11 replies to this topic

[TurningBreeze]

Hi folks,

 

I'm looking for a better way to distribute items to machines, as with an auto-pulverizing facility or the like. As far as I've been able to manage, pipes have an obnoxious tendency to drop items out if the destination is full and tubes (if long enough) will vastly overestimate the amount of items needed, leaving a bunch of stacks floating around.

 

All I'd like to do is lay down half a dozen like machines and have a system that correctly fills them from a chest as needed, without a million wires/switches and without outlandish startup costs. Thus far, the best I've done is to interfere with filters and tweak the timers until the dropoff in output is worth not having junk whizzing around ineffectually. Any suggestions?

[ZL123]

I assume you're using BuildCraft. You could use Gates and Pipe Wire to attach on to your Pipes, or you could switch over to RedPower, using Transposers/Retrievers/Ejectors and all those fancy stuff with your Redstone/Pneumatic Tubes. I think you might also be able to use Applied Energistics.

[TurningBreeze]

*Chuckles* I use all three.

 

Redpower has disappointed me thus far; filters and ejectors just add a "buffer" rather than address the problem, whereas using retrievers in combination with retrivulators solves the problem by micromanaging the input that each machine can use and vastly increasing the cost of the project.

 

AE probably has an elegant solution using export buses... I need to experiment more, but for the moment I'm reluctant to set up another network with a permanent power draw for what should be a really simple problem.

 

Something about gates always turned me off. In theory a well-timed redstone signal should alleviate the symptoms though. Maybe it's time I gave gates a chance...

 

 

 

...Ah, another thing that might work is ender chests. If the system is set up with an ender chest on either end and items are being pulled out of one, any items that don't find a home in the machines will just shuttle into the other chest. The neverending stream of items will still be somewhat annoying, but at least it won't be wasteful or risk despawning.

 

I'm thinking out loud here. Feel free to contribute!

[ZL123]

If you're thinking about Ender Chests, Tesseracts should also work. I think those are less buggy, but I'm not quite sure.

[ZER0-0]

This could help in some way shape or form:

[Celestial Oblivion]

I use redpower because you can use restriction tubes to dump any overflow items in a barrel/chest. In theory you could then have the system loop the items around infinitely until the machines are able to process them.

 

Also, if you aren't already try putting hoppers on all of your machines, especially things like pulverizers that will have several different items going into it.

 

Neither may totally solve the problem if you really have a ton of items coming in, but unlike some of the other solutions they're cheap and will handle most set ups casual players will have.

[ZL123]

I use redpower because you can use restriction tubes to dump any overflow items in a barrel/chest. In theory you could then have the system loop the items around infinitely until the machines are able to process them.

 

Also, if you aren't already try putting hoppers on all of your machines, especially things like pulverizers that will have several different items going into it.

 

Neither may totally solve the problem if you really have a ton of items coming in, but unlike some of the other solutions they're cheap and will handle most set ups casual players will have.

If you have regular (Cobble)stone Buildcraft Pipes looping though, that would give the same result to your restriction tubes.

I agree with the hoppers as well.

[McGreed]

I have been missing the mods for Buildcraft, the Insertion and Extraction pipes you could get from Additional Pipes. It has this nice green pipe which would mainly put item into attached container, and if there was no room, send it on to the next pipe. This stopped the items to spill over.

Now I'm just using Redpower tubes, but the BC pipes can be really nice.

[Celestial Oblivion]

If you have regular (Cobble)stone Buildcraft Pipes looping though, that would give the same result to your restriction tubes.

I agree with the hoppers as well.

 

Not quite. An individual buildcraft pipe can only check if an inventory it is connected to is full, and if so it will force all items to go through an alternate route if available. But it has no idea what inventories are available to other pipes. It thus only works for linear routes, because if you split your pipe network before reaching the machines, the pipe that splits the paths can't tell that all inventories connected to the pipes down path A are full. With redstone tubes, the tubes form a network that calculate the route at the time the item is sent, so it already knows what inventories are full and it will route them to the restriction tube if all of them are full, not matter where the machines are.

[TurningBreeze]

Huh. I was kind of expecting somebody to point out a machine that does exactly this - I'm a bit surprised that most suggestions are ultimately workarounds.

 

It seems to me like loops are the most affordable solution - be it with ender chests, tele pipes, tesseracts, or straight up circular tube arrangements.

 

Hoppers always struck me as kind of overrated for an automated system. It's awesome that they're vanilla, but like loops they still depend on the operational speed of the machines, which can cause backlog. Ultimately they don't perform any better than barrels, which is a cheaper option with far more storage, as demonstrated in this fairly rudimentary proof of concept:

 

Link to avoid stretching screen

[ZER0-0]

Huh. I was kind of expecting somebody to point out a machine that does exactly this - I'm a bit surprised that most suggestions are ultimately workarounds.

 

It seems to me like loops are the most affordable solution - be it with ender chests, tele pipes, tesseracts, or straight up circular tube arrangements.

 

Hoppers always struck me as kind of overrated for an automated system. It's awesome that they're vanilla, but like loops they still depend on the operational speed of the machines, which can cause backlog. Ultimately they don't perform any better than barrels, which is a cheaper option with far more storage, as demonstrated in this fairly rudimentary proof of concept:

 

Link to avoid stretching screen

There really is no perfect solution to your problem, except maybe gates.

[Embri]

Have you looked into using Routers?

They'll distribute to any connected machine/inventory (and with upgrades, you can specify a particular inventory or machine only). I use them to fill and empty my industrial centrifuges and it does the job quite neatly.  All you really need is a nice big buffer on either end to hold the incoming and outgoing products - outgoing can link up to one's storage system of course.