them generates a set amperage, independent of the current voltage of the network (they will generate the same amount of A at 1V as they do at 100V). The charging speed appears constant as well - charging the network from 0% to 10% (AKA 0V to 10V) seems to take just as long as charging it from 90% to 100%. I'm saying "seems" because I didn't specifically test it, I just didn't notice any major change in charging speed depending on voltage. Thermopile The Thermopile has five valid faces - bottom, and the four sides. Placing a hot/cold block on top will have no effect at all; it is purely for output (you can, however, output from the other sides as well if you like). For the Thermopile to generate energy, it needs a "hot budget" and a "cold budget". Both must be present, it is not enough to slap down a very hot or cold block on its own and hope to match it against the neutral environment. Different blocks are worth different amounts of hot or cold "budget": Fire: 0.125A "hot" Lava: 0.500A "hot" Water: 0.125A "cold" Snow: 0.500A "cold" Ice: 0.500A "cold" Adding one block of Lava allows the Thermopile to generate up to 0.5A in energy, if it has that much "cold budget" as well. Meaning, it needs to have either an ice or snow block, or four blocks of water next to it. However, one Lava and four blocks of Ice still only generate 0.5A, because even though there is 2.0A worth of "cold budget", the single block of Lava is still only worth 0.5A. Other examples, to visualize it: 1x Fire + 1x Water: 0.125A 1x Fire + 2x Water: 0.125A 2x Fire + 2x Water: 0.250A 2x Fire + 1x Snow: 0.250A 2x Lava + 3x Water: 0.375A Since there are five valid faces, the absolute maximum you can get a Thermopile to output is 1.000A, using two Lava and two Snow/Ice blocks. However, since the Snow/Ice will melt, this is not a stable configuration. The best stable output is 0.500A, using the 1x Lava, 4x Water setup that is mentioned on the Tekkit wiki. Solar Panel The Redpower solar panel works during the same daily timespan that the IC2 solar panel does. However, in contrast to the IC2 counterpart, it ignores rain, snow and thunderstorms and will work normally during those events, so long as it is day. For some odd reason, the solar panel's power output differed somewhat depending on what was connected to it. One consumer connected: 1.86A Two consumers connected: 1.94A If the single consumer, or one of the two consumers, was a Battery Box and the network charge status (voltage) got high enough for it to start charging its mass storage, the solar panel's output changed again to 2.00A. This is probably the panel's true output rating. I have no idea why it would be less in the other cases. The Thermopile did not show this behavior, even when linking together several of them.

I see... that makes sense. I didn't even think of using the bottom face. Going to try that out.

Alright, I've been toying around with Blutricity a bit more, and I've come across something that made me curious. The Thermopile. I suppose few people use it, because the solar panel is more powerful and doesn't require you to puzzle out its function, but I like puzzles. Hopefully there's another person like that here who can share their findings. So far, I have only been able to get it to work with lava next to it. Using fire as a heat source, or using just an ice block with no heat on the other side, has been generating nothing at all. Using lava on one side and ice on the other generates a bit of energy. Unfortunately, the lava will melt the ice within seconds, so you actually end up with water instead. Lava/Water generates less energy than Lava/Ice. Lava/Dirt or Lava/Air generates zero energy. It does not matter which face of the thermopile the Lava and Water blocks are against. Left/right works just as well left/front or left/rear or other such things. As such, you can have more than one water block next to the Thermopile. For example, Lava left, Water right and front. This generates more energy than just a single water block. I have not tested using multiple lava blocks with one water block. Has anyone here ever actually used Thermopiles for energy generation? If so, can you share some more insights on their workings, and possibly some good designs on how to set them up for maximum efficiency?

It is back in IndustrialCraft2 v1.98 and newer, as per the changelog here: http://forum.industrial-craft.net/index.php?page=Thread&threadID=7401 You'll have to wait until Tekkit updates to Minecraft 1.3.2 before you can use it, though.

Well, a recipe list would probably the most commonly used feature... How about a breakdown of mod-specific game mechanics? Then I would not need to make threads like this. I also lost count of all the various things I have ended up testing ingame just to know the specifics, because the descriptions on the internet were too ambiguous. Of course, that would require a lot of in-depth knowledge and research, because even the wikis sometimes say contradicting things, or don't mention something at all... EDIT: Also, Equivalent Exchange should have a big fat game balance warning ;)

Thanks for the answer. Looks like the wiki has a little more info, yes. Though I find it odd that the machines are described as consuming volts in order to function... if this was modeled after RL electricity, then should be consuming amperes, but require a certain voltage to be present in order to activate. Wonder if that's an error on the wiki editor's part.

I never used that stuff before, and I want to experiment with it. Obviously, getting it running is easy enough - plop down a Redpower solar panel, wire it up to for example a blulectric furnace, and it works. But what about the details? For IC2 and BC, we know the discrete units of energy, which generators/engines produce how much, which machines consume how much, and so on. I don't know any of that for Redpower. So my questions are: - What is the discrete energy unit that Redpower uses? How much does a solar panel produce, how much a thermopile? And what is the capacity of the batteries and the battery box? - Is there a comprehensive list of machinery that requires Blutricity to work? This recipe list I've been using doesn't provide this information. How much energy does each of these machines consume per tick and/or per activation? - Is there distance based energy loss on blue alloy wire, or can you transfer over an essentially infinite distance so long as you can keep the chunks loaded? - Do Redpower solar panels stop generating energy at night or during rain, like the IC2 ones? - Do we know if there will be other power sources besides solar panels and thermopiles in future releases? Have people considered energy conversion mods between, say, IC2 and Redpower? Does Blutricity work in a similar enough manner to make such a conversion feasible?

Just grab the entire Tekkit_Server_3.1.2 directory (the one launch.bat resides in). That will ensure it backups everything, including config files you may have adjusted. Now, if you want your client files backupped as well, you'll find those at: %appdata%/.techniclauncher

Can't help you with the texture pack issue. However: Yes, that would require an additional account. However, you can use just about all commands from the server console. For example, if somebody lost an item due to what was clearly a bug, you can use the "/give" command from the server console to give the player a new item. You can even talk from the server console using the "/say" command, which will print a chatline ingame prefixed with [server] (and usually colored in bright purple for emphasis). To use a command from the server console, omit the leading slash. For example, "/give" ingame becomes just "give" on the console, "/say" becomes "say", "/tp" becomes "tp" and so on. You can use the command "/de-op playername" to remove all admin rights from your character, and from then on use the server console only. Should you at any point need an actual character with admin rights, typing "op playername" on the console (again, no leading slash) will restore ultimate power to you ingame. Generally, areas with no players near them are unloaded from memory. "Near" is defined by the view-distance setting in the server.properties files. For example, setting view-distance=9, which is the default, causes a square area equal to the chunk the player is standing on plus 9 more chunks in each direction to remain loaded. As a chunk is 16x16 blocks, this is equal to a 19x19 chunk area spanning 304x304 blocks. Once the player moves, new chunks are loaded in front of him and out of range chunks behind him are unloaded. No machinery continues to function in an unloaded chunk. That means, if nobody is online, no chunks are loaded and nothing is going on in the world. (...Technically. In practical application, some areas around the world spawn 0,0 might always remain loaded, and there seems to be an odd bug where logging off sometimes doesn't unload chunks. You can read more here.) If you want an area to remain loaded while nobody is near, you need to build and plop down a chunk loader block. Ingame, they are named Teleport Tether, World Anchor and Dimensional Anchor. They are from different mods and differ somewhat in costs and in the area they keep loaded.

Don't bump your threads, it's against the rules... Also, did you modify your Railcraft-5.3.3-MCPC-1.2.5-r8.zip file in any way? Last time I got an error like this was when I tried to install a Buildcraft addon that required me to replace a file inside the main Buildcraft zip with an up to date one. Using WinZip on the machine that hosts my server led to getting this error. Using WinRAR on my own machine and then copying the file over resulted in error-free operation.

That's what I thought at first... ...except that I can reliably reproduce this while being completely alone on the server. Freshly rebooted server, too. Logged in, popped a stack of dust into the furnace, logged off, let it sit for 10 minutes, logged back in and voila, a stack of bars completed. Works every time, as strange as it is.

I thought a Filter was supposed to only send items if there's space in the destination inventory? Please correct me if I am wrong, but I think it should work this way: Have one Filter on the source chest, and tubes directly to the recyclers. Set the timer on the Filter to be just a tiny bit longer than the time it takes for an item to travel to the farthest away recycler. Set the Filter to dispense stacks of 60 items at a time. This will ensure that the second time the Filter tries to dispense a stack, the first stack will have already reached its target and filled up its inventory with 60 blocks. Since a recycler can only accept 64, there is no room for an additional stack of 60, and thus it is no longer a valid target. The second stack will thus go to a different recycler. And because you set it to dispense 60, not 64, the first recycler will once again become a valid target when it has 4 items remaining in its inventory, giving the Filter time to dispense a new stack before the recycler runs out completely. If 4 items isn't enough of a buffer, setting the stack size slightly lower (like 56) should help. Of course this only works if you keep sending out the same item; if you have different items, a recycler will have to run empty before it can accept something new. Mind you, I've never actually built something like that... I tend to be satisfied with much smaller installations. So if it does not work like I described, chalk it up to my inexperience. But I think it's worth a try anyway. Oh, and: make sure your timer sits right next to the Filter. One block of Red Alloy Wire quickly toggling off-on-off creates more lag than a dozen directly connected timers.

Yeah, the Tekkit client comes with Optifine installed, which supports HD textures without the need for MCpatcher. Very convenient :)

That doesn't quite explain why my base remained loaded while I was offline... I am 600 meters away from spawn, 450 meters away from the nearest other player's base , and I do not own a single chunk loader. Server-side "render" distance is set to 12 chunks (i.e. a 25x25 chunk field, or 400x400 meters). I find it odd that I can reliably "unload" my base by walking away, but logging off keeps it loaded.

Something I have experienced though is that sometimes chunks are not unloaded immediately, especially when a player logs out. I had my server running, dumped a lot of stuff into macerators and furnaces, and logged off to eat dinner without shutting down the server. Once I returned, I noticed that all the machines had finished their job - they kept running while I was offline. For some reason, the chunks were not unloaded. However, when I am ingame and walk far away from my base and then return, I will find that progress was paused while I was away, so in that case chunks are correctly unloaded.

Sounds to me like you aren't quite awake, ampayne, because these "machines" are generators creating power. Mind you, geothermal generators only run when they have somewhere to put their energy. If your storage is full and barely anything consumes any power, they will go into standby until there's room for more energy. The one generator flashing on and off is probably due to a single machine, like a rotary macerator, consuming power to keep its speed high. Start using power, and you'll start seeing the generators work.

Dropbox is a great tool to share pictures with, but you're using the wrong link. Go to the folder where you stored them on your harddisk, rightclick each file, and select "dropbox" -> "copy public link". Then use that one to link an image to other people. The links you tried to use above are links for the Dropbox web interface that requires people to log in. The proper public link begins with "https://dl.dropbox.com/" and not "https://dl-web.dropbox.com/". Like so: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/44754370/2012-04-22_17.13.55.png EDIT: Gave the seed a look-over. Not bad; fairly large arctic island with two small shield volcanoes and two oil wells near the coast. Really not a fan of arctic landscapes personally, though, everything is so monotone. The main land is really close, you can walk straight there across the ice. There's a far more impressive volcano at -245, +680 too.

You would be correct; retrievers are neat like that. But if he already has the BC infrastructure, upgrading the engine is by far the cheapest option and therefore deserves the mention.

You cannot daisy chain Redstone engines due to the way they work. The chain will look like it's working but the front engine will not put out any more power than it would if it was by itself. Explaining why would require a long-ish post; I recommend looking at the Buildcraft wiki, it's all there. Daisy chaining is meant more or less exclusively for steam engines, which can be hooked up to chains of up to 12 in one line without incurring penalties or becoming dangerous. You can theoretically chain combustion engines too, but it doesn't add very much of an advantage, only very much of an additional explosion hazard. Usually it's not worth it. You can have multiple Redstone engines on one pipe, namely up to four - one on each side not occupied by the source machine/chest or the continuing pipe. A single steam engine is still more than twice as fast as this, as outlined above.

Have you tried going to the Bukkit website and typing the word "title" into the plugin search bar...?

1. Make sure you downloaded the proper, official server package from http://www.technicpack.net/tekkit/ 2. Make sure you have the proper, official Technic Launcher from the same source 3. Do not install any other mods or plugins. None at all, not client, not server. 4. In the server.properties, set gamemode=0, difficulty=2, generate-structures=true, spawn-monsters=true, spawn-npcs=true, spawn-animals=true 5. Start the server using launch.bat 6. Play for a Minecraft day or two. This is the only advice I can give you. I have never seen a Minecraft game not spawn anything. If the above does not work, then I cannot help you any further. If the above does work, try and figure out what you did different in your previous attempts. That's likely the thing that causes your problem.

You can use different engines too. A steam engine will pump out stacks of 24 items each piston stroke. It strokes once per 52 ticks, as opposed to a Redstone engine at maximum speed, which will stroke once per 20 ticks. This means that in the same timeframe that four Redstone engines (the maximum you can slap on a single wooden transport pipe) pump out 104 items, a single steam engine will pump out 240, more than twice as much (and almost 10 times as much as a single Redstone engine). Of course, the steam engine requires coal, but considering you have what appears to be a blaze rod condensing EMC loop running there, paying for that tiny amount of coal on the side shouldn't even register in your output statistics.