Tutorial/Klein Tower

A Klein Tower is a vertical factory that produces Klein Star Omegas. Automating the process with such a factory is useful because crafting the klein star omega is a fairly labor-intensive process, in addition to costing ridiculous amounts of EMC. Properly fed by a Mass-Fab Macerator or Power Flower, a klein tower can supply a whole team of players with Klein Star Omegas with considerable ease.

The Klein Tower comes in two forms. A Stage One tower is slower and requires more components, but doesn't require that you have a Klein Star Sphere pre-built. Once you do have a Sphere though (built by the first tower), you can build a Stage Two tower if you want. Stage Two is notably shorter and significantly faster; the trouble is, such speed is almost always entirely unnecessary (who needs thousands of Klein Star Omegas?). It's just neat, and you can disassemble the first tower to re-use its components elsewhere.

Stage One: Standard Tower

The standard tower is easy enough to construct, and produces Omegas at a very respectable rate. With a timer that fires every 0.2 seconds driving the factory, a Klein Star Omega can be produced as fast as every 3.5 to 4 minutes. However, this assumes the factory is being fed sufficient EMC during this period to remain at maximum production speed (requiring massive EMC storage, or one or more Mass-Fab Macerators feeding the factory).

Once you produce your first Klein Star Sphere, you can consider moving on to Stage Two below, or simply leaving the tower as it is (since no group of players realistically needs to produce more than a few omegas).

Needed Components
The following machines and components are needed to build the Klein Tower at Stage One, and should be constructed in advance:
 * 6x Automatic Crafting Table Mk II
 * 8x Filter
 * 2x Energy Condenser
 * 14x Red Alloy Wire (maybe more)
 * 1x Timer
 * 2x Mobius Fuel
 * 2x Diamond
 * 1x Lever (optional)
 * 1x Screwdriver
 * 1x Chest
 * 15 or more Pneumatic Tubes (optional)
 * Lots of EMC to feed the machine, e.g. from an MFM, Power Flower, or lots of DM Pedestals or Red Matter Furnaces

The components below will be needed to "program" the automatic crafting tables, but they can be grabbed from the tables themselves as the factory starts up (you don't need to build them right now). Each time the factory advances to the next stage of production, grab the produced item (for example, Klein Star Zwei) and use it to program the filter containing it to produce the next item up. This process will be described later.
 * 1x Klein Star Ein
 * 1x Klein Star Zwei
 * 1x Klein Star Drei
 * 1x Klein Star Vier
 * 1x Klein Star Sphere

Assembly
Now that you have all the necessary machines and components built, it's time to assemble the tower. Note that it helps to use dirt stairs or a ladder while working on the tower, as it's very tall.

Step 1: Build the base
Place an Automatic Crafting Table. On its left and right, place filters. Then place an energy condenser on each side. Use the screwdriver to orient the filters toward the crafting table (so they will pump items out of the condensers and into the table).

Step 2: Build the tower
Above the crafting table, place a filter. Orient it with the screwdriver to pump items upward. Then place another crafting table above the filter. Continue alternating filters and crafting tables until you run out of both.

If you want the chest to sit at the top of the tower, just place it on top of the filter. Otherwise use pneumatic tubes to pipe the output from the filter back down to ground level and place the chest down there.

Step 3: Wiring
If you're afraid of redstone wiring, fear not. This task is actually extrmely simple.

WIth red alloy wire selected in your inventory, click the front of the top filter to place it on the filter. Repeat on the crafting table below it. Continue placing red alloy wire in this way until you cover the bottom crafting table.

Next place one more red alloy wire on the ground in front of the table. Next, place the timer in front of that. Use the screwdriver to orient the timer so that one of its pulse outputs goes to the red alloy wire.

Place the switch on the control side of the timer so that you can turn the timer on and off. It's convenient to turn it off for now.

Programming
Now we need to "program" the condensers, crafting tables, and 2 filters. By program I just mean tell them what they're making/pumping. This is easy. The Klein Star Ein is crafted with 8 Mobius Fuel and 1 Diamond. Both these items are condensable. For crafting tables above the first, each stage of Klein Star are simply built with 4 of the previous stage.


 * Note: In fact, Klein Stars up to Sphere are condensable, but they're a pain to build manually (requiring 256 Klein Star Eins).  Once one is made though, the factory can be collapsed down to a simpler and smaller one.  This is discussed in the Stage Two section below.

Step One: Klein Star Ein at the Base Level

First right-click on the lowest crafting table. Pick up a diamond from your inventory, and click in the center of the bottom-left grid of the crafting table's interface. Put the diamond down and pick up the mobius fuel. Click every outer slot in the crafting grid. It should now show a diamond surrounded by mobius fuel. Note that you got to keep the diamond and mobius fuel.

Next right-click on the condenser on the left. Place a diamond in its upper slot so it will convert items placed in it into diamond. Right-click on the filter on the left and place the diamond inside.

Finally right-click on the condenser on the right. Place a mobius fuel in its upper slot. Then right-click on the filter on the right and place the mobius fuel inside.

Step Two: Timer

Right-click on the timer and set it to 0.2 seconds (or the lowest speed allowed on your server). Flip on the lever to tell the timer to start pulsing.

Note that we haven't set up the crafting tables above the base level. That's because we don't have those stages of Klein Star yet. But don't worry: the factory will produce those for us, and we can program each stage as the factory ramps up.

Feeding the Factory
Now you need to pour vast quantities of EMC into your factory. If you don't have an MFM or Power Flower, this will be a pretty manual process of bringing items to the tower and stuffing them into each condenser.

If you DO have an MFM or power flower, then you can set it up to pump EMC into the condensers automatically and let the tower run itself. To do this, attach pneumatic tube to the output of the MFM or Power Flower and lead them to your power flower. Split the pneumatic tube two ways, taking one path to each condenser on the base level.

An MFM is significantly faster than a Power Flower, but even the power flower will help a great deal in automating the production of Klein Star Omegas for you and your friends.

Final Programming
Once the factory has been fed enough to produce its first Klein Star Ein, right-click on the crafting table above the base. Pick up the Ein and use it to build a 2x2 grid of Eins in the crafting table interface in the bottom-left. Place the ein back in the crafting table's storage. Now it will produce the next stage of Zwei whenever it has 4 Eiens.

Once you have a Zwei built in the crafting table above that one, repeat the process with it. Continue this with each stage until you've produced an Omega.

It has to be said though, each stage gets slower and slower. In fact, 4 times slower than the stage below it. It takes 1024 Eins to produce an Omega, so obviously you're going to be waiting a while before doing the final programming. If you're feeding the factory enough EMC to produce at full speed, this will only be a few minutes. Otherwise, just leave and come back later, periodically checking on the tower as players or the MFM or Power Flower feed it more EMC.

Note that once you produce your first Klein Star Sphere, you can actually skip to Stage Two if you want.

Speeding Up
The timer can only tick so fast. If you have tons of EMC to burn through or multiple MFMs producing it at high speed, the rate at which diamonds and mobius fuel is pumped into the system starts to matter. To speed up the machine, open up the filters on the left and right side of the base and increase their item count to 8 diamonds and 64 mobius fuel. By pumping in more items at a time, you're making the most out of each pulse from the timer.

However, if you really care about speed, switching to Stage Two below is the way to go.

Stage Two: Simpler Construction, Faster Production
The klein tower is neat, but it can be made faster and simpler. All you need is to build up to the Klein Star Sphere, and you can then disassemble the tower (or build a second one in parallel) to shorten the process. The reason is the Klein Star Sphere is condensable. It requires 256 Klein Star Eins to build, so the first tower we built served a very valuable purpose. Now that one sphere is built however, we can construct a much simpler tower.

Needed Components
All of these can be salvaged from your first tower, with parts to spare:


 * 1x Klein Star Sphere
 * 1x Automatic Crafting Table Mk II
 * 2x Filter
 * 1x Energy Condenser
 * 6x Red Alloy Wire (maybe more)
 * 1x Timer
 * 1x Lever (optional)
 * 1x Screwdriver
 * 1x Chest
 * Lots of EMC to feed the machine, e.g. from an MFM, Power Flower, or lots of DM Pedestals or Red Matter Furnaces

Step 1: Build the Tower
Place a condenser on the ground. Place a filter above the condenser, and point it upward to pump out of the condenser. Place an automatic crafting table above the filter. Place another filter above that, pointing it upward. Place a chest at the top of this tower.

Step 2: Programming
Right-click on the crafting table and use the Klein Star Sphere to make a 2x2 block in its programming slot, so it will produce Klein Star Omegas.

Right-click on the condenser, and place the Klein Star Sphere in its top slot. It will now convert any EMC pumped into it into spheres.

Step 3: Wiring
The wiring for this factory is just like the normal tower, on a smaller scale. Build a line of red alloy wire from top to floor, then add a timer and a switch. Note that red alloy wire won't travel over a condenser, so place a dirt or other block next tot he condenser to give a path for the wire.

Step 4: Feeding
Feed this tower similar to how you fed the taller one. In this case, there's only one condenser, so it's simpler.

Maximum Speed
A Stage Two tower will produce Klein Star Omegas about as fast as you can pump EMC into it... though to be fair, no one needs that many Omegas.

Good Behavior and Empathy
Many players will dislike the idea of a Klein Tower fed by MFMs, because it trivializes one of the greatest challenges of the game. The Klein Star Omega nearly represents the pinnacle of Tekkit Crafting; it's one of the most difficult items to create, and is used in the recipes for the most difficult items. So in a sense these people are right: this is evil. It takes a lot of challenge out of the game, at least for players who play for that challenge.

I personally feel the Klein Tower and MFM represent one of the greatest feats in Tekkit, building awesome factories to solve problems. But not all players will agree with that sentiment. You should exercise discretion in your use of such factories. Show respect and try to not trample over people's feelings or the spoken and unspoken rules of the servers you visit.

Wickedness
The alternative is, of course, heaping on the blasphemy in the glorious name of evil. I'm guilty of such a wicked act myself. True story: I once maximized the output of a Klein Tower using multiple MFMs, then piped the resulting Klein Star Omegas into a Recycler that fed our Mass Fabricator farm. When the guy who ran our server saw this, he said he cried a little. I, on the other hand, was entitled to a hearty evil laugh.

Note that evil laughs and acts can get you banned from some servers, and for good reason; but everywhere else, I say do evil and laugh heartily. It's quite fulfilling.