BatBox Grids vs MFE?

[erdrik]

Ok, For my first play through Ive deticated myself to teir 1 energy sources only.

Im including Storage devices in this rule and as such Ive made a .. possibly over the top BatBox Energy Storage room.

Not counting all the Batboxes Ive got placed along my exclusivly copper wiring, this room alone contains 132 batboxes:

NOTE: The lamps on the Batboxes are set to turn on when the bat box they are on is full of energy, while the ones on the floor are lever triggered and just for lighting.

(At the time of this pic, the room was half full)

At 40,000 EU each thats a total of 5,280,000 EU when full to capacity.

Since I obviously don't need to worry about raw storage capacity, what benefits(aside from MV output) does a MFE offer over this setup?

(I actualy have another 28 batboxes, but thought this may be enough... lol XD )

[gavjenks]

1) Cheaper

2) Easier to set up (your time)

3) Much less lag, as there are many fewer things for the game to calculate.

[warpspeed10]

Wow dude that's really cool. It's totally over the top and not necessary, but I like it nonetheless.

[erdrik]

1) Cheaper

2) Easier to set up (your time)

3) Much less lag, as there are many fewer things for the game to calculate.

Mmm.. All three of those is a non-issue for me.

So no other benefit? Like a machine that exclusivly requires MV or higher energy or anything like that?

@warpspeed10:

Thanks. Im gunna fill it up and see how many machines I can built to drain it all again. XD

[gavjenks]

Well also:

4) You can't charge stuff like nano armor or energy crystals in a batbox.

5) It has very limited energy transfer speed. In many cases you can get around this by using many batboxes in parallel. but that's not good enough for some things. Like electrolyzing water is painfully slow with batboxes and you cant use wires so you cant hook it up to 8 of them. Or powering a teleporter also wont use wires, so at most you can pack 5 batboxes around a teleporter, which will limit your max teleport range to like... 50 blocks or something.

6) Obviously as you have discovered they use a ton of space. Which makes you more visible on pvp servers, but even if you don't play with pvp, still just makes everything vastly more complicated and difficult.

7) It's a lot harder to see how much power you have (you need crazy setups like the lights display you have, etc., and even that is very crude compared to exact numbers in a GUI)

[Industrial Miner]

Like electrolyzing water is painfully slow with batboxes and you cant use wires so you cant hook it up to 8 of them.

Electrolyzers only work with MFE's and MFSU's. Otherwise it'd be much easier to charge your cells up, as one batbox charges up quiet fast.

[erdrik]

Electrolyzers only work with MFE's and MFSU's. Otherwise it'd be much easier to charge your cells up, as one batbox charges up quiet fast.

Err... The 7 Electrolized Water Cells required to build my Centrifuge Extractor, were charged in an Electrolyzer thats was being powered by a single BatBox. So yea,... Pretty sure Electrolyzers work with BatBoxes. (tho as gavjenks said, it was indeed painfully slow)

[Industrial Miner]

Err... The 7 Electrolized Water Cells required to build my Centrifuge Extractor, were charged in an Electrolyzer thats was being powered by a single BatBox. So yea,... Pretty sure Electrolyzers work with BatBoxes. (tho as gavjenks said, it was indeed painfully slow)

Oh nevermind. Still I remember that the wiki said that only MFE's and MFSU's could use them.

[gavjenks]

An electrolyzer requires the storage device to be 75% full. But it also charges with a speed proportional to the output of the battery. So batboxes work, but 1/4 as fast as MFEs, and 1/16th as fast as MFSUs

[warpspeed10]

The question you need to ask yourself is, did you have fun building your batbox array? If that answer is yes, then there is no problem. If you want to be able to charge nano or quantum armor, you can hook up an MFE or an MFSU to the end of the line. 32 EU/t transfer rate is faster then many power generator setups, so it's not as slow as you might think. If you want to electrolyze water cells, just place the electrolyzer next to the MFE/MFSU at the end of the line. Remember though, most machines accept only low voltage, so you will need a medium voltage transformer to convert high voltage to medium, and a low voltage transformer to convert medium voltage to low.

[GreenWolf13]

Or, you could setup a charging bench Mark 3. That would charge your quantum armour.

[erdrik]

I did indeed have fun setting it up.

Not looking to charge anything specific.

Its just that Im getting some odd readings from the EU-Reader, at my solar panels, and thought there might be some issues with lotsa BatBoxes like that.

5 Panels(per cluster) feed into a line of Tin cables, which join up at one face of a batbox(so each solar panel cluster has one input face).

It been that way for a while and it seems the panels produce more EU than the BatBox can put out, since it gets charged full even when my machines are running.

So then I added my wind mills and water strainers(through another Batbox connection), and now the EU-Reader says the solar panels, and there tin cables are at 0 EU/t(during the day)...

I thought maybe I wasn't drawing enough energy, but I got 2 quarries(with directly connected energy links), 6 induction furneces, 2 rotary macerateres, 1 compressor and 1 singularity compressor, 1 centrifuge extractor, and an electrolyzer all hooked up to the grid.

All the advanced machines have levers switched on so they are constantly working.

I currently have 40 Solar Panels, 4 wind mills, 20 water strainers, and a geothermal generator.

with that should I be out producing the machines or should they be drawing more than the generators can handle?

[warpspeed10]

Well I can answer your weird EU readings. It sounds like the amount of EU your water strainers are producing is greater than or equal to 32 EU/t. In that case, the batbox will always be full, and will never ask the solar panels for any of their EU (hence the 0 EU/t reading). What you can do is divide up your generators into clusters of less than 32 EU/t and connect each one to its own batbox. As long as the clusters generate less than 32 EU/t, your bat boxes should never totally fill up until everyone else down the line is full.

[Wendo]

Also, an LV transformer would still be tier 1, but it'll transform up to MV. With enough batboxes in parallel it'd probably work pretty well, but you'd have to be careful of the copper wire losses

[erdrik]

Well I can answer your weird EU readings. It sounds like the amount of EU your water strainers are producing is greater than or equal to 32 EU/t. In that case, the batbox will always be full, and will never ask the solar panels for any of their EU (hence the 0 EU/t reading). What you can do is divide up your generators into clusters of less than 32 EU/t and connect each one to its own batbox. As long as the clusters generate less than 32 EU/t, your bat boxes should never totally fill up until everyone else down the line is full.

DX ... that would require a complete restructuring of my facilities. lol

Well, Ill have to keep that in mind for the future.

Fortunetly(in a way), Ive met the goal line for my first play through.

Tested all the things I wanted to, made all the crude automated machine clusters I wanted to.

I will keep the world, but I think its time to start a new one with less limited play rules.

Thanks for the help.

EDIT:

Incase yer interested:

Overhead view

WindMills, and a Auto Sugar Cane test build

Interior of my first stage storage facility

The Factory Floor

How I named my machines

And a close up of one of them. (221 Grinder Smelter. Currently making glass and sand.)