User blog:SeaWing/HV Solar Array Factory

There are some great vids on YT about how to make High Voltage Solar Arrays (HVSA) automatically. The designs are very creative and it is obvious a lot of work went into implementing them. All of these videos suggest using Energy Condensors to aquire the raw materials for the Arrays. This makes sense given the amount of resources required to make just one HVSA. It seems nearly impossible to do it without them. But can it be done without them and if so, why?

A Look At Resources
HVSA's need 8 MV Arrays, which need 8 LV Arrays, which need 8 Solar Panels. That's 8 x 8 x 8 = 512 Solar Panels for one HV Array. That's a lot of Solar Panels. So essentially an HVSA factory is a Solar Panel factory. How much raw materials are needed for an HVSA? Here's the breakdown for one Solar Panel:

1 Generator 2 Circuits 3 Coal Dust (Macerated Coal)
 * 1 Furnace
 * 8 Cobblestone
 * 1 Machine Block
 * 8 Refined Iron (Smelted Iron Ingot)
 * 1 Battery
 * 4 Tin Ingot
 * 2 Redstone Dust
 * 1 Copper Cable
 * 0.5 Copper Ingot
 * 1 Rubber / 0.33 Sticky Resin (Extracted)
 * 1 Refined Iron (Smelted Iron Ingot)
 * 2 Redstone Dust
 * 6 Copper Cables
 * 3 Copper Ingot
 * 6 Rubber / 2 Sticky Resin (Extracted)

3 Glass (Macerated and smelted Cobblestone)

A Couple Of Problems
I have made Solar Panel factories using Condensors and without them. Of course, a passive factory that relied on a Quarry alone for materials always required a lot of running around and was never fully automated. Designing a factory without Condensors will face a couple of problems right away.

There is no way to automate the collection of Sticky Resin from Rubber trees. Using the Treetap with a vanilla Dispenser doesn't work, neither will a RedPower2 Deployer even though it emulates a players right-click with the chosen tool. I assume it has something to do with not recognizing a tool from another mod, or the Resin doesn't release because it is blocked by the Deployer placed directly in front of it.

The resources that come from the Quarry are found at different levels, like Redstone found in the bottom 16 levels and Tin in the bottom 40. And Iron is not as abundant as other materials such as Copper, Tin, Coal and Cobblestone. Not only do these other materials collect and become a storage problem, but the Solar Panels cannot begin to be made until the Quarry gets down to the Redstone level. Until then, Furnaces, Copper, Tin, Machine Blocks, Coal Dust and Glass will start to fill the Automatic Crafting Tables and Chests with no place to go.

Solution # 1...
An Energy Condensor is the best solution for supplementing the supply of raw materials such as Sticky Resin, Redstone, and Tin. Resin isn't actually supplimented because it doesn't come out of the ground, so it needs to have a dedicated and constant source. Tin won't appear until level 40 and Redstone at level 16 which may take the Quarry some time to reach depending on the dimensions. Both of those will need a Condensor from the start as well. But there's no shortage of EMC coming out of the Quarry especially with unused items such as Rubies, Sapphires, Emeralds, Uranium, Diamonds and Tungsten.

Hypothetically and with liberal estimations, suppose a 64 x 64 Quarry yields 50 Diamonds, 20 Tungsten, 3 stacks of Uranium and 5 stacks total of the three Gems. Roughly 1.8 million EMC of the needed 2.5 million EMC can be mined from this Quarry to produce one HVSA. And this is not taking into account the 10 stacks or so of Nikolite which can easily mass up another 80,000 to 100,000 EMC, plus the EMC from all the miscellaneous Cobblestone, Dirt, Gravel, Marble and Flint which can add another 225,000 EMC.

Diamonds 50 x 8192 = 409,600

Tungsten 20 x 16,384 = 327,680

Uranium 192 x 4096 = 786,432

Gems 320 x 1024 = 327,680

Total = 1,851,392

Nikolite 100,000

Misc. 225,000

Total = 2,176,392 EMC The amount of EMC coming from the Quarry comes up a little short of the amount needed for the HVSA so naturally more mining is needed, and nobody builds a Quarry for one use anyway. Also, who wants to stop at just one HVSA? The EMC can be rounded up if you add your mob drops into the Condensor. In general, it can be estimated that a full-size Quarry will generated one High Voltage Solar Array.

So, the Condensor solves the problem of providing Sticky Resin without manually tapping trees and providing resources when they are needed, not just when they are found. This also solves the problem of amassing huge quantities of materials from the Quarry which require an ever growing storage facility. But what else is there?

Solution # 2...
I have used Energy Condensors and I think they are great but there is a problem with using them. They work so well that reaching the end of the game can come too fast, whatever "the end of the game" means. When the challenges of designing and building the factory have already been met, a new challenge can be to aquire raw materials without using Energy Condensors. And the first thing that comes to mind is, of course, Mass Fabricators.