Applied Energistics 2 stage patterns

[Prototype958]

Hello again! Brand new to AE as of yesterday. Almost have my network set up completed, few more pieces to go. Just adding patterns right now but I'm curious about something.

I'm looking for someone to enlighten me a little about the patterns for the ME networks. I've watched a bunch of videos on AE in general, but I haven't found one that talks about what I'm calling "2 stage patterns".

Basically what I'm trying to find out is if there's a way to create crafting patterns that are smart enough to say, "Alright this pattern needs a piston, but we're out of pistons. I have the mats for a piston, and a pattern on how to make it. I'll make a piston and add it to the recipe I'm doing".

Also maybe for something that needs to be outsourced? Say I tell the network to build 10 Energy Conduit, but I only have enough Hardened glass for 8, is there a way to set up the patterns to have the network automatically craft that glass if the materials are there?

I tried doing this with the Golden Processors in that I set up the recipe for the assembly, and set the output to the final smelted version but the network couldn't seem to figure that one out(yes I have the powered furnace intergrated properly)

[Daemon_Eleuel]

are you talking about molecular assembly chamber patterns?

as long as you have both the pattern for the <whatever uses pistons> and the piston in the chamber, it will create the piston as necessary.

same goes for any shaped crafting.

Smelted things are a bit more tricky, personally I just set various furnaces and similar with a storage bus on the output, this allows for nice "on request" availabilty and a proper buffer (normally 64 items).

[plowmanplow]

This is just how ME crafting fundamentally works. If you ask it to craft a combustion engine and you don't have any iron gears, as long as you have recipes in your MAC for wooden, stone, and iron gears the system will craft your engine as you would expect.

As for things like hardened glass, you still make recipes for those, but instead of putting the recipe in your MAC you put the recipe in the recipe section of a ME Interface attached to an Induction Smelter.

[Prototype958]

as long as you have both the pattern for the <whatever uses pistons> and the piston in the chamber, it will create the piston as necessary.

Huh... I thought I had tried it like that, but I guess I was mistaken... I'll go check it out again right now.

As for things like hardened glass, you still make recipes for those, but instead of putting the recipe in your MAC you put the recipe in the recipe section of a ME Interface attached to an Induction Smelter.

Again, thought I had tried that with the Basic Processor Assembly, but I must have done something wrong. I'll go double check my patterns and give it a shot now.

I'll have to look into that Storage Bus idea as well. I've seen them in NEI but I haven't worked with them yet. Need to do some research on that front.

Thanks for the advice guys. Like I said, only been working with ME for about a day now, finished my MAC last night and have been filling it with patterns all morning. Just trying to get as many things down to a single click as possible. =P

[Dewfire]

For pistons, since they use wood, you need to make sure you have that wood in your system. Jungle, Oak, Spruce etc, if your pattern was made using Spruce, and you only have Oak, then it won't make it. Same for all other wood items. If anyone knows a way to have it use Wood in general I'd love to know!

For things like harden glass you have to create an ME Interface, and place it next to the furnace, you then have an export bus on one side feeding it say Lead and it keeps the lead in the Smelter at 64, then when you request Harden Glass from the system, it feeds in the pulverized Obsidian and out comes the glass. At least that's how I have it set up in my system.

[Daemon_Eleuel]

You can change the type of wood from one to another using a minium stone.

That should allow you to convert all your wood to one type and avoid the problem.

wood difference is just aesthetics afaik.

[Prototype958]

That's an interesting little quark about the different types of wood, thanks for the heads up! I'm sure I would end up beating my skull against the wall when I messed that one up. Lol

Alright I've got the simple things working like the Processors, but I'm still struggling with the hardened glass and I'm assuming it has to do with the way my induction smelter is set up. Is the Export bus smart enough to handle the multiple outputs from a single side of the smelter, or do I need multiple busses exporting to the appropriate input sides of the machine?

I currently have it set up just like all my other intergrated machines with the Interface on top, export bus coming in on the side and input bus coming out of the opposite side. I'm going to go build another export and try playing with the Induction's input configs and see if it will work with a 2 Export busses right now.

[Daemon_Eleuel]

indeed, you need 2 export bus, one for lead and one for pulverized obsidian.

The sides don't really matter as long as they match the machine configuration, which you can change from the third tab from the top.

if you only use one export bus the machine will be filled with 128 lead ingots eventually.

On the output you can either use a storage bus (this will "show" the output buffer as a chest to the ME network, retrieving items from there on demand) or an import bus that will just move the items to the ME network storage as soon as they are made (which will lead you to run out of pulverized obsidian or lead).

[plowmanplow]

Or, you can just do it the "right" way and put an ME Interface on the TE machine with one or more appropriate crafting patterns in it.

[Daemon_Eleuel]

in that case you have to wait for the items to be smelted/whatever then :|

[weirleader]

Or, you can just do it the "right" way and put an ME Interface on the TE machine with one or more appropriate crafting patterns in it.

Even if you do it the "right" way, you need to be careful. I tried that and when I requested 128 hardened glass it filled the Induction Smelter with 128 pulverized obsidian and had no room to add lead. So you either have to be careful to only request in batches of 64 or less, OR you have to have one side configured to always be full of one resource (e.g., pulverized obsidian) and then add the other side's resource (e.g. lead ingots) as requested.

EDIT: somehow missed the comment above that had mentioned two exports... my bad.

[Karaktar]

using the interface works fine for me mind you anytime i happen to be in my system i always order a stack of stuff like the hardened glass and other things that i have set up to be on demand processing

[Prototype958]

http://forums.technicpack.net/threads/pictures-making-applied-energistics-work-with-an-induction-smelter.45001/

Wow, don't know how I missed this post when I was looking into this problem... Seems like they fixed it by making both outputs the same color? From what I understand as long as I don't request so many that it would try and put more then a stack of one component in, I should be good that way. I'll test it when I get home.

Anyway, for the record, I am using an Interface on top of the machine, I have that on all my machines and it works fine for them. I also have the correct pattern in the machine with the correct recipe on the pattern.

I'm at work right now so I can't test anything but I will as soon as I get back.

Set up when I left was 2 Export busses, one on the back going to the "Purple" input, one on the left going to the "Green" input(those 2 are the defaults I believe), Interface on top of the machine with the pattern for Hardened Glass in it and an Import Bus on the right.

I'm looking for more of an "On Demand" solution, if I ever need to use the Induction Smelter for something else(probably wouldn't anyway but just in case) I'd like to be able to just drop in a new pattern and go instead of having to reconfigure the setup.

[TokiWartooth]

Prototype every induction furnace recipie has a "common" ingredient and a "rare" ingredient, the way I set this up is to constantly keep a stack of the common ingredient in the induction furnace via an export bus on one input, and the rare in the recipie in the interface on top, thus any time I request that material it sends the rare ingredient and gets crafted, this keeps only one stack of common in the furnace, it does however make each Induction Furnace into a unitasker but this is smart because you can do multiple smelt jobs at once by setting up multiples.

all the other ways of doing this can lead to jam ups and problems, except maybe the storage bus removal method, though that is kinda slow because you have to keep coming back to pull out more materials.

[Prototype958]

Thanks Toki. I guess that makes sense. I'll have to rework my setup a little so I have room to incorporate an extra Induction Smelter or 2 if I need them later I guess. Seems like that's going to be only solid solution.

I haven't looked into it before, but I'm assuming that the single slot on the Export Bus will let me pick which component comes through it? If that's the case then just putting one Lead in the Bus feeding the "Purple" input slot should keep Exporting lead for me so I don't need to worry about it anymore. I'll be sure to give it a try when I get home tonight.

Also, I just have to say, you guys are fantastic. I've posted a few times here this week as I dig deeper into the new Tekkit pack and every time I get the same handful of people responding quickly and with a lot of good information. Thanks for all the help everyone!

[Karaktar]

The other way to do this is just use an interface and keep 1 of each thing in the induction smelter then it can never jam up as it takes 2 obsidian dust for each job so there will always be extra sitting in it

[Dewfire]

My thought on this follows with Toki. You have a Basic Export Bus on one color for Lead, so it keeps 64 lead sitting in the one spot in the Smelter GUI. You then place an ME Interface on the other color, and put in a crafting patter of 2 Obsidian Dust = Harden Glass and you place that in the Interface. Then for the Import Bus you set it on the Orange output on the smelter and it grabs anything the smelter makes and places it back on the network ready to be used.

With this, you can request stacks as you need them, or the network can smelt it as needed.

[Prototype958]

Woah woah woah... The Interface actually needs to be on an input color? I just thought it had to be connected to the top of the TE Machines... I completely misunderstood all those videos I watched. I guess that makes sense though... All my other machines are still set to the default input specs which is usually input from top and left...

What I had before for all my TE machines was Interface on top, ME pipe connecting that to the network, and an Export bus going into the right of the machines... I thought the Interface just told the machine what needed to be done, I didn't even think of it actually putting the components into the machine... wow I feel dumb. Thanks Dew, that would have caused all sorts of problems for me down the road, I'm sure of it.

[Dewfire]

Glad I could help! I love AE, and I have used it extensively in my builds. Once you start to use it more, you will to I think. Nothing like clicking on Liquiducts or Energy Conduits and having stacks of them pop out ready for you to use without all the hassle!

[CharlieChop]

I read that most of you just keep the furnaces stocked up with one type of material. There are some videos around that show you how to setup a network that will only use the materials required for the amount of items requested.

There's tons of video tutorials on the AE website that will greatly help you improve your networks and make them extremely efficient. in this case what you need is a Subnetwork, and BevoLJ showcases it quite well, using the Energy conduit as an example. (isnt that exactly what you need?)

http://ae-mod.info/Videos/

Just scroll down into the Subnetworks tutorial by BevoLJ.

[weirleader]

do subnetworks exist in rev10.n?

EDIT: think I get it now. It's not subnetworks that I'm really asking about... it's directional ME Interfaces. I'm going to take a closer look now that I'm using Tekkit 1.1.5

[CharlieChop]

i use subnetworks for my farms, ore processing and well... basically anything i want. from fertilizer production to deep storage units taking retarded amounts of cobblestone and dirt. What do you mean with directional interfaces? i cant really think of a way to use just a single interface.

[weirleader]

sorry, think I just need to watch the complete videos first (I did a quick skim); then I'll have a more educated response.

[CharlieChop]

pay close atention to what he says, i think that towards the end of the video he shows how to craft energy counduits, from scratch, nada. the system automatically does the liquid redstone, obsidian dust...everything.

[Dash16]

The Mindcrafters also have a good series of videos on AE:

http://wiki.technicpack.net/Applied_Energistics_Video_Tutorials