1.1.8 New player Q's: Redstone Energy Cell, Redstone Energy Conduit and Liquiducts

[Steve From Marketing]

Hello,

I'm having problems finding out information about Redstone Energy Cells and Conduits.

Does the conduit have a max capacity of how much power it can carry over? I mean if I have single pipe of conduits how much power can I run through it in MJ/t or MJ/s?

When you examine a conduit with a multimeter it says "Saturation X,Y%". What does this mean?

When I examine for example a cell input with it it says "Average Distribution (X ticks): Y,Z". What does this mean?

I have a setup where I have a line of conduits like (A conduit input, B is cell, C conduit output)

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When I power my quarries from end of C output the multimeter says saturation is 100,0%. Does this mean it's topping out the amount of power I can run through it? Also the batteries deplete/recharge at varying levels. If I have my engine array connected to start of A input at say 80MJ/t does the cells get equal amount of recharge at 10MJ/t (8 cells, 80MJ/t input so 10MJ/t per cell)?

Also in the aforementioned setup do the cells discharge energy equally? So if I have the cells setup to output the maximum 100 MJ/t each do they discharge at equal level? Each tick each cell is discharged 100MJ? What if the output power requirement is below or above the amount the cell array can output? What happens if power requirement is say 1500MJ/t compared to 500MJ/t?

About liquiducts what is the capacity in those? I mean how much can they transport (?) in or out in mB?

[jakalth]

ok to start out...

energy conduits do have a limit to how much they can output and have a much higher amount that they can transfer. But this limit is a huge number... around 1000Mj/tick? Someone correct me if I'm wrong here.

Saturation is how close to maximum transfer rate you have reached.

Average Distribution is how much power the device hooked up to the conduit at that spot is asking for. and the (x ticks) is how long it monitored the results before averaging it out.

saturation means the conduit is full, as in it has more power in it then it can output. reason for this is cause your energy cells can output more power then the quarry can input at any given time. So this is normal. If it was below 100%, it means you can still supply more power to the conduit before maxing it out.

energy cells do not recieve power equally. it is a rather random method used to recharge them. Sometimes 1 cell will charge faster, sometimes another. and sometimes they all charge equally. same goes for draining them. you can force them to charge and drain equally by setting the input and output values on each cell to spread out the power transfer. but this is not really needed for anything that draws less power then one cell can out put.

if power requirement goes higher then 1 cell can output, 2 cells will do the job, or more then one connection to the cell will also work. each cell can output 100Mj/tick, Per Side. so for your example, 1000Mj/tick would either need one connection to 10 cells, or 2 connections to each of 5 cells, or... etc.

liquaducts output 100mb/tick, per output connection. but they can transfer more then that if connected to other liquaducts.

[phazeonphoenix]

Hello,

I'm having problems finding out information about Redstone Energy Cells and Conduits.

Does the conduit have a max capacity of how much power it can carry over? I mean if I have single pipe of conduits how much power can I run through it in MJ/t or MJ/s?

Yes but the limit is high upwords of 2000 MJ/t.

When you examine a conduit with a multimeter it says "Saturation X,Y%". What does this mean?

Best I can explain that is that the conduit network works both as a conductor sending X MJ/t down the line but also storing an amount of MJ if your power generation is greater than your power utilization. I use the figure as an excess of energy production indicator.

When I examine for example a cell input with it it says "Average Distribution (X ticks): Y,Z". What does this mean?

It's the average power utilization by that connection over X ticks. Can be seen as a direct indicator of how much power you're utilizing per tick. Sum all your averages together for your total.

I have a setup where I have a line of conduits like (A conduit input, B is cell, C conduit output)

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xxBBBBBBBB

xxCCCCCCCCC

When I power my quarries from end of C output the multimeter says saturation is 100,0%. Does this mean it's topping out the amount of power I can run through it?

I believe it means you're power input to conduit C is greater than your output from conduit C. Each cell by default wants to output 50MJ/t times eight that is a potential input of 400MJ/t connected to the potential output of (lets assume) two fully running quarries.

Also the batteries deplete/recharge at varying levels. If I have my engine array connected to start of A input at say 80MJ/t does the cells get equal amount of recharge at 10MJ/t (8 cells, 80MJ/t input so 10MJ/t per cell)?

This goes back to each conduit line being able to store as well as transmit energy. MJ acts more like a liquid than anything else. The energy in the line would behave similarly to how items running through BC transport pipes. When they reach a branch/fork/intersection they randomly pick a new direction to go in and go. Depending on pipe design that might favor certain destinations more than another.

Also in the aforementioned setup do the cells discharge energy equally? So if I have the cells setup to output the maximum 100 MJ/t each do they discharge at equal level? Each tick each cell is discharged 100MJ? What if the output power requirement is below or above the amount the cell array can output? What happens if power requirement is say 1500MJ/t compared to 500MJ/t?

This is the behavior I've seen. If there's a power input surplus, eg high saturation, the devices attempting to input power every tick try to push power into the pipe. Seeing that the pipe is full(ly saturated) no power is used/exchanged. Then a relatively small amount is pulled out of the pipe by a powered device. Next tick one input gets to output a bit of power to top off the pipe but every other input is denied since it's full again. How do they determine which is first? No idea it seems random.

If there's a power input deficiency, eg low saturation, the inverse happens. Power output connections are checking the pipe every tick for power and finding none does nothing. Insufficient power input occurs and one output gets a partial amount of energy chosen randomly.

About liquiducts what is the capacity in those? I mean how much can they transport (?) in or out in mB?

Actually most of what I said above applies to them. You get much more information about their capacity and throughput with the multimeter than you do with the redstone energy conduits.

[Steve From Marketing]

Hey jakalth,

Thanks a bunch. That's some sweet information right there.

I just noticed that if you examine a liquiduct with the multimeter it tells you the type, amount and transfer rate. I'm not sure what the amount means as I examined a liquiduct transferring water (14000mB) and another one transferring redstone liquid (7500mB).

This goes a bit off title but does a quarry also input power per side? And does this go for most other mods? So instead of sticking a single red energy conduit in my quarries I'd connect it with four conduits (left, right, back,down and up reserved for materials).

[phazeonphoenix]

machines take power from most sides and multiple connections per machine aren't needed. conduits do not have a limit of how much MJ it can output per tick, liquiducts do 100mb/t.

[Digdug83]

As a side note on quarries, they can consume anywhere from 1-100 MJ/t depending on how much you're feeding it and what it's currently munching through. I sat next to mine for about ten minutes once just spamming my multimeter and that was the range I got. On average though if it's working through non-ore blocks it takes up to 30 MJ/t. Ore blocks require more juice (or time if you're not feeding it a lot of power), I suspect in direct parallel with how much effort it takes to break them with a pickaxe. It can work with less than that but it can't work faster with more it seems.

[Steve From Marketing]

Phazeonphoenix thanks for your help. Your comparison of MJ to liquids in pipes is actually pretty brilliant.

Digdug83:

I actually examined a quarry with the multimeter and it said "Requesting 500,0". If you examine a cell with a multimeter it says "Requesting 100,0". This I think means that in the cell control panel you can see that (by default) it's input is set to maximum 100 MJ/t. So when the quarry is asking for 500,0 I think it means it wants 500 MJ/t. I also remember reading this from another wiki or forum post.

[Digdug83]

Actually I was examining the input side of a conduit that was leading from the energy tesseract, not an REC. It's entirely possible I'm wrong of course but I haven't seen any increase in quarry speed or efficiency with additional power. Although since I only use one tesseract frequency to supply power to all of my machines it has something on the order of 2000ish MJ/t to play with heh.

[jakalth]

Well, from all my use of a quarry, I have never seen it actually use more then about 40Mj/tick average over its full operation. That's running a 63 x 63 quarry from level 72 down to bedrock, through the occasional lava lake converted to obsidian. I have it supplied with as much power as it wants, but that ends up being how much it ends up using of the power available to it. Usually have at least 80Mj/tick available.

There are other devices that act the same way as the quarry. They claim to want much more power then they actually use. Seems like either a slight error in the multimeter or that is just how the conduits makes sure the devices get the power they will need regardless of supply.

[plowmanplow]

The numbers for BC Quarries are quite well established.

Straight from the wiki:

The quarry uses a minimum of 2MJ/t and a maximum of 32MJ/t to move its head continuously, and a flat 60MJ to break each block.

At the minimum energy usage it moves 0.11002blocks/tick (9.089ticks/block) therefore using an average of 6.6012MJ/t (60MJ/block*0.11002blocks/t).

Total power used is therefore the sum of the power used moving, and power used breaking blocks an is ~9MJ/t (2+6.6). Maximum energy usage uses 32MJ/t equating to a speed of 0.26m/t (26cm/tick). Average power usage per tick for the head to break blocks at max speed is therefore 15.6MJ/t (0.26blocks/t*60MJ/block), giving a maximum total usage of ~48MJ/t (32+15.6).