BuildCraft Pipe that divides equally?

[Tyl3r684]

I do not know if it is possible, but. I need a pipe that will equally divide coal into these. Like a chest with an engine pumping to it, then like 2 to the first, 2 to the second pie, etc.

Is there any way to do that? Thank you!

[ZombieTwiglet]

The distribution pipe will do that. Say you have 10 machines all needing 2 coal, you put the distribution pipes all along where the normal pipes are except the last one, you set all the output except the one going into the machine and the one going to the next pipe to 0 then on the machine one you set it to 2 and the exit to the next pipe to 18, then the next pipe you do the same except you set it to 2 and 16, then 2 an 14, then 2 and 12 and so on.

[Omicron]

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.

[AQJ]

*A fork system of http://thetekkit.wikia.com/wiki/Teleport_Pipes#Distribution_Transport_Pipe as described above (but without the randomness)

*A loop with Insertion pipes, and then have a buffer of coal, have all the engines full, and then just "top them off" with a loop constantly cycling large amounts of coal

*Redpower retrievers set up a retriever system with RedPower tubes instead

A fork system is probably cheaper, but takes up a large area of space...

[ace223]

Wont buildcraft automatically split the Coal between the 10 engines?

putting one into each of them, then starting again?

have you just tried that?

[AQJ]

@ace223 it will do a random pipe at each intersection

so Buildcraft would put half the coal into the first engine and then do the same for the second engine...

so the engines would get

50%

25%

12,5%

5,75%

etc etc

[Omicron]

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.