One of the things you’re going to be doing a lot, and for a very long time at that, is crafting circuits. Exactly what those machines need all that computation for isn’t necessarily obvious sometimes, but if you want to industrialize, you’re not escaping the need for circuits. Many, oh so very many circuits.
Terminology GTNH (and Gregtech in general) groups circuits based on two things - their tier and their type, or grade as I like to use for the latter distinction. A circuit’s tier is exactly that, LV tier circuits are used to craft LV tier machines, MV tier circuits craft MV tier machines, etc. A circuit’s grade seemingly does not make too much of a difference for crafting purposes - an IV Mainframe and an IV Processor share 99% of their uses in recipes - but where they do differ is where it matters the absolute most: How expensive/difficult they are to craft, and whether they can be used to craft higher tiers of circuits.
NEI has an overview page for all of the different circuits (and many of the circuit components) which you can access by looking up the recipe of most circuits, and clicking on the “Circuits overview” button on the Gregtech Circuits NEI tab. Circuit tiers are shown top to bottom, circuit grades are shown left to right.
As an example look at MV circuits. Good Electronic Circuits are the first grade, Good Integrated Circuits are the second grade, and Integrated Processors are the third (and final) grade. All three can be used to craft MV machines and other things that need MV tier circuits, but beyond that they are very different.
Good Electronic Circuits are crafted from Electronic Circuits (LV tier), which in turn are crafted from Vacuum Tubes (ULV tier). Good Integrated Circuits are crafted from Integrated Logic Circuits (LV tier), and used to craft Advanced Circuits (HV tier). Integrated Processors take this a step further, being crafted directly from circuit components, and being used to craft Processor Assemblies (HV), Workstations (EV), and finally Mainframes (IV).
In short: The higher grade a circuit is the fewer steps are required to craft it, as well as the more you can craft it up to create higher tiers of circuits. Higher grade circuits aren’t necessarily cheaper (or faster/simpler) than lower grade circuits at all stages, but they often are. And if not they are required for higher tiers
The First Circuit(s. Technically the second, but we basically don’t count the actual first ones) Crafting circuits without machines to make it cheaper is simply painful. Expect to run through about a half stack of redstone, about three quarters of a stack of copper, half a dozen steel and sulfur dust, a quarter stack of sticky resin, and about half an iron hammer and wire cutter. As well as some other stuff.
Fortunately there are machines that make crafting circuits cheaper, even in the steam age. A Forge Hammer will cut down on the plates cost, which - given wires and fine wires are both crafted from plates at this stage - is going to save you a fair chunk of resources, so it’s a good investment.
Machines alone will not cut it, however. Going through the whole process to craft a circuit every time you need one will drive you crazy in very short order. What you want to do is craft circuits in batches, and craft the components in batches as well. Missing six Red Alloy Wire to finish two circuits? Craft a stack of the stuff, and save yourself the trouble of having to go through the process of alloy smelting slow as molasses red alloy the next ten times this situation will come up. If you have the materials and the machines to process it just dump stuff into a hopper and let it run. It’ll save you a lot of headache in the near future.
Of course there is a balancing act you’ll have to perform, since neither resources or machine processing capacity are infinite. Not to mention you will eventually get improved recipes that makes crafting components cheaper, or even make components fully obsolete, and sitting on a chest full of stuff that no longer has a use isn’t too efficient. In some cases you’ll be able to recycle or otherwise reuse the stuff elsewhere, but not always.
Broadly speaking, during the Steam and LV age your resources and processing capacity will be at their most limited, and upgrades to circuit crafting available quickly and repeatedly. MV will see major improvements to your processing capacity and resource income thanks to miners, but more limited upgrades to circuit crafting. HV even more so as miners are upgraded and (ideally) an ore processing system is set up, causing resource availability to explode, but circuit upgrades are gated behind new multiblocks and/or multiblock upgrades. EV, IV and LuV each continue the trend, improving resource availability through far better multiblock miners while having few upgrades to circuit crafting. Circuit crafting instead settles into a standardized pattern, requiring special (but otherwise not necessarily hard to get) resources to continue the circuit crafting chain and/or unlock what few upgrades to circuit crafting still exist here and there.
All told, this early on I would recommend leaning on the questbook coin shop to supplement your supply of circuit components, and not going too crazy with the batches of circuits you craft. Later on the madness will start, not to worry, but early on it’s better to stick to (relatively) humble beginnings.
Entering LV As mentioned upgrades to circuit crafting come quickly and repeatedly in LV, so make sure to check NEI often until you’ve found and memorized the better recipes. Some improvements will come from having access to basic machines - using a Wiremill to turn a copper ingot into 2 copper wires directly instead of using a Steam Forge Hammer to turn three ingots into two plates, than using a wire cutter to cut one plate into one wire, let stand the Wiremill’s greater improvements to crafting Fine wires - whereas other will come from having access to an Assembling Machine. For example Vacuum Tubes can be crafted much more easily, and cheaply, in an Assembling Machine than in a Crafting Table. Of course you will also need a Fluid Extractor to go with it for that particular recipe, but either way the more LV machines you craft, the more you can save resources on crafting circuits. And make batch crafting that much easier.
The second major upgrade will come in the form of your first Circuit Assembling Machine, essentially an Assembling Machine dedicated to crafting circuits and a few odd circuit-adjacent recipes. You will need (Tier+1) circuits to craft a (Tier) CAM, so you will need to craft some MV tier circuits by hand first, but after doing so and investing those circuits (and a bunch of other materials, obviously) into your first CAM you’ll be able to start crafting those same MV circuits cheaper, and easier. One early note about the Diodes you need for MV circuits, and for that matter, a few things you can do to make circuit crafting in LV cheaper which you might not have thought about or thought possible: Polyethylene, Annealed Copper, and Solar Silicon Grade Dust doesn’t require any MV tier technology. Monocrystalline Silicon Boules - and, in turn, wafers - do require an EBF, but nothing more. You can, and should, make and use those early on
Overwhelmed by the NEI jungle worth of different recipes for circuit components, and no clue where to start looking for better recipes? Here’s some pointers on how crafting Electronic Circuits will evolve from late steam to early MV:
Plates initially requires two ingots plus a GT Hammer to craft a single plate. A Steam Forge Hammer can turn three ingots into two plates, improving the yield and removing the cost of replacing the GT hammer. An LV Bending Machine will turn one ingot into one plate directly, improving the yield once again Foils initially requires two ingots plus a GT Hammer to craft a plate, than another hammer use to craft that plate into two foils. The steam forge hammer will cut down on plate cost, but the first direct improvement comes in the form of the LV Bending Machine again, turning one ingot directly into four foils Casings are initially crafted from a plate plus a GT hammer, using a different shaped recipe than crafting foils. A steel Mold (Casing) lets a Steam Alloy Smelter turn two ingots into three casings. An LV Cutting Machine can turn one plate into two casings, and an MV Extruder will turn one ingot into two casings Wires initially requires a plate and a GT Wire Cutter to cut said plate into a single wire. A forge hammer will cut down on the plate cost in the steam age, but with an LV Wiremill you can directly turn one ingot into two wires. Fine Wires initially requires a foil plus GT Wire Cutter to craft one fine wire. A Forge Hammer will (once again) cut down on the plate cost substantially, but with an LV Wiremill you can directly turn one ingot into eight fine wire. That’s an 8x yield increase going from zero machines to one LV machine Rods initially require an ingot plus a GT File to craft one rod. With an LV Lathe you can turn one ingot into one rod and two small dust - note that Steel Dust can be smelted and cast out through a TiC smeltry, so this process is worth it for steel ingots at least. Finally an MV Extruder turns one ingot into two rods Bolts initially require a GT Saw plus a rod to turn into two bolts, which can later be improved with an LV Cutting Machine to cut one rod into four bolts, and later still an MV Extruder to turn an ingot into eight bolts directly (FYI, GT tools take 400 durability damage per crafting recipe they’re used in, giving iron tools 64 uses before they break. “Why have 25600 durability tools take 400 damage instead of a 64 durability tool take one damage?” you ask? GT is from an era of modding where the only people smart enough to ask those kinds of important questions were the people smart enough to flee screaming towards whatever alternative to modded Minecraft they could find at the time. The durability nonsense is a remnant of an old “make every non-GT tool useless by globally increasing durability consumption by 400x” mechanic, you see…)
Diodes are first crafted in a crafting table. An LV Assembler cuts the number of (fine) wires required in half, a Centrifuge (LV or steam multi) reduces the Sticky Resin cost and avoids wasting potential Raw Rubber Dust, and an LV Arc Furnace lets you make Annealed Copper to get double the Diodes per craft. (unsure how you’re supposed to use the LV Assembler recipe without a centrifuge or fluid extractor to produce some kind of glue? Technically you can melt rubber in a TiC Smeltery to make glue, cast that out into a bucket, and put that into the assember directly. I do not recommend it, but it’s technically possible) Vacuum Tubes are first crafted in a crafting table. An LV Assembler and Fluid Extractor lets you craft them at 1/3rd the cost in wires, zero fine wires, and half the steel rods. An LV Arc Furnace lets you make Annealed copper wires to double the output, and an MV Fluid Extractor lets you use Molten Redstone Alloy to double the yield again. Pay very close attention to the difference between Molten Redstone, Molten Red Alloy, and Molten Redstone Alloy - three different fluids with different yields, and different recipe requirements. You should use Molten Red Alloy in LV, and Molten Redstone Alloy (once you can) in MV Glass Tubes are initially made with a steel Mold (Ball) in an Alloy Smelter with Glass Dust, itself crafted in a crafting table. There’s two ways to improve this recipe in LV (or steam, if you build a steam mixer multi), or at least do it differently. First, Glass Dust can be crafted in a Mixer to double the glass dust per Flint Dust and/or use Quartzite Dust instead of Quartz Sand. Alternatively you can use an LV Fluid Extractor to turn one Quartzite Dust into 72mb Molten Glass, and use an LV Fluid Solidifier to turn 144mb molten glass into various glass products, inclusing tubes. Later you’re able to use an MV Arc Furnace to turn one sand into two glass blocks, which you can melt into 144mb Molten Glass per block in an MV Fluid Extractor or macerate directly into glass dust. Circuit Boards are initially a crafting table recipe with 8x copper wire and 1x Coated Circuit Board, itself a wooden plank and two sticky resin/slimeballs. An LV Assembler and Centrifuge (or other source of Refined Glue, technically, but it’s going to be a centrifuge) will let you craft wooden planks 8x cheaper and faster, even if it really doesn’t feel like it when you’re spending two minutes crafting a full stack of wooden planks. The same Assembler will let you craft circuit boards using foils instead of wires instead - effectively this makes a circuit board cost 1 ingot per board at worst, 75% cheaper than the crafting table recipe at its best. Still in LV you can double the circuit board yield by using Chemical Reactors and oil processing to produce Polyethylene, the first tier of plastic. Polyethylene makes innumerable recipes cheaper, not just this one odd circuit recipe, so it’s very worth grabbing as soon as is reasonably possible Red Alloy Cables (and, really, cables in general) are first crafted in an Alloy Smelter with 2x rubber bar and 1x wire per cable. An LV Assembler will cut the amount of rubber required per cable in half, but this requires a source of molten rubber. You can use an LV Fluid Extractor to melt down rubber bars into molten rubber, but the better method is using an LV Chemical Reactor to produce molten rubber from raw rubber dust and sulfur dust directly. This is not only 3x and 9x the rubbber per raw rubber dust and sulfur dust respectively, but also lets you use an LV Fluid Solidifier to directly turn molten rubber into I.E. Rubber Rings, which in turn is 8x yield through a solidifier compared to the old alloy smelter into GT knife method - one rubber ingot worth of molten rubber solidifies into four rings, an alloy smelter turns two rubber bars into one plate that gets cut into one ring. (excess red alloy cables left over after crafting a CAM? Macerate them to get back the materials used to craft them, or if you just want to wires back, use an Unpackager to strip off the rubber. Wires can be directly fluid extracted, if you need molten red alloy or want to recycle it further that way)
Finally, eventually you’ll craft that LV CAM to greatly simplify the Electronic Circuit Recipe, in addition to making it cheaper. I mentioned another benefit previously as well, and that would be SMDs.
Entering MV, or “time for Wafers and SMDs” There are five common components that are used by all circuits, though not every circuit requires every type of component to craft: Resistors, Diodes, Transistors, Capacitors, and Small Coils. Resistors you have crafted many times before by now, and the first grade of MV circuits introduced you to the concept of Diodes. As well as the concept of Gallium Arsenide, which is not a material most people will remember fondly (or at all considering the coin shop allows you to basically skip it, but details). The remaining components will come into play soon enough
In addition to those components the second grade of LV circuits - Integrated Logic Boards, required to craft HV tier circuits down the line - will introduce you to the concept of wafers. Wafers, broadly speaking, are another common circuit crafting ingredient that requires slightly different processing to produce different kinds of engraved wafers. Engraved wafers are then further crafted into different engraved wafers, or if they are ready, cut in a Cutting Machine to produce the cut wafers used in crafting different circuits as well as some other things. Energy Hatches, for example, will require cut wafers from now on.
To start with wafers, they require Solar Silicon Grade Dust - see the Fluid Lines tab for a more in-depth explanation to set that up - and Gallium Arsenide to cook a Monocrystalline Silicon Boule. Boules of all stripes take very long to cook in an EBF, so once again, batch crafting is your friend when it comes to these things. Boules are cut into blank wafers, which are then engraved, cut, and used for crafting. That said blank basic wafers actually have a direct crafting use related to circuit crafting: They can be used to replace Gallium Arsenide Dust in the Diode crafting recipe, making the recipe much more efficient. (remember that the whole process of creating Solar Silicon Grade Dust, Monocrystalline Silicon Boules, cut blank wafers and diodes doesn’t need anything more than an Electric Blast Furnace, so that extra efficiency you can get nice and early if you invest into some early machines/crafting/etc.)
With access to an MV Assembling Machine you are also able to start crafting, and using, SMDs. There are SMD versions of all five common circuit component types (SMD Small Coils are called SMD Inductors, the rest are simply directly named after their respective component). These are significantly easier, and cheaper, replacements for the five basic components, and they will become mandatory replacements in the near future. Once you have resources to throw around don’t be afraid to batch craft SMDs by the drawer. They will be used in bulk, and remain used in bulk until mid to late IV at the absolute earliest.
The Tantalum Problem (SMDs) One thing you’ll notice is that many of the SMDs have various recipes you can use to craft them, requiring slightly different items and producing different amounts. Consistently Tantalum is required for (one of) the most efficient recipe(s), but unless you’re using Thaumcraft Transmutation to dupe it Tantalum tends to be in short supply and hard to process. So what’s the solution? Are the better recipes not worth using, similar to Gelled Toluene? Is finding a steady source of Tantalum (that, for >99.99% of people, won’t include the aforementioned TC method) mandatory? Is there some trick to these SMDs? What’s the solution?
In this particular instance, there is a trick to managing SMDs. As an example let’s look at SMD Capacitors, which are the yellow ones. They have four recipes total - you can use 2 Thin Silicone Rubber Sheets or 4 PVC sheets, and either 2 Aluminium Foil or 2 Tantalum Foil. Silicon Rubber/Alu, PVC/Alu, Silicon Rubber/Tantalum, and PVC/Tantalum respectively yields 16, 24, 32, and 48 SMDs, with each craft also requiring one ingot worth of PE and 16s in an MV Assembling Machine. PVC is genuinely easier and cheaper than Silicon Rubber, no clue why it’s considered the better material TBH, but when GTNH throws you a bone you take it. So, very cheap Alu or very expensive Tantalum? 24 cheap or 48 expensive SMDs per craft? Which is the better recipe to use?
The answer depends on whether you need the SMDs quickly. 48 SMDs are 48 SMDs, whether crafted in two 16 second crafts or only a single one. That is the only meaningful difference there - if a few ingots of PE break the bank your factory has some serious issues that need addressing immediately, and if the power cost is a concern even more so. Can you afford to spend twice as long crafting SMD Capacitors? If yes, you can freely use the cheaper recipe. And remember what I said about batching these things by the drawer: Keep an eye on your stockpile and you’ll never feel any sort of time crunch crafting SMDs
Of course one thing that is going to mess with that is autocrafting. If you switch to having AE2 on demand craft SMDs when you need them you will feel those slower recipes. Of course by that time you’ll also have many more options in terms of resource gathering/processing, so perhaps the expensive/faster recipes won’t feel quite so expensive anymore. Alternative you can set up a system that passively crafts SMDs using the cheap/slow recipes and keeps some amount of them in stock. Such passive processes aren’t as common in GTNH as they are in Nomnifactory, but they do have their uses. Such as SMDs
Entering HV, or “The Cleanroom” HV opens up the third and final grade of MV circuits, as well as Phosphorus doped Monocrystalline Silicon Boules. Broadly speaking higher tiers of Boules will yield more engraved wafers per blank wafer engraved, and allow you to craft different types of engraved wafers that were unavailable before.
(Reference Table of wafers, courtesy of PlayfulPiano)
| Green | | 2x ULPIC | 8x ULPIC | 1x ASoC | 2x ASoC | 4x ASoC | 32x ASoC | 6:1 | | ULPIC - MV Energy/Dynamo Hatches ASoC - Final Grade Alt HV/EV Circuits | |:—|:—|:—|:—|:—|:—|:—|:—|:—|:—|:—| | Yellow | | 1x LPIC | 4x LPIC | 1x SoC | 4x SoC | 8x SoC | | LPiC 4:1 SoC 6:1 | | LPIC - HV Energy/Dynamo Hatches SoC - Final Grade Alt LV/MV Circuits | | Blue | | | 1x PIC | 4x PIC | | 1x QPIC | 16x QPIC | PIC 4:1, Others 2:1 | | PIC - EV Energy/Dynamo Hatches QPIC - UHV+ Energy/Dynamo Hatches PICs can be made into HPICs & UHPICs HPIC - IV Energy/Dynamo Hatches UHPIC - LuV Energy/Dynamo Hatches | | Red | | 1x ILC | 4x ILC | 8x ILC | 1x NPIC | 4x NPIC | 32x NPIC | ILC 8:1, Others 2:1 | | ILC - Grade 2 LV & Grade 1 HV Circuits NPIC - ZPM Energy/Dynamo Hatches NPICs can be made into PPICs PPIC - UV Energy/Dynamo Hatches | | Cyan | | 1x RAM | 4x RAM | 8x RAM | 16x RAM | 32x RAM | | 32:1 | | HV-UV Non-Final Grade Circuits | | Endereye | | | 1x NOR | 4x NOR | 8x NOR | 16x NOR | | 16:1 | | Grade 2 IV-UV Circuits | | Enderpearl | | | 1x NAND | 4x NAND | 8x NAND | 16x NAND | | 64:1 | | Grade 2 ZPM Circuits | | Orange | | 1x Simple SoC | 4x Simple SoC | 16x Simple SoC | 64x Simple SoC | | | 6:1 | | Final Grade ULV Circuits | | White | | 1x CPU | 4x CPU | 8x CPU | 16x CPU | 32x CPU | | CPU, NCPU 8:1, QBits 4:1 | | CPU - Final Grade LV/MV Circuits CPUs can be made into NCPUs & QBits NCPU - Final Grade HV-ZPM Circuits QBits - Final Grade EV Circuits |
Of course accessing these upgraded circuits and wafers comes at a cost: You will require Kanthal EBF Coils to cook the Phosphorus doped Boules, and a Cleanroom to cut the upgraded Boules into wafers. You’ll also need a Cleanroom to craft the final grade of MV circuits (and it’s upgrades).
The Cleanroom might seem like an intimidating multiblock to craft at first, but unless you’re behind on certain infrastructure it should prove little actual challenge. For size I would recommend a 5x4x5 interior, as this is enough space to set up everything you’d want inside a cleanroom without having to play a bit of GTNH flavored Compact Claustrophobia. If the extra blocks prove challenging take a step back and fix the issues your base has. You can suffice with the minimum 3x3x3 interior, but I find it better to build the final cleanroom the first time and not have to worry about upgrades. Remember that Filter Machine Casings have a cheaper recipe in an Assembling Machine compared to a crafting table, and that GT Item Filters can be made using Raw Carbon Mesh instead of Fine Steel Wire. Both recipes are valid, but unless you are swimming in Steel, use the former recipe. Short on Carbon Dust? Electrolyse (char)coal dust or Dark Ashes, which can be crafted from Pile of Ashes from Ash Blocks in the Nether. Avoid electrolysing Diamond Dust if you can, you’re going to be needing them in the not too distant future. Finally, as is mentioned on the cleanroom controller tooltip, 2.7 changed the Cleanroom multi so that you can use a variety of blocks to replace up to 30% of the multi’s Plascrete (though note that the multi requires an asbolute minimum of 20 Plascrete, relevant if you’re making a minimum size one). Of particular note if you’ve done a bit of Botania is Managlass, which is the cheapest EV tier glass by far and available as early as early LV.
Speaking of upgrades, to get power inside your Cleanroom you’re going to need to use Diodes - the block, not the circuit component - to send power through the wall (or floor) of the cleanroom. Rather than using a Machine Hull as a 1A Diode I would recommend using a 16A HV Diode to send power into a cleanroom. Overkill? For now, yes, but again I prefer to upgrade the cleanroom as few times as possible, and 16A HV will eventually allow 4 EV machines to run inside the cleanroom at once. The reason is because cleanrooms take a long time to spin up, especially when ran at low voltages, so I prefer to avoid that
With the multi build and running you will be able to directly craft MV tier circuits without using Diodes - the circuit component - and craft all the way up to the first grade of IV tier circuit. Remember to put a Howler Alarm on the Cleanroom to inform you of maintenance issues - it can void recipes if it’s below 100%
The Mad Batch Crafting Era (post-cleanroom) Setting up a Cleanroom, especially early on (it requires some HV components and Stainless Steel, but otherwise nothing that can’t be done in late MV/early HV), represents a major turning point in circuit crafting. The dynamic of limited resources and fast upgrades that started in the Steam age has done a full reversal, and with access to HV a ton of options for building critical infrastructure and/or progression down various side paths have opened up. Most rush through HV as far as their single Steam Grinder can carry them, praying that AE2 will save them from themselves, but you can spend a long time setting up and preparing stuff in HV that will make progression all the way up to and including crafting an Assembly Line in late IV much smoother. Of course all of that will require circuits, which (given an ore processing system and upgraded miners) you’ll have the resources to craft in bulk. And no further upgrades on the horizon
This is why I harp on the need for an early ore processing system so much (or other methods of generating resources, I.E. bees) - how many circuits is that AE2 system you’re dreaming of going to cost? Or that AE2/GT++ multiblock ore processing system? How many will it take to get there in the first place? With enough processed resources and machine processing capacity you can start to batch up multiple stacks of circuits, including extra stacks to craft into stacks of higher tier circuits, as early as HV. Fill compressed chests full of stuff, shove them next to a machine, and watch the circuits steadily be printed
That said autocrafting those stacks and stacks of circuits would be nice, especially as you reach the point where a single Compressed Chest is no longer able to hold all of the crafting ingredients for all the circuits you’re crafting. Yes, that happened to me. Yes, it was glorious. But, patience. You’ll get there
Assembly Line prep (Advanced SMDs) Carried by miners and ore processing you’ll comfortably get to Nanocircuits in EV (gated by Radon needed to craft an EV CAM, the solution to which is found in Thorium veins in the Nether), and later on upgrade to Quantum Circuits when you’ve got an IV CAM and a steady source of Indium and Platinum. However the final boss of what I consider GTNH’s early game looms on the horizon: The Assembly Line, which requires close to nine hundred quantum circuits just to satisfy the quest. If you want a full length one you will need over a thousand. You’re going to need something better than just a single machine in a cleanroom to accomplish this task. And remember what I said earlier, about on demanding SMDs becoming a problem? Welcome to needing over 20K SMD Capacitors to craft a single multi, again, just to satisfy the quest. Interested in a full length one? Upgrade that number to 27K. Even using the expensive Tantalum recipe is going to take a while here if you’re on demand crafting SMDs. If you’ve passived SMDs you’re probably fine, might need to upgrade the storage capacity a bit but beyond that, it’ll get the job done. That said crafting the circuits themselves will still take a while. And there is a way to start crafting circuits faster
Something you are able to start crafting in EV (partially, though I wouldn’t recommend doing so that early on anyhow) are Advanced SMDs. ASMDs are quite different from their earlier counterparts - they only have one recipe per ASMD (crafting a full stack of ASMDs for each recipe) and are very expensive to craft - but they also have two very significant benefits compared to regular ones. The biggest one is simple: Circuit recipes that use ASMDs instead of regular SMDs craft twice as fast. The other benefit helps counteract their higher cost a bit: Recipes only need a quarter the amount of ASMDs compared to regular SMDs.
It is, IMO, worth setting up ASMDs at least to craft Quantumprocessor Mainframes, which shaves off 40 seconds of crafting time per mainframe. This might not sound significant, but just to satisfy the questbook you’ll need 90 of them, which adds up to 3600 seconds or exactly one hour worth of crafting saved. The lower tiers of quantum circuits will see less benefit from ASMDs in terms of their crafting time, but you can still use ASMDs to craft them instead of you so wish. Saving 5 seconds per quantum circuit might not sound like much, but when you need over 800, rest assured, it adds up fast
Of course I’ll not sugar coat that ASMDs, circa IV, are not cheap. PBI, all three HSSs, Tungstensteel, Indium Gallium Phosphide, Graphene, Vanadium-Gallium, Niodium-Titanium, and of course the bigggest hurdle: Samarium. That is a long list of things to get sorted if you want to on-demand craft ASMDs, and rest assured, you will at this stage. That said I find that ASMDs serve as a very good early test of your factory, see if it’s comfortably able to handle IV and actually capable of doing anything with an Assembly Line when you do manage to craft one. You’re not going to be crafting any LuV components without Samarium or a steady supply of HSS-S, or a general ability to cook and cool those EBF ingots in an efficient manner. PBI you honestly could probably put off for a bit longer, but it doesn’t hurt to set it up early. It’s not like it’s expensive, and you’ll need it by ZPM anyhow
For Samarium, you’re going to want to get a T3 rocket and head off to Europa to find Ledox veins. The sporadic ore in this vein is Rubracium Ore, which yields Samarium Ore Concentrate Dust through it’s ore processing byproducts. Process that in an LCR and then a Centrifuge to get a small yield of Samarium. It won’t be a long term solution, but you won’t need that much this early either. Each ingot of Samarium will craft two LuV motors, or four stacks worth of Advanced SMD Inductors. Remember that you only need a quarter as many ASMDs per circuit than regular SMDs - those four stacks are going to go a long way (for context, a full length Assembly Line plus Advanced Data Access Hatch will consume 2460 ASMD Inductors, or ~39 Samarium Rings, or ~10 ingots of Samarium. Yeah. That 1:256 crafting ratio hard at work. Do not be afraid of temporarily using the LCR->centrifuge recipe with Samarium Ore Concentrate Dust)
For the EBFing capacity, I highly - as in, very ridiculously highly - recommend looking into the GT++ Volcanus if you haven’t set those up already. Take a look at the EBFs tab to see just how much of a difference it is going to make, especially with regard to another ingot that’s going to cause a load of trouble in terms of crafting LuV components if you don’t have very robust and upgraded EBF smelting capacity - Ruridit. If you cannot manage the EBFing required to craft ASMDs, Ruridit is going to absolutely murder your factory when you try and break into LuV. So upgrade accordingly, making ASMDs viable as well
For the vacuum freezer capacity - and don’t underestimate this, it is very easy to have the vacuum freezer creep up on you until it becomes a major bottleneck - I have to recommend a Mega Vacuum Freezer. Yes, it’s a big ugly blue box, but it’s a useful big ugly blue box. Give it a ton of power, and cooling is sorted
The rest you should honestly have or at least know how to handle by now - PBI is one more easy chemical line, the various non-Samarium/Platline dusts/ingots are just careful ore processing filtering and AE2 patterns, Graphene is Advanced Glue and a few AE2 patterns, etc. If you can’t handle them you honestly are not in a good position to handle IV, and if you’re not in a good position to handle IV what are you even hoping to accomplish by trying to rush LuV? Alternatively if half an ingot of HSS-S per stack of ASMD Capacitors breaks the bank Osmium wise, well…you need two HSS-S ingots per LuV motor. So, eh…yeah
Assembly Line craft (Circuit Assembling Machine PA…-ish) ASMDs are a worthwhile diversion, but even doubling the speed of a process to get it down to ~4 hours worth of processing time is simply not going to be good enough. You’re going to need to start crafting circuits in parallel, and for that you’re going to need a processing array. No, not the multiblock, an actual array of single block machines placed in-world. You know, the very kind of setup that Processing Arrays, the multi, were added to obsolete because GT is simply not good at handling those kinds of things despite it’s mechanics encouraging (and, in this case, practically requiring) its players to do? That kind
The good news is that GTNH does give you a neat little tool to make these sorts of in world arrays much easier to set up: ME (Dual) Interface P2Ps. These are effectively flat (Dual) Interfaces that you can link together, allowing one interface to send items to multiple destinations simultaneously. It’s not a perfect system, and it requires the assigned crafting CPU to have co-processing units in order to make full use of them, but it does make it much easier to parallelize recipes without having to spam patterns. Interface P2Ps are configured much like fluid P2Ps, in that there is one designated “input” P2P (which, for Interface P2Ps, is the one that holds the crafting patterns) that can link to multiple “output” P2Ps, although all interface P2Ps are bi-directional and able to send/accept items from and back into the network. The input interface P2P is also used to craft stuff. If you use interface P2Ps be careful with the size of your crafting recipes - AE2 interprets the content of a crafting pattern as a single recipe, and will push them into different machines accordingly. If you’ve got a pattern that crafts four circuits at once your craft won’t get parallelized if you request only four circuits. AE2 will assume that is a single recipe, and use a single machine
The bad news is that building 4-16, or however many single block CAMs you feel is a reasonable amount for how long you want your Assembly Line craft to take, reveals a(n at this point) difficult problem: Cleanroom maintenance. At any point during this massive 8+ hour to ~15 minute craft your cleanroom can get a maintenance issue, voiding 10% of the circuits it’s crafting from then on until it’s fixed. How do you resolve this? Realistically, you don’t. There are some cursed ways to brute force solve maintenance issues available at this point, but they are either unreliable (Dynamism Tablet) or have such clown tier recipes that you’d genuinely save time manually fixing a maintenance problem and resetting the big craft than setting up what passes for maintenance automation at this point (drone centre). So…yeah. I guess welcome to an early introduction to GTNH’s shift to RNG-based game mechanics, because that’ll happen circa LuV+
“Surely there’s a better, more creative solution than Processing Arrays coming full circle”, you insist? Maybe, depends on where you draw lines I suppose. So long as Processing Array controllers still exist and function, even if they are uncraftable, one could cheat one in and not feel bad about it citing a problem the pack does not give you the tools to reasonably deal with. Whether that is a fair option or not ultimately depends on your opinion, I can’t say I care enough to judge either which way. Another option could be to set up automation to turn off CAMs when a maintenance issue is detected - single block machines do respond to a Machine Controller Cover, and of course Needs Maintenance Covers are something you’ve likely used before for a very similar reason. You’d want a manual override included to keep the CAMs off while the cleanroom works its way back up to 100% efficiency, but that would at least be one way to avoid potentially voiding a bunch of very expensive circuits overnight even if it means no partial progress is made towards the big craft. Perhaps the best solution is to passively craft circuits - 8+ hours is a long time, yes, but compared to how long you can spend in IV in total it’s a drop in a 1000 litre bucket
Circuit Assembly Lines (CALs) So you’ve overcome the hurdle, you’ve crafted your Assembly Line after…however long it took you to craft that thing. Hundreds of circuits and so many materials finally put into this one multi that is able to smash things together better than the previous incarnations of “machine that smashes things together”. You know what would be really funny and not at all indicative of slightly questionable game design, no sir? Giving you a reasonable alternative to that in-world array of CAMs immediately after making you craft hundreds of circuits, rendering the array obsolete. No recycling or reusing any part, straight reducing it to scrap
I’d say “welcome to GTNH”, but if you’ve gotten this far you probably have gotten that memo before by now
Circuit Assembly Lines are a circuit specific variant of regular Assembly Lines, although CALs do not require the Assembler Machine Casings that made regular assembly lines so expensive. They’re able to work as a multiblock CAM, or - given a circuit imprint to set and lock a given controller to a specific CAL recipe (note that you cannot un-imprint CAL controllers in any way as far as I know, though you can use old controllers as multiblock CAM controllers perfectly fine) - run specific CAL recipes. If you think you can delay crafting these things until you’ve gotten a bit more use out of your in world CAMs array do note that from Crystal grade circuits onwards the single block CAM recipes will, mysteriously, be significantly more expensive than the CAL equivalent, functionally necessitating CAL recipes to craft circuits. Of course the excessively expensive single block crystal circuit recipes do still exist, because in order to run in CAL mode CALs require those circuit imprints, which requires a sample circuit to be turned into an imprint, which means there has to be a CAM recipe to craft it. Why, yes, this is around the point where the pack starts to trip over itself a bit. It’s functional, but there is a lack of polish if you but look closely enough
All that complaining aside, CALs are nothing short of amazing in their own right, to the point where even if CAM recipes weren’t intentionally nerfed you’d never want to use them again anyway. The full potential of CALs won’t be realized until you have circuit imprints to use the CAL recipes, but even if you set up a few of them temporarily running CAM recipes you will benefit from their single biggest bonus: Perfect overclocks by default. Unfortunately CALs can only accept a single (non-multi amp or laser) energy hatch, but one bit of trickery you can do - if you’re confident in your power spine and cabling skill - is share this energy hatch between a double or even quad wallshared CAL setup. Sneak right click the front face of the CAL controller with a screwdriver to mirror them, and you’re able to build a 13x3x5 cube of four wallshared CALs. Why do that when you can’t wallshare the controllers, which are the most expensive part of the multi? Well, this early on there’s not a real need to, but later on energy hatches will become significantly more pricy than the cost of an entire CAL otherwise, so keep the trick in mind for later. If you wish to use it
To get maximum value out of your CALs you’ll need circuit imprints. Note, however, that CALs imprinted to the IV, LuV and ZPM tier quantum circuits will be a temporary fixture. Once you’ve got Crystal grade circuits going you won’t use those tiers of quantum circuits for long if ever again, so consider whether you wish to invest into that. Regardless it’s at least worth it for the EV tier quantum circuit, as an EV quantum circuit imprint will work for both the basic and the later ASoC recipe. Getting circuit imprints is likely going to be quite the rabbithole, but one well worth it. CAL recipes are, effectively, 16 CAM recipes compresssed into a single recipe, while only needing 12 times as long to produce as it would in a single block CAM - basically, a 25% speed increase. Add perfect overclocks, and you’ll be able to craft circuits much faster than you could before…relatively. Circuit demand isn’t going to get any easier, unfortunately
Crafting circuit imprints is going to be a pain, but nothing you won’t be able to manage - strictly speaking there is nothing stopping you from crafting them in IV, bar the fact that without a(n LuV-gated) CAL they’d be useless. You’ll need to use an EBF to craft Flawed Cubic Zirconia and Flawed Prasiolite, process Rare Earth III to get Tellurium, and grab some basic materials to smash the lot together (boron, bismuth, nothing else even worth mention to be honest). The questbook can offer further guidance in the LuV chapter, if you need it