Project Red Transportation - MV Storage and Autocrafting

Introduction

Applied Energistics 2 is an incredible mod, and will supersede all other autocrafting options when you get it. However, it is not necessary to reach EV and get titanium to do autocrafting.

This doesn't just mean the basic "auto crafting table" functionality - you can also request items on demand from a storage system, load recipes perfectly from a single input, and more!

What are my options?

Project Red: Transportation is great. Use it (assuming you're at least MV).

(TODO: Non PR:Transportation options)

Explaining Project Red: Transportation

Most of Project Red: Transportation is not a huge improvement over normal GTNH passive crafting. However, it shines most due to two circuits and one pipe:

• Circuits
  • Item Broadcaster Chip
  • Stock Keeper Chip
• Pipe
  • Routed Interface Pipe

The Routed Interface Pipe is the backbone that allows everything to work. It connects to inventories and has space for up to 4 chips to insert.

The Item Broadcaster Chip tells the PR network that an item is available in an adjacent inventory. It has up to 9 slots and can have a priority set for it.

The Stock Keeper Chip can be told to only fill an inventory with an exact number of items (up to 9 slots) and then stop until it becomes empty again. This means no waste - items aren't requested until they're needed.

With these basic building blocks, it is possible to build a single network that contains every dedicated crafting path you want, with ingredient reuse across the different crafting paths.

You don't get machine reuse like you would with AE2, but hey - you can always add those machine crafting recipes to your network, right? :)

Project Red Example: Autocrafting LV->MV circuits

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  Step 1: 6 inputs leading into a Circuit Assembly Machine. No chips are inserted yet - just the pipes, drawers, and machines added.

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  Step 2: Set up broadcast items for all inputs. In this case I'm using drawers, but this isn't very Item Broadcaster Chip efficient. Consider using 2x2 drawers or another more compact solution you come up with (filing cabinets?). As long as the network has access to the items, you're good.

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  Step 3: Sanity check your chip to make sure it has what you want. You can do this by pressing shift while hovering over the programmed chip. Once it looks good, put it in the pipe adjacent to the relevant drawer.

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  Step 4: Now program the final LV circuit recipe onto an Item Stock Keeper Chip. Put this into the pipe adjacent to the circuit assembly machine.

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  Step 5: Assuming you did everything correctly, you should be done with the first part! The system is now passively crafting LV circuits. However, it is only requesting what it needs, and the system can be reused for other crafts. Let's move on to fully automating LV->MV circuits.

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  Step 6: Set the fluid extractor to infinitely refill tin ingots. This will ensure that the tin fluid never runs out. (Note that the fluid extractor is between the two circuit assembly machines so that both have access to its fluid.)

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  Step 7: Remember that the Routed Interface Pipes can accept up to 4 cards. Because of this, you can put an Item Broadcaster Chip onto the first circuit assembler's adjacent pipe set to the LV circuit, making LV circuits now available to the network.

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  Step 8: Now program an Item Stock Keeper Chip with your MV circuit recipe. Remember to set it to only refill when empty so it only uses what it needs. Put it next to the second circuit assembler.

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  Step 9: You're done! The system will now automatically pull crafting materials for LV circuits and MV circuits. If you want to turn a particular craft off, you can either remove the adjacent chip or hit the machine with a soft mallet (which will cause the chip to fill items once to satisfy the chip "when empty" rule but not actually use the materials since the machine is off).

How do I get Project Red Ingredients?

First, remember rule 1 of any autocrafting system - the first system you set up should be making more of the autocrafting system. So make sure you have chips automated.

Now, looking at specific items:

• Dyes for Illuminars
  • One source is bees, as they passively produce flowers while active. You can automate bees easily using an apiary, a hopper, and some tin item pipes that feed the bees back into the apiary.
  • Alternatively, you can progress in Thaumcraft and get the Rainbow Cactus. This can be farmed for dyes.
• Gold / Redstone / Glowstone Dust / Silicon
  • All of these are byproducts of glowstone dust producing flowers like glowflower or glieonia (from Thaumcraft). Set them up - you're going to need them anyway for chrome for HV.
  • You can also directly get redstone from redwheat.
  • If you're on 2.1.1.0, cobblestone -> sand -> glass -> silicon dioxide is a great source of silicon.
• Diamond
  • GT++ Fish traps are a renewable early game source of diamonds.
  • Alternatively, you can produce these from bio chunks.
• Glass
  • Arc furnace!!