turtles, self replicating

[Raewin]

Just tried it with crafting tables, my Java crashed half an hour due to insufficient memory

[Viktor_Berg]

That's terrifying. An area of upgrade would be to avoid using EE, or at least limit its use to convert other blocks into fuel.

[gavjenks]

That's neat, but EE is pretty lame for this. Obviously the turtles should collect the resources to build more of themselves.

[stringburka]

Agreed with gavjenks. It's awesome it's possible, but forcing the turtles to collect resources themselves (or to construct automated mines, or at least to gather fuel for the mines you set up) would probably both allow the project to keep going for longer periods without crashing and be faaaar cooler.

[Rareden]

yes i have no interest in EE its way too op and i want to create a fully self sufficient system/ai

[Raewin]

Hehe, the purpose of the setup is to test if they turtles are able to start up another recently placed turtle and then launch that turtle. Of course i'll agree that it will be the best if im able to create self-replicating turtles with just ComputerCraft alone.

Also, the setup above was using the previous version of computercraft which doesn't include fuel and crafting table. The later version made the process harder due to the fact that turtles constantly needs fuel. The only idea i can think of is to constantly plant sapling and converting wood to charcoal to provide fuel for the rest of the crew (Which take foreverrrrrrrrr). And then the turtles will have to constantly mine blindly like a quarry because of their range of sight. The turtles will have trouble identifying blocks id since .compare() require a comparing block. It's not impossible and i'll update and try it when im free.

[gavjenks]

Hehe, the purpose of the setup is to test if they turtles are able to start up another recently placed turtle and then launch that turtle. Of course i'll agree that it will be the best if im able to create self-replicating turtles with just ComputerCraft alone.

Also, the setup above was using the previous version of computercraft which doesn't include fuel and crafting table. The later version made the process harder due to the fact that turtles constantly needs fuel. The only idea i can think of is to constantly plant sapling and converting wood to charcoal to provide fuel for the rest of the crew (Which take foreverrrrrrrrr). And then the turtles will have to constantly mine blindly like a quarry because of their range of sight. The turtles will have trouble identifying blocks id since .compare() require a comparing block. It's not impossible and i'll update and try it when im free.

I see no reason to restrict it to computercraft alone. Simply not EE.

Don't see any problem with involving BC, auto crafting tables, redpower, or IC2. For instance, mining turtles can carry around IC2 miner machines, drills, pipe, transposers, and solar panels, and provide coal to their teammates who focus on other jobs like wood chopping/growing, ore processing or crafting (due to limited inventory space)

However miners may not even be necessary. A 9x9 area has about 3/4 of a stack of coal in my experience on average, enough for about 4000 block movements. Turtles mining in straight lines down in a chess knight pattern from each other would require 1000 block movements (down 64 x 16 turtles, then over 9, then go back up in the next area. Slight differences depending on how big an area a batch is for you). So even without any very intelligent behavior,you could easily reveal every single block of value in a chunk without using more movement than about 1/4 of the coal available in that same chunk.

All you need to build a turtle is about 7.5 cobblestone, 1 redstone, 2 logs, 7 iron. The main bottleneck is diamonds, needed for mining turtles. Every chunk has about 4 or 5 diamonds. The other resources would outstrip this easily. Thus, you have enough per chunk to make probably about 1.5 new mining turtles, and as many other support turtles as you need, and their fuel.

If you need 16 turtles per chunk, this means a crew would need to process about 10 chunks before having the resources to construct another duplicate crew to branch off from them.

By using IC2 miners, you can put all your excess iron to use, though, and duplicate new miner crews (of a different type) more quickly than the diamond bottleneck would allow (because you need dozens of diamonds for a crew of dumb mining turtles, but only about 12 for 4 IC2 miners that would cover a whole chunk)

ALSO by the way, don't forget the power of ender chests. Turtles who find a lush forest or suitable growing area could leave 1 or two turtles behind as long-term foresters / loggers, who cut down trees, run themselves on charcoal, and then plant and harvest more indefinitely, placing their winnings in a wood storage ender chest that others can access elsewhere. Allowing processing of the oceans, for instance, to go more quickly, since turtles there wouldnt have to wait for trees.

By the way #2, the turtles should be programmed to incinerate any blocks that are not valuable for making more turtles (including gems, copper not needed for macerators and things, nikolite, etc.), in order to make it harder for humans to overthrow them. =P

[warpspeed10]

With IC2 you can also have some farmer turtles that farm a bunch of wheat/ reeds. They can craft these drops into plantballs, run then through a compressor to make compressed plant clumps, and add those to tin cans to make biocells. They can run these biocells through an extractor to create biofulecells. Now all they have to do is place them into a canning machine with an empty fuel can to create filled fuel cans. Then they can fill up on fuel and keep running.

This isn't the simplest system, however it nesesitates the turtles needing a machine hive in order to keep functioning. They need dedicated farmers, fuel deliverers, machine builders, and power creators.

[gavjenks]

Again I think there's plenty of coal to do everything you could ever want.

Also: new thought!

We are simply talking about replicating, but crashing a server with only a few chunks stripped of resources and a few hundred turtles or whatever isn't very spectacular. I think a better plan is to self replicate until you have a decent processing capacity, like 10 chunks a minute or so, and then switch over to world destruction mode, where you stop making more turtles, and instead just strip every block bare in the whole world in a spiral pattern, keeping only coal and wood to burn, and destroying everything else (just drop it behind the turtle in full stacks and let is despawn). EVERYTHING. Until the world is bare air down to the void.

You can even drain oceans. Just have a grid of turtles place cobble all around and then dig it up, and that layer of ocean is gone. then move down. Doesn't require any extra movement beyond standard mining patterns, so no extra coal. For speed though you may want to have some turtles carry water source blocks (available from UU matter) so they know when their region is an ocean.

And since youre not replicating anymore, it would be more reasonable to have a central control area distributing more difficult resources to the frontline with ender chests. Things like explosives would make the whole job much faster, if you are willing to program the extra intelligence to use them, and once you have enough supply per minute, you wouldnt run out after replication stops.

[stringburka]

Gavjenks makes this sound even more frakkin' awesome.

However, I think it would be more interesting for them to start building superweapons/nukes and targeting player-built stuff if possible, rather than just mindless destruction. Putting forests on fire might be a good idea, but I'd rather see the turtles build nuke cannons to fire on player bases or use deployers to attack them with muskets than just draining an ocean. One feels more "metagamey".

[Rareden]

lol my turtles shall rule the world with all this

[Raewin]

Everything will be much easier if .detect() returns block id.