Noob questions (quarry, pipes, engines)

[Jdoki]

Hi,

First post, please be gentle!

Just started playing Tekkit having only ever played vanilla MC. Really enjoying discovering stuff!

I managed to set up a quarry powered by two Steam engines. They are cooled by an Aqueous Accumulator. I have the quarry attached by pipe to a chest for storing stuff. I also created a chest that would feed both engines fuels, and managed to get that going with a Redstone engine and pipes.

But I've run in to a couple of things that I'm hoping someone can help answer / advise.

When one of my Steam engines empties of fuel material, it starts filling with material that has been quarried. If the second engine empties it also starts filling up. Any ideas how to stop this?

The same goes if I have different types of fuel material in the feeder. I've been using different types of wood to begin with, but if some oak stuff reaches an engine filled with birch, the oak pops out. Is there any way to buffer this?

Finally, is there any way to use a single chest to feed multiple engines and have it send material equally between them? I'm finding one engine gets significantly more fuel - even though the pipes are symmetrical (this seems to be worse once the redstone engine heats up).

I'd like to keep any solutions simple / low complexity as I'm enjoying building knowledge.

Thanks!

[PessimiStick]

Diamond transport pipes. Set the filters on the color facing the engine to any valid fuels you have in the chest it's pulling from, and then loop the rest of the pipe back to the chest. Anything that isn't on the filter or won't fit in the engine's inventory will just keep moving down the pipe back to the chest. There's no simple way to guarantee even distribution down forking pipes that I'm aware of (Edit: I was wrong -- Distribution Pipe will do this), but if you just add more fuel than you'll need it shouldn't be too much of an issue (both will stay at 64 as they keep getting refilled).

As an aside, wood is a terrible fuel. Coal/Charcoal (burnt wood) is many times more efficient.

[weirleader]

When one of my Steam engines empties of fuel material, it starts filling with material that has been quarried. If the second engine empties it also starts filling up. Any ideas how to stop this?

Are they all on the same pipe network? I'd keep my fuel pipes separate from the quarry resources pipes.

The same goes if I have different types of fuel material in the feeder. I've been using different types of wood to begin with, but if some oak stuff reaches an engine filled with birch, the oak pops out. Is there any way to buffer this?

What you might want to do is look at the variety of pipes available to you -- check out the wiki entries for Buildcraft and for Additional Pipes.

There are pipes in there for filtering and for round-robin delivery for equal distribution.

[Jdoki]

Thanks for the answers. I'll start looking at more advanced pipes. Was only using basic stuff like stone and wood while messing around. Will definitely change to better fuels once I have finished experimenting.

@weirleader. My output pipe from the quarry to storage chest is a separate network to the pipes coming out of the feeder chest to engines. I guess if I can keep the engines filled it won't be an issue any more, just seemed a bit odd.

Thanks for the wiki link. I did go digging (no pun!) around in there - but didn't get further than waterproof vs transport...

[weirleader]

well if they're not connected, I don't know how quarry resources are getting into your engines.

I'd pay special attention to the Emerald Transport Pipe, the Diamond Transport Pipe (although they're a bit expensive, with a quarry you should have some emeralds and diamonds), Distribution Transport Pipe, Advanced Wooden Transport Pipe, all good an potentially useful depending on your design.

[dwwojcik]

I suspect the steam engines come up as a valid inventory for the quarry to shove stuff into once the fuel runs out and the engine is finishing burning the last piece. I'd separate the engines from the quarry with wooden conductive pipes.

[weirleader]

oh, right! I didn't even consider they were directly connected! I have been using conduits for so long...

[CharlieChop]

Try using insertion pipes too. Cheaper and will onky insert items while possible. After that they just go on. All you gotta do after that is feed it back to the chest.

If youre getting too much trash from your quarry use a void pipe atached to a diamond pipe. That way you can discard cobblestone, gravel and dirt. Leaving the usefull stuff get into the chest and give you more space. Void pipe is just ink and something else.

If youre using wood turn it into charcoal by smelting it. Its a lot more efficient for your steam engines. And at the same time you single out your fuel source and its less of a hassle tok keep those engines running

[Jdoki]

Thanks again for the suggestions.

I ended up using a combination of things from a few of the responses. Void pipe to trash the cobble and dirt and a diamond pipe to filter in to the storage chest. Diamond pipes to filter to the engines. Distribution pipe to split fuel between the three engines equally; all looped back to feeder chest. Also an iron? pipe to regulate flow direction at one point. I also split the engines away from the quarry using conductive pipes - and this stopped the engines filling with quarried material when empty.

It worked like a charm until a rogue creeper undid a lot of the good work (oh well, such is life - and I learned a lot!).

Since the Creeper I've been trying to use Phased Conductive and Waterproof pipes to transport energy and water - but have had zero luck so far. If anyone has an idea of what I'm doing wrong I'd appreciate it. I'm sure it's something obvious - but the lack of info on the web about these set ups has me confused.

My set ups...

Set up 1.

Aqueous Accumulator -> Waterproof stone pipe -> Phased Waterproof Pipe. (Set to Send Only, Channel 1)

Phased Waterproof Pipe -> Water Proof stone pipe -> Steam Engine (Set to Send & receive, Channel 1)

(The pipes in to the Steam Engine feed in against the grey side of the engine)

Set up 2.

Steam Engine -> wooden Conductive Pipe -> Phased Conductive Pipe (Set to Send Only, Channel 5)

Phased Conductive Pipe -> Wooden Conductive Pipe -> Quarry (Set to Send & Receive, Channel 5)

(The Wooden conductive pipe is attached to the 'red' end of the Steam engine)

Neither set up works. I've also tried transmitting the power from the Steam engine to a Pulverizer to see what happens. Any ideas?

[Viktor_Berg]

Don't use phased pipes, they don't work. Use Tesseracts instead.

[Jdoki]

Well that clears that up!!

I've not used Tesseracts before, but thought they had a massive energy drop off (20%?)

[Viktor_Berg]

That's not a big deal, really. You shouldn't be so starving for power that a 20% loss is a huge thing.

[Jdoki]

Nice, thanks Viktor_Berg. Something new to research tonight!

[CharlieChop]

iirc tesse drop is 25% in this version...... can anyone confirm this?

[dwwojcik]

That's what I've heard.... but imo its not that big of a deal. If you send just a little power through, you only lose a tiny amount of power, and if you send huge amounts of power through, you've got plenty of power to spare. If 25% is too much for anybody I believe there is a config option.

[Viktor_Berg]

In the newer versions of TE, the loss is 20% in tesseracts and 0% in conduits. I think 1.1.5 RC has that version of TE.

[dwwojcik]

In the newer versions of TE, the loss is 20% in tesseracts and 0% in conduits. I think 1.1.5 RC has that version of TE.

Ooo, nice. I don't like disappearing power.