Applied Energistics 2: Difference between revisions

When 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 MEpattern-holding interface (the one holding that encoded pattern) 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.