Assembly Line Automation - AE2 Decoder

Heads Up!

Tutorial is courtesy of Divran, and the most up to-date version can be found here.

This guide uses the ME Fluid Packet Decoder (pack version 2.2.8+) to automate an Applied Energistics 2 enabled Assembly Line.

Step 1

Build the ME cable skeleton.

This requires an ME controller to have enough channels. I also recommend using alternating colors of cables so they don't connect to each other.

Step 2

Add storage busses for input and an interface at the back for output. The red ME cable connects back to your main network.

Step 3

Add fluid packet decoders.

Do not place them so close to each other that they touch, since that would place them in the same subnetwork, which wouldn't work.

Step 4

Add storage buses to your fluid packet decoders.

The storage buses pointing at the packet decoders are item storage buses, while the storage buses pointing up away from the packet decoders are fluid storage buses.

Step 5

Configure the filters on your storage buses.

They need to be configured to only accept fluid packets and everything except fluid packets, respectively. To do this, search for 'packet' in NEI, and you will find an 'invalid fluid packet' item. Drag this into the storage buses, then add a fuzzy card and an inverter card as the images to the right show.

Storage bus pointing at packet decoder
Storage bus pointing at input buses

Step 6

Set storage bus priority.

Set the priority of each storage bus in decreasing order. The storage buses pointing at a packet decoder should have the highest priority (20, 19, 18, 17), and the storage buses which are pointing at where the input buses will go should follow after that (with priorities 16-1 or 15-0)

Storage buses pointing at packet decoders
Storage buses pointing at input buses

Step 7

Add an item p2p to the front of the assembly line.

The item p2p at the bottom of the cyan cable in the close-up picture below is the input. You want to link from the bottom p2p to both of the other ones.

Caution:

This is the most important part of the setup, as it allows the blocking mode setting to work in your interface, which is required to be able to encode more than one recipe in a single assembly line.

You will notice that the topmost item p2p appears to be pointing at the 'wrong' side of the first input bus. This is intentional. We know the item p2p will not be able to put any items into the input bus from this side, but it can still see into it, and that is enough for blocking mode to work. As long as the interface sees that an item is already inside, it won't try to push the next requested craft in. I recommend you use an interface p2p rather than a normal interface to allow multiple assembly lines to easily reuse the same recipes. The interface at the bottom of the cyan cable is where you will later place your recipes.

Step 8

Place input buses, input hatches, and an output bus.

All the input buses MUST be ULV, so that they have only a single input slot. All of them should be rotated down into the storage buses.

Step 9

Finish up the assembling line multiblock.

I recommend you do this using the auto-build feature of a Multiblock Hologram Structure Projector. Grab 15 of them in a stack, then grab all required materials, minus the buses and hatches which you already placed. Then temporarily put any wireless ME terminal which you may have in your inventory into a backpack or a chest. This way, the holo projector won't use any buses or hatches you may have in your ME storage. Then shift-right click to complete the multiblock.

Step 10

Placing recipes

The interface p2ps in this picture is where you will place your recipes.

Caution:

Make absolutely sure you enable blocking mode in every single interface and/or interface p2p!

As previously mentioned, I also strongly recommend you to use interface p2p instead of a normal interface, to easily allow you to hook up any number of assembling lines. The rest ME cable in this picture should be connected to your main ME network.

Make sure to enable this option!

This prevents several issues regarding fluid insert order.

36 recipe slots isn't enough! How do you get more? I recommend a quick research trip into thaumcraft to unlock transvector interfaces. Then place them near the item p2p as shown in this picture, and link them all to the item p2p input.

Step 11

One assembly line isn't anywhere near fast enough. You should be looking forward to setting up something similar to this, eventually.

Be careful when building many assembly lines in the same chunk. Too many will overload the chunk and minecraft will no longer be able to save that chunk, causing rollbacks. I believe we are very close to hitting that limit in the picture to the left, so I don't recommend building your assembling lines on two floors. Stick to one floor.