Shaped Crafting
You'll notice this eats up quite a bit of copper to make. That Redstone Transmission Coil requires a silver ingot as well. Okay, so what does this thing run on? Well, it runs on Steam. Which means, at this point, you need some form of solid fuel and water to boil. But let's put it down for a moment at look in the GUI.
You'll notice a liquid bar on either side, a slot for solid fuel, and a bar labeled 'RF' in the middle. RF stands for Redstone Flux, and is the unit of measurement for the energy that Thermal Expansion uses. No longer on the Minecraft Joules (MJ) Standard (although it readily converts to MJ at a 10:1 ratio, converting it back into RF is currently impossible), RF is what is used to power all TE machines that require power. You'll also notice some icons on either side. Let's discuss these for a moment.
First is the 'information' tab. Clicking on it will bring up some useful information about the block. One of the most overlooked parts of this mod is mentioned in that last paragraph. Generation rate varies according to energy demand. What this means is "If you don't need the energy, it won't waste your fuel trying to produce it." Which is kinda really amazing and awesome and one of the reasons I like this mod so much. It won't quite shut down, but it WILL drop to about a tenth of the production, and fuel consumption. This is very handy.
Beneath that is the tutorial button. Basically, it'll generally give tips, not unlike what I'm doing here.
On the other side on the top is the RF Indicator. You'll notice it currently says 0 RF/t being generated, and a theoretical maximum of 80 RF/t and 0 RF stored. Yes, it will store a small amount of RF internally, but I wouldn't really rely on it too much. How much energy it is storing will determine how much it throttles power output.
Beneath that is the Redstone Control button. You'll see three buttons in the popout window. The redstone dust icon means it ignores nearby redstone signals and just works nonstop no matter what. The 'turned off redstone torch' symbol means it will run unless it is given a redstone signal, which will then turn it off. The lit redstone torch means that the Dynamo will require a redstone signal to turn on and run, just like most of the engines from Buildcraft and similar mods.
That last one is actually pretty important, because a compact base design can have redstone signals flying all over the place, and this lets you either ignore them, or turn on/off based on what signals are flying around. So say your energy storage emits a redstone signal when full, which can then turn off the dynamos. You can do that, no problem.
Right, so that's the GUI. But we need solid fuel and water. Solid fuel isn't a big problem, coal or charcoal works just fine. Setting up a renewable source of water isn't too hard, just a couple of well-placed buckets of water will work. However, automatically getting that water into the engine will require another machine, this time the Aqueous Accumulator.
Protip:
You see that green button with the cog? That's what I'm talking about. You'll notice that on each of the five sides of the AA that isn't the face, there's an orange mark. You'll also notice that on the outside of the machine, the sides are similarly marked. Now, click one of those orange sides, and the orange mark vanishes. You'll note that it does the same thing on the machine itself. An orange slot denotes automatic output, and that it is orange on all five sides denotes that it will output its inventory (water) to any of the five non-face sides. Clicking on the various faces will turn off connectivity on that side. This is oriented from the 'face' itself, rather than any absolute cardinal direction. The spot in the corner denotes the 'back' (i.e. the opposite side from the face). Right now, the only face you really need to leave orange is the top slot (the one above the face) to feed the dynamo, so you can leave the others however you want.
You'll notice this eats up quite a bit of copper to make. That Redstone Transmission Coil requires a silver ingot as well. Okay, so what does this thing run on? Well, it runs on Steam. Which means, at this point, you need some form of solid fuel and water to boil. But let's put it down for a moment at look in the GUI.
You'll notice a liquid bar on either side, a slot for solid fuel, and a bar labeled 'RF' in the middle. RF stands for Redstone Flux, and is the unit of measurement for the energy that Thermal Expansion uses. No longer on the Minecraft Joules (MJ) Standard (although it readily converts to MJ at a 10:1 ratio, converting it back into RF is currently impossible), RF is what is used to power all TE machines that require power. You'll also notice some icons on either side. Let's discuss these for a moment.
First is the 'information' tab. Clicking on it will bring up some useful information about the block. One of the most overlooked parts of this mod is mentioned in that last paragraph. Generation rate varies according to energy demand. What this means is "If you don't need the energy, it won't waste your fuel trying to produce it." Which is kinda really amazing and awesome and one of the reasons I like this mod so much. It won't quite shut down, but it WILL drop to about a tenth of the production, and fuel consumption. This is very handy.
Beneath that is the tutorial button. Basically, it'll generally give tips, not unlike what I'm doing here.
On the other side on the top is the RF Indicator. You'll notice it currently says 0 RF/t being generated, and a theoretical maximum of 80 RF/t and 0 RF stored. Yes, it will store a small amount of RF internally, but I wouldn't really rely on it too much. How much energy it is storing will determine how much it throttles power output.
Beneath that is the Redstone Control button. You'll see three buttons in the popout window. The redstone dust icon means it ignores nearby redstone signals and just works nonstop no matter what. The 'turned off redstone torch' symbol means it will run unless it is given a redstone signal, which will then turn it off. The lit redstone torch means that the Dynamo will require a redstone signal to turn on and run, just like most of the engines from Buildcraft and similar mods.
That last one is actually pretty important, because a compact base design can have redstone signals flying all over the place, and this lets you either ignore them, or turn on/off based on what signals are flying around. So say your energy storage emits a redstone signal when full, which can then turn off the dynamos. You can do that, no problem.
Right, so that's the GUI. But we need solid fuel and water. Solid fuel isn't a big problem, coal or charcoal works just fine. Setting up a renewable source of water isn't too hard, just a couple of well-placed buckets of water will work. However, automatically getting that water into the engine will require another machine, this time the Aqueous Accumulator.
Protip:
- How do you know if a machine requires power, makes power, or doesn't care about power?
- If it requires a Redstone Reception Coil, it requires power. If it requires a redstone Transmission Coil, it produces power. If it requires a Pneumatic Servo, it doesn't need power.
You see that green button with the cog? That's what I'm talking about. You'll notice that on each of the five sides of the AA that isn't the face, there's an orange mark. You'll also notice that on the outside of the machine, the sides are similarly marked. Now, click one of those orange sides, and the orange mark vanishes. You'll note that it does the same thing on the machine itself. An orange slot denotes automatic output, and that it is orange on all five sides denotes that it will output its inventory (water) to any of the five non-face sides. Clicking on the various faces will turn off connectivity on that side. This is oriented from the 'face' itself, rather than any absolute cardinal direction. The spot in the corner denotes the 'back' (i.e. the opposite side from the face). Right now, the only face you really need to leave orange is the top slot (the one above the face) to feed the dynamo, so you can leave the others however you want.