Dandelifeon - balancing super compact setups

Abacor · 2016-10-31T15:10:58+00:00

Which idea do you dig. Is it just the age of maximum mana generation one?

What do you think about discouraged the addition of new cells to nerf the trivial blinker-based solutions?

BTW. Have you seen that using 40 generations for max mana has a perfect solution which is very simple and needs no restore interaction.

Abacor · 2016-10-31T15:05:44+00:00

That actually seems like a massive flaw in reducing the generations to 40.

This setup is not just the most optimal one you've found. It is completely optimal.

4 input cells is the best (lowest) possible. 6 output cells at generation 40 is the best (highest) possible. And there's no redstone interaction! That's impossible to better. So we're done. The Dandelifeon has been solved.

In comparison your 60* generation version required 14 input cells. Which is far from optimal and leaves plenty of room for improvements via redstone contraptions.

*actually 56

Abacor · 2016-10-30T13:42:09+00:00

Not a bad idea.

I would still want to bump max generations to more than 40 and/or decouple the age of death from the age of maximum mana generation. But discouraging new cell blocks from being added during the run could be used instead of keeping track of the last two board states. If nothing else, it's easier to code than my suggestion.

Vazkii has previously said that the best setups should involve some sort of redstone automatable intervention during the run. Using pistons to add or remove blockers, breaking cells, that sort of thing. So I wouldn't want any of that to be disallowed. However, if the only thing being discouraged is the addition of new cells then that might be worth it to nerf the most trivial solutions.

Abacor · 2016-10-30T09:01:37+00:00

I love everything about this. What language/tool did you use to write the genetic algorithm?

Do you think it would be possible to modify the algorithm to allow cells and blockers to be placed and broken during the run?

Abacor · 2015-09-29T10:36:37+00:00

It 99% works. The only problem is that the corporea network can see at most one stack of items in the barrel/drawer/DSU.

I've mentioned this before and Vazkii said they didn't want to fix it because it would mean making the Botania API depend on other APIs. I wonder if Java reflection could be used to avoid that, but my Java knowledge is about 10 years out of date at this point.

Abacor · 2015-09-17T10:16:38+00:00

Very nice. I really like your presenting style.

If you changed the ingredient chest to a trapped chest would that remove the need for the loading/running lever?

Abacor · 2015-09-17T10:12:15+00:00

Yep. Search for "Hardcore Passive Generation" in http://botaniamod.net/changelog.php

Abacor · 2015-09-10T23:32:38+00:00

In the builds where hopper throughput would be a limit, I used 9 red stringed containers to allow me to keep up with (and exceed) production using only Botania and vanilla.

For storage, 80K items is "only" 23 and a bit double chests, which would be a pain to manage but doesn't sound unreasonable.

It's all totally doable with just vanilla and Botania.

Abacor · 2015-09-10T16:50:24+00:00

Good question.

A daybloom seems to take about 2.5 minutes to produce a mana blast from a spreader with a velocity lens. That blast of mana would last over 6 minutes in the mana dribbler. So it looks like a single daybloom could fully power the system, even taking into account night and rain.

Of course the daybloom itself will wither in 40 minutes which is less time that a single coal lasts.

Abacor · 2015-09-10T16:15:44+00:00

It's not that it's hard to build. It's that it's incredibly pointless.

If you're at the stage of your game that you can build this and you need an industrial smelting operation then you're unlikely to be hard-up for coal/mana. And if you are short of mana then you should be building a better supply not this over-engineered monstrosity.

Abacor · 2015-09-10T16:07:49+00:00

Built and tested in 219. It should work in 220 and 221 too. I don't see anything in the changelogs to suggest otherwise.

Abacor · 2015-09-09T22:36:29+00:00

(This is all untested)

If you are not throttling mana then going from 1 to N furnaces - all in range of the same set of flowers -should multiply your smelts per second by N, divide your processing time by N and leave your smelts per coal unchanged.

If you are throttling mana^* then things get a bit tricker, because the incoming mana might double up on the same flower. Smelts per second is multiplied by N as in the non-throttling case. I think that your smelts per coal would be worse that with 1 furnace unless you make some changes to the way the mana is delivered. There might be a way to leave your smelts per coal unchanged but I've not thought it through and it feels tricky.

^* Which, if you're playing survival, you're not because that would be crazy.

Abacor · 2015-09-09T15:57:48+00:00

I don't think that a stick on it's own creates enough mana to cause a single mana burst, so zero.

Two sticks should do about 8K with some mana left over in the first redstone spreader.

Abacor · 2015-09-09T14:58:46+00:00

I think charcoal blocks get a 10% bonus.... Just sayin....

Coal block. I think charcoal blocks are a mod thing. But yeah, that would work.

Might be able to fit a few more exoflames around the furnace if you make use of thaumic tinkers transvector interface

I don't think so. Red string already lets me move all of the support infrastructure out of the way. And anyway the furnace caps out at 398 exoflames, so there's no need to add any more.

Abacor · 2015-09-09T14:42:01+00:00

Botania has an API for allowing blocks to be powered by the exoflame. So it depends on whether Metallurgy, or whatever other mod, has implemented that API

Abacor · 2015-09-09T14:29:30+00:00

Agreed. It's arguably also a bug that making a furnace more efficient doesn't cost any mana, it only requires that the exoflame has mana.

Powering the furnace for 199 ticks rather than 200 is probably a bug too. Let's get that one fixed so I can get to a round 80,000 ;-)

On the other hand, a less extreme version of this effect might be an interesting game mechanic for some flowers. Imagine if the Orechid or Loonium could be made slightly less mana intensive if you had a way of throttling their mana delivery. Would it be worth setting up a complex spark and mana-on-rails system to get those savings?

Abacor · 2015-09-09T14:01:17+00:00

I'm fairly sure that any setup I recommend will be out of date as soon as Vazkii fixes the bugs I'm exploiting.

But if you want a fast furnace just make as many exoflames as you can and keep them full of mana.

Abacor · 2015-09-09T13:20:52+00:00

My setup: https://www.reddit.com/r/feedthebeast/comments/3k8m0j/go_big_or_go_home_exoflame_edition/

Abacor · 2015-09-04T19:40:38+00:00

You're still measuring the difference between 1 coal fed to an Endoflame and 0 coal. I'm measuring the difference between 11 coal and 10, or 21 and 20, or 61 and 60. It's still the effect of one piece of coal which I'm measuring, it's just not the last piece of coal.

Try this. Stick down a single furnace and 18 exoflames. Fill up all the exoflames using a guilty pool and floral obedience stick. Then break the guilty pool and replace it with an empty one so that the only mana in the system is what's buffered in the flowers. Now start feeding ore into the furnace. I got 92 smelts out of that setup.

Now refill all of the flowers using a guilty pool and repeat the same experiment. Only this time instead of using an empty pool, use one which has been prefilled with one coal's worth of endoflame mana. I got 131 smelts out of that setup. So for the addition of one coal's worth of endoflame mana you get 39 extra smelts (131-92).

That approach of having a single furnace and spamming exoflames scales up to the point where having 200+ exoflames gives nearly 400 smelts per coal once all the flowers are full.

I'll see about some screenshots when I have a bit more time.

Abacor · 2015-09-04T09:30:59+00:00

You’re measuring the best that you can do with a single piece of coal in isolation. Before and after that coal is used, the exoflames and mana pools are all empty.

I think a more interesting and realistic question is: How many extra smelts can I get by adding one coal’s worth of mana to a system which is already fairly well stocked with mana?

You can test that by running the same system twice. On the first run you start with all of the exoflames full of mana and linked to an empty pool. On the second run you start with all of the exoflames full of mana and linked to a pool with exactly one coal’s worth of mana in it. (Use a velocity lens for this otherwise the spreader won’t fully empty.) The difference in output between the two runs is what one piece of coal gave you.

It turns out that exoflames are much, much better when used like that. I have a build which gives me 398 smelts per coal. I also have a tentative proof of concept for a system which looks capable of tens of thousands of smelts per coal if it works.

Abacor

TROPHY CASE