Omicron

It applies only to tin. All other cables are similar, but the exact numbers are different. I recommend a jaunt over to the industrialcraft wiki where they have an entire page explaining how energy loss works exactly.

Also, don't give too much about the blue lines inside the conductive pipes. In my experience, they sometimes show and sometimes they don't, even on the same machine. It's just a little visual cue.

Yeah, the cables are doing perfectly fine and there's no "rules bending" going on here. But the thing with splitting packets, that's interesting and a very good point. Come to think of it, there's no way the two HV arrays could arrange with each other which of them charges which MFSU when. So obviously each HV array must charge all MFSUs at the same time, which means splitting up its power output. So if each packet loses 5 EU over the distance and you had one receiving device, it would send one 512-EU packet that would arrive as one 507-EU packet. But if there were 32 receiving devices, it would send 32 16-EU packets, which would arrive as 32 11-EU packets. Thus 512 EU/t turn into 352 EU/t. As gavjenks said, you can put the MFSUs in sequence - at least, have only one receive from the solars and then hook all the others up to that one. But yes, it will limit you to the 512 EU/t output that a single MFSU can do. You might be able to circumvent that with a clever misuse of transformers... I am not sure it will actually work this way, but you can try. At the receiving side, place a HV transformer that transforms up to EV (2048 EU) packets from the 512 EU ones the solars send down the wire. Then, place a second HV transformer directly next to it that once again transforms the 2048 EU packets down to 4x 512 EU packets. Then, hook up to 4 MFSUs up to that transformer. Theoretically, if the first transformer counts as a single receiving device, it will receive singular 512 EU packets no matter how many MFSUs you want to hook up further down the chain. Then, the second HV transformer will put out the 2048 EU packets it receives from the first one in 4x 512 EU packets if necessary - four times the throughput of a single MFSU. So you would not introduce a throughput bottleneck in this case. Mind you, this is pure theory that I have never tried out before :p

I run a server on a secondary machine at home. Sometimes when I start the server, nobody can connect. Nobody at all, no me as the admin on the local LAN, not my friends via the internet. Your description reminds me of this issue because the server shows as offline in everyone's server browser despite it definitely running. Then I reboot that computer, and start the server again, and everyone can log in fine. Works everytime. Sounds like a pretty silly solution, but some people (like me) rarely ever do a cold boot, they just use standby mode day after day after day. And Windows likes itself a good cold beer boot now and then.

No they don't. I was wrong about cables once today already, but this one I am definitely sure about and have sources to back me up.

Curious. I too have a server that's about three weeks old, and it rains plenty by itself. In fact, it rains ridiculously often. You can't go more than three dry Minecraft days without a new torrential downpour lasting at least a whole day and night. It's extremely annoying for anyone interested in using solar power, so maybe you should consider yourself lucky My server is just a standard Tekkit 3.1.2 server with EE and CompactSolars turned off, and a tiny Anti-Enderman-Griefing plugin. As for the readouts, I honestly can't explain that. But, here's an experiment you can try. Grab a MFSU and some lapotron crystals. Put the MFSU next to the solar arrays (but disconnect the solars for the moment). Discharge a lapotron crystal into it, then make sure you have one empty MFSU on the other side, and connect the glass fiber cable to the output. You should then have exactly one million EUs going down the cable at the same packet size that the HV arrays normally put out. On the receiving end, you should get a number that's a bit less than one million, due to distance loss. Write down that number. Also check what your EU meter what the cable says during transfer. Now run the test again, except now you put multiple MFSUs on the receiving side. Like, say, 10. Don't forget to make sure all are empty. Once more, you charge up the source MFSU with exactly one million EUs, and let it transfer. Then, check the cable readout,and check how much power arrives on the receiving side. If the readout differs, but total power received is virtually identical to test #1, then the readout is bogus. If the readout doesn't differ, then something is weird with your setup (since the readout does differ when the solars are hooked up). If total power transferred is noticably less, then you probably found a bug.

Your phrasing is ambiguous. Define "the cable is long". Where are you putting your MFSUs? How and where are you measuring your throughput? How many MFSUs exactly correspond to which exact measuring numbers? Can you provide a screenshot? Have you tried looking if the time that 5 MFSUs take to charge to 100k is the same time a single MFSU takes to charge to 500k? If you say "weather does not cycle normally", does that mean it does cycle, just not in a way you consider "normal"? How do you define "normal"? Do you expect snow to happen outside of arctic biomes?

Wow, good suggestion! We actually do have a lot of bandwidth issues with timers (I made a newer thread, I see you replied there as well). I'm curious to see if this will make a difference.

If you can find a craftbukkit ported version for 1.2.5 server, then you can give it a try.

Interesting concept. Do you know what plugins/mods are used to alter the ore distribution and biome types?

No, Buildcraft uses a chance-based system to divide items at a fork. With two outputs, it's 50-50. So in this setup, the coal piece comes up to the first fork, and has a 50% chance to go into the first engine or travel on. Then what coal remains has another 50% chance to go into the second engine or travel on. And so forth. This means there is a steadily diminishing amount of coal remaining in the pipe the further down you go. Out of one full stack of coal, - the first engine receives 32 - the second engine receives 16 - the third engine receives 8 - the fourth engine receives 4 - the fifth engine receives 2 - the sixth engine receives 1 - the seventh engine receives 1 and the eighth and all further engines receive nothing at all.

Well, EE is disabled completely too, as well as the various alloy furnace exploits. I have not disabled using ice in recyclers yet, that's a nice catch. Anything else that people tend to abuse in recyclers? I honestly pondered disabling cobblestone and dirt as well, but more because it makes no sense for these things to generate scrap at all and less because of game balance issues. But then I thought: "what the hell am I going to do with all the useless cobble I tend to amass?" and left it in just so it has at least that minor use. Though it might be an interesting experiment to make a game with the recycler limited to actually recycling products only (tools, machines, batteries and so on, and no resources). That would probably end up with people setting up automated crafting tables to produce and funnel Furnaces into recyclers, though... It should also be noted that I'm running a private, friends-only server, so I have an additional layer of protection from exploiting. Namely the fact that I know where they live, so I can come over and slap them silly :p

Isn't that from the Logistics Pipes addon, though? That's in Technic SSP, but not in Tekkit. In the ages-old 2.2.14 version of Buildcraft that comes with Tekkit, I'm not aware of any way to reliably do this. If you wanted to, you could spend a whole lot of space and pipes on making a tree structure of equal forks so that each end branch has the same chance of receiving an item as all the others; but even then, it's still a 50-50 chance for each item to choose a direction at each fork, so you might get random streaks. It works over time when you simply have a system that feeds coal to the engine array constantly; on the average, each engine will receive the same amount of coal. But if you need to ensure that for a single coal insertion, all engines receive exactly 2, then it will not work. EDIT: I stand corrected, it's not a logistics pipe.

Equivalent Exchange, Redpower and Buildcraft at minimum. Buildcraft released a beta recently, but I doubt Tekkit will include betas. IC2 and Railcraft updated earlier the month. Computercraft and Rei's Minimap are ready as well. Unsure about the slew of "smaller" mods and addons.

I have disabled CompactSolars for this reason on my server. Players can still generate enormous amounts of UU-Matter using nuclear reactors or combustion engine arrays (with one bucket of fuel being worth >600k EU, this works surprisingly well), but neither way is a "set and forget" method. Both variants are highly explosive if done wrong, and both variants run out of resources unless you actively procure more oil or uranium (neither of which can be made out of UU-Matter). Or I suppose they could drain the nether with Geothermals. But that, too, consumes effort and/or resources because you have to move the lava or the energy between dimensions, and occasionally move the pump to new lava fields. And then of course there are normal solar panels. But the 512 panels that go into a lone HV Array they take up a LOT of space, much less dozens of that... The point being, so long as there's a tradeoff in effort and resources and a lack of closed-loop systems, I don't mind UU-Matter so much.

So, last time I posted, I described how my (private, friends-only) server has crazy bandwidth draw when people play with Redpower frames... and how deactivating the frame-controlled moving castle gate dropped bandwidth usage for players in the area by over 90%. Turns out I was wrong. It's not the frames that are having problems. It's the timers that were controlling the frame motors. Anywhere a timer runs, even on relatively slow settings (once per second or slower), bandwidth usage absolutely explodes. In my area I play with items from Buildcraft, Industrialcraft and Railcraft. There are engines running, pipes pumping liquids, automated carts rolling along and macerators macerating, you know, as they do. Bandwidth usage for my IP is between 5 and 10 kB/s. My friend uses a lot of Redpower. He has a water generator supplied by buckets via Redpower machinery, controlled by a timer. He has that frame-based moving castle gate, controlled by a multitude of timers (I think it's 4 or 6, I forget). He has a sorting system, again controlled by timers (one or two). With all timers off, his bandwidth usage is comparable to mine. The water generator isn't so bad, by itself. However, activate the frame timers or the sorting system in addition (much less both at once!), and everything goes to all heck. He'll have bandwidth draws of upwards of 60 kB/s on average, with spikes going far higher the moment the timers fire. It's easy to see if the sorting system is on a 1-per-2-seconds timer speed - the bandwidth graph shows a sharp spike to 120-130 kB/s (ca. my connection's maximum) exactly every 2 seconds, while in between it's more like 30 kB/s. When he has both systems running, or sets the timers on one system too fast, he can't even stay connected. The server boots him with "disconnect.overflow" errors. The same will happen even with the timers set to very slow, if another player decides to visit him. Also, other players will have latency of around 1000ms even if not anywhere near, because the bandwidth is maxed out. This is really bumming all of us out, since it's basically impossible for him to build what he wants to build, it's impossible for others to play lag-free, and I kind of feel guilty for offering "crappy" service to everyone. Is this really normal and to be expected? I am more than a little surprised that it should be impossible to host Tekkit for even one single player on a 1 MBit upstream, when in the past I've had 8-10 players on a vanilla server without the slightest hitch. That can't be right... can it?

I have noticed the same thing, logging out and back in only to find that my machines finished their job and that my solar panels charged all storage to maximum. Not that I mind that so much... It's still weird, though.

I often wish the Railcraft iron tank was available in Tekkit. Having a 7x7x8 block massive liquid tank with the same 16 buckets per block capacity that Buildcraft tanks offer, but working with a single input and output... yum. Then you could really store too much lava Sadly, it's from a newer Railcraft version, and we'll have to wait for a Tekkit update.

Erm, no that's not how IC2 works. Copper cables carry packets of up to 32 EU in size, and an infinite number of them in parallel. Each solar panel produces one packet per tick, sized 1 EU. That means that a single copper cable can carry power from an infinite amount of solar panels without ever bottlenecking. Now, storage devices and transformers have output limits, as far as transmissions to a single source go (they do of course transfer independently to however many sources ask power, unless it's a transformer, which is limited to 4xdown or 1x up). But, the MFE's single transfer limit is 128 EU/t, much higher than the amount of power the solar panels produce. The LV Transformer can output up to 32 EU/t to a single source, so this would be a likely candidate, and the 32->33 step looks almost too fitting to be a coincidence. However, he has two LV Transformers running, so the Energy Link should be able to ask for 2x 32 EU/t if it can use that much. Unless, of course, only one of the transformers is actually hooked to the Energy Link. The screenshot he uploaded makes it look like they both feed the same cable though.

If you play singleplayer, install this: http://forum.industrial-craft.net/index.php?page=Thread&threadID=5789 And you'll have no one, not two, but four electrical engines to choose from. If you run a server, it's more complicated. If you play on a server you don't run, it's probably impossible unless you're best buddies with the admin.

I don't think you can call it finished if it doesn't make Jaffa Cakes... :p

Then how can he gain a surplus (however slight) with 33 instead of yout 144 panels?

In the Buildcraft config file: - modifyWorld=false In the IC2 config file: - enableWorldGenOreCopper=false - enableWorldGenOreTin=false - enableWorldGenOreUranium=false - enableWorldGenTreeRubber=false In the Redpower config file: - rage about the lack of line breaks - optional: add line breaks (no, it won't save them) - adjust the following section: world { generate { copper=0 emerald=0 indigo=0 marble=0 nikolite=0 rubbertree=0 ruby=0 sapphire=0 silver=0 tin=0 tungsten=0 volcano=0 } In the mods folder: - delete mod_NetherOres.jar - optional: delete other mods you don't want

Quarry power usage: up to 9 MJ/t Solar panel power generation: 1 EU/t EU to MJ conversion: 5 EU == 2 MJ, but the Energy Link is bugged and only delivers roughly 90% of its MJ output. Therefore: 33 EU / 5 * 2 * 0.9 = 11.88 MJ. Or the other way around: 9 MJ / 2 * 5 / 0.9 = 25 EU You will need roughly 25 solar panels to power your Quarry at full speed during daytime. The reason why you need more than 25 to see a difference in your MFE is probably due to one or more of the following three reasons: 1) maybe something else is drawing power; 2) maybe you have distance-based loss in some cables and/or conductive pipes; and 3) some energy will "disappear" into the Quarry's internal storage, since it will only run at full speed if that storage is full. It's not gone though, you get that energy back when the solar panels shut off at night and the Quarry feeds on those reserves for a few moments longer. If you play singleplayer Tekkit (or have the means to get the server you play on modified) then there are other mods that add alternatives to the Energy Link that drain less EU/t, and also fix the bugged power conversion. For example, a Regular Electric Engine from the Transformers mod never consumes more than 12.5 EU/t, and outputs 5 MJ/t, allowing you to run your Quarry at a bit over half speed while imposing a hard limit on how much juice it can "steal". I added that to my own server because it is so convenient.

Sorry, I'm not that experienced yet with Tekkit. I thought that was what they were called. Guess I got some wires crossed in my head And no, it was definitely the frames. Literally everything else in the area, down to the last vanilla furnace, was shut down prior to that. It was the last thing we disabled. I'm not saying they're coded wrong, but maybe the way they are set up matters. That's why I was asking - if there's any known way you can "do it wrong" that causes massive bandwidth drain. Is it the act of moving that's expensive, maybe? With the active circuitry behind it permanently running to await signals from the owner's remote control, maybe the frames were constantly trying to continue moving further than they were able to?