Fix the Luminators excessive EU drain

[Lazersz]

Building a high tech, modern metropolis with electric lights is really difficult when you need the entire output of a two cell nuclear reactor to power a few lights.

[The Merchant of Menace]

Luminators take up as much as they need to fill their internal storage, which is pretty massive, once it's full, they stop eating energy so badly.

I suggest using Redpower lamps though.

[Lazersz]

I think they should have an internal storage of maybe 100EU - then just stick with lightly drawing power from the main grid. Is this something I can edit myself?

[Pulse95]

I personally like using the Luminators, because when my power is low it makes my base look like it is in critical condition. I like that realism feel. I think you can edit the files to fix your problem, but it would be better to ask the IC2 forums rather than here.

[Lazersz]

That's why I like them too, only my power isn't low, I have a nuclear reactor being exhausted by a few lights. Most are on now but some are flickering on and off and it's quite annoying. Might try charging them with a crystal.

[gotyaoi]

How are you cabling this? Have you taken EU loss over distance into account?

[NinjaStyle]

Redpower lamps can be powered with a redstone torch just saying...

[Made_You_Look]

According to the wiki, the luminators have 10k eu storage, and use .25 eu/t. I'm pretty sure if you're using all of the power from a nuclear reactor on "a few lights", something isn't right.

[NightKev]

Why are you asking (well, demanding) that the Technic team "fix" this, anyway?

[atheneftw]

a nuclear reactor with 2 uranium cells has 40eu /t output, since each luminator takes 0.25 u will be able to light up 160 luminators with it (more like 100 because of eu loss)

isnt that more than enough? :P

[Wooden_axe]

some machines will "request" power whenever their internal reserve is "not full", and with LV EU packet size being the size it is (32 i think), and with the luminators requesting power every tick, thats ALOT of power going to waste, and cropmatrons are guilty of this as well

[Made_You_Look]

some machines will "request" power whenever their internal reserve is "not full", and with LV EU packet size being the size it is (32 i think), and with the luminators requesting power every tick, thats ALOT of power going to waste, and cropmatrons are guilty of this as well

Well, that just plain sucks. Seems like a bit of an oversight on the modders part.

[Torezu]

Alternatively, you could only switch EU feed on for a little while. It doesn't take long at 32 EU/tick to fill the luminators' internal supply.

[gotyaoi]

I just tested this, and that's sort of the opposite of what was happening. Those two machines will attempt to keep their internal buffers full, yes, but only when it's missing at least one packet worth, that is 32 EU. This was tested using an EU detector cable. For the luminator, which consumes .25 EU/t, or 5 EU/s, the cable lit up about every slightly less than 7 seconds, meaning it had time to use up almost 35 EU before more came through the wire. Similar results for the cropmatron, which uses 1 EU/t, or 20 EU/s. The cable lit about every slightly less than two seconds, plenty of time to use up at least 32 EU before it got more.

I didn't test this with longer wires though, which could have an effect given the lag between request and receive. Be right back.

Edit: Stuck a 38 block long glass fiber cable in there. Absolutely no change in behavior.

Final conclusion: Machines only appear to request power if there's room in their internal buffer for a full packet. Not tested with machines that take a higher packet size than 32, but I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader.

[Wooden_axe]

very interesting, I may have to test this when I feel like it on my own time,

[Torezu]

...but I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader.

Be careful about using this phrase. It can actually cause flashbacks and hallucinations in anyone who's survived a bachelor's degree and above in an Engineering field or any of the hard sciences. :D