Powering a big home (?)

[PoisonFrog]

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...

 

I was planning on putting one on my space station, once I actually get around to building it. Well, more of a spaceship really. The idea in my head was something like 'giant wooden steampunky stingray-looking thing', but I've yet to actually get started.

 

 

 

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?

 

Other reason: lasers look cool. There are some drawbacks, of course. Last time around I made the mistake of putting mine outdoors; I had to keep breaking graves on my land after people wandered by and got killed by the precharger beams.

Edited July 7, 2014 by PoisonFrog

[Melfice]

Other reason: lasers look cool. There are some drawbacks, of course. Last time around I made the mistake of putting mine outdoors; I had to keep breaking graves on my land after people wandered by and got killed by the precharger beams.

 

You should have put up warning signs.

That solves liability, and you'd be free to nick their loot. Not your fault they didn't read. You're just going for compensation for the emotional trauma.

[Loader]

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?

Haha, yeah, well, not my fault I live in a timezone where you guys leave me alone talking to myself every evening!

 

I tested in singleplayer creative, today I was using the creative cells - just plop one over a precharger with a conduit and see what it takes - it measures faster for me up to 2 prechargers (10k input total, 5k each seems to be the limit).  I'd definitely be interested to hear what you find if it's different, I'll be setting up my system of these up one of the next times I play so I'd like to understand them as best as I can before then.

 

EDIT: Now I've confused myself - it seems like it can take 20k input total (look at the pre-charger interfaces to see when they fill up with energy).  I'm sure it wasn't speeding up when I was checking it before going from 10k to 20k, but 20k (4 prechargers) definitely seems faster now.

Edited July 7, 2014 by Loader

[PoisonFrog]

You should have put up warning signs.

That solves liability, and you'd be free to nick their loot. Not your fault they didn't read. You're just going for compensation for the emotional trauma.

 

I did.

 

It didn't help.

 

Even with some four or five warning signs around the  laser drill array, I still kept finding graves next to it. Kept happening right until someone stole the drill. (Apparently the protection plugin that server used didn't prevent people from wrenching things on other people's land. Oh well.)

[Kalbintion]

Haha, yeah, well, not my fault I live in a timezone where you guys leave me alone talking to myself every evening!

 

I tested in singleplayer creative, today I was using the creative cells - just plop one over a precharger with a conduit and see what it takes - it measures faster for me up to 2 prechargers (10k input total, 5k each seems to be the limit).  I'd definitely be interested to hear what you find if it's different, I'll be setting up my system of these up one of the next times I play so I'd like to understand them as best as I can before then.

 

EDIT: Now I've confused myself - it seems like it can take 20k input total (look at the pre-charger interfaces to see when they fill up with energy).  I'm sure it wasn't speeding up when I was checking it before going from 10k to 20k, but 20k (4 prechargers) definitely seems faster now.

 

You misunderstand, the pre-chargers have a higher limitation to the power they can receive than the drill can. The drill only receives 5k RF/t regardless of how much power the pre-chargers are acquiring. If the pre-chargers are getting more power than 5k RF/t then they will simply store the power in their reserves until it is necessary.

[Loader]

OK, you finally persuaded me to test all permutations of this

 

Here's the setup and results, mining for 5 minutes with all drills controlled by a single lever (which cuts off the power when switched):

Just the results for people looking for a reference:

4 Prechargers

• 40k RF/t total input, 10k RF/t per precharger, 22 items (precharger output restricted to 5k causing bottleneck, only 20k RF/t making it to the drill)
• 20k RF/t total input, 5k RF/t per precharger, 22 items
• 10k RF/t total input, 2.5k RF/t per precharger, 11 items
• 5k RF/t total input, 1.25k RF/t per precharger, 5 items

2 Prechargers

• 20k RF/t total input, 10k RF/t per precharger, 11 items (precharger output restricted to 5k causing bottleneck, only 10k RF/t making it to the drill)
• 10k RF/t total input, 5k RF/t per precharger, 11 items
• 5k RF/t total input, 2.5k RF/t per precharger, 5 items
• 2.5k RF/t total input, 1.25k RF/t per precharger, 2 items

So you need two 10k power generation setups to run one drill at max efficiency.  Interestingly even at 20k the drill doesn't seem to be running at max capacity, but there's no way to feed it more power than that due to the precharger limits.

Edited July 8, 2014 by Loader

[Kalbintion]

Interesting results, I did testing like this back in 1.0.9c of the modpack, and MFR has since updated for the modpack since my initial testing. I wonder if the mechanics were changed because I was only getting 1250RF/t max output from a precharger, for a total of 5K RF/t on the drill.

[pirahnah3]

I can say after setting it up that boy it USES power. I have 4 prechargers and  they will use power as fast as I can feed it. I would agree that each one will use 5k rf/t even in a creative world when I had all 4 prechargers on being fed by a creative cell they would all (as quick as I could check at least) only get up to just over 5k rf and then discharge. 

[Cal12]

Tell me if I'm wrong but isn't fuel a better source to use with compression dynamos?

[DanielUSA]

The easiest fuel mix is LXP Liquid XP and water.

 

The absolute best fuel mix is liquid coal and gelid cryotheum.

 

The highest burning fuel is liquid coal. 10,000k RF/t

 

Biofuel burns at 504 RF/t

 

LXP Liquid XP burns at 1000 RF/t

Edited July 10, 2014 by DanielUSA

[Kalbintion]

"r/f" isn't a valid form of measurement that I've ever head of in minecraft. Are you sure you didn't mean RF/t? (Redstone Flux per tick)

[DanielUSA]

I just edited.

 

Thanks for pointing that out.

[Loader]

Tell me if I'm wrong but isn't fuel a better source to use with compression dynamos?

Dynamos work by duration, so a fuel canister generates 1.5M RF total, it doesn't generate any faster, still at 80RF/t, so it simply lasts longer, a bit over 15 minutes.  A bucket of liquifacted coal generates 1M RF/t, so it'll be used up in a bit over 10 minutes (LXP is the same).  Coolant works in the same way, with a bucket of gelid cryotheum not needing to be replaced for 4M RF and water buckets being 400k RF.  Water is a lot easier to get so it's not usually worth the cryotheum in most situations.  Sewage and sugar in a reactant dynamo generates as fast as energized glowstone and nether stars, but you'd need a lot more sewage and sugar to generate the same total (it's much easier to get though, so the quantity might not matter).  There'll be a balance point for you somewhere between length of time it runs and ease of acquiring the materials - for most people that's mob essence and blaze powder (as you can get both with a blaze farm/grinder setup, grabbing blaze spawners from the nether).

 

The 'best' option is just what you can get your hands on at a rate that you can get it and use it (this is one of the things I like best about the B-Team).

 

The easiest fuel mix is LXP Liquid XP and water.

The absolute best fuel mix is liquid coal and gelid cryotheum.

The highest burning fuel is liquid coal. 10,000k RF/t

Biofuel burns at 504 RF/t

LXP Liquid XP burns at 1000 RF/t

I just tested this, and it seems the same for everything to me - BioFuel reactors used to be different but even they're 80RF/t now.  Can you show how you had your setup?

[mattymaats]

 

 

I just tested this, and it seems the same for everything to me - BioFuel reactors used to be different but even they're 80RF/t now.  Can you show how you had your setup?

 

Hey loader,

 

I use the BioFuel reactor for my laser drill and I'm pretty sure at full efficiency I get the same results at 500RF/t+ which is why it's my preferred power option. I have a small farm with 9 different crops on the go being fed into the reactor & planter linked into 4 BioGenerators feeding into 4 pre-chargers. I can maybe take some pictures later on or you can come and take a look tonight.

[Targren]

It might be worth mentioning: I don't know if it's a problem in 12a, but in the last recommended version, I tried using Rednet energy cables. It caused the server to crash whenever I went back to my base. I was also mixing them with Redstone conduits, though, so that may have been my issue, but it's got me wary of them now.

[Loader]

Rednet energy cables used to have different behaviour - recently (12a testing) it seems like they have exactly the same behaviour as conduits (limit by connections not by throughput) so it's worth trying it again.  I hope they're ok, I'm halfway through setting up a system that uses them

[DanielUSA]

@Loader

 

I don't have a setup. I watched a video on youtube and wrote down the values for future reference.

[Kalbintion]

It might be worth mentioning: I don't know if it's a problem in 12a, but in the last recommended version, I tried using Rednet energy cables. It caused the server to crash whenever I went back to my base. I was also mixing them with Redstone conduits, though, so that may have been my issue, but it's got me wary of them now.

Feel free to post up that crash report up on the tracker, it may indicate if its the actual cause or if something else is at fault instead of the cables. Chances are btw that the log contains block location information, and I'll be asking for you to provide that block info (what it is, whats around it) if you dont provide it in your initial tracker report on this. You can look at the log yourself for the coordinates, it should be under a section named "Block location:"

[Loader]

I have a small farm with 9 different crops on the go being fed into the reactor & planter linked into 4 BioGenerators feeding into 4 pre-chargers.

For future people scanning through here, mattymaats invited me took a look at this, we tested it to be 80RF/t (the other system being used alongside it for comparison was skewing the results).

 

If people are checking on their own servers a good rule of thumb is that 3 dynamos/generators generates almost 5000RF every second, and that's an easy thing to test for if you don't want to do it in detail like we did (start it up, wait 10 seconds, break the conduit to the energy cell and see if you got about 50,000 RF).

 

Thanks for taking the time to check it out with me, Mattymaats!

[cake2]

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.

 

​So what you want is to have a switch that turns on things and turns them back off?