Expanded Mob Counter?

[Kalbintion]

I've been looking for a means to count large amounts of entities in an area. I know of the Mob Counter from MFR and am using it presently. However, it will only output a signal of strength 15 max. Using the projred red alloy wire allows for a higher value but each mob adds a larger number to the wire output value per mob, still limiting it to 15 at the max 255 value for them.

 

Anyone know of a sure-fire, efficient method for counting mobs (this includes farm animals) in an area?

[Loader]

The debug screen has an entities count in the top left - you mean other than that?  Is it for automation or for hunting lag or something?

[Kalbintion]

Its for automation purposes. I know of a few odd ways I could count entites (using a tripwire hook and the project red counter, while feeding the mobs only once through the counting system, but this method is entirely complex and can be more of a problem than not with the means I want)

 

Specifically, I created an automatic farm design, however the issue is there can only be up to 15 of the farm mob (chicken, cow, pig, sheep) in the pen at a given time due to the limitation of the Mob Counter. While this isn't necessarily a bad thing, since it will work, I would prefer to be able to keep more than 15 of any one of them in their pen to increase breeding rates and thus increase farm rates.

[Loader]

Why do you need to know the number?  Can you just set it up with however many breeders you want and then use a chronotyper to pull out the babies into another pen?

 

You'd have three chambers - a breeding chamber with a rancher, a middle chamber behind a bunch of chronotypers on one wall that pull in babies, and a third chamber behind another set of chronotypers that pull out the matured babies when they become adult to go into a grinder.

[Kalbintion]

The reason I am using a numerical value is to disable the grinder from being active (thus preventing some lag in my world due to the amount of machines running at the same time...its around a few hundred, not including pipes) until a threshold of mobs is hit. The other goal was to minimize the size of the farms as much as possible. I considered using the chronotyper but it isn't what I wanted to accomplish. The other method was to use the counter from project red but it does not give a redstone signal for values that are between the min and max and do not work as was intended here.

 

Another reason I want to do this is for the villager breeding system. Disabling it once 50 (or whatever number) villagers are in a chamber (regardless of growth) but this project was post-poned until an expanded mob counter system could be done without too much of a hassle.

[Loader]

Right, I see - it seems to me from what you've said that the chronotyper set up would work, but it'd be at least three times the size of a setup using that system if it could be made to work.

 

I don't have any better ideas than that, I'm afraid