Buildcraft - Industrialcraft

[amadans]

sorry for my ignorance in this matter, but i wanted to ask if there is a way to use industrialcraft power source (e.g. solar panels) for lets say quarries. if so, can someone please explain me how? ty :D

[Niavmai]

Energy link.

[kawaiiwolf]

Or electrical engine, depending on how many EU/t you wanna suck down. Power link will eat up 120 Eu/t, the engine only 6. The energy link does supply a lot more juice though.

[Neowulf]

By very careful with the energy link. Energy linking the quarry can spew out more items then you're prepared to deal with if you don't over-engineer your processing setup. And the filler on the clear pattern can easily overtax your client and server by breaking too many blocks.

I just got done clearing a 64x64x32 area underground, even in small 16x16 chunks only ~20 layers deep I had to hustle to pick up all the cobblestone before it nuked my machine. Each chunk ate about half a mil EU too (yay for geothermal mk2 and an overzealous ic2 miner/pump combo).

[Kmartinator]

Or electrical engine, depending on how many EU/t you wanna suck down. Power link will eat up 120 Eu/t, the engine only 6. The energy link does supply a lot more juice though.

Is this a number based on hooking a quarry to an energy link? The energy link is supposed to accept up to HV, so would that mean if I hooked an MFSU to an energy link, it would run 4 quarries at full tilt (ignoring the horrible spacing issues of such an idea)?

I guess, ultimately (and sorry if this question is too piggybacking on the original post), what is the most IC energy the quarry will actually use without bleeding out excess into nothingness?

[Nethaufer]

Is the energy link in the current release of Technic and I'm just missing it, or do you have to download it as an addon?

[KakerMix]

Is the energy link in the current release of Technic and I'm just missing it, or do you have to download it as an addon?

They are talking about Tekkit, not Technic. The reason it isn't in Technic is because we've moved on the Buildcraft 3 which isn't supposed by Power Convertors (Becuase it lacks SMP). We're on track with having it in Tekkit 2 though, because we are still on Buildcraft 2.

[Kmartinator]

So I don't know how reliable it is, but according to a random person who posted in the minecraft forums {shivers}, the energy link has a personal storage of 2500 EU to help it handle some excess from inputting large amounts of power. That would seem to be the cause of, say, your quarry still running for a little bit even after disconnecting power.

I don't know if this helps move forward the discussion of the intricacies of this silly little block, but maybe it'll jump start someone's brain on the subject?

[SimpleGuy]

Most blocks have internal EU storage, even ones you wouldn't think of.

For instance, all transformers store a little bit of EU.

[Kmartinator]

Most blocks have internal EU storage, even ones you wouldn't think of.

For instance, all transformers store a little bit of EU.

Okay, but that's generally only blocks that deal with EU, right? So, for example, the energy link will hold a small chunk of energy, but the quarry will not?

I'd still like to know, though, how much EU a quarry can suck down without wasting any. Hopefully I can benefit from someone else's painstaking research :)

[HalibutBarn]

In my experience, there doesn't seem to be any benefit in giving more than 24-32 EU/t to a quarry, as it doesn't seem to get any faster. The cutoff point might even be lower than that, those are just the levels I've tried myself.

What I do for my quarries is use an MV solar array, fed through an MFE for storage and a batbox to limit the drain rate, so that some of the energy is held back and stored and it can run at night as well.

[Leroy]

Okay, but that's generally only blocks that deal with EU, right? So, for example, the energy link will hold a small chunk of energy, but the quarry will not?

I'd still like to know, though, how much EU a quarry can suck down without wasting any. Hopefully I can benefit from someone else's painstaking research

In my experience, there doesn't seem to be any benefit in giving more than 24-32 EU/t to a quarry, as it doesn't seem to get any faster. The cutoff point might even be lower than that, those are just the levels I've tried myself.

What I do for my quarries is use an MV solar array, fed through an MFE for storage and a batbox to limit the drain rate, so that some of the energy is held back and stored and it can run at night as well.

Both the Energy Link and the Quarry have internal storage, but the Quarry's is in buildcraft's energy unit, MJ. You can basically ignore it though, as it's not a big enough buffer to keep them running for long without a constant source.

ANYWAY, so the Quarry will run at full speed when consuming 9 MJ/t.

The conversion rate that mod uses is 5:2, but the energy link has a bug which means it loses 10%. So the conversion is EU * 2/5 * 0.9 = MJ.

32EU/t * 2/5 * 0.9 = 11.52MJ/t - full speed quarry

If you rearrange the equation, you can find the minimum EU/t needed is 25EU/t. But since there's no convenient way to throttle current from an MFE to an exact value like that, I'd go with 32 =)

[milcondoin]

If the internal storage of your machine (be it from bc or from ic) would be more than filled by an energy chunk, it will only take the needed amount of energy and refuse the overcharge. Thus your Quarry will only drain 25 EU/t from your BatBox.

It's something along the lines of:

"Hey, I've got 32 energy here, you want?"

"32 is too much for me, I'm stuffed. I'd like only 25 please."

"OK, here are 25 for you."

The target then gets 25 and the source loses 25.

This example happens, after checking if

a) IC: correct energy-tier (a.k.a LV, MV, HV, EV)

BC: enough energy stored in the source

Fun fact for BC:

Machine X configured as minEnergyReceived = 30; maxEnergyReceived = 200. Energysource configured as maxOutput = 1 (Redstone Engine RE) with current stored Energy = 30.

X: "You've got 30-200 Energy for me?"

RE: "I've got 30 Energy stored."

X: "I'd like 30 then."

RE: "Sorry, only 1 Energy/pump from me."

X: "That's fine with me."

Intuitively I'd say: minEnergyReceived is meant as wanting at a minimum that much energy in one go. In the code it is enough, if the machine has enough energy stored. Thus a redstone engine can power everything, given enough time, as long as the recipient doesn't have loss of stored energy.

[Leroy]

That's how the machines within BC and IC work, but the Energy Link is from neither, and will just eat up as much EU as you send it, and excess MJ are lost.

Also, it doesn't seem to obey the same rules as IC. The Energy Link is hard limited to 72EU/t but it will happily draw that much through the output of an LV Transformer. Presumably, the transformer is happy to deliver more than one 32EU packet per tick, which shouldn't be allowed. =) That's why I would throttle it with a BatBox to get it to a reasonable level to power a quarry.

[milcondoin]

The energy link has an internal storage of 2500 EU. As soon as this storage is full, it won't accept any more EU. If at some point it has a storage of 2430 EU and receives an offer of 128 EU, it will only keep 70 EU and refuse the 58. Same as an IC machine would work. Same principle for output to BC machinery. It first checks how much will be accepted and then sends only that amount to the target.

Do you have conductive pipes between your energy link an the target BC machine? The pipes have an internal storage as well and will lose energy over time. So: Batbox -> Energy Link -> Wooden Conductive Pipe -> Golden Conductive Pipe -> BC machine will constantly drain energy out of the Batbox, even if the BC machine won't use up any of its stored energy. Using BatBox -> Energy Link -> BC machine will stop that behaviour.

Your Quarry will only drain 25 EU/t (after its internal storage of 7000 MJ has been filled), if there are no conductive pipes used, regardless of being powered by a Batbox or a MFE

[Leroy]

How big is the internal storage of gold conductive pipes? I guess I may have been seeing the excessive 72EU/t draw because it was filling up the internal storage of the conductive piping. You have to lay 101 pieces of gold conductive piping before you lose even 1% of your power, so it's not loss. My initial testing setup was:

MFE -> LV Transformer -> Energy Link -> Wooden Conductive Pipe -> Gold Conductive Pipe -> Quarry

This setup drew 72EU/t for a while.. something like 2-3 minutes, which at full speed is at least 72 * 20 * 120 = 172800 EU = 69120 MJ. ( * 0.9 for energy link bug = ~62000)

Since this is way bigger than the internal storage of the quarry I concluded that it was just drawing as much EU as possible and throwing away excess MJ. I'll be glad if I'm wrong since it means the Energy Link is smarter than I thought, and much more useful =)

[Nolzi]

How big is the internal storage of gold conductive pipes? I guess I may have been seeing the excessive 72EU/t draw because it was filling up the internal storage of the conductive piping. You have to lay 101 pieces of gold conductive piping before you lose even 1% of your power, so it's not loss. My initial testing setup was:

MFE -> LV Transformer -> Energy Link -> Wooden Conductive Pipe -> Gold Conductive Pipe -> Quarry

This setup drew 72EU/t for a while.. something like 2-3 minutes, which at full speed is at least 72 * 20 * 120 = 172800 EU = 69120 MJ. ( * 0.9 for energy link bug = ~62000)

Since this is way bigger than the internal storage of the quarry I concluded that it was just drawing as much EU as possible and throwing away excess MJ. I'll be glad if I'm wrong since it means the Energy Link is smarter than I thought, and much more useful =)

I'm sorry to disappoint you, but the Energy Link is dumb as bricks.

[milcondoin]

Wooden Conductive Pipes have a max storage of 1000 MJ, Golden also. Wooden pipes lose 1 MJ/100 ticks and they also lose 1% of the received energy by default. Golden ones lose 0.01% power. The pipes are exact (using double as the chosen format), while the machines use int. So 10 MJ become 9.9 MJ after Wooden, becoming 9.89901 MJ after Golden, becoming 9 MJ in the machine.

Another thing:

MFE -> LV Trafo -> ... uses 72 EU/t? LV Trafo has a max output of 32 EU/t and its internal storage is only 256 EU, so after a few ticks it should only use 32 EU/t max, since the LV Trafo acts as a throttle.

The Energy Link fills its internal storage of 2500 EU as fast as it can and after that uses only as much as is needed to become full again. The output asks the recipient how much it wants and then gives only that. If the recipient always wants everything, regardles if it can store it, then there is much loss involved, because the Link just trusts the recipient.

The Quarry answers with a loud GIMME ALL on the questions (25 MJ in building phase, 200 MJ in digging phase), regardless of its actual needs.

Yes, this is in contrast to my last posts, where I made a mistake regarding the quarry. Forestry machines, which use BC-Style energy, ask only for the needed amount. BC machines are dumb and want all. Using a throttle like a LV Transformer or Batbox is the way to go (but still: always connect the Energy Link directly to its target and scrap the power pipes).