Something which is often missed/ignored is the importance of managing/expanding your EBF setups. Early on this isn’t too problematic, but come Tungstensteel you could be spending 400 seconds smelting when 5 would have been enough. Always look carefully through NEI, there are surprises like that This tab will try to give some guidelines as to how many EBFs you want at a given stage of progression (to a point - past IV I’ve got no actual Survival experience so I’ve got no idea you should have enough experience to have a feel for your processing capacity and power situation. Hopefully) EBFs have three main considerations: The availability of power, upgraded coils, and the gasses they need to make smelting faster/more efficient. Obviously there’s no point getting a second EBF if you don’t even have the power to run one more often than not, so take that into consideration
Your first EBF (LV-MV) The capstone of the LV age is crafting your first EBF. At this point, depending on what you prioritized/went for first, you might struggle just trying to even keep it powered long enough to complete a single smeting task…if you temporarily borrow the steam turbines from the rest of your LV machines The first goal after building an EBF is, obviously, ensuring you’re producing enough power to run it continuously and consistently, if you can’t do so already. Solar Boilers are not up to this task, but if you do want to go steam power it’s not impossible with large Railcraft boilers, or a Large Bronze Boiler A better solution, at this early of a stage, is collecting oil and turning it into Light Fuel. A bit of investment into MV machines can make this process even simpler/better, both by allowing you to make the hydrogen used to desulfurize a closed loop, and by allowing you to include heavy oil to produce Diesel Beyond those two there’s not a lot of options in terms of power production this early on. Benzene, without Kanthal Coils, has a very hard time producing much of a power profit. And cooking Kanthal off of batteries or borrowed steam turbines alone would be hell itself. Use Light Fuel as a stop-gap measure
| Description | Energy Hatch | Energy Hatch | Output Hatch | Energy Hatch | Energy Hatch |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Once you’ve got enough power to meaningfully run an EBF it’s time to add some automation. A Needs Maintenance Cover will emit a redstone signal if the multiblock is in need of maintenance, which is very important to know if you’re not feeding it excess power. Send that to a lamp to see issues at a glance | Maintenance | Controller | Input Bus | Controller | Maintenance |
| Further, you can automate the EBF turning on/off if there’s enough fuel/battery charge to run it. A Fluid Detector Cover can read fluid levels, an Energy Detector Cover can read the EU levels of a battery buffer. A Machine Controller Cover can automate the EBF turning on/off based on a redstone signal | Input Hatch | Input Hatch | Output Bus | Input Hatch | Input Hatch |
| This sort of automation will become (somewhat) more complicated very soon, but at least one of these two can still be fitted in easily. If you have to make a choice obviously choose the maintenance alarm. If you have enough power you can just let the EBF run, and if you run out you’ve got bigger issues | Energy Hatch | Energy Hatch | Output Hatch | Energy Hatch | Energy Hatch |
| Maintenance | Controller | Input Bus | Controller | Maintenance |
For this sort of automation place a Needs Maintenance/Machine Controller Cover on the EBF controller. To send the maintenance signal through a block (note that buses and hatches will not pass through a redstone signal at all) sneak-right click the cover with a Soldering Iron to enable strong signal If the Machine Controller Cover needs it’s signal send through a block the easiest/cheapest, though probably ugliest, way is to use Project Red Red Alloy Wire. It’ll get the job done, at any rate quad EBFs and give them individual input buses, so for this reason I tend At this point you should look into producing Nitrogen, Oxygen, Hydrogen and (later) Helium in order to speed up your EBF recipes and make them more efficient. It has less impact early on than later on, but even early on you don’t want your EBF to be any slower/power consuming than it needs to be default on the cheap, though, absolutley use a quad design Your second EBF (MV-HV) As soon as you are able to consitently power a second EBF it’s recommend that you invest in one. EBF smelting becomes the norm past LV, and ingots are only going to become harder to smelt. You’ll have to expand your production capabilities to keep up, otherwise you’ll be waiting on EBFs a lot Of course, much like it’s more primitive BBF predecessors, EBFs can be wallshared. And this is key to save on coils, which are going to be the most expensive component of EBFs, and their later variants. One quirk is that quad EBFs have issues fitting all of their hatches/buses, so I recommend dual EBFs In case it’s not visible I’ve done my best to show designs for dual and quad EBFs, as well as quad Volcani, to the side. Of course it’s not strictly necessary to copy these. If you make your own recall that regular EBFs in GTNH cannot I/O from the top row like they can in a pack like Nomifactory, instead in GTNH the top row of EBFs can only fit Output Hatches that are used to capture pollution gases that cannot be output to output hatches in the bottom. If an EBF is complaining about no fluid output space, chances are this is why. Note that muffler hatches determine how much fluid you get output
| Description | Input Bus | Input Hatch | Casing | Input Hatch | Input Bus | ||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| With processing capacity upgraded it’s time to tackle the biggest, most important aspect of efficient, fast EBF smelting: Coils. Upgraded coils increase an EBF’s heat capacity. Every 900K you’re above a recipe’s minimum the craft consumes 5% less EU/t. Every 1800K you get an upgraded 4/4 overclock | Output Bus | Muffler | Casing | Muffler | Output Bus | ||||||||||||||||||
| As an example let’s take a look at Pulsating Iron. This is available as soon as you’ve got an EBF set up (albeit the non-oxygen recipe requires Kanthal coils), and is used to craft EnderIO item conduits. That should serve as a good example of a recipe you’ll be running a whole bunch even in later energy tiers | Casing | Casing | Casing | Casing | Casing | ||||||||||||||||||
| Output Bus | Muffler | Casing | Muffler | Output Bus | |||||||||||||||||||
| Pulsating Iron | MV, CuNi, C1 | HV, CuNi, C1 | EV, CuNi, C1 | MV, CuNi, C11 | HV, CuNi, C11 | EV, CuNi, C11 | MV, FeAlCr, C1 | HV, FeAlCr, C1 | EV, FeAlCr, C1 | MV, FeAlCr, C11 | HV, FeAlCr, C11 | EV, FeAlCr, C11 | MV, Ni4Cr, C1 | HV, Ni4Cr, C1 | EV, Ni4Cr, C1 | MV, Ni4Cr, C11 | HV, Ni4Cr, C11 | EV, Ni4Cr, C11 | Input Bus | Input Hatch | Casing | Input Hatch | Input Bus |
| Ticks per recipe | ——————– | ——————– | ——————– | 1600 | 800 | 400 | 3200 | 1600 | 800 | 1600 | 800 | 400 | 3200 | 1600 | 800 | 1600 | 400 | 200 | |||||
| EU/t | ——————– | ——————– | ——————– | 120 | 480 | 1920 | 120 | 480 | 1920 | 114 | 456 | 1824 | 114 | 456 | 1824 | 108 | 433 | 1732 | (Bottom row:) | ||||
| EU per ingot | ——————– | ——————– | ——————– | 192000 | 384000 | 768000 | 384000 | 768000 | 1536000 | 182400 | 364800 | 729600 | 364800 | 729600 | 1459200 | 172800 | 173200 | 346400 | Maintenance | Controller | Pyrothium V. | Controller | Maintenance |
| Energy Hatch | Energy Hatch | Casing | Energy Hatch | Energy Hatch | |||||||||||||||||||
| Key entries to look at are the last three. MV/Ni4Cr/C11 to HV/Ni4Cr/C11 gets an upgraded overclock, making the recipe 4x faster at 4x the EU/t cost (ultimately costing a bit more EU total due to a rounding issue). The regular overclock from HV to EV only cuts time in half, doubling the EU cost per ingot | Casing | Casing | Casing | Casing | Casing | ||||||||||||||||||
| Now compare these last three entries to the Circuit 1 Kanthal/Nichrome recipes, which don’t add Oxygen. Not only does it miss out on an upgraded overclock because the recipe has a higher base heat requirement, but the total EU cost quickly spirals out of control from the constant doubling of the EU cost | Energy Hatch | Energy Hatch | Casing | Energy Hatch | Energy Hatch | ||||||||||||||||||
| Maintenance | Controller | Pyrothium V. | Controller | Maintenance |
In short: A combination of using the circuit 11 recipe and upgrading to Nichrome coils turns a 800 ticks, 1920 EU/t recipe into a 200 ticks, 1732 EU/t recipe. Quadruple the smelting speed, slightly under a quarter of the total EU cost. This is why investing in upgraded coils and gasses is worth the effort Quad Volcanus design. Note that with Volcani you can use the top row for Upgrading Further (HV-EV) As you advance you’ll soon find that even two EBFs, properly upgraded and overclocked, are not cutting it. That’s fine, if you find yourself waiting on EBF recipes it’s time to invest in another dual EBF, or perhaps upgrade to a quad setup. If you have the power and can afford the machines you should expand One caveat to be weary of, however, is the Vacuum Freezer. Starting in HV ingots start needing this filler multiblock to cool down hot ingots. Upgrading your EBFs is all well and good, but make sure the rest of your infrastructure can keep up. No point in upgrading if it just moves the bottleneck down the line
It’s difficult to say exactly when you’ll end up needing more than two EBFs, but definitely before entering EV proper you’ll end up needing more. This is both because Rutile should get a dedicated EBF for automated processing, and because work for your EBFs starts to pile up around this time. If not earlier
Speaking of EV, starting in EV you’ve got access to quad input hatches. These, exactly as the name suggests, are input hatches that can hold up to four different fluids at once. I personally don’t see too much use for them at that point, at least for EBFs, but I’m sure they’ll come in helpful in a few situations
Power Problems Part I (EV) Setting down a dedicated EBF for Rutile (and later on Tungstic Acid into Tungsten Trioxide as well), in addition to one or two quad EBFs for on demand smelting and an appropriately tiered Vacuum Freezer or two to cool the resulting hot ingots, is going to delete your power supply in short order. Of course cutting back on processing capacity means having to wait on stuff to get finished, and being short on power in one spot doesn’t speak well to your power supply everywhere else in your factory - EBFs are a major portion of your power demand, but only a portion at the end of the day. How to solve this issue?
One thing I highly recommend doing is actually investing into an IC2 nuclear reactor, to take some of the load off of the rest of your power supply. You’ll be getting plenty of Thorium in the process of getting Radon - be it through the plutonium LCR loop or sifting for Radium 226 initially - and even with a modest setup in terms of fuel efficiency you’ll get 160M EU out of each quad thorium fuel rod, or about a 16A EV battery buffer full of Lapotron Crystals worth of power. Of course that power is released only very slowly, but a bit of setup makes sure that’s not a problem. Very useful for AFK servers, needless to say
In terms of which reactor design to use, I’d recommend either the 10x quad thorium 1920 EU/t design (reactor code: 0D150C0D0C0D15150D140D0D140D140D0D140D1C1C0D1C0D1C1C0D0D1C1C0D1C0D1C1C0D140D0D140D140D0D140D15150D0C0D0C150D) or the 16x quad thorium 2560 EU/t design (reactor code: 0D1C1C0D150D1C1C0D0D0D0D0D150D0D0D0D1C0D0D1C151C0D0D1C1C0D0D1C151C0D0D1C0D0D0D0D150D0D0D0D0D1C1C0D150D1C1C0D). The former has better fuel efficiency, the latter has better EU/t output. I tend to favor sheer output over fuel efficiency, but it’s up to you
Actually setting up IC2 reactors to feed EBFs is going to be a touch finnicky and extremely bizarre, but I have tested the setup in 2.6.1, and it works. You might need to disconnect and reconnect cables a few times to get stuff to properly figure out connections and all, but beyond that, it should work. In total you’ll need a full six chamber nuclear reactor (bigger is generally better with IC2 reactors, considering more reactor chambers is cheaper than more nuclear reactors themselves), a dual EBF (each overclocked to EV for now), a battery buffer (minimum 9A HV, maximum 16A EV - the bigger the buffer the better the setup’s bulk smelting capacity), a 4A EV -> 16A HV transformer if using an EV battery buffer, two Energy Detector Covers, some Red Alloy Wire or Redcrystal, and some HV tier cables. Yes, HV tier, I’ll explain that shortly. Note that HV supercons are fairly cheap in EV, so consider using a few of those
Set up the EBFs and make sure their energy hatches are all facing the back. This leaves one block of Heat Proof Casing between them (or a wallshared item/fluid bus/hatch accessed through the bottom - doesn’t matter if it is). Against this block place the EV->HV Transformer with the EV input facing further back (or a 2x supercon if using an HV battery buffer). Place the battery buffer directly against this block, with it’s output facing the relevant input. Now, for the uninitiated, the way that IC2 reactors are build is that Nuclear Reactors have 3 chambers worth of space by default, and additional Reactor Chambers are placed against Nuclear Reactors in-world (they cannot be placed against any other block and cannot be shared between multiple reactors, but can be adjacent if attached to different reactors, for the record), giving reactors with the full six extra chambers a distinct 3D + shape. You want the reactor placed such that the reactor block itself is one block behind and above the battery buffer, with the reactor chambers directly touching the battery buffer both above and behind in. “But that 2560 EU/t design produces IV tier power, and you’re saying to use an EV or even HV tier battery buffer!” you say. I mentioned this setup was going to be extremely bizarre, yes? IC2 reactors - which might be shared with other IC2 based generators, I’m not sure - only push what power receivers can accept. Plug an HV tier cable into a reactor that produces 2560 EU/t and it’ll push 512 EU/t into the cable, nothing more. Do note, however, that reactors are hard limited to 1A output per side that a cable is connected to. Whether that’s 1A HV or 1A EV, doesn’t matter. 1A per side is the limit. Also note that IC2 reactors feeding GT machines can be finnicky, so you might have to disconnect and reconnect cables in order to get stuff to register
Anyway, the 2560 EU/t design needs to be connected on at least 5 sides - note the battery buffer itself does not count in this instance, since IC2 EU needs to go through a GT cable in order to be converted into GT EU - so you’ll need six cables to send power from the reactor to the battery buffer. I trust you can figure out how to set up the cables, just remember to double-check they are properly connected to multiple sides of the reactor. Next place an Energy Detector Cover on the top and bottom of the battery buffer. Configure the top cover to EU Stored, Inverted signal, and an energy threshold of about 99% of the total storage of the battery buffer (shown on WAILA when you hover over it, or use a Portable Scanner). Note that you can write I.E. “162m” to easily input 162000000 EU. This will automatically turn on the reactor when the battery buffer is below the specified threshold. Note you won’t need latches here, once the EBFs kick in they’ll drain more power than the reactor produces, so there won’t be any flickering with the reactor turning on/off. Speaking of, configure the bottom Energy Detector Cover to the same settings, but redstone normal instead of Inverted. This produces a signal when the buffer is nearly full, which you want to send to machine controller covers on the EBFs to tell them to turn on. Note that the most energy intensive recipe these EBFs are likely to run is Tungsten Trioxide -> 2x hot Tungsten ingots, but with at least a 9x HV battery buffer and the reactor running it should complete both recipes before power runs out. That said when using the 1920 EU/t reactor design a 9x HV buffer will not suffice, so you’ll need at least a 16x HV buffer in that case (or temporary turn one of the two EBFs off). Of course if you want to use these EBFs for manual bulk smelting you’ll need an override switch
So how much smelting can you get done before you need to replace the fuel rods? Obviously that depends on a number of factors, but to put it one way: The 1920 EU/t reactor design produces exactly enough power to run the most EU/t intensive EV tier EBF recipes there are, and thorium fuel rods last for 50000 seconds before depleting. Now you will encounter some loss due to energy taxes if nothing else, but all the same even if you assume only 99% energy efficiency that still gives you 49500 seconds of EBFing. That is around 240 hot tungsten ingots cooked, or just shy or ~400 tungstensteel cooked
Powering your entire EBFing enterprise off of nuclear reactors is going to be expensive, and frankly impossible once you start overclocking EBFs to IV, but getting slow but steady “free” EBF smelting out of what is otherwise just a useless byproduct is not a bad deal at all
Power Problems II (EV-IV) IC2 reactors are great to take a load off of your power grid or slow cook some stuff on the cheap, but it’s not going to keep up with demand once IV overclocked EBFs start to enter the picture - and they will, if not to cook some early Iridium than because recipes at EV tier are just too slow to tolerate. This will require a better solution for power, though. What solutions you employ depends heavily on playstyle and choices made up to this point, but here’s a few general tips and broad pieces of advice to keep your EBFs running - bar the still standing tips of “use C11 recipes/upgrade coils where remotely possible”:
Better fuel efficiency = better power output (sometimes): If you’re still using single block EV/IV gens and their horrendous fuel efficiency, it’s time to retire them. Fuel efficiency is a joke stat, yes, but only insofar that it doesn’t impact power output. Around now your fuel production should start to struggle (something worth adding for people using Large Gas Turbines: You can overfeed them to produce more power at the cost of fuel efficiency. Obviously this isn’t ideal, but there are times where slightly more power for slightly less fuel efficiency is a good deal - see the Benzene tab for an in-depth explanation)
Burn everything you’ve got: If you’re doing petrochem for Diesel/CBD/HOG/Naphtha as a primary fuel source, or have a setup producing Benzene, look at what else you can burn for power. Supplementing power production off of byproducts is a great way to stay one step ahead of your rising power demands Of course this can only go so far in terms of actually boosting power production, and if relied on too much can easily result in a confusing mess of a base, but as a quick band-aid fix to speed up production of a more long term solution this method is very useful for pushing your base that little bit further
Time to upgrade: If you are still running Diesel/Benzene now might be the time to strongly consider setting up CBD/HOG and/or Nitrobenzene. Or start investing into some other method of power production, or scaling up existing production, or whatever. TL;DR: You need more power, so get more power It’s only tempormanent: Don’t be afraid to invest in a robust temporary setup. Having a very local central power-type setup purely to help feed EBFs and VFs are resources you can invest into actual centralized power later at basically no meaningful loss, and in the meantime actually setting it up (alongside the infrastructure required to support it, and possibly the infrastructure required to build it at all, for that matter) becomes that much easier. A simple battery buffer is enough to redstone control multiblock power generators, and make sure EBFs can keep running without fear of running out of power
GT++ Volcanus (mid/late-IV) The power of upgraded overclocks and gasses alone will not be able to keep pace with the increasingly expensive and slow smelting requirements of the increasingly expanding list of EBF recipes. You can continue to build more EBFs, but this will rapidly stress your power production to it’s breaking point The Volcanus offers a better, albeit expensive, solution. Volcani process EBF recipes at 220% speed, reduce EU/t consumption by 10%, and are capable of running up to 8 recipes in parallel (which they will prioritize over overcloking a recipe, if possible). This combo is amazing, and will save your power plant
As an example let’s return to Pulsating Iron, since it’ll make for an easy comparison to their EBF smelting speeds, EU/t and total EU costs above
| Pulsating Iron | MV, CuNi, C1 | HV, CuNi, C1 | EV, CuNi, C1 | MV, CuNi, C11 | HV, CuNi, C11 | EV, CuNi, C11 | MV, FeAlCr, C1 | HV, FeAlCr, C1 | EV, FeAlCr, C1 | MV, FeAlCr, C11 | HV, FeAlCr, C11 | EV, FeAlCr, C11 | MV, Ni4Cr, C1 | HV, Ni4Cr, C1 | EV, Ni4Cr, C1 | MV, Ni4Cr, C11 | HV, Ni4Cr, C11 | EV, Ni4Cr, C11 | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ticks per recipe | ——————– | ——————– | ——————– | 727 | 727 | 727 | 1454 | 1454 | 1454 | 727 | 727 | 727 | 1454 | 1454 | 1454 | 727 | 727 | 727 | ||||||
| Ticks per ingot | ——————– | ——————– | ——————– | 727 | 181.75 | 90.875 | 1454 | 363.5 | 181.75 | 727 | 145.4 | 90.875 | 1454 | 290.8 | 181.75 | 727 | 145.4 | 90.875 | ||||||
| EU/t | ——————– | ——————– | ——————– | 108 | 432 | 864 | 108 | 432 | 864 | 102 | 510 | 816 | 102 | 510 | 816 | 97 | 485 | 776 | ||||||
| EU per ingot | ——————– | ——————– | ——————– | 78516 | 78516 | 78516 | 157032 | 157032 | 157032 | 74154 | 74154 | 74154 | 148308 | 148308 | 148308 | 70519 | 70519 | 70519 | ||||||
| Parallel | ——————– | ——————– | ——————– | 1 | 4 | 8 | 1 | 4 | 8 | 1 | 5 | 8 | 1 | 5 | 8 | 1 | 5 | 8 |
It takes more than simply looking at a controller to see exactly how good Volcani are, as it’s rare that a given recipe takes less ticks (usually when overclocking past the point of 8 parallels). However prioritized parallels, increased speed, and an EU/t discount all combine to make the Volcani very efficient That said there is one quirk that results from this setup that needs to be observed in order to get maximum speed for minimum EU costs out of your Volcani. For that lets take a look at cooking Ruridit using Radon, which you’ll need 16 ingots of per LuV motor once you reach the Assembly Line era (The yellow columns are HSS-G coils, red are HSS-S, and dark grey are Naq Alloy coils. The smelting times/costs for regular EBFs is also included as another point of comparison, and why you really should have Volcani up and running before trying to break out into LuV at the absolute latest)
| Ruridit (Radon) | Volcanus, HV | Volcanus, EV | Volcanus, IV | Volcanus, LuV | Volcanus, HV | Volcanus, EV | Volcanus, IV | Volcanus, LuV | Volcanus, ZPM | EBF, HV | EBF, EV | EBF, IV | EBF, LuV | EBF, HV | EBF, EV | EBF, IV | EBF, LuV | EBF, ZPM | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ticks per recipe | 5370 | 5370 | 5370 | 2685 | 5370 | 5370 | 5370 | 1342 | 335 | 11812 | 5906 | 2953 | 1476 | 11812 | 2953 | 1476 | 738 | 184 | ||||||
| Ticks per ingot | 5370 | 1342.5 | 671.25 | 335.625 | 5370 | 1342.5 | 671.25 | 167.75 | 41.875 | |||||||||||||||
| EU/t | 411 | 1642 | 3284 | 13133 | 390 | 1560 | 3120 | 12477 | 45039 | 456 | 1824 | 7296 | 29184 | 434 | 1733 | 6932 | 27725 | 100087 | ||||||
| EU per ingot | 2207070 | 2204385 | 2204385 | 4407763.125 | 2094300 | 2094300 | 2094300 | 2093016.75 | 1886008.125 | 5386272 | 10772544 | 21545088 | 43075584 | 5126408 | 5117549 | 10231632 | 20461050 | 18416008 | ||||||
| Parallel | 1 | 4 | 8 | 8 | 1 | 4 | 8 | 8 | 8 | ———————– | ———————– | ——————– | ——————– | ——————– | ———————- | ——————— | ——————— | ——————— | ||||||
| Minutes/motor | 71.6 | 17.9 | 8.95 | 4.475 | 71.6 | 17.9 | 8.95 | 2.236666667 | 0.5583333333 | 157.4933333 | 78.74666667 | 39.37333333 | 19.68 | 157.4933333 | 39.37333333 | 19.68 | 9.84 | 2.453333333 |
As you can see the HSS-S Volcanus didn’t gain any speed from it’s upgraded coils until it was overclocked all the way to LuV power. Since Volcani prioritize parallels over overclocks they need to be fed inordinate amounts of power to start overclocking recipes, and using any available perfect overclocks The lesson is that you should actively try to overclock your volcani whenever possible, and give them the best coils you can craft. That way you’ll only very rarely run into a situation where you end up imperfect overclocking a recipe and “wasting” power. In fact Ruridit was chosen as an example is because it’s, by far, the most likely recipe to suffer from this - HSS-S coils are technically optional, so you might end up with an LuV HSS-G Volcani imperfect overclocking Ruridit. That said the power cost per ingot is still around an order of magnitude less than the recipe’s EBF equivalent, it’s the speed that’s a real waste
Of course this power saving comes at a cost, and that is Blazing Pyrotheum. Volcani, like their tooltip says, consume 10mb per second whenever they are active. Note that this cost is flat - number of parellels, recipe tier, coils, etc. all have zero impact on this cost. A Volcani consumes 10mb/s, and that’s it If a Volcani runs out of Pyrotheum during a recipe the multi will void the inputs and get a maintenance issue, which is obviously very bad. Thankfully a combination of Fluid Detector Covers and Machine Controller Covers allow you to easily set up automation to turn off a Volcani if Pyrotheum is low Note that a volcanus set to only run with a full pyro hatch should never fail a recipe for lack of pyrotheum. Even if the pyro hatch is shared between two volcani, and both start the single slowest EBF recipe in the pack simultaneously, they still should both finish the recipe before the pyrotheum hatch runs dry
One quirk of Volcani is that the multi will not run if a recipe has a fluid output, and no fluid output hatch is present to collect it, even if you’d prefer to simply void the fluid. In this case open the controller GUI and set the multi to void fluids, but not void items - another addition after the spreadsheet was first made Another quirk of Volcani is that unlike regular EBFs they allow input/output hatches to work in the top layer. This frees up a lot of design options for both dual and quad Volcani, which regular EBFs simply could not replicate. As with EBFs I’ve included my preferred quad volcani design to the right Note that my design gives each Volcani the bare minimum amount of casings need in older pack versions, so one can be swapped for an additional bus/hatch these days. Also make sure to look at the various AE buses/hatches that are available these days. Expensive, perhaps, but they are worthwhile
Mega Vacuum Freezer (IV) Remember that caveat I mentioned about Vacuum Freezers creeping up to you and becoming the new bottleneck in EBF crafting? Once you upgrade to Volcani and massively increase it’s throughput the bottleneck baton will likely be handed over to your Vacuum Freezers. Fortunately there’s a solution, but it will require some specific (and probably bizarre) infrastructure in order to make sure it works properly and consistently. It’s worth doing, but it has to be done well. Nothing will be gained from trying to run a broken machine before fixing it, and how to fix it can be unintuitive if you don’t realize what the problem is
Technically as early as HV, although you will need a centralized power system and (relatively) beefy power production and power storage to make full use of it, you can craft a Mega Vacuum Freezer. This huge blue box is able to vacuum freeze up to 256 recipes in parallel, and can accept both multi-amp and laser hatches in order to supply the incredible amounts of power needed to run that many recipes in parallel. However if you hook up your MVF to your central power supply the same way you hook up everything else - and why would you do so differently, the system clearly works after all - you’ll find your MVF randomly having switched itself off while requested ingots aren’t making it to your AE2 system. This is indeed because the MVF is power failing, and the reason why might surprise you: Cable Loss. Yes, that mechanic you thought you left behind in MV is back with a vengeance, and it needs to be addressed
To first explain why your MVF is power failing at all, as an example take a look at any of the vacuum freezing recipes that requires 1920 EU/t. Vacuum freezers are able to run as many recipes in parallel as their power tier can support, and let’s say you’re running your MVF at LuV to go easy on your still early power grid. Floor(32768/1920)=17, meaning your MVF will try to run 17 recipes in parallel, consuming 32640 EU/t. Or 1A MV off of a full amp of LuV. Cable loss and energy tax - the extra EU it costs for diodes/dynamo hatches/transformers/etc. to send out a packet of EU - easily loses that much at this stage
So what’s the solution to the problem? Broadly speaking, there’s two options: Overamp multi-amp energy hatches, or use superconductors. One little known fact about multi-amp energy hatches, despite it being listed on their tooltips, is that they are able to accept 25% more amps than they provide power to a given multi. Simply feed them more power than they strictly need, and you can avoid MVFs shutting down because of cable loss (or maintenance issues, for that matter). Of course this comes at the cost of putting more strain on the power spine if you don’t give the MVF a dedicated line - hint: You should - or making dedicated lines somewhat bulkier as it has to move more than 64A. You are also going to need a cable actually able to feed >64A into a 64A energy hatch if you’re using one, but this isn’t too big a problem. Worst case 16x HSS-S will suffice up to UHV, and you’re not likely to need better than that
The, IMO, better alternative is using superconductors to supply lossless power, although this will obviously have appreciable costs associated with it. Do consider if this is actually the preferable option for your specific factory. Simply add one (or more) dedicated 64A dynamo hatches to your LSC, and draw a dedicated line of superconductors from there to 64A Energy Hatch(es) on your MVF to supply it with full power. The reason I prefer supercons, despite their obvious cost, is the fact that they have very high amperage limits. 16x EV supercon can support 128A EV or effectively 2A ZPM with zero cable loss, so even a relatively cheap supercons can supply MVFs with a fair chunk of power. Of course if you need a long line of superconductors, depending on where your LSC/MVF is, that cost might grow out of control pretty rapidly. If it’s far away adding a few transformers to make up the difference might be preferable
Regardless of which solution you opt to use, do remember this: A Mega Vacuum Freezer is only as good as the amount of power it’s given. The entire reason you set up a MVF is because vacuum freezing is becoming a bottleneck, but mega vacuum freezers have zero innate speed bonus over their 3x3x3 counterparts. Their parallels do give them something of a speed bonus in practice, mind: Recall the example of a MVF running 17 EV recipes in parallel using 1A LuV. A regular VF overclocking those EV recipes to LuV would run 16 such recipes in the same time the MVF runs 17, so the MVF is faster
That marginal speed bonus will not be enough, however. The real power of these parallels is allowing MVFs to avoid the EU cost penalties associated with overclocking, allowing it to be fed gargantuan amounts of power without losing any efficiency. EV tier recipes will not reach maxium parallels unless a MVF is fed at least 1A UV, or 64A IV. Given this amount of power a MVF is able to act as 256 EV tier VFs, which will give you an appreciable amount of VF throughput circa IV with good energy efficiency. Why, yes, material processing is starting to get slightly ridiculous. And it’ll only get even crazier from here
Preparing for the lategame As amazing as Volcani are you will inevitably end up in a situation where your production cannot keep up with demand. Again. At that point you’ve basically got two choices: Volcani spam if your power production is anything less than “freaking amazing”, or if it is (and it should be), setting up a Mega EBF Mega (Electronic) Blast Furnaces are massive 15x20x15 multiblocks that require ungodly amounts of resources, but if you’ve got infinite power to throw at problems, there is no better. MEBFs can do up to 256 recipes in parallel, and to power this craziness can accept Multi-Amp hatches and Laser Hatches Multi-amp hatches are available starting in EV. Laser hatches are technically available in EV, but don’t become relevant until much later. They allow you to supply insane amounts of power to an MEBF to feed it’s many parallel recipes, at which point it can process stuff faster than even an array of Volcani
“Infinite” is a tall order, though. Very lategame ingots can reach costs in the multiple billions of EU per, and that’s with the best gas available. Volcani are great for keeping the cost of these ingots more sane. Just take another look above: Neutronium costs at least 6400 times more EU than Pulsating Iron If you want to take Volcani to their extreme you’ll want to build a lot of Volcani, and either automate them in such a way that they are able to run on demand recipes in parallel or produce ingots passively. Both are viable options with multiple different approaches possible, so I’ll leave picking one up to you Alternatively you can go for a mixed approach. The extra EU a MEBF spends on smelting Steel in ZPM does not even amount to a rounding error, so you could set up a MEBF for massive bulk smelting of cheap/simple materials, and reserve your Volcani for the expensive, complex recipes/passive crafting
As a rough example of Volcani vs. MEBFs (though mind that it would never be regarded as such in practice): A 4A UV, Fluxed Electrum coils, Krypton Volcanus will smelt a Neutronium ingot every 545.5 ticks, and consume ~917M EU per ingot. A Mega EBF with 1024A UV - an MEBF only gets 256 parallels, but in this particular instance the heat bonus from high energy tiers (which Volcani do not benefit from) pushes the MEBF’s heat capacity high enough to get a perfect overclock on the 9000 heat Neutronium recipe, so it can consume 1024A UV at zero loss of energy efficiency - Fluxed Electrum Coils and Krypton will take a mere 4.6875 ticks per ingot smelted, but at a ruinous ~2.13G EU per ingot cost. I mentioned before this example would never be regarded as one in practice, and that difference in energy cost is why. Nevertheless I hope this demonstrates how much faster (albeit, at a cost) MEBFs can be (for context, one 256 parallels run of that MEBF will consume an extra ~310G EU over slow cooking the same ingots in Volcani. That’s ~7.7 minutes worth of 64A UV, or ~33.5M EU/t of power generation. Around 4.25A UV one Volcanus takes as long to smelt 256 ingots as it takes to make up for lost power)
Preparing for the endgame If you’re crazy enough to stick around for GTNH’s (large gap in it’s) endgame than prepare for complete and absolute insanity. I can’t even guess as to what you’ll need or how to go about it, this is a path few have walked and ever fewer walked away from with their sanity intact
Tips and tricks: An Equal Trade focus is exceptionally convenient for swapping out coils. Though note that to fully cover a dual EBF from either far end/quad EBF in general with one swap you’ll need at least one range upgrade. Of course you can also swing your wand twice, but don’t forget that step. Mixing coils won’t work