[Concept] Enterprise Energy Engineering - end-game RF mod

[planetguy]

Ever wished there was more you could do with RF, once you're flying around with your resonant jetpack and have flux tools for everything under the sun?

 

Enter Enterprise Energy Engineering: an epic explosion of end-game energy equipment.

 

This mod would add a few machines, which would function quite differently from (AFAIK) anything else out there. Instead of accepting power incrementally over some time and pausing if they run out, they would require it to be supplied all in one gigantic burst - any other power is not enough to do anything. Other RF mods' energy infrastructure is not set up to provide power in huge bursts, so there are a few new infrastructure components:

• Capacitors: Capacitors are multiblock structures built from two sheets of electrodes, one input side and one output side, separated by a 1-block layer of something non-conductive. Primitive capacitors can be built with common materials or even air, but there will be materials that provide increased capacity. They can be charged or drained from any RF system, but unlike Thermal Expansion's equipment they impose no per-tick transfer limit.
• Extra-High-Capacity Cable: Unlimited-transfer capacitors are useful, but there's really not a whole lot you can do without an unlimited-transfer cable. Enter EHC Cables. These bad boys take up a full block, since anything less would vaporize itself if you tried to stick two billion RF through them in one tick.
• Fast-acting Switches: Suppose your machine needs 1M RF in a single tick. You're not going to get anywhere if your capacitor constantly tries to discharge its full capacity into your machine each tick. These allow you to block all current flow until the specified amount of RF is immediately available, and are fast enough to allow

Infrastructure is all well and good if it supports something of interest, and that's where these machines come in. Unless otherwise stated, all of them are 3x3x3 solid cube multiblocks - these are the sort of equipment that deserves the extra scale. They are built out of a single block per machine, as opposed to multiple different types of block.

• Vaporizer: Requires burst power. Instantly vaporizes blocks for a cool 1M RF apiece, for use in utility machines. Utility machines can be placed on top of the vaporizer. If they can use the vaporized material given to them, they do; otherwise they pass it upwards until it is vented out the top. Vapour vented cools into one ingot/item of the thing originally inserted - a piece of iron ore would make an iron ingot, for example. The utility machines require a one-time injection of refrigerant (gelid cryotheum) when they first built. They do not require burst power, but use RF when cooling something down. They are:
  • Condenser: Requires refrigerant (gelid cryotheum) to be added when it is first built. Does not require burst power, but uses large amounts of RF. Converts vaporized ores into 9 ingots apiece.
  • High-Pressure Deposition Chamber: Requires refrigerant (gelid cryotheum) to be added when it is first built. Does not require burst power, but uses large amounts of RF. Crystallizes vaporized things around a seed item. Recipes:
    • Diamond block: Deposit a coal block onto a diamond seed.
    • Emerald block: Deposit a lapis block onto an emerald seed.
    • Nether Quartz block: Deposit cobblestone onto nether quartz.
  • Low-Pressure Deposition Chamber: Deposits vaporized materials onto a substrate.
    • Gamma-Ray Mirror: Deposit a silver ingot onto an iron pressure plate.
    • Sample
• Gamma-Ray Emitter: Shoots a beam of deadly gamma rays with a 300K RF pulse, suitable for incinerating mobs, shattering blocks and generally making a mess. Can be redirected with gamma-ray mirrors, or used by certain machines, such as the...
• Molecular Decomposition Spectrum Analyzer: Requires ~10K RF per analysis, not necessarily in one burst. Uses gamma ray beams from an external source to knock the particles out of an object (destroying it in the process) and guesses the object's structure based on whatever spews out. Note that, while it is theoretically possible to copy an item from one sample, you will encounter much greater success if you average many samples. Some items, particularly complicated ones or those involving nested items (or those blacklisted in the config) may simply be impossible to sample accurately.
  • Each item has a real hash and N (configurable, default 4?) decoy hashes - the real hash is uniquely identifiable per item; the decoys are not. (Hashes are dependent on the world seed, so that you can't just Google them on the Internet, and are not reversible - you can't write out the item you want and have the hash appear.) When an item is scanned, characters are selected randomly, 1/N from the real hash and the rest from any one decoy hash, and combined into a sample. This scanned data must then be processed on a computer (OC, CC, or if neither of those are installed, a sample compositing ASIC would be craftable) into average samples, which reflect the item well enough to reconstruct it. Since 1/N of all data comes from each key, you can't just average all your samples - your real hash will look like any other - so you must separate the samples by decoy key.
  • You can share samples with other players. This adds a more interesting dynamic to computers - they might have very valuable data to steal - and makes information that is only valuable in-game.
• Molecular Reconstruction Chamber: Witness the full potential of E=MC². Given a high-quality (or at least recognizable, though this risks failure) sample of an item, this machine can replicate it - for a mind-bending 1 BILLION RF BURST! Best get to work on those capacitors and generators. (Just how much is 1 billion RF? If you were inclined to do so, you could generate it with one TE steam engine running at full capacity in around 7.234 days of real-life time by burning 3125 charcoal blocks.)
  • Balance justification: In my opinion, anything you can get enough to precisely sample, you can get in any needed quantity given enough repetitions of the same tasks. If you're willing to pay I'd consider it fair to allow you to sidestep the intermediate grinding to acquire another. Items that have additional data may not be replicated, so you can't duplicate, say, a carried chest full of canvas bags full of unobtainium. If you as a modpack maker consider an item to be worth more than 1 billion RF, there will be a blacklist so that you can restrict its duplication.
• Sample Compositing ASIC: The raw data from a Molecular Decomposition Spectrum Analyzer is more or less useless without some number crunching. These things will handle that for you - toss your samples in, and a best-guess composite sample will be returned.

 

Anything that uses or transports huge amounts of RF (over 100K per tick or so) invariably leaks some of the energy. Players run the risk of electrocution (fluxtrocution?) if they stand too close without either a full set of protective leather clothing or some very serious insulation.

 

 

 

So far, the only thing I've implemented is some multiblock structure utility code - all of this is open to suggestions.

 

The mod is open-source here.

Edited October 19, 2014 by planetguy

[planetguy]

Updated, mirrored on FTB forums. I've started a bit of coding.