Applied Energistics 2: Difference between revisions

[[Category:Guides]][[Category:Automation]][[Category:Applied Energistics 2]][[Category:Mods]]

This guide will only focus on item storage and autocrafting through AE2 and the foundations of a simple Matter Energy (ME) network, but please note that AE2 is not limited to just this purpose. It is possible to transport energy, fluids, vis, redstone signals, light, and even space. It can do all these things cross-dimensionally on top of this!

FiveSix main types of cabling exist: quartz fiber, glass cables, covered cables, smart cables, and dense cables, and ME Conduits (from Ender IO).

*Glass cables can hold up to 8 channels and power. ItCovered iscables are functionally equivalent to coveredglass cables.

* A regular terminal will allow the manual insertion/extraction of items frominto/tofrom the ME network.

* A pattern terminal is essentially a regular terminal but will also allow one to create patterns for autocrafting purposes (explained below).

Nearly every minecraft block has an AE2 facade recipe (4 cable anchors + block). Facades allow the hiding of cabling, interfaces, and buses behind a facade of the chosen block. The AE2 Network Tool allows easy removal of facades as well as the ability to see through facades, allowing for easy debugging of your system without tearing everything apart.

Import buses will import items into a networksnetwork's storage. Just like an export bus, it will import slowly at first, but will start to speed up. Again, cards can upgrade the default behavior.

Storage buses connect to other inventory-like devices, such as JABBA barrels, and interactstreats withthose them.inventories Extractinglike orthey insertingwere itemsstorage intocells, aallowing networkyou thatto isinsert/extract usingfrom those inventory-like devices. Right clicking on a storage bus forwill bring up a particularUI itemin which one can specifiy which items will be stored by this storage bus, essentially treatacting as a filter of sorts. Since the inventory-like deviceis treated as a medium to hold item, like a storage cell, forone thatcould itemtheoretically (evenhave ifa thedrive-less ME network hasand nouse pure storage cells)buses instead. ThisStorage buses can be very useful in instances where an upgraded barrel (or a super chest) can hold more of a single item than a storage cell ever could. Storage busses can also be used on Drawer controllers for easy mass storage of multiple types with only one storage bus.

Furthermore, connecting a storage bus to an ME Interface will expose the contents of the network connected to that Interface to the network connected to the storage bus. In other words, if Network A has a storage bus and Network B has an ME Interface, connecting Network A's storage bus to Network B's interface allows Network A to see and interact with all items stored in Network B. This interaction is not two-way. In the aforementioned scenario, A can see the contents of B, but B does not see the contents of A. This allows one to create subnetworks. This feature should be used sparingly for performance reasons.

Interfaces also allow for autocrafting. The bottommost row of 9 slots (slot C in Figure 1) can hold crafting/processing patterns (will be explained shortly). The top right slot (slot D in Figure 1) can hold upgrade cards.

Interfaces can be shaped shape-crafted to be in panel-mode or block-mode. Functionally, there is no difference between the two modes. Panel-mode interfaces can seamlessly exist within AE2 facades and can attach to any 6 sides of a cable or a block, whereas block-mode interfaces will take up the whole block space.

This device will perform shaped crafting recipes dictated by the interfaces that are connected to it. It is the primary way of doing shaped crafting recipes in AE2. NoteThe molecular assembler itself does not need a channel, but remember that thisthe deviceinterfaces needsconnected to it will require a channel each. By default, it crafts slowly but can be sped up with acceleration cards.

Encoded Patterns hold recipes inside them. Inserting this pattern into an ME Interface will allow one to autocraft that recipe from any terminal of the ME network. To create an Encoded Pattern, a blank pattern and a pattern terminal is needed. Inside the terminal, it iswill possiblelook tolike toggleFigure between creating crafting patterns or creating processing patterns. Blank patterns can be inserted into the slot on the bottom right side. Encoded patterns can be overwritten with new recipes (insert it into the output slot and encode a new recipe).2:

Crafting storage is required alongside patterns. Crafting storage blocks come in 1K, 2K, 4K, 16K, and 64K byte variants (similar to storage cells). Crafting storage is essentially a buffer where items are held until the recipe is finished. Because of this, the longer a recipe is (let's say you have 5 or more "chained" recipes for a single recipe) the more storage you will need to start that job.

Crafting Storage can be expanded in a multiblock structure. The only rulerules isare that it must be cuboid and it must have at least 1 crafting storage block. The entire multiblock will only use 1 channel.

OnceWhen a valid pattern is inserted into an ME Interface, the recipe will be auto-craftable from a terminal. Once the autocraft for that recipe is initiated, all "input" items will be dumped into whatever inventory the pattern-holding interface is connected to.

The key thing to know is that, for processing patterns, the ME network will simply dump all the "input" items of the encoded pattern into the interface's attached inventory and will expect the "output" item to be inserted into the network at some later point in time. If there isn't enough space to dump items into, the ME network will wait until space frees up; it will not send parts of a recipe, it will send it all at once. The output item doesn't have to be inserted into the same ME Interface that started the recipe; it can inserted from anywhere in the network, through any means (import buses work too), and it will satisfy the recipe. With this in mind, autocrafting in AE2 is actually very simple. The ME network has no idea what kind of inventory you are dumping the input items to, it simply dumps items (assuming there is enough space) and expects the exact number ofpattern-specified output (specified by the patterns) back into the system. If it doesn't ever get the expected itemoutput(s) back, itthe willME hangnetwork andwill not allow you start another autocrafting recipe, so make sure that you have set the recipe properly. Recipes can also be cancelled at any point.

Let's theorycraft an example. Let's say you want to autocraft 1x tin cables. We need a processing pattern with: 1 1x tin wire and 1 rubber sheet. This can't be dumped directly into an assembler (because the rubber sheet has to be fluid extracted), so we will instead connect the interface to a chest. This will make the ME network dump a 1x tin wire and 1 rubber sheet into the chest whenever you request a tin cable from a terminal. From the chest, you can have a filtered Ender IO item conduit take all rubber sheets and insert them into a fluid extractor while taking all non-rubber items and inserting it into an assembler. The output of the assembler (a 1x tin cable) can then be inserted back into the ME network and the recipe will be considered "complete" by the ME network.

Note that you would probably also need to set up autocrafting for the 1x tin wires as well: 1 tin ingot->2 1x tin wires. This recipe could be hooked up directly to a Gregtech wiremill. But note if you do this, you will literally have a limit of 4x9 wiremill recipes. This is because interfaces can only hold 9 recipes each and only 4 of the 6 faces of a Gregtech machine can have an interface attached to it: (one is a non-insertible "face" of the machine and the other would be used for EU input) and interfaces can only hold 9 recipes. To get around this, we can do what we did before and instead connect the interface to a chest. The chest can then have items transported from it to the machine. You will notice that doing it this way is also easily expandable (since we can easily just add more chests/interfaces). As long as the ME network receives 2 1x tin wires after dumping a tin ingot into the chest, any setup is valid.

Right clicking with an AE2 wrenchNetwork Tool onto any part of your ME system gives a detailed overview about the components in your system and their energy drain. Clicking the top-left button will further convert the default AE units into EU for ease of reading (since this pack mainly deals with Gregtech EU). OneThe thinglist tobelow notegives isan thatapproximate GT:NH alters the energyEU drain reportedfor by the AE wrench overview. Anyeach component in the overview list actually has an EU drain multiplied by 10. The total drain listed at the bottom, however, is correctAE2.