Server/SteamWorks/Tips-Tech

Tips - Tech

Intro

This chapter treats technic, pipeworks, mesecons and digilines as one big mod.

The only important difference is that some machines require power.

Power comes in 3 tiers: LV, MV, HV - low-, medium-, high-voltage.

Others only need signals (as in, ON&OFF-information), and
digilines can transmit/process more general data.

Digtrons can use electric power, but mostly use fuel (as in, coal or oil).

...

Simple machines

Simple, as in "don't require power".

• Chests (as well as other nodes with an inventory - eg. a furnace)

technic provides iron- copper- silver- gold- and mithril-chests

• Autocrafter - automatically produce items according to a recipe

this makes many often-needed recipes much less tedious

• Nodebreaker - dig the node in front

useful eg. for automated harvesting of trees

• Deployer / Dispenser - put/shoot an item

eg. for replanting saplings

• Detectors - node-detector, player-detector, button, pressure plate

eg. pressure plate can open&close nearby doors

or node-detector triggering a nodebreaker when a sapling has grown into a tree

• Injectors - get item/s from a chest/machine and put it into a tube or another chest or machine

eg. for moving stuff between autocrafters and chests

• Tubes - can transport items. They come in many variants, the most useful are
  • vacuuming tube - collect loose stuff, eg. wood&leaves or harvested fruits&seeds
  • sorting tube - route incoming stuff in different directions, depending on type
  • teleporting tube - expensive, moves stuff directly to another teleport-tube
• Pipes - like tubes, but for fluids

also: pumps, valves, spigots

• Mesecons - logic gates, and Lua-controller
• lightstones - in several colors, can be switched on&off
• piston & sticky piston + push & pull an item
• noteblock - makes a sound

...

Electric machines

The tiers:

• LV - cheap, support no automation, no upgrades
• MV - less cheap, support upgrades and automation via pipeworks and mesecons
• HV - as MV, but more expensive, faster, more powerful

Eg. an LV-cable is made from 3 copper + 6 paper,
an MV-cable is made from 3 LV-cables + 6 rubber,
an HV-cable is made from 3 MV-cables + 6 plastic.

There are several categories of machines:

• generators (water-powered, solar, geothermal, nuclear)
• switches & storage - eg. battery-boxes
• consumers - machines doing some 'useful' work
• mobile & battery-powered - can be recharged at any battery-box of LV, MV or HV.

...

Digtron

Digtrons are modular, configurable machines for digging and building.

All digtron-parts use a digtron-core in their recipe.

Eg. a digtron-inventory-module consists of a chest and a digtron-core.

needs 4 iron, 1 mese-shard

The main uses for a digtron are

• mining: making tunnels & shafts while digging for ores
• farming: digging&placing plants, aka harvesting&seeding - crops as well as trees
• leveling/bulldozing terrain
• building roads, bridges, houses etc.

Examples:

Digtron-Chest&Crate

Quite useful is a digtron-crate plus one or more digtron-inventory-modules,
providing movable chests (much like a MC-skulker-box).

Place a digtron-crate next to some other digtron-parts (eg. a digtron-chest), and activate it.

The crate will pack in all the digtron-modules it has contact to, and then can be picked up like a chest.

Also carry a stackwise-injector and some vacuuming-tubes with this, for quick loading/unloading.

Small, simple tunnel-digger

• 2 digger-heads (on top of each other, face their 'rotating' sides to the front) - to dig a tunnel of size 2x1

needs 1 digtron-core, 4 diamonds (per head)

• 1 combined storage - for fuel and the gathered stone, ore etc.

needs 1 digtron-core, 1 chest, 1 furnace

• 1 control-module - to make it move

needs to be facing in the direction the digtron should move

needs 1 digtron-core, 4 or 8 mese (normal/automatic controller)

Optional, but very much advised:

• 1 builder-head - for automatically placing torches or glowglass every few spaces

the side with the cross must be pointing to a free spot in the direction where the item is to be placed

needs 1 digtron-core, 4 mese-shards

• 1 rotation-axle - for changing the direction of the digtron

needs 1 digtron-core, 8 coal

• 1 digtron-crate - to pack the digtron in, and carry it around.

needs 1 digtron-core, 1 chest, 1 mese, 1 iron

For operation, it needs some fuel in the storage-module, eg. coal or oil-extract.
The material/s for the builder-head/s (eg. torches) also need to be in there.

A screwdriver is also useful, to rotate digger- and builder-heads while building the digtron.

needs a 1 stick, 1 iron

This 'simple' model lacks 2 features:

• protection against sand or cobble from above
• same for the floor, eg. when digging into a cave

this would require at least 2 more digger- and builder-heads.

Harvester

For cutting wood or plants, soft-diggerheads can be used. They are cheaper - needing 1 digtron-core, 4 steel (instead of diamonds).

A digtron moving on top of farming soil will randomly damage some soil, so it is better to have it hanging above the field.
So, it is common to build a roof of (glow-)glass over the field, from which the digtron hangs.

...

Tasks

For starters:

• getting wood

lowtech: axe

tech: chainsaw & power-supply, chests & vac.tubes

• finding and digging ore

lowtech: pickaxe

tech: drill, mining-laser, digtron, quarry & power-supply

• making ingots from ore

lowtech: furnace & fuel

tech: grinder, then electric furnace & power-supply

The grinder makes dust from ore, and doubles the yield

It can also make more flour from grain then mortar&pestle.

• crafting

lowtech: in the crafting-grid, by hand

tech: autocraftes, tubes, injectors, mesecons-logic

• storing stuff

lowtech: chests, backpacks

tech: sorting-tubes & technic-chests

• repairing worn tools

notech: craft new tools

lowtech: anvil & hammer

tech: MV-toolworkshop & power-supply

As can be seen, most of the 'better' solutions to these tasks require some power-supply.

We have to start with LV, then build up to MV, then HV
because each MV-part consists of some LV-part plus extras.

Basics

Before we get to the technic parts, we need some basics, see previous tips.

To recap:

• sticks and wood, stones - for tools, chests, furnace
• coal - to make torches, fuel for the furnace. See also leaves&oil-extract.
• iron - for locked chests, iron tools, bucket
• a place for building a home/base/lab - protect that area !
• food, water - mods hunger and diet are active

Also useful (but not essential):

• backpacks - more inventory-space to carry around
• canteen (waterbottle - mod thirsty is active !)
• circular saw - for cutting wood, stone into different shapes
• glass - for windows etc.

...

Hydro-power

Technic has a water-powered grinder, that can be used on grain and ore.
This would be useful to get started from scratch.

• Water-turbine - this one only generates mechanical power, no electricity.

needs 4 sticks, 1 iron

• Water on 4 sides (N,E,S,W) of the turbine

needs a bucket for placing

needs 3 iron

• The water-powered grinder

needs 5 granite, 2 iron, 2 brick-blocks

need 4 clay-bricks each

needs clay - can often be found in shallow water off the coast

Total:

• wood: 1
• iron: 1+3+2 = 6
• granite: 5
• clay: 8

This grinder gets you double yield from ore, and 4x yield from grain (compared to mortar&pestle).

This grinder also works on all types of grain.

LV

We need at least:

• LV-cables (to connect all those parts, eg. 6+)

needs copper and paper

needs papyrus, or cotton, or bamboo, or hemp

• Hydro-generator (4 of them would be nice)

needs 1 wood, 1 diamond, 4 marble, 1 LV-cable, 1 machine-casing

needs 8 cast-iron, 1 brass

needs copper, zinc

need alloy-furnace - made from 8 brick-blocks

need 4 clay-bricks each

needs clay

• Switching-station

needs 2 copper, 3 LV-cable, 1 machine-casing, 1 LV-transformer

needs 5 iron,

2 fiber,

needs glue, made from saplings

2 copper-coil

needs 4 iron, 4 fine-copper-wire, made from copper

• LV-Battery-Box (or more)

needs 3 wood, 1 LV-cable, 1 machine-casing, 4 RE-batteries

needs 6 wood, 2 copper, 1 tin, per battery

• LV-Grinder

needs 4 desert-stone, 2 granite, 1 LV-cable, 1 machine-casing

• LV-Furnace

needs 7 stone, 1 LV-cable, 1 machine-casing

• also: bucket for placing water

needs iron

Total:

• wood
• iron
• copper
• tin
• diamond
• clay
• stone
• desert-stone
• granite
• papyrus (or bamboo, cotton, hemp)

Other machines, less urgent:

• LV-Alloy-furnace (we can make do with the lowtech alloy-furnace
• LV-sawmill - makes 8 planks from each wood (as compared to 4 when done by hand)
• LV-Extractor - extract dye from flowers, grass, cactus, bones
• LV-CNC-machine - can cut materials into different forms (similar to circular-saw) - mainly for deco
• LV-Compressor - make sandstone from sand ...

can also make diamonds from coal (in a multi-step process)

We will need many more of some of these parts, so some autocrafters would be useful.

needs 5 iron, 2 mese, 2 plastic

to make plastic: leaves --> oil-extract --> paraffin --> plastic

Oil-extract is also a good fuel ( so, save the coal for making torches and diamonds :)

MV

The most important MV-machine is the MV-toolworkshop, for repairing tools.
One way to get just this working is to use a supply-converter, that converts LV to MV (can also convert between MV and HV).
Otherwise, we would also need some MV-generator(s).

needs ...

We need:

• some MV-cables,

needs LV-cables, and 6 rubber per cable

needs raw-latex, from a rubbertree

needs a tap

needs 1 wood, 3 sticks, 1 pneumatic-tube - made from plastic

• a supply-converter,

needs 1 LV-cable, 1 MV-cable,

1 LV-transformator, 1 MV-transformator,

2 rubber, 1 machine-casing, 1 fine-gold-wire, 1 doped-silicon-wafer,

needs silicn-wafer, gold

needs sand, coal-dust

• another switching-station

same part as for LV

• a MV-Battery-Box

needs 1 MV-cable, 1 MV-transformator, 5 LV-Battery-Boxes

• and the MV-toolworkshop.

needs 1 MV-cable, 2 obsidian, 2 wood, 1 diamond, 1 machine-casing, 1 carbon-cloth,

needs graphite, made from compressed coal-dust

1 sticky piston

needs 3 wood, 4 stone, 1 iron, 1 mesecon, glue - made from saplings

Other MV-machines:

• MV-grinder, MV-furnace etc. work just like the LV-models, but faster
• Thresher - for processing harvested plants, eg. grain, melons, pumpkin etc.
• Freezer - make ice from water, obsidian from lava
• Centrifuge - for processing uranium into uranium-fuel.

...

HV

The most impressive (and dangerous) machine is the nuclear reactor.
It produces a lot of power.

Other HV-machines:

• HV-Quarry
• Forcefield-generator

...

Examples

...