Power Production Methods?

[Vas]

I was trying out Tekkit again after being gone for a long time and it seems the fusion reactors kinda suck. I need lots of power to power large AE systems with many disks. For example, 50 disk drives all full of 64k disks (that's 10 each drive). So far the only thing I can find that can do this, is biofuel.

units/t = AE Power, mj/t = Buildcraft power, eu/t = IC2 Power, kj/t = UE power

ME Controller takes 6 units/t, 1.2mj/t, 3eu/t, or 1.2kj/t

ME Disk Drive takes 2 units/t, 0.4mj/t, 1eu/t, or 0.4kj/t

ME 64k Storage takes 2 units/t, 0.4mj/t, 1eu/t, or 0.4kj/t

1 ME Controller, 50 ME Disk Drives, 500 ME 64k Storages takes;

1106 units /t, 221.2mj /t, 553eu /t, 221.2kj /t

shows a reactor design that produces 0.06 mega joules a tick. Assuming 1000kj is 1mj, that means 60kj/t right?

I'm trying to figure out what each of the power methods produces but some of it isn't very well documented. The turbines are what produce the power for theAtomic Science (UE) system, but it doesn't tell you how much power each turbine produces. Biofuel Generator produces 16mj/t in Buildcraft power which has always produced the best amount of power with the least amount of work in the past for me. I am using a solar farm as well with Galacticraft's Advanced Solar panels which work really well but only work during the day. They actually work better than the fusion power system I set up, it's barely working at all. Likely to glitchy to work. What other power systems are there that can be made self sufficient?

[Valkon]

The fusion reactor setup shown in the video isn't actually very efficient; you get a significantly greater deal of power out of one if you use steam funnels over the water and pipe into turbines (among other things). You may find this guide helpful, it's what I used when I got around to actually bothering to learn how Atomic Science's reactors worked.

As for other forms of power generation, I can't say I know of any you haven't mentioned that are in the current recommended version of Tekkit; however, if the development builds are any indication, we may be getting the Big Reactors mod with the 1.6 release of Tekkit, which will provide a few additional options for power generation.

[Vas]

I may end up leaving tekkit anyway if I find something better, I found that in this version of Tekkit, a lot of my fav things are gone which kind of annoy me. Seems a lot of good things always end up getting deleted from Minecraft in some way. I don't know if I'll look at that guide, it's way way way to much text. Video and images are much better.

[xylonez]

If you don't even have a steady amount of power supply for your AE network, then you can just forget about making yourself a fusion reactor.

As for your storage system, use DSUs and storage buses. That's your clue right there.

You shouldn't need that much 64k storage drives even if you pre-formatted them.

Also, MJ stands for Minecraft Joules not Mega Joules. 1 reactor turbine (small one) gives you 2.25MJ/t and you just multiply it by 9 for the big one.

With that being said, you can still make a biofuel power plant that can generate as much power as a fusion reactor could generate.

My biofuel power plant can generate about ~2.2k MJ/t on demand.

[Vas]

There's this Fulmination Generator, but it seems useless because there are no explosives in the game, and antimatter crashes the game completely and corrupts your game files. I'd have liked it if it was an actual working mod. Pfft. Apparently the stuff you make with Antimatter can't even be made because none of it exists in the mod, so antimatter seems to be totally utterly useless right now. The power sources in this game seem like they are nerfed to always require vast massive super systems in order to prevent you from having automated compact systems to power large devices. :/

[weirleader]

I'm trying to figure out what each of the power methods produces but some of it isn't very well documented.

I may end up leaving tekkit anyway if I find something better, I found that in this version of Tekkit, a lot of my fav things are gone which kind of annoy me. Seems a lot of good things always end up getting deleted from Minecraft in some way. I don't know if I'll look at that guide, it's way way way to much text. Video and images are much better.

So what you're really saying is things aren't documented in the manner you would like; I think it's always good to operate on the principle that if you don't like the way things are then show everybody how to do them better. In other words, if you prefer something documented with video and images, then by all means do so and share.

If a lot of your favorite things are gone then you're probably better off playing Classic or Lite. Things are different. Not better/worse, just different. Current Tekkit isn't supposed to be Lite+new stuff. They're constantly making changes, some because they can, some because they are limited by updates/glitches/interoperability.

Some of your concerns have to do with partially-developed mods. It's true that some aren't really firing on all cylinders yet, but there's not a lot that can be done about that other than being patient. And power sources in this game are tiered; some are easier to create and produce a certain limited amount of power or have maintenance limitations, others produce vast amounts of power and require complex setups. I'm just getting started with the fusion reactor myself (based on the post mentioned above), but it's shaping up to be pretty awesome. In the end, I guess if you don't like it then you should just vote with your feet.

Apologies for ranting a bit, but I figure the guys putting this all together are doing an awesome job and don't get enough thanks. Instead they get complaint after complaint from people who want something customized to their specific tastes.

It just occurred to me, you can always make your own custom modpack...

[Valkon]

The power sources in this game seem like they are nerfed to always require vast massive super systems in order to prevent you from having automated compact systems to power large devices. :/

Personally, I prefer the larger, more complex systems over smaller ones, easier ones (see: Nuclear Reactors vs Solar Panels/Arrays in IC2), mainly because I think the ones that are more involved in the setup are more fun and interesting.

But that's just me.

[xylonez]

I don't get what you are trying to say.

Are you trying to say that atomic science is useless? or what?

Because it seems to me that's what you are implying here.

I think it's a well known fact that the choice of power source is kinda limited (mainly biofuel / fusion reactor for high-end setup), but I don't think it's nerfed at all. If any, biofuel is OP.

A 4x4x4 setup with 24 Biofuel generator can easily power your AE network (and still having a surplus of ~100 MJ/t), and you could probably make it more efficient/compact if you don't care about aesthetics.

[Vas]

So what you're really saying is things aren't documented in the manner you would like; I think it's always good to operate on the principle that if you don't like the way things are then show everybody how to do them better. In other words, if you prefer something documented with video and images, then by all means do so and share.

If a lot of your favorite things are gone then you're probably better off playing Classic or Lite. Things are different. Not better/worse, just different. Current Tekkit isn't supposed to be Lite+new stuff. They're constantly making changes, some because they can, some because they are limited by updates/glitches/interoperability.

It just occurred to me, you can always make your own custom modpack...

No I meant that things aren't documented very well because I go to the mod sites or wikis and find that they don't mention a lot of information. Like when I tried to find the min/max that turbines produce (from spinning slowly to spinning max speed) and it didn't even say anything remotely related to how much power it produces.

I don't like the idea of making my own mod pack because then I have the extremely difficult task of managing the entire thing on my own while I don't know java and won't be able to fix any of the issues myself, having items conflicting with each other and such. I mean the previous versions of this tekkit were amazing, except for the fact that there was a huge lack of updates causing bugs to just stay. I mean the guy who made biofuel reactors said his mod had already fixed all of the bugs I was talking to him about, but the author of the mod pack was being to slow to update. Now that the pack finally got an update, he removed half the decent things and for some reason some moron renamed all pipes and such from liquid to fluid. An absolutely useless change that just makes it harder to find stuff for a while. Distribution pipes are now gone, same with some modules in the power suit such as mob repulser and lead blower, power suit appears to be broken because none of the power generation devices on it generate power anymore. (I've already made sure all my modules are off)

I mean if you plan to change things, aren't you supposed to change things for the better? Not for the worse. And if it's a change, shouldn't you be calling it a new mod name like Tekkit 2.0? And then just update the older one till all the bugs or most of the bugs are gone. One thing I don't get is, why is antimatter even in this mod pack, if it can't be used in anything at all other than to crash and totally utterly destroy the entire map 100%?

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Someone said you can use pipes to channel steam, but that doesn't appear to work at all. I had to get a tank full of steam then have 4 steam engines pump all that steam into 4 different pipes at once into all 4 corners of a large turbine just to make it spin. One pipe line above boiling water doesn't even spin a single small turbine except maybe half an inch every minute. Those giant square steam funnels don't work at all, fluiducts (You know, liquiducts before some idiot renamed them) don't work at all (which is my preferred method of transferring liquids), and it cuts the production by 99/100ths, if a single turbine directly over boiling water spins rapidly, why does it not spin but half an inch a minute with a pipe 2 blocks tall over boiling water?

I've tried these systems out extensively and it's really hard to find precise information on the mods and when I started working with the Fulmination Generator, I found out that the absolute only explosive in the game that you can use in it, causes the map to become corrupted and totally destroys everything making it a totally useless addition at this current time, especially considering that you can't craft anything else with the antimatter.

I guess I have to stick with biofuel because it's the only power source in the game that doesn't require a super complex mega ultra system, and is the only one that can be 100% fully automated. Unless you like make a binary fusion system and remove one side from being functional on both, then it might be possible to automate that in some way.

I would definitely like my own mod pack, but I do not have the skill to create one. Even with a tutorial thing that tells you how to put one together, that tutorial doesn't tell you how to deal with bugs that occur because of 2 packs conflicting and these are things you have to fix yourself, the owners of the mods likely won't help you other than say "remove the other guy's mod". A long while back when Minecraft was still pretty new and bukkit was a huge thing, I used to run a minecraft server and it was insane trying to manage my server with all of the plugins I had to keep updating all the time. I made sure to update once a month unless a critical bug was fixed, but it was still insane at times especially when mod authors tend to abandon their projects later on (xcraftgate being the best world to world and teleportation system there was at that time) so I really don't want the stress of that all over again. I'm on this version of tekkit simply because it's the only one with Galacticraft up to date with Mars.

[xylonez]

Someone said you can use pipes to channel steam, but that doesn't appear to work at all. I had to get a tank full of steam then have 4 steam engines pump all that steam into 4 different pipes at once into all 4 corners of a large turbine just to make it spin. One pipe line above boiling water doesn't even spin a single small turbine except maybe half an inch every minute. Those giant square steam funnels don't work at all, fluiducts (You know, liquiducts before some idiot renamed them) don't work at all (which is my preferred method of transferring liquids), and it cuts the production by 99/100ths, if a single turbine directly over boiling water spins rapidly, why does it not spin but half an inch a minute with a pipe 2 blocks tall over boiling water?

1. Fluiducts not being able to extract steam from steam funnels is a known issue on the 1.2.x version of tekkit (hence the beta build, if you know what "beta" means). Ranting about stuff that doesn't work when you are playing a version that is not stable is just fucking retarded.

2. Fluiducts or liquiducts were never able to extract steam directly from the boiling water. Gets your facts right first.

3. Do your homework or research first before you rants here.

I don't want to be rude, but a guy gave you a link on how to setup a fusion reactor (even with step-by-step pic) and you simply dismissed it by saying it has way too much text. Yet you are complaining that the fusion reactor isn't working for you. Yeah, sure, you've tried it extensively. All of us here that can manage to build one must be either liars or idiots.

You need to either become less ignorant or just get lost.

[Vas]

1. Fluiducts not being able to extract steam from steam funnels is a known issue on the 1.2.x version of tekkit (hence the beta build, if you know what "beta" means). Ranting about stuff that doesn't work when you are playing a version that is not stable is just fucking retarded.

2. Fluiducts or liquiducts were never able to extract steam directly from the boiling water. Gets your facts right first.

3. Do your homework or research first before you rants here.

1 & 2, I don't remember exactly where, but I do remember something saying liquiducts and pipes were supposed to be able to transfer steam, but they don't. If it's a bug then fine, but even so pipes barely transport that steam too. Not enough to even turn one small turbine 2 blocks up. Some of my turbines turned when routed with pipes, but very very super slowly compared to directly above the water, and some didn't turn at all.

I don't want to be rude, but a guy gave you a link on how to setup a fusion reactor (even with step-by-step pic) and you simply dismissed it by saying it has way too much text. Yet you are complaining that the fusion reactor isn't working for you. Yeah, sure, you've tried it extensively. All of us here that can manage to build one must be either liars or idiots.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/30270697/Clipboard01.jpg - So, where exactly are these pictures you speak of?

http://voltzwiki.com/wiki/Fusion_Reactor - The video on this page shows how to build a fusion reactor, I followed everything exactly and only 5 large turbines actually turn on, others slightly spin or don't spin at all. It does not provide enough power to run a super tiny AE network, it produces less power than 72 solar panels. I've been trying many different designs as well, none of them worked out any better, some even failed completely. My design work has shown me that the fusion reactor has a range of about 8 blocks, and is totally random so it doesn't always have that range which makes it inefficient for running a system if it's only randomly heating some water. The only sure thing is that it'll heat the water 1 to 2 blocks away from it's self, the rest are random. I'm still doing some tests here and there but I've found a lot of things wrong with it that make it terrible for providing power when you could do a more stable system with less work.

Fission reactors explode after a while unless you get a control rod and such, and then you need to manually do the fuel for them which takes away automation.

Solar arrays are nice, though they take up a lot of space as they should. I use Heavy Aluminium Wire for it all, since it's the only wire in the game it seems, http://wiki.micdoodle8.com/wiki/Heavy_Aluminum_Wire and has no range limit from the info I see. This seems to be the absolute best system there is as it's totally automated and self running.

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After having fiddled around with the design for a while, I think it's bugged. I will provide some screenshots though and some info on my test of the Fusion Reactor. I will also provide a spreadsheet for tile placements.

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/30270697/MC/1.png , https://dl.dropbox.com/u/30270697/MC/2.png , https://dl.dropbox.com/u/30270697/MC/3.png

3.png shows power levels of each turbine after checking every so often. Text is in the image but I'll say again here. Red = no spin, orange = slow, yellow = semi fast, green = fast, purple = max. Speaking of fans, my laptop fan just stopped for a second. Hah. I'll post this now and edit in additional information, just in case my laptop is about to fail. Don't want to lose this typed stuff so far.

First strike shows what the turbines were at after 2 minutes of being powered on, the reactor maxed out with Deuterium Cells. I started it with half a battery, that's 2500kJ. Second strike is 7 minutes later than that. Third strike is 20 minutes after that. After I cut the cables to collect the power, I had a total of 5521.93kJ in power. Started with half a battery and about half an hour later it filled one battery and about half a percent of another battery.

Spreadsheet of setup: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Ao4izdINg3HfdHhNTm1HRmhpb1U1UDgxdU11d3VMS3c

I've tried many other designs, maybe I can put them all in the spreadsheet but it appears this system is semi functional at the time and you can't really automate it.

New design screenshot; https://dl.dropbox.com/u/30270697/MC/4.png

Purple circle indicates that the turbines went to maximum speed after about an hour, for about several minutes or so, filling 33 energy storage devices. The big red circles with the large red lightning indicate that turbine has not turned on at all, not even in the slightest. The other colors are the same for the previous one.

[Valkon]

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/30270697/Clipboard01.jpg - So, where exactly are these pictures you speak of?

Obviously there's more than that, but I couldn't be bothered to link together multiple screenshots of the thread and whatnot.

[Vas]

Yea, half the page down and hidden inside text, so I didn't notice it when scrolling down. Sorry. That's still a very large amount of text, I did much better setting up a fusion reactor system with the video I watched. It seems though that fusion reactors are broken so even if I did read this text tutorial, it would be pointless. They slightly kinda sorta work here and there. As you can see from my previous post with links and such.

I will go ahead and try the setup mentioned there with all the images though, it will take a while so I won't reply till later, possibly till tomorrow.

[xylonez]

1 & 2, I don't remember exactly where, but I do remember something saying liquiducts and pipes were supposed to be able to transfer steam, but they don't. If it's a bug then fine, but even so pipes barely transport that steam too. Not enough to even turn one small turbine 2 blocks up. Some of my turbines turned when routed with pipes, but very very super slowly compared to directly above the water, and some didn't turn at all.

In 1.1.10, you gotta use your wrench to set your liquiduct to extract mode, then power it with a redstone signal. Maybe that's what you are missing.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/30270697/Clipboard01.jpg - So, where exactly are these pictures you speak of?

http://voltzwiki.com/wiki/Fusion_Reactor - The video on this page shows how to build a fusion reactor, I followed everything exactly and only 5 large turbines actually turn on, others slightly spin or don't spin at all. It does not provide enough power to run a super tiny AE network, it produces less power than 72 solar panels. I've been trying many different designs as well, none of them worked out any better, some even failed completely. My design work has shown me that the fusion reactor has a range of about 8 blocks, and is totally random so it doesn't always have that range which makes it inefficient for running a system if it's only randomly heating some water. The only sure thing is that it'll heat the water 1 to 2 blocks away from it's self, the rest are random. I'm still doing some tests here and there but I've found a lot of things wrong with it that make it terrible for providing power when you could do a more stable system with less work.

Then you are doing something wrong. Posts your setup here and maybe we can figure something out, but blaming the mods when it works for the others is not the way to go.

Solar arrays are nice, though they take up a lot of space as they should. I use Heavy Aluminium Wire for it all, since it's the only wire in the game it seems, http://wiki.micdoodle8.com/wiki/Heavy_Aluminum_Wire and has no range limit from the info I see. This seems to be the absolute best system there is as it's totally automated and self running.

Are you sure you are running tekkit 1.1.10? Because AFAIK, tekkit 1.1.10 doesn't have heavy aluminium wire nor solar panels/arrays.

Your picture in the spreadsheet is not per layer and that makes things even more confusing (based on your picture, the glass is one layer above the electromagnet at the top).

But I think I get a rough idea of what's happening. Your fusion reactor only have 4x4 spaces for the plasma to run into, making only 10x4 electromagnet that's effective.

A big turbine requires steam from 9 block of boiling water to run at full speed, and not a single one of your turbine is receiving that amount of steam.

That's why the one that's spinning is only the one in the middle cross-line, because the rest of the water is not boiling.

[Vas]

Tekkit 1.2.2, I locked the game version so it wouldn't update anymore. I used "the latest" not "the recommended" when I downloaded this a few days ago.

I just followed this exactly; Atomic science power generation. Tips and tricks. (Post 11) and it still isn't working. I will upload my entire save file with several of my reactor setups. If there isn't another reply here by the time I get this uploaded and set up, I'll post again with my save. My net is extremely severe during the day, high packetloss due to someone running equipment on the same frequency as my dish and refusing to change their channel. I do love the method in that post though, with all the pictures. It looks much nicer, if only it worked. I refuse to use pipes, it must be liquiducts so if they don't actually work, then I won't be able to use that method.

[xylonez]

Tekkit 1.2.2, I locked the game version so it wouldn't update anymore. I used "the latest" not "the recommended" when I downloaded this a few days ago.

There's a few weird interactions between fluiducts and steam funnel in 1.2.2. It isn't stable yet, so.. yeah..

[Vas]

There's a few weird interactions between fluiducts and steam funnel in 1.2.2. It isn't stable yet, so.. yeah..

Yea, I tried the reactor I saw in the steps and it looks much nicer, it just doesn't work. I said I'd upload the save file and such, but that'll have to wait. My dog died this morning and it looks like she was poisoned by someone intentionally. Rather depressed about it so I haven't gotten around to building my previous reactor designs and uploading them all. I will eventually. Just, not likely today, or tomorrow. :/ Do you know if fluiducts were fixed with steam in 1.2.3? I can see them currently filled with steam, but it won't turn the turbines at all.

[xylonez]

Yea, I tried the reactor I saw in the steps and it looks much nicer, it just doesn't work. I said I'd upload the save file and such, but that'll have to wait. My dog died this morning and it looks like she was poisoned by someone intentionally. Rather depressed about it so I haven't gotten around to building my previous reactor designs and uploading them all. I will eventually. Just, not likely today, or tomorrow. :/ Do you know if fluiducts were fixed with steam in 1.2.3? I can see them currently filled with steam, but it won't turn the turbines at all.

I feel sorry for you. I dunno the specific details about AS in 1.2.x as they were still in testing phase. Someone said in the thread that if you put the fluiducts first and then the steam funnel second, it will work. If you put it in the reverse order, the fluiducts will say that it has steam in it, but it won't extract it. I'm not too sure on this though, you might wanna check on the 1.2.4 thread later.

I know

[Shawn Mullins]

I think steam going through fluiducts got fixed in 1.2.4 but all Atomic Science IDs got changed so everything built in 1.2.3 that is an Atomic Science item will vanish if you load a 1.2.4 world. The IDs were switched back in 1.2.5, however the steam interaction between funnels and liquiducts was reset ( i.e. broken again) in 1.2.5 but there is a simple fix, you could also do this with a 1.2.2 version if you don't want to update. Go into your tekkit folder, by default, if using Win7, it is

C:\Users\YourUserNameHere\AppData\Roaming\.technic\tekkitmain\config

once there find the AtomicScience.cfg file, open it with notepad, scroll down and find the line that says

B:"Allow Layered Turbines"=false

and change the word false to true, save and close the file, reload minecraft and you will be able to pump steam through funnels, into liquiducts and into reactor turbines.