Tutorial: Matter generation - IC² Forum (2024)

This tutorial will teach you how to generate UU-Matter with the Mass Fabricator (aka Matter Generator). UU-Matter can be crafted into several items.

First, we need to craft a mass fabricator. It takes 2 cables, an HV transformer, 2 advanced circuits, an advanced machine, 2 glowstone dust and a recycler.

Then, we need to build a power system to power the machine. HV is optional, but highly recommended. Remember that the Mass Fabricator is the only machine which directly accepts HV current (and also remember that HV + other machines = KABOOM)! This power system uses a single generator, but you can create an even bigger one depending on your resources.

Feeding the generator some coal...

And after the matter generator is fed a total of 2 million EU from the HV, it generates UU-Matter.

Here's my improved grid, used from now on on this tutorial:

It's recommended that you feed the Mass Fabricator with some secret material in the middle (lightning bolt). Doing so will speed it up a bit.

The progress bar will slowly start filling...

...and this is after a minute or so... ...then one more minute... ...almost there...

----------------------------->

...and we have UU-Matter!

All matter recipes are secret, find them yourself (a hint: all matter recipes exclusively use matter, nothing else, but this may change in the future). Matter can create many valuable and invaluable items, like this DIAMOND!

Quote from Xaiier

Why do you use a HV transformer? Won't the same amount of energy get to the matter generator if you just link it directly?

Yes, but it would get it there faster, thus increasing it's efficiency.

Quote from Adien_Alexander

Yes, but it would get it there faster, thus increasing it's efficiency.

How does it get it there any faster? It's only traveling a few blocks, its not like we have to worry about energy loss. And anyways, it has to sit there and charge the HV for all the time it makes up.

Quote from Xaiier

How does it get it there any faster? It's only traveling a few blocks, its not like we have to worry about energy loss. And anyways, it has to sit there and charge the HV for all the time it makes up.

That's just a small scale example. =/

For example, We'll say the MF has 5 inputs, (Top, bottom and three side). Assuming you have your MFE/MFSU set to the max you'd be inputting 320 EU/s total. Now, if you have 5 HVT's set up, you can be maxing out at 10k Eu/ pulse (Barring any wire-fu, which will be discussed in the tutorial I'm hoping). Each of those 2k lines, would have 4 inputs, which would average out to needing 500 Eu/s to make it pulse every second. Seeing that out max is 64 Eu/s, it would take no more than 8 pulses from each MFE/MFSU to fill the HVT to sending capacity, which 8 pulses multiplied by your 320 Eu/s you'd have from just hard wiring in MFE/MFSU would give you approximately 2500 Eu total for that time period. (Which about the same as ONE HVT would give you on average for an 8 second period). Am I being clear? It's just a simpler way to condense your inputs, thus getting more energy into the MF in less time, and space.

Quote from Adien_Alexander

That's just a small scale example. =/

For example, We'll say the MF has 5 inputs, (Top, bottom and three side). Assuming you have your MFE/MFSU set to the max you'd be inputting 320 EU/s total. Now, if you have 5 HVT's set up, you can be maxing out at 10k Eu/ pulse (Barring any wire-fu, which will be discussed in the tutorial I'm hoping). Each of those 2k lines, would have 4 inputs, which would average out to needing 500 Eu/s to make it pulse every second. Seeing that out max is 64 Eu/s, it would take no more than 8 pulses from each MFE/MFSU to fill the HVT to sending capacity, which 8 pulses multiplied by your 320 Eu/s you'd have from just hard wiring in MFE/MFSU would give you approximately 2500 Eu total for that time period. (Which about the same as ONE HVT would give you on average for an 8 second period). Am I being clear? It's just a simpler way to condense your inputs, thus getting more energy into the MF in less time, and space.

Ah, I see, explains a lot of stuff.

So the reason you would do it is because the HVT has a theoretically higher max eu/s possible than a MFE does. Also you can abuse the HVT's ability to have more than 100 eu/s incoming, so that you aren't as limited by the 64 eu/s max.

Just curious, but would it theoretically be possible to expand this beyond what you said, so that HVT's go into HVT's that go into HVT's and so on, or would the massive incoming spikes overload (not literally) the HVT? Meaning the max incoming is 2k/s which isn't possible without other HVT's so the most input to one HVT is 320 eu/s? Then again, with proper wiring and some switch blocks, it would be possible to combine signals into a large 2k input, but in that case there isn't really a need for the HVT anyways. Would it be an even better idea to screw the HVT's and just combine a crap-load of signals into one massive blob of doom? The wastage would be minimal once the charge got high enough and you could theoretically have a 2 million eu/s input to the matter generator meaning instantaneous starting. If you combined both ideas, you could theoretically make a number of HVT's that all spike at the same time, sending 2 million EU's down a single line, and by the time the matter generator was ready again, all the HVT's would be ready to spike again.

I probably went a little too far. At that point, you probably should just have multiple generators but anyways, yeah.

EDIT: If you reference my question in the support forum, does the matter generator truly "store" energy up, or does it have to wait till its finished to start receiving energy again? If it does hold it, it would be easy to make a system where the incoming HVT pulses fill it just as it finishes, so that it can start again (rather than having 1000 HVT's spiking at once.

Quote from Xaiier

Ah, I see, explains a lot of stuff.

So the reason you would do it is because the HVT has a theoretically higher max eu/s possible than a MFE does. Also you can abuse the HVT's ability to have more than 100 eu/s incoming, so that you aren't as limited by the 64 eu/s max.

Just curious, but would it theoretically be possible to expand this beyond what you said, so that HVT's go into HVT's that go into HVT's and so on, or would the massive incoming spikes overload (not literally) the HVT? Meaning the max incoming is 2k/s which isn't possible without other HVT's so the most input to one HVT is 320 eu/s? Then again, with proper wiring and some switch blocks, it would be possible to combine signals into a large 2k input, but in that case there isn't really a need for the HVT anyways. Would it be an even better idea to screw the HVT's and just combine a crap-load of signals into one massive blob of doom? The wastage would be minimal once the charge got high enough and you could theoretically have a 2 million eu/s input to the matter generator meaning instantaneous starting. If you combined both ideas, you could theoretically make a number of HVT's that all spike at the same time, sending 2 million EU's down a single line, and by the time the matter generator was ready again, all the HVT's would be ready to spike again.

I probably went a little too far. At that point, you probably should just have multiple generators but anyways, yeah.

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Yes, combining HVTs wuth Switch cables is a part of the "wire-fu" I was talking about. And yes, it is theoretically possible to to generate a UUM every frame. I may just figure it out on a flat map. ;P

Quote from Adien_Alexander

Yes, combining HVTs wuth Switch cables is a part of the "wire-fu" I was talking about. And yes, it is theoretically possible to to generate a UUM every frame. I may just figure it out on a flat map. ;P

Wait every frame?

Maybe you can explain some stuff to me. Does giving a machine more energy make it work faster? From what you are saying that seems to be how it works.

From some random youtube vids ive seen 15k eu/s still taking quite a bit of time to generate one UUM, how much would be needed to make it instant?

Well, you'd have to somehow supply the Mass Fabricator with a monumental 2,000,000 EU/s to get it to spit out one UUM per frame.

You /could/ try to boost the MF with material and thus 'only' needing 200,000 EU/s, but then you'd also have to supply half a stack of material per frame too.

Quote from Talonius

Well, you'd have to somehow supply the Mass Fabricator with a monumental 2,000,000 EU/s to get it to spit out one UUM per frame.

You /could/ try to boost the MF with material and thus 'only' needing 200,000 EU/s, but then you'd also have to supply half a stack of material per frame too.

Not impossible...

Quote from mcnugget_123

if anyone sets up that sort of thing, with multiple HV lines could we possibly get a picture?
ill continue trying to work it out on a small scale for now
also for anyone else newish reading this i find MF really useful for absorbing excess power, for instance on my server we have a group of about 40 solar panels powering a
machinery room, and since thats way more power than is needed constantly, you can just split the cable off an MFE or MFSU and have 32eu/s to machinery and the other 32 to a MF, so im not wasting any energy whatsoever, i also have the MFSU redstoned so we have a constant supply for batteries etc hope that gives someone some help or an idea lol

If someone fixes worldedit for singleplayer so it works with mod blocks, I'll do it. Otherwise I really don't feel like placing 200,000 solar panels...

I went ahead and generated some flat land on a map that I wasnt doing anything with and succesfully got up to 3 Million EU/s, I was cranking out UU Matter once a (real life) second and going through the secret ingredient (I dont know if you want it public yet...). It wasnt that hard, all I did was create a reactor bank that leads to an HV Transformer, 16 HV Transformers per bank = 32K EU/s, 8 Sets of Reactor/HV Banks (128 HV Transformers) @ 32K EU/s = 256K EU/s with pulses going all the way up to 3.2 million, Ill upload the map if anyone wants to check it out. Im pretty proud of it actually, but be warned, this WILL slow your computer down, Minecraft just cant keep up with all the particles its supposed to be generating, even when the animations and particles are turned off, and for the love of god DONT turn off the 2 main switches...

If I can take a video of it in action I will post it, for now youll have to download the map, Time Warner cut my cable and uploading sucks of a cell phone tether...

My Map, Test2.

By nsuneson at 2011-07-14

Edit - Cause I cant do basic math...

Quote from nn04

I went ahead and generated some flat land on a map that I wasnt doing anything with and succesfully got up to 3 Million EU/s, I was cranking out UU Matter once a (real life) second and going through the secret ingredient (I dont know if you want it public yet...). It wasnt that hard, all I did was create a reactor bank that leads to an HV Transformer, 8 HV Transformers = 16K EU/s, 6 Sets of Reactor/HV Banks @ 16K EU/s = 96K EU/s with pulses going all the way up to 3.2 million, Ill upload the map if anyone wants to check it out. Im pretty proud of it actually, but be warned, this WILL slow your computer down, Minecraft just cant keep up with all the particles its supposed to be generating, even when the animations and particles are turned off, and for the love of god DONT turn off the 2 main switches...

If I can take a video of it in action I will post it, for now youll have to download the map, Time Warner cut my cable and uploading sucks of a cell phone tether...

My Map, Test2.

By nsuneson at 2011-07-14

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Nice. The problem with the switches is exactly as I mentioned.

Anyways, as impressive as it is, I don't think nuclear is the way to go. There is no freaking way that anyone could ever keep that many generators supplied to function properly, nor supply enough (secret item here), so I would think that it would be better to use a system that was slower but more efficient.

Quote from Xaiier

Nice. The problem with the switches is exactly as I mentioned.

Anyways, as impressive as it is, I don't think nuclear is the way to go. There is no freaking way that anyone could ever keep that many generators supplied to function properly, nor supply enough (secret item here), so I would think that it would be better to use a system that was slower but more efficient.

Yea its incredibly hard to keep this thing functional, I think IndustrialCraft needs some kind of coil built into it that multiplies the HV leads cause 2K per transformer is kinda cheap, I mean disposable camera capacitors can do 6KV and they are tiny, so imagine something Minecraft Life Size. I want to build a 10 Million EU/s system but if its going to be 128 levels high then I might as well give up now, no where near enough processing power....

Quote from nn04

Yea its incredibly hard to keep this thing functional, I think IndustrialCraft needs some kind of coil built into it that multiplies the HV leads cause 2K per transformer is kinda cheap, I mean disposable camera capacitors can do 6KV and they are tiny, so imagine something Minecraft Life Size. I want to build a 10 Million EU/s system but if its going to be 128 levels high then I might as well give up now, no where near enough processing power....

Disposable camera caps can do 300V, definately not 6000V.