13 replies to this topic

[dedbbs]

So, I've made a few handfuls of edits, correcting things as I could,
but despite reading all of the guidelines and help pages, I do not know
what specifically I should do regarding the GregTech Fusion Reactor
being split into an old version and a new version.

My friend and I
were on my server all night getting the my new reactor both FULLY
automated (should require no intervention unless an error occurs)  using
Helium-3/Deuterium Fusion AND into a far smaller layout than we'd seen
in the very few Youtube videos on the topic. Incidentally, all I really
saw about the new reactor was a few videos (disappointing, text is so
much easier to refer to ) soonce I gleaned "This is how you make the
basic multiblock for the reactor" from the video, I put my blocks
together from from there. I'm only boasting a little bit, and I'm
boasting more for my friend than me, he has a much keener sense of
timings and seeing whether automation processes like this will work.
 
Anyway,
while I wouldn't say I'm an expert on these reactors by any stretch of
the imagining, based on the dearth of information on the new Fusion
Reactor, I would figure that information I have available both
successfully assembling & automating the reactor would be
appreciated? I'd appreciate either give me advice and/or going along
after me when I finish and making sure it's organized properly. I just
want to reiterate, I've used help and search functions, and whether it
was right in front of my face and I didn't know it or it simply wasn't
there, I'm not sure what to do in this particular situation:

In
the article, how do you logically separate out the two reactors, which
function quite differently in some areas, but similar in others, and do
so in a way that people will understand and not leave more confused than
when they arrived. How do I keep this information from spilling over to
the information on the old reactor? How many screenshots would be
appreciated. I apologize that this situation confuses me, and I think as
it would be my first edit beyond adding serveral sentences to some MFR
articles, I guess I would just greatly appreciate a little handholding
in this situation, please.
 
And if not handholding, I would very much appreciate it if someone would at
least say "Okay, go ahead, do whatever,, and we'll work on letting you
know how to fix your horrible mistakes."

Thank you very much for reading, and thanks for any help offered; it's always greatly appreciated.
 
ONE BUG WE LEARNED ABOUT IN THIS (I will update its Wiki Page to Reflect):
ADDING AN AE STORAGE BUS TO AN INDUSTRIAL ELECTROLYZER WILL CAUSE AN
UNRECOVERABLE CRASH. It will require you to either temporarily remove
either the AE or GregTech mods, play with one or the other's item ids to
delete the old things from the world, restore a backup, or delete the
region file the problem occurred in.

Anyway, here's a
screenshot of our new reactor (I'm so proud of it... my baby. I can't
even imagine all the resources that went into it. Thankfully Applied
Energistics makes it so easy for me to forget how many resources I'm
spending...):

(This was in no way done with the aid of creative mode, but I was using creative mode at the time of the screenshot to give my users some replacement stuff casued by the solution to the AE Storage Bus vs . GregTech battle.)

Edited by dedbbs, 30 May 2013 - 02:32 AM.

[digitallyApocalyptic]

Wow. I'm impressed. The only time I've ever built a Fusion Reactor and ever will build a Fusion Reactor (either old or new) is in Creative, as it seems like it would be easier and more efficient to use Advanced Solar Panels/Nuclear Reactors/dang near anything else for power generation, especially as even reactions that emit energy require energy input, and the new Fusion Reactor's reactions result in a net loss of energy regardless of which one you use, as I understand it.

 

Anyways, about the wiki: Honestly, I'm not sure, as radical changes like this which change the entirety of how an item looks, works and functions don't happen all that often (exceptions being, for instance, the Industrial Blast Furnace) and we don't really have a great way of dealing with that laid out here. I'd say that these are a few things you could do, off the top of my head:

 

1) Split the article into two sections, one for new and one for old behavior; however, although this works for the Industrial Blast Furnace page, for an article like the Fusion Reactor which requires more attention, it would probably make the article long and cumbersome; do not recommend

2) As Minecraft Wiki does, use a History section, where the main article details the newest behavior and then a section under ==History== details how the behavior has changed, possibly with a screenshot of the old setup

3) Split the article into two articles (Fusion Reactor and Fusion Reactor/Old Behavior or similar) where one is a subpage of the first, linking to the old behavior article from the main one

 

Regarding screenshots: Screenshots are very good. I'd say that a top view in a test world (sans any unrelated builds per Style Guide) and possibly a view of one of the corners (all the corners are basically the same, afaik, so one corner could be rotated/duplicated to produce a functional reactor) would probably be good. Automation setup might not be necessary, but screenshots are always good for helping to visualize the concept, especially when all there is to work off of in this case is Greg's diagram of the reactor layout, so I'd say add as many as you feel comfortable with and feel would be helpful, but keep it balanced so that the page isn't entirely made up of screenshots.

 

Also, a question out of curiosity: I see superconductor wire connecting your machines together. Is this the case for all machines in your base?

[dedbbs]

Wow. I'm impressed. The only time I've ever built a Fusion Reactor and ever will build a Fusion Reactor (either old or new) is in Creative, as it seems like it would be easier and more efficient to use Advanced Solar Panels/Nuclear Reactors/dang near anything else for power generation, especially as even reactions that emit energy require energy input, and the new Fusion Reactor's reactions result in a net loss of energy regardless of which one you use, as I understand it.

 

Anyways, about the wiki: Honestly, I'm not sure, as radical changes like this which change the entirety of how an item looks, works and functions don't happen all that often (exceptions being, for instance, the Industrial Blast Furnace) and we don't really have a great way of dealing with that laid out here. I'd say that these are a few things you could do, off the top of my head:

 

1) Split the article into two sections, one for new and one for old behavior; however, although this works for the Industrial Blast Furnace page, for an article like the Fusion Reactor which requires more attention, it would prob

ably make the article long and cumbersome; do not recommend

2) As Minecraft Wiki does, use a History section, where the main article details the newest behavior and then a section under ==History== details how the behavior has changed, possibly with a screenshot of the old setup

3) Split the article into two articles (Fusion Reactor and Fusion Reactor/Old Behavior or similar) where one is a subpage of the first, linking to the old behavior article from the main one

 

Regarding screenshots: Screenshots are very good. I'd say that a top view in a test world (sans any unrelated builds per Style Guide) and possibly a view of one of the corners (all the corners are basically the same, afaik, so one corner could be rotated/duplicated to produce a functional reactor) would probably be good. Automation setup might not be necessary, but screenshots are always good for helping to visualize the concept, especially when all there is to work off of in this case is Greg's diagram of the reactor layout, so I'd say add as many as you feel comfortable with and feel would be helpful, but keep it balanced so that the page isn't entirely made up of screenshots.

 

Also, a question out of curiosity: I see superconductor wire connecting your machines together. Is this the case for all machines in your base?

Thanks for all the help and advice. I'll definitely folllow it. I might have just tuckered myself out a bit... I went to edit the ME Storage Bus Article and I ended up overhauling it and then I accidentally overhauled the entire Applied Energistics article. It's funny for someone who is very unsure about stuff like this, that I can be very brazen at times. I just was sick of seeing the AE article text copied verbaitm from the website, and I knew that I wouldn't be dealing with conflicting info... Or making a new article.

 

If I don't work on the text of the article tonight, I'll at least try laying down a demo reactor in an empty flatland in Creative and take some screenshots. If I was going to get into the automation, I'll be honest with you, after dealing with 2 errors with the storage bus resetting all my GT machines while working on that reactor last night (each time after I finished, neither time was caused by me), I don't think I'll want to recreate my automation anytime in the near future, though, so if I provide screenshots of that, that's going to be live and in my house. At least I have it marked well and different stages demarcated by colors. I could probably remake the reactor now without even needing to look at the picture after doing it twice...

 

Well, I do know there are (were, maybe more now) 2 fusion recipes that used more power than they made in exchange for Iridium & Something Else. Deuterium + Tritium Fusion or Helium-3 + Deuterium are both supposed to produce a surplus of power, albeit without stuff. I have never had a Deuterium Tritium Reactor, but on our FTB Beta server we had one and it needed about 25-30 machines to keep running continously. The Helium-3 + Deuterium reactor that I had only needed about 10 machines, perhaps even less, to keep things going.

 

I am definitely sure that I am producing vast amounts of power! So
either everyone else is doing it wrong or nobody's trying very hard to
see the very obvious solutions to doing it I'm honestly not sure how
many of the plasma generators I could keep running at a time, but I
definitely had 21 running without problem. when I was recharging my IDSU
from having my power off for a day. That's 21 @ 2048 eu/packet, - 43008
total EU a tick. I leave 5 plasma generators attached to my fusion
machines, 4 attached to the Energy Input things on the corners of the
Tokamak (if they are charged, stopped fusion will reignite when there's suppplies), 4 on UU-Matter, and then a Christmas Tree like structure I built out of Superconductorwire, Liquiducts, and Plasma Generators, and a few Inverted lights that powers my IDSU. I am constantly gaining liquid plasma at an astounding rate - the only fuel producing thing that beats it in speed is MFR's Lava Generator fully powered.

 

Honestly, the biggest difference is the use of this plasma and plasma generators in power generation, rather than simply providing a power line out that required 16 HV transformers. Not only can you basically store an ungodly amount of power if you keep producing more plasma and keep making tanks or putting it in cells (8 Million + per cell @ 2048/tick in a Plasma Generator.) After running nonstop for 12 hours I have more than 1,200 buckets of Helium Plasma, and it's still going up. A really really nice feature too is that the new plasma generator can be brought and added anywhere if you bring a liquid tesseract - meaning you can have portable EV power without having to make an IDSU to bring with you.

 

VERY VERY VERY IMPORTANTLY these plasma generators DO NOT consume fuel when there is no power being requested. Before, with direct EU created fusion, you just lose excess power if you had nowhere to put it to, which you basically always were stuck with. Now, as long as you have a place for the plasma to go, you're not wasting power. I am curious to see if the power shuts off on the actual reactor when its outputs for plasma are completely stuffed, though...

 

Anyway, talking about it on here xD. i'll try to work on that article then over the next few days.
 

As for the Superconductorwire, it's only like that in that room. the power running to the centrifuges & electrolyzers is all at 2048 eu/packet. All of the machines have been upgraded with the new GregTech upgrades system (is there an article on this, either? I've been figuring this one out too, and man is it nice to finally be able to overclock a centrifuge. Ah, I hear you ask, but you can use HV Cable at 2048 eu/p? But, I also really, really, really hate the way HV cable looks. If I can afford it I will make more Superconductorwire, even though I know it's not necessary. If I could, I would replace my whole house with it. I just like the way it looks. It looks like an actual floor block rather than something I half fall through. The one friend who was helping to design & test the automation setup with me has made fun of me on several occasions for using the game's most expensive wire simply for aesthetic reasons, but whatever. My only complaint with it is it can't be painted. Of course, that begs the question "Are you REALLY going to run anything less than the maximum power over it?"

[Iamtk421]

What about having both reactor designs on the one page with spoilers to reveal whichever is of interest to the reader?

At least until the old version is no longer commonly used.

[Artsja]

Sorry for giving so little input, but: detailed Reactor setups and Reactor automation can be included in the Tutorial section and then linked to from the article. And thanks for your quality contributions dedbbs.

[dedbbs]

Artsja, would you be fine with me posting on the article a 3 layer image serving as a sort of visual aid-schematic showing the new construction form, then linking to a brief tutorial for further information? There are many ways one can build these reactors, technically, though I haven't been convinced there's any use ot it.

Anyway, when I was taking screenshots for this before I went to bed in a creative flatworld for this, I made a pretty big array of plasma generators just to see how much EU I could reliably get from the plasma produced.

Oh and thank you for the thank you Artsja, it's no problem. Just doing my part to get good documentation out there for people. A few articles on ftbwiki/the old wikia may have indirectly caused some disasters on my server with some bad info, and I like to correct that bad advice when possible.

 

On a related mode, I also love GregTech but I love to disable all that exploding behavior.

Anyway, check it out, about double the EU/t of the previous fusion reactor. Still not enough to fully power a mass fabricator, though :

Attached Thumbnails

• 

[digitallyApocalyptic]

To my understanding, Matter Fabricators can only accept 8,192 EU/t and will use no more as of newer GregTech versions. I'm not sure which version changed this; previously, they were able to accept as much EU as they were being fed (on a server where I was outlandishly rich, I had >100 Ultimate Hybrid Solars hooked up to a Matter Fabricator, and it just churned out UU-Matter at a ridiculous pace) potentially allowing for the creation of 1 UU-Matter/tick if they were being fed 16,666,666 EU/t in packets of <= 8,192 EU/p, but I think that such behavior has been somehow nerfed/disabled, so "fully powering" a matter fabricator isn't a thing which can really happen any more.

 

From the glance that I took at the Fusion Reactor's new recipes (which lasted approximately zero seconds) it appeared that all reactions resulted in a net loss of power, but it's probably just a misunderstanding on my part as to how it functions. I'll probably do more creative mode tests with it at some point.

[dedbbs]

To my understanding, Matter Fabricators can only accept 8,192 EU/t and will use no more as of newer GregTech versions. I'm not sure which version changed this; previously, they were able to accept as much EU as they were being fed (on a server where I was outlandishly rich, I had >100 Ultimate Hybrid Solars hooked up to a Matter Fabricator, and it just churned out UU-Matter at a ridiculous pace) potentially allowing for the creation of 1 UU-Matter/tick if they were being fed 16,666,666 EU/t in packets of <= 8,192 EU/p, but I think that such behavior has been somehow nerfed/disabled, so "fully powering" a matter fabricator isn't a thing which can really happen any more.

 

From the glance that I took at the Fusion Reactor's new recipes (which lasted approximately zero seconds) it appeared that all reactions resulted in a net loss of power, but it's probably just a misunderstanding on my part as to how it functions. I'll probably do more creative mode tests with it at some point.

Ah, I was referring to the Mass Fabricator. If you choose to enable it in the GregTech config file, the Matter Fabricator will take up to 1 million EU/t. You can play with the power usage rates of both to make both have their potential advantages and both worthwhile. I tend to have easy mode options selected on GregTech, mostly because many of my server users are playing FTB Ultimate as their first either literal or genuine (as in, with time-spent) MineCraft experiences. They've been getting much better lately, though, but the automation needed to keep a Matter Fabricator going is still beyond a few of them... It's possible that even if they got past it, I would keep Mass Fab on... Scrap farms can make a ton of lag if done wrong.

 

I looked at the GregTech ComputerCube to look at the Fusion Recipes to see what you were talking about, and yes, the recipes do very much appear to function at a net energy loss as you said. One minor bothersome point of this new Helium Plasma system is that you have to keep power constantly flowing into Fusion Energy Injectors, or the reaction will eventually stop, regardless of whether fuel is present or not. It's really just a minor annoyance. If you look closely, however, past that (using the Helium-3/Deuterium Recipe I'm using as reference) and look at the end product, you'll see the Helium Plasma Cell (It doesn't actually come out as a cell in the new reactor, just as a liquid) - Essentially a bucket's worth of liquid capable of making 8,192,000 EU for the price of 262,144EU, for a net gain per reaction (not counting the processing prior to this) of 7929856 EU.

 

This prompted me to look more closely and also to do a bit of math figuring out the rates of everything. Gotta prepare for the article, after all.

It churns out a bucket's worth of Helium Plasma every 6 seconds/120 ticks if constantly supplied with fuel and power, so you can keep each Plasma Generator running for 4000 ticks/approx 200 seconds on one. Within that 200 seconds, 33.33 buckets worth of Helium Plasma are produced. Meaning that, if my math here is right, the upper limit for sustained energy production on a He3/Deut Reactor at 67584 eu/tick.

I probably pay somewhere between 10000-20000 EU/tick for maintaining the processing loop. Honestly, I've probably gotten too many overclockers/transformer upgrades on my centrifuges & electrolyzers  as is because I've got more excess He-3 than I know what to do with, so I could probably keep that on the low end if I wanted to. But why tinker with it when it works, it's not like I'll miss that much power.

[dedbbs]

I hate replying to my own posts rather than editing them, but I just talk so darn much I know that what I said would probably go unnoticed.

 

Just wanted to say I finished the overhaul of the Fusion Reactor page. I  redid some things in the opening section and made a new section that applied to both. Honestly, some of this stuff probably would do better in a tutorial, but with such a legitimately complicated multiblock with all kinds of important considerations , I didn't feel right not giving all the info I could.

[ZER0-0]

I hate replying to my own posts rather than editing them, but I just talk so darn much I know that what I said would probably go unnoticed.

 

Just wanted to say I finished the overhaul of the Fusion Reactor page. I  redid some things in the opening section and made a new section that applied to both. Honestly, some of this stuff probably would do better in a tutorial, but with such a legitimately complicated multiblock with all kinds of important considerations , I didn't feel right not giving all the info I could.

Wow. This is helpful.

[dedbbs]

Wow. This is helpful.

Thanks, I'm very glad to hear it and to know I may have been of assistance.

 

I'm pretty sure this wiki now holds a significant amount more documentation on the new Reactor over anywhere else, including on Greg's wiki. Hopefully all I messed up on was a couple of spelling errors and stuff, I'd just hate to spread disinformation.

[ZL123]

Awesome! You've put a lot of work into this, I see.

[dedbbs]

Awesome! You've put a lot of work into this, I see.

Man, you have no idea, I don't even know why I got so into it. I disappeared into this wiki for a whole day editing things and trying to fix blank holes... After making that huge article, I have created new pages for ALL of the new Fusion-related things, somehow got distracted and made starter articles for the new GregTech upgrades somewhere in the middle of that and did a few other random edits.

 

If anyone sees see any stupid wording from me that looks like it was made by someone temporarily lapsing into sleep-walk (in typing form), please be gentle...

[r00teniy]

Is it posible to have fusion reactor configured for 2 recipes and switch between them w redstone signal or something else?

(Having 2+2 injectors for h2 h-3 and 2+2 for iridium production and pointing which to use wout emptying one set of them)

If it's possible this information would be helpfull in wiki article.