Powering a big home (?)

[fspro15]

I have a HUGE mansion on a server (attack of the b-team server, ofc), and I think it's cool to have a basement where the electric room is located. Where the main "switch" is, that will cut the power to every electric thing in the mansion.

Back in vanilla minecraft, i'd have to use a normal redstone current going from every redstone lamp and stuff, and end in the basement and be connected to a lever.

 

But now i've started playing on an attack of the b-team server, so I dont want to use the old boring vanilla minecraft stuff! It would be cool to use cables/wires through the mansion, and lots of generators and machines in the basement that help run the power through the place! So that it will look kinda like real-life.

 

I know this might make me sound like a real noob... but I really like getting advise here, gives me inspiration.

 

So, do any of you know how to do this? How to "make" a basement like this? What blocks (machines etc.) I have to use? I'm think maybe machines or something just being down in the basement continuously powering the mansion.

 

Thanks in advice! :-)

 

Long and detailed answers are also just fine :-)

[StratusNightstar]

One option for power is a compression dynamo with liquid xp from the liquid xp mod. If your building is very big you may want to think about Tesseracts to transfer power from the basement to the different areas to reduce the amount of wiring. Another power option is a lava fabricator with magmatic dynamos.

[kdports]

My idea would help for the basement itself. I don't know about the shutoff though. Jsit's Set it and Forget it Power works REALLY well and gives you almost unlimited power fairly cheaply. I was able to do it, and I'm a complete no

Edited July 6, 2014 by kdports

[pirahnah3]

a small mob grinder setup will give you a ton of power if done up right and its easy. As for running power around, they have these neat bundled cables that you could use so you could actually have a few different circuits even. If not you could simply pipe some redstone power pipes everywhere and then just remove one. The more you look into this the more options there are. If you really get into the cables you can actually get into a lot of stuff with timers and all that to have the house turn on and off the lights for you. 

[Kalbintion]

Bundled cables are for redstone signals only, not for power. My best suggestion for transferring power is the use of tesseracts as running conduits in a building not designed to hide wires, etc can be a problem (it also becomes a problem if you try to run project red pipes with conduits, as you'll end up having to go around them in some cases which would be more pipes/conduits and is just more painful)

 

As for power systems, there a ton of options for "set it and forget it" systems - revolving around tree farms, XP, mob farms, etc... Each with their own server performance hits and advantages. I personally use the XP system with enough dynamos to procure 10k RF/t, which is the maximum the redstone energy conduits can handle anyway. This particular setup is another forget it type system, but it isnt by any means the only one.

 

Another power option? Solar panels, while they don't produce a ton of power, you can overcome this with stupid amounts of them on a space station, and itd be set forever and itd be passively generating power during the day cycle (ie: have cells store power, otherwise no night operations really).

[Loader]

Rednet cables/controller are the best option for redstone signals and controlling on/off switches in terms of size and allowed complexity (much of the complexity can be replicated with a large room and the Project|Red logic gates, but it's a lot more server CPU friendly especially with some timer-like circuits).  The Rednet energy cable is the second-best of the power cables (1/5th of the Redstone energy conduit) but it also takes the rednet redstone signal so it makes a great choice for small to medium power requirement bases (honestly 2k RF/t is more than enough for almost anything except if you're deliberately building around the 10k RF/t limitation).

[fspro15]

Thanks for the answers!

But is it not possible to connect redstone lamps (or similar) to these machines via cables/wires? The wires don't seem to "connect" to the lamps!

[Loader]

Okay let me be a bit clearer, think of it this way - there are two types of cable;

1. Power/Energy cables : These transmit RF or kW (conduits, galacticraft wires, rednet energy cable).
2. Redstone/Signal cables : These transmit a redstone on/off signal from something like a button, torch or lever (project|red wires and cable bundles, redstone dust, rednet cables, rednet energy cable).

A machine like an oxygen compressor takes just power/energy.  It runs all the time if it can, and fills up with energy.  If it isn't working, it doesn't use any energy.

 

A block like a redstone lamp or illuminator takes just a signal.  If there's a signal it's on, if there isn't, it's off.

 

A machine like a redstone furnace or a pulverizer takes both energy and a signal.  It uses energy up to function, and it turns on or off with a redstone signal (it doesn't use any power when there's no work to do, or it's off).

 

 

I favour the rednet cables due to its natural free-standing nature, cheapness (mostly plastic and redstone), ease of connection co-ordination (you set the colors using a wrench, not by dying an insulated cable) and advanced options that you can use or completely ignore (the rednet controller can allow you to have light dimmer switches, pulsing lights, buttons which act like levers in the system etc.) but people often like the project red version as they're almost identical to the late stage redpower stuff technic users were used to already.  I suggested the rednet energy cable if you have to take power as well as it means there's only one core cable running around, you can power and turn on/off machines from one connection (really useful for compact power generators).

 

 

EDIT:

Another power option is a lava fabricator with magmatic dynamos.

As an FYI, this is not an option for generating power, it uses up more power than it makes (if it seems to be generating power then odds are you're using galacticraft wires and a power generation infinite loop bug that can corrupt chunks and worlds).

Edited July 6, 2014 by Loader

[DanielUSA]

Anywhere I can find any more information on rednet cable? I always use energy conduits and wire due to the fact I thought those where the only two forms on carrying energy.

[Melfice]

RedNet cables don't carry power.

They just carry a redstone signal.

Edited July 6, 2014 by Melfice

[Loader]

RedNet Energy Cable carries power and a redstone signal (twice the power a hardened conduit carries).  The basic RedNet cable only carries a redstone signal, so make sure you're using the right one (the power carrying one has a yellow framework around it).

[Melfice]

Oh, my bad.
I didn't even know there was a RedNet Energy Cable.

[Loader]

I think it's been in MFR for a couple months - I vaguely remember seeing it a while back but I only tried using it recently (and was pleasantly suprised by how much power it takes).  The only thing I feel is missing from it is that you can't shut off the power - if you have an orange power output and apply a redstone signal on an orange input that travels, but the power flows freely regardless of those colour settings (so if the redstone signal has no effect on a machine then it doesn't do anything).  I guess it lets the machine charge from any input colour and output colour, but it just seems like a missed opportunity for more control to me.

 

Daniel, the rednet energy cable behaves exactly like a conduit in terms of power transport, it can simply also take a redstone/rednet signal (for which purpose it behaves exactly the same as the basic rednet cable).  It can connect to basic rednet cable so if you have a 'control room' with signal inputs/outputs only then you don't have to bring the more expensive cable to it.

[Kalbintion]

 (honestly 2k RF/t is more than enough for almost anything except if you're deliberately building around the 10k RF/t limitation).

 

I am actually building around the 10k RF/t limtiation. Actually doing it where I need roughly 50k RF/t being generated in total. 40k RF/t of that going to laser drills at their max 5k RF/t. The other 10k RF/t going to public use/local machines (w/ about 1.2 billion RF stored)

[Loader]

Yeah, stuff like the laser drills are a good example of where a 10k+ system becomes truly useful, but it's not hard to provide that for a short distance (conduits have a ridiculous max throughput, the limit is by connection).  Don't the laser drills take 10kRF/t?

 

EDIT: Just did some testing, looks like 10k total, 5k from two prechargers is the maximum (either there's massive diminishing returns beyond that or it simply wastes excess power).  That would mean it's possible to max them out with the rednet energy cables or even the hardened conduits (the hardened conduits would need two power sources though).

 

EDIT2: For some reason I thought hardened cables take 1k RF/t, they're not able to max out the laser with those at the 400 RF/t limit - you can get close with 4 prechargers (8k max).

 

EDIT3: Rednet energy cables seem to handle throughput limits 'properly', rather than per connection, so they should max out at 8k too.

 

EDIT4: Testing the maximums on Rednet energy cables shows they're taking 1k RF/t max, not 2k (this means that if you can split them 5 times from the source and keep them separate all the way, they can provide 5k max per precharger/source combo.  Given that you'd almost need a redstone conduit to feed that source anyway means that'd probably be a better option all round).

Edited July 6, 2014 by Loader

[PoisonFrog]

While we're on the topic of power generation, I figured I may as well take the opportunity to show off my current power setup; I know Loader likes to look at the pretty pictures anyway.

 

Having recently moved over to a new server, I found myself needing a new power setup. Last time around I'd used a ton of solar panels in space to make lava for magmatic dynamos, but I felt like mixing it up a bit.

 

I started out with this:

 

 

The bottom compartment holds six vanilla mob spawners (4 witch, 1 skeleton, 1 zombie) that I'd moved there with Block Teleporters. No light whatsoever, of course. At floor level there's the frame of an Enhanced Portal hooked up to a timer; every couple of seconds it pulses briefly, portalling everything in the room to the glass compartment up top; small enough to be handled by a single MFR grinder (initially powered by inferior, temporary means, but not anymore).

 

The mob essence I was making with that was just the first step, though. It mainly goes to this:

 

 

Bottom compartment holds an autospawner with a King Slime, 'exact copy' is set to 'yes'. Mob essence from the first grinder is being used to fuel this. Similar to the first grinder, the King Slimes get ported up to the chamber above; I'm not using MFR grinders for this one, though. As the King Slimes would always get ported to the exact same spot, I put an Autonomous Activator in the floor there, pointed upwards, and placed a TConstruct Cleaver inside. Looting III, a Flux upgrade for easy recharging, and enough damage to one-shot the King Slimes (not hard). Since it only takes a single hit to kill the King Slime, a fully charged cleaver lasts for AGES.

 

 

Slime channels help draw whatever drops out towards the corners, where it gets collected by Vacuum Hoppers. Strategically placed Ember Moss in the corners helps to kill off anything else that might decide to spawn in there. XP Showers pour the XP orbs out onto LXP Collectors; the LXP and various item drops get tesseracted away.  Some of the LXP gets converted to Mob Essence (via a hidden Unifier) to help fuel the Autospawner even when the vanilla spawners are inactive due to nobody being near them; the vast majority goes HERE:

 

 

The main "body" of the tank is a solid 9x9x9 cube of OpenBlocks tanks, with a bit more up top to make it look less boring. It fills up surprisingly quickly; King Slimes drop a LOT of XP, I guess. 

 

Meanwhile, at my other base a few thousand blocks away, the LXP gets tesseracted to my actual power generation system:

 

 

52 Resonant Energy Cells (though I started out with Redstone ones until I could get enough Enderium) in a 14x14 square, with as many Compression Dynamos as I could fit in; they're being fed with LXP and water, the water stored in two tanks fed by two Aqueous Accumulators each. Each energy cell feeds into the one clockwise of it; the idea is that the power should go around and around, making sure none of the dynamos stop working until ALL the energy cells are full. The positioning of the square is such that all the energy cells and all the dynamos are inside the same chunk, so I only need one poppet shelf to keep it all loaded. Got a tesseract in one corner sending the generated power off to wherever I might need it; might add some to the other corners for symmetry, but that might just be my OCD acting up again.

 

(That was a joke. I don't actually have OCD.)

 

The King Slime brings in plenty of neat drops, too. All the slime tools just get shunted into a Nullifier, but I've set up Deep Storage Units to hold Miniature Red Hearts (current count: 2425), Miniature Yellow Hearts (current count: 11435) and Gelatinous Slime (current count: 70063). Everything else gets dumped into two double chests; if those should happen to be completely full, excess stuff gets Nullified to prevent jams. The drops from the vanilla grinders comes through here, too.

[Loader]

I know Loader likes to look at the pretty pictures anyway.

Guilty as charged

 

Looking at it I'd say it stores around 2,600,000,000 RF and generates at a maximum of a bit over 10k RF/t (11,200?), that's pretty good for a generator that fits in a chunk and is only 3 blocks tall (or it could be, if the aesthetics weren't such a priority).

 

Looks like I've got to add liquid XP to my list of 'things I need to use to power my base because it looks awesome'!  How do you have the output from that set up?

[DanielUSA]

I like how it look like an oil rig.

[PoisonFrog]

Guilty as charged

 

Looking at it I'd say it stores around 2,600,000,000 RF and generates at a maximum of a bit over 10k RF/t (11,200?), that's pretty good for a generator that fits in a chunk and is only 3 blocks tall (or it could be, if the aesthetics weren't such a priority).

 

Looks like I've got to add liquid XP to my list of 'things I need to use to power my base because it looks awesome'!  How do you have the output from that set up?

 

 

The tesseract in the corner of the next-to-last picture sends the power off to a couple other tesseracts here and there, hooked up to the various things I need power for. Not running anything massively demanding yet, really. Tweaking it as I go along.

[PoisonFrog]

The plan is to have one tesseract in each corner, I think. Should be able to pull out plenty of power that way.

[PoisonFrog]

I did the math:

 

Out of 52 energy cells...

 

...40 are connected to 4 dynamos each: 160 dynamos.

...8 (the ones next to corners) are connected to 3 dynamos each: 24 dynamos.

...4 (the actual corners) are connected to 2 dynamos each: 8 dynamos.

 

Total: 192 compression dynamos.

 

Towards the end, I was getting VERY tired of mining for tin.

[Melfice]

Just a heads-up, Frog. If you want to add more information and nobody else has posted since, you can edit your post.

[Loader]

Time for a mining laser to use all that power so you can get more power, so you can use more power on the mining lasers so you can get more power...

[mattymaats]

It's weird how MFR has much better power production than TE but no one seems to use it, take a wee look at the bioreactor

[Kalbintion]

Yeah, stuff like the laser drills are a good example of where a 10k+ system becomes truly useful, but it's not hard to provide that for a short distance (conduits have a ridiculous max throughput, the limit is by connection).  Don't the laser drills take 10kRF/t?

 

EDIT: Just did some testing, looks like 10k total, 5k from two prechargers is the maximum (either there's massive diminishing returns beyond that or it simply wastes excess power).  That would mean it's possible to max them out with the rednet energy cables or even the hardened conduits (the hardened conduits would need two power sources though).

 

EDIT2: For some reason I thought hardened cables take 1k RF/t, they're not able to max out the laser with those at the 400 RF/t limit - you can get close with 4 prechargers (8k max).

 

EDIT3: Rednet energy cables seem to handle throughput limits 'properly', rather than per connection, so they should max out at 8k too.

 

EDIT4: Testing the maximums on Rednet energy cables shows they're taking 1k RF/t max, not 2k (this means that if you can split them 5 times from the source and keep them separate all the way, they can provide 5k max per precharger/source combo.  Given that you'd almost need a redstone conduit to feed that source anyway means that'd probably be a better option all round).

 

From my testing and what I've read, each drill only takes 5k RF/t, split four-ways to the prechargers. Not sure how you ended up with the values you did. Also, edit much?

 

Time for a mining laser to use all that power so you can get more power, so you can use more power on the mining lasers so you can get more power...

 

Only reason to use them lasers is so you dont have to go out and mine anymore lol, not that mining is annoying since theres so many ores to begin with...but who wants to spend time mining when you can essentially become creative mode?