From 21e044478e259efa202dce2c2e82afc342f07b90 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: SmallJoker <mk939@ymail.com>
Date: Sat, 26 Nov 2022 23:25:33 +0100
Subject: [PATCH] Fix battery box charging issues caused by out of sync functions
---
manual.md | 1531 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++---------------
1 files changed, 1,124 insertions(+), 407 deletions(-)
diff --git a/manual.md b/manual.md
index d43e320..bd4a3cf 100644
--- a/manual.md
+++ b/manual.md
@@ -1,196 +1,424 @@
-Minetest technic modpack user manual
-====================================
+# Technic User Manual
-The technic modpack extends the Minetest game with many new elements,
-mainly constructable machines and tools. It is a large modpack, and
-tends to dominate gameplay when it is used. This manual describes how
-to use the technic modpack, mainly from a player's perspective.
+The technic modpack extends Minetest Game (shipped with Minetest by default)
+with many new elements, mainly constructable machines and tools. This manual
+describes how to use the modpack, mainly from a player's perspective.
-The technic modpack depends on some other modpacks:
+Documentation of the mod dependencies can be found here:
-* the basic Minetest game
-* mesecons, which supports the construction of logic systems based on
- signalling elements
-* pipeworks, which supports the automation of item transport
-* moreores, which provides some additional ore types
+* [Minetest Game Documentation](https://wiki.minetest.net/Main_Page)
+* [Mesecons Documentation](http://mesecons.net/items.html)
+* [Pipeworks Documentation](https://github.com/mt-mods/pipeworks/wiki/)
+* [Moreores Forum Post](https://forum.minetest.net/viewtopic.php?t=549)
+* [Basic materials Repository](https://gitlab.com/VanessaE/basic_materials)
-This manual doesn't explain how to use these other modpacks, which ought
-to (but actually don't) have their own manuals.
+## 1.0 Recipes
-Recipes for constructable items in technic are generally not guessable,
-and are also not specifically documented here. You should use a
-craft guide mod to look up the recipes in-game. For the best possible
-guidance, use the unified_inventory mod, with which technic registers
-its specialised recipe types.
+Recipes for items registered by technic are not specifically documented here.
+Please consult a craft guide mod to look up the recipes in-game.
-ore
----
+**Recommended mod:** [Unified Inventory](https://github.com/minetest-mods/unified_inventory)
-The technic mod makes extensive use of not just the default ores but also
-some that are added by mods. You will need to mine for all the ore types
-in the course of the game. Each ore type is found at a specific range of
-elevations, and while the ranges mostly overlap, some have non-overlapping
-ranges, so you will ultimately need to mine at more than one elevation
-to find all the ores. Also, because one of the best elevations to mine
-at is very deep, you will be unable to mine there early in the game.
+## 2.0 Substances
-Elevation is measured in meters, relative to a reference plane that
-is not quite sea level. (The standard sea level is at an elevation
-of about +1.4.) Positive elevations are above the reference plane and
-negative elevations below. Because elevations are always described this
-way round, greater numbers when higher, we avoid the word "depth".
+### 2.1 Ores
-The ores that matter in technic are coal, iron, copper, tin, zinc,
-chromium, uranium, silver, gold, mithril, mese, and diamond.
+Technic registers a few ores which are needed to craft machines or items.
+Each ore type is found at a specific range of elevations so you will
+ultimately need to mine at more than one elevation to find all the ores.
-Coal is part of the basic Minetest game. It is found from elevation
-+64 downwards, so is available right on the surface at the start of
-the game, but it is far less abundant above elevation 0 than below.
-It is initially used as a fuel, driving important machines in the early
-part of the game. It becomes less important as a fuel once most of your
-machines are electrically powered, but burning fuel remains a way to
-generate electrical power. Coal is also used, usually in dust form, as
-an ingredient in alloying recipes, wherever elemental carbon is required.
+Elevation (Y axis) is measured in meters. The reference is usually at sea
+level. Ores can generally be found more commonly by going downwards to -1000m.
-Iron is part of the basic Minetest game. It is found from elevation
-+2 downwards, and its abundance increases in stages as one descends,
-reaching its maximum from elevation -64 downwards. It is a common metal,
-used frequently as a structural component. In technic, unlike the basic
-game, iron is used in multiple forms, mainly alloys based on iron and
-including carbon (coal).
+Note ¹: *These ores are provided by Minetest Game. See [Ores](https://wiki.minetest.net/Ores#Ores_overview) for a rough overview*
-Copper is part of the basic Minetest game (having migrated there from
-moreores). It is found from elevation -16 downwards, but is more abundant
-from elevation -64 downwards. It is a common metal, used either on its
-own for its electrical conductivity, or as the base component of alloys.
+Note ²: *These ores are provided by moreores. TODO: Add reference link*
+
+#### Chromium
+Use: stainless steel
+
+Generated below: -100m, more commonly below -200m
+
+#### Coal ¹
+Use: Fuel, alloy as carbon
+
+Burning coal is a way to generate electrical power. Coal is also used,
+usually in dust form, as an ingredient in alloying recipes, wherever
+elemental carbon is required.
+
+#### Copper ¹
+Copper is a common metal, used either on its own for its electrical
+conductivity, or as the base component of alloys.
Although common, it is very heavily used, and most of the time it will
be the material that most limits your activity.
-Tin is supplied by the moreores mod. It is found from elevation +8
-downwards, with no elevation-dependent variations in abundance beyond
-that point. It is a common metal. Its main use in pure form is as a
-component of electrical batteries. Apart from that its main purpose is
-as the secondary ingredient in bronze (the base being copper), but bronze
-is itself little used. Its abundance is well in excess of its usage,
-so you will usually have a surplus of it.
+#### Diamond ¹
+Use: mainly for cutting machines
-Zinc is supplied by technic. It is found from elevation +2 downwards,
-with no elevation-dependent variations in abundance beyond that point.
-It is a common metal. Its main use is as the secondary ingredient
-in brass (the base being copper), but brass is itself little used.
-Its abundance is well in excess of its usage, so you will usually have
-a surplus of it.
+Diamond is a precious gemstone. It is used moderately, mainly for reasons
+connected to its extreme hardness.
-Chromium is supplied by technic. It is found from elevation -100
-downwards, with no elevation-dependent variations in abundance beyond
-that point. It is a moderately common metal. Its main use is as the
-secondary ingredient in stainless steel (the base being iron).
+#### Gold ¹
+Use: various
-Uranium is supplied by technic. It is found only from elevation -80 down
-to -300; using it therefore requires one to mine above elevation -300 even
-though deeper mining is otherwise more productive. It is a moderately
-common metal, useful only for reasons related to radioactivity: it forms
-the fuel for nuclear reactors, and is also one of the best radiation
-shielding materials available. It is not difficult to find enough uranium
-ore to satisfy these uses. Beware that the ore is slightly radioactive:
-it will slightly harm you if you stand as close as possible to it.
-It is safe when more than a meter away or when mined.
+Generated below: -64m, more commonly below -256m
-Silver is supplied by the moreores mod. It is found from elevation -2
-downwards, with no elevation-dependent variations in abundance beyond
-that point. It is a semi-precious metal. It is little used, being most
-notably used in electrical items due to its conductivity, being the best
-conductor of all the pure elements.
+Gold is a precious metal. It is most notably used in electrical items due to
+its combination of good conductivity and corrosion resistance.
-Gold is part of the basic Minetest game (having migrated there from
-moreores). It is found from elevation -64 downwards, but is more
-abundant from elevation -256 downwards. It is a precious metal. It is
-little used, being most notably used in electrical items due to its
-combination of good conductivity (third best of all the pure elements)
-and corrosion resistance.
+#### Iron ¹
+Use: multiple, mainly for alloys with carbon (coal).
-Mithril is supplied by the moreores mod. It is found from elevation
--512 downwards, the deepest ceiling of any minable substance, with
-no elevation-dependent variations in abundance beyond that point.
-It is a rare precious metal, and unlike all the other metals described
-here it is entirely fictional, being derived from J. R. R. Tolkien's
+#### Lead
+Use: batteries, HV nuclear reactor layout
+
+Generated below: 16m, more common below -128m
+
+#### Mese ¹
+Use: various
+
+Mese is a precious gemstone, and unlike diamond it is entirely fictional.
+It is used in small quantities, wherever some magic needs to be imparted.
+
+#### Mithril ²
+Use: chests
+
+Generated below: -512m, evenly common
+
+Mithril is a fictional ore, being derived from J. R. R. Tolkien's
Middle-Earth setting. It is little used.
-Mese is part of the basic Minetest game. It is found from elevation
--64 downwards. The ore is more abundant from elevation -256 downwards,
-and from elevation -1024 downwards there are also occasional blocks of
-solid mese (each yielding as much mese as nine blocks of ore). It is a
-precious gemstone, and unlike diamond it is entirely fictional. It is
-used in many recipes, though mainly not in large quantities, wherever
-some magical quality needs to be imparted.
+#### Silver ²
+Use: conductors
-Diamond is part of the basic Minetest game (having migrated there from
-technic). It is found from elevation -128 downwards, but is more abundant
-from elevation -256 downwards. It is a precious gemstone. It is used
-moderately, mainly for reasons connected to its extreme hardness.
+Generated below: -2m, evenly common
-rock
-----
+Silver is a semi-precious metal and is the best conductor of all the pure elements.
-In addition to the ores, there are multiple kinds of rock that need to be
-mined in their own right, rather than for minerals. The rock types that
-matter in technic are standard stone, desert stone, marble, and granite.
+#### Tin ¹
+Use: batteries, bronze
-Standard stone is part of the basic Minetest game. It is extremely
-common. As in the basic game, when dug it yields cobblestone, which can
-be cooked to turn it back into standard stone. Cobblestone is used in
-recipes only for some relatively primitive machines. Standard stone is
-used in a couple of machine recipes. These rock types gain additional
-significance with technic because the grinder can be used to turn them
-into dirt and sand. This, especially when combined with an automated
-cobblestone generator, can be an easier way to acquire sand than
-collecting it where it occurs naturally.
+Tin is a common metal but is used rarely. Its abundance is well in excess
+of its usage, so you will usually have a surplus of it.
-Desert stone is part of the basic Minetest game. It is found specifically
-in desert biomes, and only from elevation +2 upwards. Although it is
-easily accessible, therefore, its quantity is ultimately quite limited.
-It is used in a few recipes.
+#### Uranium
+Use: nuclear reactor fuel
-Marble is supplied by technic. It is found in dense clusters from
-elevation -50 downwards. It has mainly decorative use, but also appears
-in one machine recipe.
+Depth: -80m until -300m, more commonly between -100m and -200m
-Granite is supplied by technic. It is found in dense clusters from
-elevation -150 downwards. It is much harder to dig than standard stone,
-so impedes mining when it is encountered. It has mainly decorative use,
-but also appears in a couple of machine recipes.
+It is a moderately common metal, useful only for reasons related to radioactivity:
+it forms the fuel for nuclear reactors, and is also one of the best radiation
+shielding materials available.
-alloying
---------
+Keep a safety distance of a meter to avoid being harmed by radiation.
-In technic, alloying is a way of combining items to create other items,
-distinct from standard crafting. Alloying always uses inputs of exactly
-two distinct types, and produces a single output. Like cooking, which
-takes a single input, it is performed using a powered machine, known
-generically as an "alloy furnace". An alloy furnace always has two
-input slots, and it doesn't matter which way round the two ingredients
-are placed in the slots. Many alloying recipes require one or both
-slots to contain a stack of more than one of the ingredient item: the
-quantity required of each ingredient is part of the recipe.
+#### Zinc
+Use: brass
-As with the furnaces used for cooking, there are multiple kinds of alloy
-furnace, powered in different ways. The most-used alloy furnaces are
-electrically powered. There is also an alloy furnace that is powered
-by directly burning fuel, just like the basic cooking furnace. Building
-almost any electrical machine, including the electrically-powered alloy
-furnaces, requires a machine casing component, one ingredient of which
-is brass, an alloy. It is therefore necessary to use the fuel-fired
-alloy furnace in the early part of the game, on the way to building
-electrical machinery.
+Generated below: 2m, more commonly below -32m
-Alloying recipes are mainly concerned with metals. These recipes
-combine a base metal with some other element, most often another metal,
-to produce a new metal. This is discussed in the section on metal.
-There are also a few alloying recipes in which the base ingredient is
-non-metallic, such as the recipe for the silicon wafer.
+Zinc only has a few uses but is a common metal.
-grinding, extracting, and compressing
--------------------------------------
+
+### 2.2 Rocks
+
+This section describes the rock types added by technic. Further rock types
+are supported by technic machines. These can be processed using the grinder:
+
+ * Stone (plain)
+ * Cobblestone
+ * Desert Stone
+
+#### Marble
+Depth: -50m, evenly common
+
+Marble is found in dense clusters and has mainly decorative use, but also
+appears in one machine recipe.
+
+#### Granite
+Depth: -150m, evenly common
+
+Granite is found in dense clusters and is much harder to dig than standard
+stone. It has mainly decorative use, but also appears in a couple of
+machine recipes.
+
+#### Sulfur
+Uses: battery box
+
+Sulur is generated around some lava patches (caves).
+
+
+### 2.3 Rubber
+Rubber is a biologically-derived material that has industrial uses due
+to its electrical resistivity and its impermeability. In technic, it
+is used in a few recipes, and it must be acquired by tapping rubber trees.
+
+Rubber trees are provided by technic if the moretrees mod is not present.
+
+Extract raw latex from rubber using the "Tree Tap" tool. Punch/left-click the
+tool on a rubber tree trunk to extract a lump of raw latex from the trunk.
+Emptied trunks will regenerate at intervals of several minutes, which can be
+observed by its appearance.
+
+To obtain rubber from latex, alloy latex with coal dust.
+
+## 3.0 Metal processing
+Generally, each metal can exist in five forms:
+
+ * ore -> stone containing the lump
+ * lump -> draw metal obtained by digging ("nuggets")
+ * dust -> grinder output
+ * ingot -> melted/cooked lump or dust
+ * block -> placeable node
+
+Metals can be converted between dust, ingot and block, but can't be converted
+from them back to ore or lump forms.
+
+### Grinding
+Ores can be processed as follows:
+
+ * ore -> lump (digging) -> ingot (melting)
+ * ore -> lump (digging) -> 2x dust (grinding) -> 2x ingot (melting)
+
+At the expense of some energy consumption, the grinder can extract more material
+from the lump, resulting in 2x dust which can be melted to two ingots in total.
+
+### Alloying
+Input: two ingredients of the same form - lump or dust
+
+Output: resulting alloy, as an ingot
+
+Example: 2x copper ingots + 1x zinc ingot -> 3x brass ingot (alloying)
+
+Note that grinding before alloying is the preferred method to gain more output.
+
+#### iron and its alloys
+
+Historically iron was the first metal whose working required processes of any
+metallurgical sophistication. The mod's mechanics around iron broadly imitate
+the historical progression of processes around it to get more variety.
+
+Notable alloys:
+
+ * Wrought iron: <0.25% carbon
+ * Resists shattering but is relatively soft.
+ * Known since: 1800 BC (approx.)
+ * Cast iron: 2.1% to 4% carbon.
+ * Especially hard and rather corrosion-resistant
+ * Known since: 1200 BC (approx.)
+ * Carbon steel: 0.25% to 2.1% carbon.
+ * Intermediate of the two above.
+ * Known since: 1600 AD (approx.)
+
+Technic introduces a distinction based on the carbon content, and renames some
+items of the basic game accordingly. Iron and Steel are now distinguished.
+
+Notable references:
+
+ * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron
+ * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stainless_steel
+ * ... plus many more.
+
+Processes:
+
+ * Iron -> Wrought iron (melting)
+ * Wrought iron -> Cast iron (melting)
+ * Wrought iron + coal dust -> Carbon steel (alloying)
+ * Carbon steel + coal dust -> Cast iron (alloying)
+ * Carbon steel + chromium -> Stainless steel (alloying)
+
+Reversible processes:
+
+ * Cast iron -> Wrought iron (melting)
+ * Carbon steel -> Wrought iron (melting)
+
+Check your preferred crafting guide for more information.
+
+
+### Uranium enrichment
+
+When uranium is to be used to fuel a nuclear reactor, it is not
+sufficient to merely isolate and refine uranium metal. It is necessary
+to control its isotopic composition, because the different isotopes
+behave differently in nuclear processes.
+
+The main isotopes of interest are U-235 and U-238. U-235 is good at
+sustaining a nuclear chain reaction, because when a U-235 nucleus is
+bombarded with a neutron it will usually fission (split) into fragments.
+It is therefore described as "fissile". U-238, on the other hand,
+is not fissile: if bombarded with a neutron it will usually capture it,
+becoming U-239, which is very unstable and quickly decays into semi-stable
+(and fissile) plutonium-239.
+
+Inconveniently, the fissile U-235 makes up only about 0.7% of natural
+uranium, almost all of the other 99.3% being U-238. Natural uranium
+therefore doesn't make a great nuclear fuel. (In real life there are
+a small number of reactor types that can use it, but technic doesn't
+have such a reactor.) Better nuclear fuel needs to contain a higher
+proportion of U-235.
+
+Achieving a higher U-235 content isn't as simple as separating the U-235
+from the U-238 and just using the required amount of U-235. Because
+U-235 and U-238 are both uranium, and therefore chemically identical,
+they cannot be chemically separated, in the way that different elements
+are separated from each other when refining metal. They do differ
+in atomic mass, so they can be separated by centrifuging, but because
+their atomic masses are very close, centrifuging doesn't separate them
+very well. They cannot be separated completely, but it is possible to
+produce uranium that has the isotopes mixed in different proportions.
+Uranium with a significantly larger fissile U-235 fraction than natural
+uranium is called "enriched", and that with a significantly lower fissile
+fraction is called "depleted".
+
+A single pass through a centrifuge produces two output streams, one with
+a fractionally higher fissile proportion than the input, and one with a
+fractionally lower fissile proportion. To alter the fissile proportion
+by a significant amount, these output streams must be centrifuged again,
+repeatedly. The usual arrangement is a "cascade", a linear arrangement
+of many centrifuges. Each centrifuge takes as input uranium with some
+specific fissile proportion, and passes its two output streams to the
+two adjacent centrifuges. Natural uranium is input somewhere in the
+middle of the cascade, and the two ends of the cascade produce properly
+enriched and depleted uranium.
+
+Fuel for technic's nuclear reactor consists of enriched uranium of which
+3.5% is fissile. (This is a typical value for a real-life light water
+reactor, a common type for power generation.) To enrich uranium in the
+game, it must first be in dust form: the centrifuge will not operate
+on ingots. (In real life uranium enrichment is done with the uranium
+in the form of a gas.) It is best to grind uranium lumps directly to
+dust, rather than cook them to ingots first, because this yields twice
+as much metal dust. When uranium is in refined form (dust, ingot, or
+block), the name of the inventory item indicates its fissile proportion.
+Uranium of any available fissile proportion can be put through all the
+usual processes for metal.
+
+A single centrifuge operation takes two uranium dust piles, and produces
+as output one dust pile with a fissile proportion 0.1% higher and one with
+a fissile proportion 0.1% lower. Uranium can be enriched up to the 3.5%
+required for nuclear fuel, and depleted down to 0.0%. Thus a cascade
+covering the full range of fissile fractions requires 34 cascade stages.
+(In real life, enriching to 3.5% uses thousands of cascade stages.
+Also, centrifuging is less effective when the input isotope ratio
+is more skewed, so the steps in fissile proportion are smaller for
+relatively depleted uranium. Zero fissile content is only asymptotically
+approachable, and natural uranium relatively cheap, so uranium is normally
+only depleted to around 0.3%. On the other hand, much higher enrichment
+than 3.5% isn't much more difficult than enriching that far.)
+
+Although centrifuges can be used manually, it is not feasible to perform
+uranium enrichment by hand. It is a practical necessity to set up
+an automated cascade, using pneumatic tubes to transfer uranium dust
+piles between centrifuges. Because both outputs from a centrifuge are
+ejected into the same tube, sorting tubes are needed to send the outputs
+in different directions along the cascade. It is possible to send items
+into the centrifuges through the same tubes that take the outputs, so the
+simplest version of the cascade structure has a line of 34 centrifuges
+linked by a line of 34 sorting tube segments.
+
+Assuming that the cascade depletes uranium all the way to 0.0%,
+producing one unit of 3.5%-fissile uranium requires the input of five
+units of 0.7%-fissile (natural) uranium, takes 490 centrifuge operations,
+and produces four units of 0.0%-fissile (fully depleted) uranium as a
+byproduct. It is possible to reduce the number of required centrifuge
+operations by using more natural uranium input and outputting only
+partially depleted uranium, but (unlike in real life) this isn't usually
+an economical approach. The 490 operations are not spread equally over
+the cascade stages: the busiest stage is the one taking 0.7%-fissile
+uranium, which performs 28 of the 490 operations. The least busy is the
+one taking 3.4%-fissile uranium, which performs 1 of the 490 operations.
+
+A centrifuge cascade will consume quite a lot of energy. It is
+worth putting a battery upgrade in each centrifuge. (Only one can be
+accommodated, because a control logic unit upgrade is also required for
+tube operation.) An MV centrifuge, the only type presently available,
+draws 7 kEU/s in this state, and takes 5 s for each uranium centrifuging
+operation. It thus takes 35 kEU per operation, and the cascade requires
+17.15 MEU to produce each unit of enriched uranium. It takes five units
+of enriched uranium to make each fuel rod, and six rods to fuel a reactor,
+so the enrichment cascade requires 514.5 MEU to process a full set of
+reactor fuel. This is about 0.85% of the 6.048 GEU that the reactor
+will generate from that fuel.
+
+If there is enough power available, and enough natural uranium input,
+to keep the cascade running continuously, and exactly one centrifuge
+at each stage, then the overall speed of the cascade is determined by
+the busiest stage, the 0.7% stage. It can perform its 28 operations
+towards the enrichment of a single uranium unit in 140 s, so that is
+the overall cycle time of the cascade. It thus takes 70 min to enrich
+a full set of reactor fuel. While the cascade is running at this full
+speed, its average power consumption is 122.5 kEU/s. The instantaneous
+power consumption varies from second to second over the 140 s cycle,
+and the maximum possible instantaneous power consumption (with all 34
+centrifuges active simultaneously) is 238 kEU/s. It is recommended to
+have some battery boxes to smooth out these variations.
+
+If the power supplied to the centrifuge cascade averages less than
+122.5 kEU/s, then the cascade can't run continuously. (Also, if the
+power supply is intermittent, such as solar, then continuous operation
+requires more battery boxes to smooth out the supply variations, even if
+the average power is high enough.) Because it's automated and doesn't
+require continuous player attention, having the cascade run at less
+than full speed shouldn't be a major problem. The enrichment work will
+consume the same energy overall regardless of how quickly it's performed,
+and the speed will vary in direct proportion to the average power supply
+(minus any supply lost because battery boxes filled completely).
+
+If there is insufficient power to run both the centrifuge cascade at
+full speed and whatever other machines require power, all machines on
+the same power network as the centrifuge will be forced to run at the
+same fractional speed. This can be inconvenient, especially if use
+of the other machines is less automated than the centrifuge cascade.
+It can be avoided by putting the centrifuge cascade on a separate power
+network from other machines, and limiting the proportion of the generated
+power that goes to it.
+
+If there is sufficient power and it is desired to enrich uranium faster
+than a single cascade can, the process can be speeded up more economically
+than by building an entire second cascade. Because the stages of the
+cascade do different proportions of the work, it is possible to add a
+second and subsequent centrifuges to only the busiest stages, and have
+the less busy stages still keep up with only a single centrifuge each.
+
+Another possible approach to uranium enrichment is to have no fixed
+assignment of fissile proportions to centrifuges, dynamically putting
+whatever uranium is available into whichever centrifuges are available.
+Theoretically all of the centrifuges can be kept almost totally busy all
+the time, making more efficient use of capital resources, and the number
+of centrifuges used can be as little (down to one) or as large as desired.
+The difficult part is that it is not sufficient to put each uranium dust
+pile individually into whatever centrifuge is available: they must be
+input in matched pairs. Any odd dust pile in a centrifuge will not be
+processed and will prevent that centrifuge from accepting any other input.
+
+### concrete ###
+
+Concrete is a synthetic building material. The technic modpack implements
+it in the game.
+
+Two forms of concrete are available as building blocks: ordinary
+"concrete" and more advanced "blast-resistant concrete". Despite its
+name, the latter has no special resistance to explosions or to any other
+means of destruction.
+
+Concrete can also be used to make fences. They act just like wooden
+fences, but aren't flammable. Confusingly, the item that corresponds
+to a wooden "fence" is called "concrete post". Posts placed adjacently
+will implicitly create fence between them. Fencing also appears between
+a post and adjacent concrete block.
+
+industrial processes
+--------------------
+
+### Alloying
+
+In Technic, alloying is a way of combining items to create other items,
+distinct from standard crafting. Alloying always uses inputs of exactly
+two distinct types, and produces a single output.
+
+Check your preferred crafting guide for more information.
+
+### Grinding, extracting, and compressing
Grinding, extracting, and compressing are three distinct, but very
similar, ways of converting one item into another. They are all quite
@@ -232,8 +460,7 @@
advanced machine recipes. There are also a couple of compressing recipes
making natural block types more interconvertible.
-centrifuging
-------------
+### centrifuging ###
Centrifuging is another way of using a machine to convert items.
Centrifuging takes an input of a single item type, and produces outputs
@@ -242,8 +469,8 @@
the recipe. Centrifuging is only performed by a single machine type,
the MV (electrically-powered) centrifuge.
-Currently, centrifuging recipes don't appear in the unified_inventory
-craft guide, because unified_inventory can't yet handle recipes with
+Currently, centrifuging recipes don't appear in the unified\_inventory
+craft guide, because unified\_inventory can't yet handle recipes with
multiple outputs.
Generally, centrifuging separates the input item into constituent
@@ -265,270 +492,760 @@
It recovers both components of binary metal/metal alloys. It can't
recover the carbon from steel or cast iron.
-metal
------
-
-Many of the substances important in technic are metals, and there is
-a common pattern in how metals are handled. Generally, each metal can
-exist in five forms: ore, lump, dust, ingot, and block. With a couple of
-tricky exceptions in mods outside technic, metals are only *used* in dust,
-ingot, and block forms. Metals can be readily converted between these
-three forms, but can't be converted from them back to ore or lump forms.
-
-As in the basic Minetest game, a "lump" of metal is acquired directly by
-digging ore, and will then be processed into some other form for use.
-A lump is thus more akin to ore than to refined metal. (In real life,
-metal ore rarely yields lumps ("nuggets") of pure metal directly.
-More often the desired metal is chemically bound into the rock as an
-oxide or some other compound, and the ore must be chemically processed
-to yield pure metal.)
-
-Not all metals occur directly as ore. Generally, elemental metals (those
-consisting of a single chemical element) occur as ore, and alloys (those
-consisting of a mixture of multiple elements) do not. In fact, if the
-fictional mithril is taken to be elemental, this pattern is currently
-followed perfectly. (It is not clear in the Middle-Earth setting whether
-mithril is elemental or an alloy.) This might change in the future:
-in real life some alloys do occur as ore, and some elemental metals
-rarely occur naturally outside such alloys. Metals that do not occur
-as ore also lack the "lump" form.
-
-The basic Minetest game offers a single way to refine metals: cook a lump
-in a furnace to produce an ingot. With technic this refinement method
-still exists, but is rarely used outside the early part of the game,
-because technic offers a more efficient method once some machines have
-been built. The grinder, available only in electrically-powered forms,
-can grind a metal lump into two piles of metal dust. Each dust pile
-can then be cooked into an ingot, yielding two ingots from one lump.
-This doubling of material value means that you should only cook a lump
-directly when you have no choice, mainly early in the game when you
-haven't yet built a grinder.
-
-An ingot can also be ground back to (one pile of) dust. Thus it is always
-possible to convert metal between ingot and dust forms, at the expense
-of some energy consumption. Nine ingots of a metal can be crafted into
-a block, which can be used for building. The block can also be crafted
-back to nine ingots. Thus it is possible to freely convert metal between
-ingot and block forms, which is convenient to store the metal compactly.
-Every metal has dust, ingot, and block forms.
-
-Alloying recipes in which a metal is the base ingredient, to produce a
-metal alloy, always come in two forms, using the metal either as dust
-or as an ingot. If the secondary ingredient is also a metal, it must
-be supplied in the same form as the base ingredient. The output alloy
-is also returned in the same form. For example, brass can be produced
-by alloying two copper ingots with one zinc ingot to make three brass
-ingots, or by alloying two piles of copper dust with one pile of zinc
-dust to make three piles of brass dust. The two ways of alloying produce
-equivalent results.
-
-iron and its alloys
--------------------
-
-Iron forms several important alloys. In real-life history, iron was the
-second metal to be used as the base component of deliberately-constructed
-alloys (the first was copper), and it was the first metal whose working
-required processes of any metallurgical sophistication. The game
-mechanics around iron broadly imitate the historical progression of
-processes around it, rather than the less-varied modern processes.
-
-The two-component alloying system of iron with carbon is of huge
-importance, both in the game and in real life. The basic Minetest game
-doesn't distinguish between these pure iron and these alloys at all,
-but technic introduces a distinction based on the carbon content, and
-renames some items of the basic game accordingly.
-
-The iron/carbon spectrum is represented in the game by three metal
-substances: wrought iron, carbon steel, and cast iron. Wrought iron
-has low carbon content (less than 0.25%), resists shattering, and
-is easily welded, but is relatively soft and susceptible to rusting.
-In real-life history it was used for rails, gates, chains, wire, pipes,
-fasteners, and other purposes. Cast iron has high carbon content
-(2.1% to 4%), is especially hard, and resists corrosion, but is
-relatively brittle, and difficult to work. Historically it was used
-to build large structures such as bridges, and for cannons, cookware,
-and engine cylinders. Carbon steel has medium carbon content (0.25%
-to 2.1%), and intermediate properties: moderately hard and also tough,
-somewhat resistant to corrosion. In real life it is now used for most
-of the purposes previously satisfied by wrought iron and many of those
-of cast iron, but has historically been especially important for its
-use in swords, armour, skyscrapers, large bridges, and machines.
-
-In real-life history, the first form of iron to be refined was
-wrought iron, which is nearly pure iron, having low carbon content.
-It was produced from ore by a low-temperature furnace process (the
-"bloomery") in which the ore/iron remains solid and impurities (slag)
-are progressively removed by hammering ("working", hence "wrought").
-This began in the middle East, around 1800 BCE.
-
-Historically, the next forms of iron to be refined were those of high
-carbon content. This was the result of the development of a more
-sophisticated kind of furnace, the blast furnace, capable of reaching
-higher temperatures. The real advantage of the blast furnace is that it
-melts the metal, allowing it to be cast straight into a shape supplied by
-a mould, rather than having to be gradually beaten into the desired shape.
-A side effect of the blast furnace is that carbon from the furnace's fuel
-is unavoidably incorporated into the metal. Normally iron is processed
-twice through the blast furnace: once producing "pig iron", which has
-very high carbon content and lots of impurities but lower melting point,
-casting it into rough ingots, then remelting the pig iron and casting it
-into the final moulds. The result is called "cast iron". Pig iron was
-first produced in China around 1200 BCE, and cast iron later in the 5th
-century BCE. Incidentally, the Chinese did not have the bloomery process,
-so this was their first iron refining process, and, unlike the rest of
-the world, their first wrought iron was made from pig iron rather than
-directly from ore.
-
-Carbon steel, with intermediate carbon content, was developed much later,
-in Europe in the 17th century CE. It required a more sophisticated
-process, because the blast furnace made it extremely difficult to achieve
-a controlled carbon content. Tweaks of the blast furnace would sometimes
-produce an intermediate carbon content by luck, but the first processes to
-reliably produce steel were based on removing almost all the carbon from
-pig iron and then explicitly mixing a controlled amount of carbon back in.
-
-In the game, the bloomery process is represented by ordinary cooking
-or grinding of an iron lump. The lump represents unprocessed ore,
-and is identified only as "iron", not specifically as wrought iron.
-This standard refining process produces dust or an ingot which is
-specifically identified as wrought iron. Thus the standard refining
-process produces the (nearly) pure metal.
-
-Cast iron is trickier. You might expect from the real-life notes above
-that cooking an iron lump (representing ore) would produce pig iron that
-can then be cooked again to produce cast iron. This is kind of the case,
-but not exactly, because as already noted cooking an iron lump produces
-wrought iron. The game doesn't distinguish between low-temperature
-and high-temperature cooking processes: the same furnace is used not
-just to cast all kinds of metal but also to cook food. So there is no
-distinction between cooking processes to produce distinct wrought iron
-and pig iron. But repeated cooking *is* available as a game mechanic,
-and is indeed used to produce cast iron: re-cooking a wrought iron ingot
-produces a cast iron ingot. So pig iron isn't represented in the game as
-a distinct item; instead wrought iron stands in for pig iron in addition
-to its realistic uses as wrought iron.
-
-Carbon steel is produced by a more regular in-game process: alloying
-wrought iron with coal dust (which is essentially carbon). This bears
-a fair resemblance to the historical development of carbon steel.
-This alloying recipe is relatively time-consuming for the amount of
-material processed, when compared against other alloying recipes, and
-carbon steel is heavily used, so it is wise to alloy it in advance,
-when you're not waiting for it.
-
-There are additional recipes that permit all three of these types of iron
-to be converted into each other. Alloying carbon steel again with coal
-dust produces cast iron, with its higher carbon content. Cooking carbon
-steel or cast iron produces wrought iron, in an abbreviated form of the
-bloomery process.
-
-There's one more iron alloy in the game: stainless steel. It is managed
-in a completely regular manner, created by alloying carbon steel with
-chromium.
-
-rubber
+Chests
------
-Rubber is a biologically-derived material that has industrial uses due
-to its electrical resistivity and its impermeability. In technic, it
-is used in a few recipes, and it must be acquired by tapping rubber trees.
+See [GitHub Wiki / Chests](https://github.com/minetest-mods/technic/wiki/Chests)
-If you have the moretrees mod installed, the rubber trees you need
-are those defined by that mod. If not, technic supplies a copy of the
-moretrees rubber tree.
+Features of extended chests:
-Extracting rubber requires a specific tool, a tree tap. Using the tree
-tap (by left-clicking) on a rubber tree trunk block extracts a lump of
-raw latex from the trunk. Each trunk block can be repeatedly tapped for
-latex, at intervals of several minutes; its appearance changes to show
-whether it is currently ripe for tapping. Each tree has several trunk
-blocks, so several latex lumps can be extracted from a tree in one visit.
+ * Larger storage space
+ * Labelling
+ * Advanced item sorting
-Raw latex isn't used directly. It must be vulcanized to produce finished
-rubber. This can be performed by simply cooking the latex, with each
-latex lump producing one lump of rubber. If you have an extractor,
-however, the latex is better processed there: each latex lump will
-produce three lumps of rubber.
-electrical power
+radioactivity
+-------------
+
+The technic mod adds radioactivity to the game, as a hazard that can
+harm player characters. Certain substances in the game are radioactive,
+and when placed as blocks in the game world will damage nearby players.
+Conversely, some substances attenuate radiation, and so can be used
+for shielding. The radioactivity system is based on reality, but is
+not an attempt at serious simulation: like the rest of the game, it has
+many simplifications and deliberate deviations from reality in the name
+of game balance.
+
+In real life radiological hazards can be roughly divided into three
+categories based on the time scale over which they act: prompt radiation
+damage (such as radiation burns) that takes effect immediately; radiation
+poisoning that becomes visible in hours and lasts weeks; and cumulative
+effects such as increased cancer risk that operate over decades.
+The game's version of radioactivity causes only prompt damage, not
+any delayed effects. Damage comes in the abstracted form of removing
+the player's hit points, and is immediately visible to the player.
+As with all other kinds of damage in the game, the player can restore
+the hit points by eating food items. High-nutrition foods, such as the
+pie baskets supplied by the bushes\_classic mod, are a useful tool in
+dealing with radiological hazards.
+
+Only a small range of items in the game are radioactive. From the technic
+mod, the only radioactive items are uranium ore, refined uranium blocks,
+nuclear reactor cores (when operating), and the materials released when
+a nuclear reactor melts down. Other mods can plug into the technic
+system to make their own block types radioactive. Radioactive items
+are harmless when held in inventories. They only cause radiation damage
+when placed as blocks in the game world.
+
+The rate at which damage is caused by a radioactive block depends on the
+distance between the source and the player. Distance matters because the
+damaging radiation is emitted equally in all directions by the source,
+so with distance it spreads out, so less of it will strike a target
+of any specific size. The amount of radiation absorbed by a target
+thus varies in proportion to the inverse square of the distance from
+the source. The game imitates this aspect of real-life radioactivity,
+but with some simplifications. While in real life the inverse square law
+is only really valid for sources and targets that are small relative to
+the distance between them, in the game it is applied even when the source
+and target are large and close together. Specifically, the distance is
+measured from the center of the radioactive block to the abdomen of the
+player character. For extremely close encounters, such as where the
+player swims in a radioactive liquid, there is an enforced lower limit
+on the effective distance.
+
+Different types of radioactive block emit different amounts of radiation.
+The least radioactive of the radioactive block types is uranium ore,
+which causes 0.25 HP/s damage to a player 1 m away. A block of refined
+but unenriched uranium, as an example, is nine times as radioactive,
+and so will cause 2.25 HP/s damage to a player 1 m away. By the inverse
+square law, the damage caused by that uranium block reduces by a factor
+of four at twice the distance, that is to 0.5625 HP/s at a distance of 2
+m, or by a factor of nine at three times the distance, that is to 0.25
+HP/s at a distance of 3 m. Other radioactive block types are far more
+radioactive than these: the most radioactive of all, the result of a
+nuclear reactor melting down, is 1024 times as radioactive as uranium ore.
+
+Uranium blocks are radioactive to varying degrees depending on their
+isotopic composition. An isotope being fissile, and thus good as
+reactor fuel, is essentially uncorrelated with it being radioactive.
+The fissile U-235 is about six times as radioactive than the non-fissile
+U-238 that makes up the bulk of natural uranium, so one might expect that
+enriching from 0.7% fissile to 3.5% fissile (or depleting to 0.0%) would
+only change the radioactivity of uranium by a few percent. But actually
+the radioactivity of enriched uranium is dominated by the non-fissile
+U-234, which makes up only about 50 parts per million of natural uranium
+but is about 19000 times more radioactive than U-238. The radioactivity
+of natural uranium comes just about half from U-238 and half from U-234,
+and the uranium gets enriched in U-234 along with the U-235. This makes
+3.5%-fissile uranium about three times as radioactive as natural uranium,
+and 0.0%-fissile uranium about half as radioactive as natural uranium.
+
+Radiation is attenuated by the shielding effect of material along the
+path between the radioactive block and the player. In general, only
+blocks of homogeneous material contribute to the shielding effect: for
+example, a block of solid metal has a shielding effect, but a machine
+does not, even though the machine's ingredients include a metal case.
+The shielding effect of each block type is based on the real-life
+resistance of the material to ionising radiation, but for game balance
+the effectiveness of shielding is scaled down from real life, more so
+for stronger shield materials than for weaker ones. Also, whereas in
+real life materials have different shielding effects against different
+types of radiation, the game only has one type of damaging radiation,
+and so only one set of shielding values.
+
+Almost any solid or liquid homogeneous material has some shielding value.
+At the low end of the scale, 5 meters of wooden planks nearly halves
+radiation, though in that case the planks probably contribute more
+to safety by forcing the player to stay 5 m further away from the
+source than by actual attenuation. Dirt halves radiation in 2.4 m,
+and stone in 1.7 m. When a shield must be deliberately constructed,
+the preferred materials are metals, the denser the better. Iron and
+steel halve radiation in 1.1 m, copper in 1.0 m, and silver in 0.95 m.
+Lead would halve in 0.69 m (its in-game shielding value is 80). Gold halves radiation
+in 0.53 m (factor of 3.7 per meter), but is a bit scarce to use for
+this purpose. Uranium halves radiation in 0.31 m (factor of 9.4 per
+meter), but is itself radioactive. The very best shielding in the game
+is nyancat material (nyancats and their rainbow blocks), which halves
+radiation in 0.22 m (factor of 24 per meter), but is extremely scarce. See [technic/technic/radiation.lua](https://github.com/minetest-technic/technic/blob/master/technic/radiation.lua) for the in-game shielding values, which are different from real-life values.
+
+If the theoretical radiation damage from a particular source is
+sufficiently small, due to distance and shielding, then no damage at all
+will actually occur. This means that for any particular radiation source
+and shielding arrangement there is a safe distance to which a player can
+approach without harm. The safe distance is where the radiation damage
+would theoretically be 0.25 HP/s. This damage threshold is applied
+separately for each radiation source, so to be safe in a multi-source
+situation it is only necessary to be safe from each source individually.
+
+The best way to use uranium as shielding is in a two-layer structure,
+of uranium and some non-radioactive material. The uranium layer should
+be nearer to the primary radiation source and the non-radioactive layer
+nearer to the player. The uranium provides a great deal of shielding
+against the primary source, and the other material shields against
+the uranium layer. Due to the damage threshold mechanism, a meter of
+dirt is sufficient to shield fully against a layer of fully-depleted
+(0.0%-fissile) uranium. Obviously this is only worthwhile when the
+primary radiation source is more radioactive than a uranium block.
+
+When constructing permanent radiation shielding, it is necessary to
+pay attention to the geometry of the structure, and particularly to any
+holes that have to be made in the shielding, for example to accommodate
+power cables. Any hole that is aligned with the radiation source makes a
+"shine path" through which a player may be irradiated when also aligned.
+Shine paths can be avoided by using bent paths for cables, passing
+through unaligned holes in multiple shield layers. If the desired
+shielding effect depends on multiple layers, a hole in one layer still
+produces a partial shine path, along which the shielding is reduced,
+so the positioning of holes in each layer must still be considered.
+Tricky shine paths can also be addressed by just keeping players out of
+the dangerous area.
+
+## Electrical power
+
+Electrical networks in Technic are defined by a single tier (see below)
+and consist of:
+
+ * 1x Switching Station (central management unit)
+ * Any further stations are disabled automatically
+ * Electricity producers (PR)
+ * Electricity consumers/receivers (RE)
+ * Accumulators/batteries (BA)
+
+### Tiers
+
+ * LV: Low Voltage. Low material costs but is slower.
+ * MV: Medium Voltage. Higher processing speed.
+ * HV: High Voltage. High material costs but is the fastest.
+
+Tiers can be converted from one to another using the Supply Converter node.
+Its top connects to the input, the bottom to the output network. Configure
+the input power by right-clicking it.
+
+### Machine upgrade slots
+
+Generally, machines of MV and HV tiers have two upgrade slots.
+Only specific items will have any upgrading effect. The occupied slots do
+count, but not the actual stack size.
+
+**Type 1: Energy upgrade**
+
+Consists of any battery item. Reduces the machine's power consumption
+regardless the charge of the item.
+
+**Type 2: Tube upgrade**
+
+Consists of a control logic unit item. Ejects processed items into pneumatic
+tubes for quicker processing.
+
+### Machines + Tubes (pipeworks)
+
+Generally, powered machines of MV and HV tiers can work with pneumatic
+tubes, and those of lower tiers cannot. (As an exception, the fuel-fired
+furnace from the basic Minetest game can accept inputs through tubes,
+but can't output into tubes.)
+
+If a machine can accept inputs through tubes at all, then this
+is a capability of the basic machine, not requiring any upgrade.
+Most item-processing machines take only one kind of input, and in that
+case they will accept that input from any direction. This doesn't match
+how tubes visually connect to the machines: generally tubes will visually
+connect to any face except the front, but an item passing through a tube
+in front of the machine will actually be accepted into the machine.
+
+A minority of machines take more than one kind of input, and in that
+case the input slot into which an arriving item goes is determined by the
+direction from which it arrives. In this case the machine may be picky
+about the direction of arriving items, associating each input type with
+a single face of the machine and not accepting inputs at all through the
+remaining faces. Again, the visual connection of tubes doesn't match:
+generally tubes will still visually connect to any face except the front,
+thus connecting to faces that neither accept inputs nor emit outputs.
+
+Machines do not accept items from tubes into non-input inventory slots:
+the output slots or upgrade slots. Output slots are normally filled
+only by the processing operation of the machine, and upgrade slots must
+be filled manually.
+
+Powered machines generally do not eject outputs into tubes without
+an upgrade. One tube upgrade will make them eject outputs at a slow
+rate; a second tube upgrade will increase the rate. Whether the slower
+rate is adequate depends on how it compares to the rate at which the
+machine produces outputs, and on how the machine is being used as part
+of a larger construct. The machine always ejects its outputs through a
+particular face, usually a side. Due to a bug, the side through which
+outputs are ejected is not consistent: when the machine is rotated one
+way, the direction of ejection is rotated the other way. This will
+probably be fixed some day, but because a straightforward fix would
+break half the machines already in use, the fix may be tied to some
+larger change such as free selection of the direction of ejection.
+
+### battery boxes ###
+
+The primary purpose of battery boxes is to temporarily store electrical
+energy to let an electrical network cope with mismatched supply and
+demand. They have a secondary purpose of charging and discharging
+powered tools. They are thus a mixture of electrical infrastructure,
+powered machine, and generator. Battery boxes connect to cables only
+from the bottom.
+
+MV and HV battery boxes have upgrade slots. Energy upgrades increase
+the capacity of a battery box, each by 10% of the un-upgraded capacity.
+This increase is far in excess of the capacity of the battery that forms
+the upgrade.
+
+For charging and discharging of power tools, rather than having input and
+output slots, each battery box has a charging slot and a discharging slot.
+A fully charged/discharged item stays in its slot. The rates at which a
+battery box can charge and discharge increase with voltage, so it can
+be worth building a battery box of higher tier before one has other
+infrastructure of that tier, just to get access to faster charging.
+
+MV and HV battery boxes work with pneumatic tubes. An item can be input
+to the charging slot through the sides or back of the battery box, or
+to the discharging slot through the top. With a tube upgrade, fully
+charged/discharged tools (as appropriate for their slot) will be ejected
+through a side.
+
+### processing machines ###
+
+The furnace, alloy furnace, grinder, extractor, compressor, and centrifuge
+have much in common. Each implements some industrial process that
+transforms items into other items, and the manner in which they present
+these processes as powered machines is essentially identical.
+
+Most of the processing machines operate on inputs of only a single type
+at a time, and correspondingly have only a single input slot. The alloy
+furnace is an exception: it operates on inputs of two distinct types at
+once, and correspondingly has two input slots. It doesn't matter which
+way round the alloy furnace's inputs are placed in the two slots.
+
+The processing machines are mostly available in variants for multiple
+tiers. The furnace and alloy furnace are each available in fuel-fired,
+LV, and MV forms. The grinder, extractor, and compressor are each
+available in LV and MV forms. The centrifuge is the only single-tier
+processing machine, being only available in MV form. The higher-tier
+machines process items faster than the lower-tier ones, but also have
+higher power consumption, usually taking more energy overall to perform
+the same amount of processing. The MV machines have upgrade slots,
+and energy upgrades reduce their energy consumption.
+
+The MV machines can work with pneumatic tubes. They accept inputs via
+tubes from any direction. For most of the machines, having only a single
+input slot, this is perfectly simple behavior. The alloy furnace is more
+complex: it will put an arriving item in either input slot, preferring to
+stack it with existing items of the same type. It doesn't matter which
+slot each of the alloy furnace's inputs is in, so it doesn't matter that
+there's no direct control over that, but there is a risk that supplying
+a lot of one item type through tubes will result in both slots containing
+the same type of item, leaving no room for the second input.
+
+The MV machines can be given a tube upgrade to make them automatically
+eject output items into pneumatic tubes. The items are always ejected
+through a side, though which side it is depends on the machine's
+orientation, due to a bug. Output items are always ejected singly.
+For some machines, such as the grinder, the ejection rate with a
+single tube upgrade doesn't keep up with the rate at which items can
+be processed. A second tube upgrade increases the ejection rate.
+
+The LV and fuel-fired machines do not work with pneumatic tubes, except
+that the fuel-fired furnace (actually part of the basic Minetest game)
+can accept inputs from tubes. Items arriving through the bottom of
+the furnace go into the fuel slot, and items arriving from all other
+directions go into the input slot.
+
+### music player ###
+
+The music player is an LV powered machine that plays audio recordings.
+It offers a selection of up to nine tracks. The technic modpack doesn't
+include specific music tracks for this purpose; they have to be installed
+separately.
+
+The music player gives the impression that the music is being played in
+the Minetest world. The music only plays as long as the music player
+is in place and is receiving electrical power, and the choice of music
+is controlled by interaction with the machine. The sound also appears
+to emanate specifically from the music player: the ability to hear it
+depends on the player's distance from the music player. However, the
+game engine doesn't currently support any other positional cues for
+sound, such as attenuation, panning, or HRTF. The impression of the
+sound being located in the Minetest world is also compromised by the
+subjective nature of track choice: the specific music that is played to
+a player depends on what media the player has installed.
+
+### CNC machine ###
+
+The CNC machine is an LV powered machine that cuts building blocks into a
+variety of sub-block shapes that are not covered by the crafting recipes
+of the stairs mod and its variants. Most of the target shapes are not
+rectilinear, involving diagonal or curved surfaces.
+
+Only certain kinds of building material can be processed in the CNC
+machine.
+
+### tool workshop ###
+
+The tool workshop is an MV powered machine that repairs mechanically-worn
+tools, such as pickaxes and the other ordinary digging tools. It has
+a single slot for a tool to be repaired, and gradually repairs the
+tool while it is powered. For any single tool, equal amounts of tool
+wear, resulting from equal amounts of tool use, take equal amounts of
+repair effort. Also, all repairable tools currently take equal effort
+to repair equal percentages of wear. The amount of tool use enabled by
+equal amounts of repair therefore depends on the tool type.
+
+The mechanical wear that the tool workshop repairs is always indicated in
+inventory displays by a colored bar overlaid on the tool image. The bar
+can be seen to fill and change color as the tool workshop operates,
+eventually disappearing when the repair is complete. However, not every
+item that shows such a wear bar is using it to show mechanical wear.
+A wear bar can also be used to indicate charging of a power tool with
+stored electrical energy, or filling of a container, or potentially for
+all sorts of other uses. The tool workshop won't affect items that use
+wear bars to indicate anything other than mechanical wear.
+
+The tool workshop has upgrade slots. Energy upgrades reduce its power
+consumption.
+
+It can work with pneumatic tubes. Tools to be repaired are accepted
+via tubes from any direction. With a tube upgrade, the tool workshop
+will also eject fully-repaired tools via one side, the choice of side
+depending on the machine's orientation, as for processing machines. It is
+safe to put into the tool workshop a tool that is already fully repaired:
+assuming the presence of a tube upgrade, the tool will be quickly ejected.
+Furthermore, any item of unrepairable type will also be ejected as if
+fully repaired. (Due to a historical limitation of the basic Minetest
+game, it is impossible for the tool workshop to distinguish between a
+fully-repaired tool and any item type that never displays a wear bar.)
+
+### quarry ###
+
+The quarry is an HV powered machine that automatically digs out a
+large area. The region that it digs out is a cuboid with a square
+horizontal cross section, located immediately behind the quarry machine.
+The quarry's action is slow and energy-intensive, but requires little
+player effort.
+
+The size of the quarry's horizontal cross section is configurable through
+the machine's interaction form. A setting referred to as "radius"
+is an integer number of meters which can vary from 2 to 8 inclusive.
+The horizontal cross section is a square with side length of twice the
+radius plus one meter, thus varying from 5 to 17 inclusive. Vertically,
+the quarry always digs from 3 m above the machine to 100 m below it,
+inclusive, a total vertical height of 104 m.
+
+Whatever the quarry digs up is ejected through the top of the machine,
+as if from a pneumatic tube. Normally a tube should be placed there
+to convey the material into a sorting system, processing machines, or
+at least chests. A chest may be placed directly above the machine to
+capture the output without sorting, but is liable to overflow.
+
+If the quarry encounters something that cannot be dug, such as a liquid,
+a locked chest, or a protected area, it will skip past that and attempt
+to continue digging. However, anything remaining in the quarry area
+after the machine has attempted to dig there will prevent the machine
+from digging anything directly below it, all the way to the bottom
+of the quarry. An undiggable block therefore casts a shadow of undug
+blocks below it. If liquid is encountered, it is quite likely to flow
+across the entire cross section of the quarry, preventing all digging.
+The depth at which the quarry is currently attempting to dig is reported
+in its interaction form, and can be manually reset to the top of the
+quarry, which is useful to do if an undiggable obstruction has been
+manually removed.
+
+The quarry consumes 10 kEU per block dug, which is quite a lot of energy.
+With most of what is dug being mere stone, it is usually not economically
+favorable to power a quarry from anything other than solar power.
+In particular, one cannot expect to power a quarry by burning the coal
+that it digs up.
+
+Given sufficient power, the quarry digs at a rate of one block per second.
+This is rather tedious to wait for. Unfortunately, leaving the quarry
+unattended normally means that the Minetest server won't keep the machine
+running: it needs a player nearby. This can be resolved by using a world
+anchor. The digging is still quite slow, and independently of whether a
+world anchor is used the digging can be speeded up by placing multiple
+quarry machines with overlapping digging areas. Four can be placed to
+dig identical areas, one on each side of the square cross section.
+
+### forcefield emitter ###
+
+The forcefield emitter is an HV powered machine that generates a
+forcefield reminiscent of those seen in many science-fiction stories.
+
+The emitter can be configured to generate a forcefield of either
+spherical or cubical shape, in either case centered on the emitter.
+The size of the forcefield is configured using a radius parameter that
+is an integer number of meters which can vary from 5 to 20 inclusive.
+For a spherical forcefield this is simply the radius of the forcefield;
+for a cubical forcefield it is the distance from the emitter to the
+center of each square face.
+
+The power drawn by the emitter is proportional to the surface area of
+the forcefield being generated. A spherical forcefield is therefore the
+cheapest way to enclose a specified volume of space with a forcefield,
+if the shape of the space doesn't matter. A cubical forcefield is less
+efficient at enclosing volume, but is cheaper than the larger spherical
+forcefield that would be required if it is necessary to enclose a
+cubical space.
+
+The emitter is normally controlled merely through its interaction form,
+which has an enable/disable toggle. However, it can also (via the form)
+be placed in a mesecon-controlled mode. If mesecon control is enabled,
+the emitter must be receiving a mesecon signal in addition to being
+manually enabled, in order for it to generate the forcefield.
+
+The forcefield itself behaves largely as if solid, despite being
+immaterial: it cannot be traversed, and prevents access to blocks behind
+it. It is transparent, but not totally invisible. It cannot be dug.
+Some effects can pass through it, however, such as the beam of a mining
+laser, and explosions. In fact, explosions as currently implemented by
+the tnt mod actually temporarily destroy the forcefield itself; the tnt
+mod assumes too much about the regularity of node types.
+
+The forcefield occupies space that would otherwise have been air, but does
+not replace or otherwise interfere with materials that are solid, liquid,
+or otherwise not just air. If such an object blocking the forcefield is
+removed, the forcefield will quickly extend into the now-available space,
+but it does not do so instantly: there is a brief moment when the space
+is air and can be traversed.
+
+It is possible to have a doorway in a forcefield, by placing in advance,
+in space that the forcefield would otherwise occupy, some non-air blocks
+that can be walked through. For example, a door suffices, and can be
+opened and closed while the forcefield is in place.
+
+power generators
----------------
-Most machines in technic are electrically powered. To operate them it is
-necessary to construct an electrical power network. The network links
-together power generators and power-consuming machines, connecting them
-using power cables.
+### fuel-fired generators ###
-There are three tiers of electrical networking: low voltage (LV),
-medium voltage (MV), and high voltage (HV). Each network must operate
-at a single voltage, and most electrical items are specific to a single
-voltage. Generally, the machines of higher tiers are more powerful,
-but consume more energy and are more expensive to build, than machines
-of lower tiers. It is normal to build networks of all three tiers,
-in ascending order as one progresses through the game, but it is not
-strictly necessary to do this. Building HV equipment requires some parts
-that can only be manufactured using electrical machines, either LV or MV,
-so it is not possible to build an HV network first, but it is possible
-to skip either LV or MV on the way to HV.
+The fuel-fired generators are electrical power generators that generate
+power by the combustion of fuel. Versions of them are available for
+all three voltages (LV, MV, and HV). These are all capable of burning
+any type of combustible fuel, such as coal. They are relatively easy
+to build, and so tend to be the first kind of generator used to power
+electrical machines. In this role they form an intermediate step between
+the directly fuel-fired machines and a more mature electrical network
+powered by means other than fuel combustion. They are also, by virtue of
+simplicity and controllability, a useful fallback or peak load generator
+for electrical networks that normally use more sophisticated generators.
-Each voltage has its own cable type, with distinctive insulation. Cable
-segments connect to each other and to compatible machines automatically.
-Incompatible electrical items don't connect. All non-cable electrical
-items must be connected via cable: they don't connect directly to each
-other. Most electrical items can connect to cables in any direction,
-but there are a couple of important exceptions noted below.
+The MV and HV fuel-fired generators can accept fuel via pneumatic tube,
+from any direction.
-To be useful, an electrical network must connect at least one power
-generator to at least one power-consuming machine. In addition to these
-items, the network must have a "switching station" in order to operate:
-no energy will flow without one. Unlike most electrical items, the
-switching station is not voltage-specific: the same item will manage
-a network of any tier. However, also unlike most electrical items,
-it is picky about the direction in which it is connected to the cable:
-the cable must be directly below the switching station. Due to a bug,
-the switching station will visually appear to connect to cables on other
-sides, but those connections don't do anything.
+Keeping a fuel-fired generator fully fuelled is usually wasteful, because
+it will burn fuel as long as it has any, even if there is no demand for
+the electrical power that it generates. This is unlike the directly
+fuel-fired machines, which only burn fuel when they have work to do.
+To satisfy intermittent demand without waste, a fuel-fired generator must
+only be given fuel when there is either demand for the energy or at least
+sufficient battery capacity on the network to soak up the excess energy.
-Hovering over a network's switching station will show the aggregate energy
-supply and demand, which is useful for troubleshooting. Electrical energy
-is measured in "EU", and power (energy flow) in EU per second (EU/s).
-Energy is shifted around a network instantaneously once per second.
+The higher-tier fuel-fired generators get much more energy out of a
+fuel item than the lower-tier ones. The difference is much more than
+is needed to overcome the inefficiency of supply converters, so it is
+worth operating fuel-fired generators at a higher tier than the machines
+being powered.
-In a simple network with only generators and consumers, if total
-demand exceeds total supply then no energy will flow, the machines
-will do nothing, and the generators' output will be lost. To handle
-this situation, it is recommended to add a battery box to the network.
-A battery box will store generated energy, and when enough has been
-stored to run the consumers for one second it will deliver it to the
-consumers, letting them run part-time. It also stores spare energy
-when supply exceeds demand, to let consumers run full-time when their
-demand occasionally peaks above the supply. More battery boxes can
-be added to cope with larger periods of mismatched supply and demand,
-such as those resulting from using solar generators (which only produce
-energy in the daytime).
+### solar generators ###
-When there are electrical networks of multiple tiers, it can be appealing
-to generate energy on one tier and transfer it to another. The most
-direct way to do this is with the "supply converter", which can be
-directly wired into two networks. It is another tier-independent item,
-and also particular about the direction of cable connections: it must
-have the cable of one network directly above, and the cable of another
-network directly below. The supply converter demands 10000 EU/s from
-the network above, and when this network gives it power it supplies 9000
-EU/s to the network below. Thus it is only 90% efficient, unlike most of
-the electrical system which is 100% efficient in moving energy around.
-To transfer more than 10000 EU/s between networks, connect multiple
-supply converters in parallel.
+The solar generators are electrical power generators that generate power
+from sunlight. Versions of them are available for all three voltages
+(LV, MV, and HV). There are four types in total, two LV and one each
+of MV and HV, forming a sequence of four tiers. The higher-tier ones
+are each built mainly from three solar generators of the next tier down,
+and their outputs scale in rough accordance, tripling at each tier.
+
+To operate, an arrayed solar generator must be at elevation +1 or above
+and have a transparent block (typically air) immediately above it.
+It will generate power only when the block above is well lit during
+daylight hours. It will generate more power at higher elevation,
+reaching maximum output at elevation +36 or higher when sunlit. The small
+solar generator has similar rules with slightly different thresholds.
+These rules are an attempt to ensure that the generator will only operate
+from sunlight, but it is actually possible to fool them to some extent
+with light sources such as meselamps.
+
+### hydro generator ###
+
+The hydro generator is an LV power generator that generates a respectable
+amount of power from the natural motion of water. To operate, the
+generator must be horizontally adjacent to flowing water. The power
+produced is dependent on how much flow there is across any or all four
+sides, the most flow of course coming from water that's flowing straight
+down.
+
+### geothermal generator ###
+
+The geothermal generator is an LV power generator that generates a small
+amount of power from the temperature difference between lava and water.
+To operate, the generator must be horizontally adjacent to both lava
+and water. It doesn't matter whether the liquids consist of source
+blocks or flowing blocks.
+
+Beware that if lava and water blocks are adjacent to each other then the
+lava will be solidified into stone or obsidian. If the lava adjacent to
+the generator is thus destroyed, the generator will stop producing power.
+Currently, in the default Minetest game, lava is destroyed even if
+it is only diagonally adjacent to water. Under these circumstances,
+the only way to operate the geothermal generator is with it adjacent
+to one lava block and one water block, which are on opposite sides of
+the generator. If diagonal adjacency doesn't destroy lava, such as with
+the gloopblocks mod, then it is possible to have more than one lava or
+water block adjacent to the geothermal generator. This increases the
+generator's output, with the maximum output achieved with two adjacent
+blocks of each liquid.
+
+### wind generator ###
+
+The wind generator is an MV power generator that generates a moderate
+amount of energy from wind. To operate, the generator must be placed
+atop a column of at least 20 wind mill frame blocks, and must be at
+an elevation of +30 or higher. It generates more at higher elevation,
+reaching maximum output at elevation +50 or higher. Its surroundings
+don't otherwise matter; it doesn't actually need to be in open air.
+
+### nuclear generator ###
+
+The nuclear generator (nuclear reactor) is an HV power generator that
+generates a large amount of energy from the controlled fission of
+uranium-235. It must be fuelled, with uranium fuel rods, but consumes
+the fuel quite slowly in relation to the rate at which it is likely to
+be mined. The operation of a nuclear reactor poses radiological hazards
+to which some thought must be given. Economically, the use of nuclear
+power requires a high capital investment, and a secure infrastructure,
+but rewards the investment well.
+
+Nuclear fuel is made from uranium. Natural uranium doesn't have a
+sufficiently high proportion of U-235, so it must first be enriched
+via centrifuge. Producing one unit of 3.5%-fissile uranium requires
+the input of five units of 0.7%-fissile (natural) uranium, and produces
+four units of 0.0%-fissile (fully depleted) uranium as a byproduct.
+It takes five ingots of 3.5%-fissile uranium to make each fuel rod, and
+six rods to fuel a reactor. It thus takes the input of the equivalent
+of 150 ingots of natural uranium, which can be obtained from the mining
+of 75 blocks of uranium ore, to make a full set of reactor fuel.
+
+The nuclear reactor is a large multi-block structure. Only one block in
+the structure, the reactor core, is of a type that is truly specific to
+the reactor; the rest of the structure consists of blocks that have mainly
+non-nuclear uses. The reactor core is where all the generator-specific
+action happens: it is where the fuel rods are inserted, and where the
+power cable must connect to draw off the generated power.
+
+The reactor structure consists of concentric layers, each a cubical
+shell, around the core. Immediately around the core is a layer of water,
+representing the reactor coolant; water blocks may be either source blocks
+or flowing blocks. Around that is a layer of stainless steel blocks,
+representing the reactor pressure vessel, and around that a layer of
+blast-resistant concrete blocks, representing a containment structure.
+It is customary, though no longer mandatory, to surround this with a
+layer of ordinary concrete blocks. The mandatory reactor structure
+makes a 7×7×7 cube, and the full customary structure a
+9×9×9 cube.
+
+The layers surrounding the core don't have to be absolutely complete.
+Indeed, if they were complete, it would be impossible to cable the core to
+a power network. The cable makes it necessary to have at least one block
+missing from each surrounding layer. The water layer is only permitted
+to have one water block missing of the 26 possible. The steel layer may
+have up to two blocks missing of the 98 possible, and the blast-resistant
+concrete layer may have up to two blocks missing of the 218 possible.
+Thus it is possible to have not only a cable duct, but also a separate
+inspection hole through the solid layers. The separate inspection hole
+is of limited use: the cable duct can serve double duty.
+
+Once running, the reactor core is significantly radioactive. The layers
+of reactor structure provide quite a lot of shielding, but not enough
+to make the reactor safe to be around, in two respects. Firstly, the
+shortest possible path from the core to a player outside the reactor
+is sufficiently short, and has sufficiently little shielding material,
+that it will damage the player. This only affects a player who is
+extremely close to the reactor, and close to a face rather than a vertex.
+The customary additional layer of ordinary concrete around the reactor
+adds sufficient distance and shielding to negate this risk, but it can
+also be addressed by just keeping extra distance (a little over two
+meters of air).
+
+The second radiological hazard of a running reactor arises from shine
+paths; that is, specific paths from the core that lack sufficient
+shielding. The necessary cable duct, if straight, forms a perfect
+shine path, because the cable itself has no radiation shielding effect.
+Any secondary inspection hole also makes a shine path, along which the
+only shielding material is the water of the reactor coolant. The shine
+path aspect of the cable duct can be ameliorated by adding a kink in the
+cable, but this still yields paths with reduced shielding. Ultimately,
+shine paths must be managed either with specific shielding outside the
+mandatory structure, or with additional no-go areas.
+
+The radioactivity of an operating reactor core makes starting up a reactor
+hazardous, and can come as a surprise because the non-operating core
+isn't radioactive at all. The radioactive damage is survivable, but it is
+normally preferable to avoid it by some care around the startup sequence.
+To start up, the reactor must have a full set of fuel inserted, have all
+the mandatory structure around it, and be cabled to a switching station.
+Only the fuel insertion requires direct access to the core, so irradiation
+of the player can be avoided by making one of the other two criteria be
+the last one satisfied. Completing the cabling to a switching station
+is the easiest to do from a safe distance.
+
+Once running, the reactor will generate 100 kEU/s for a week (168 hours,
+604800 seconds), a total of 6.048 GEU from one set of fuel. After the
+week is up, it will stop generating and no longer be radioactive. It can
+then be refuelled to run for another week. It is not really intended
+to be possible to pause a running reactor, but actually disconnecting
+it from a switching station will have the effect of pausing the week.
+This will probably change in the future. A paused reactor is still
+radioactive, just not generating electrical power.
+
+A running reactor can't be safely dismantled, and not only because
+dismantling the reactor implies removing the shielding that makes
+it safe to be close to the core. The mandatory parts of the reactor
+structure are not just mandatory in order to start the reactor; they're
+mandatory in order to keep it intact. If the structure around the core
+gets damaged, and remains damaged, the core will eventually melt down.
+How long there is before meltdown depends on the extent of the damage;
+if only one mandatory block is missing, meltdown will follow in 100
+seconds. While the structure of a running reactor is in a damaged state,
+heading towards meltdown, a siren built into the reactor core will sound.
+If the structure is rectified, the siren will signal all-clear. If the
+siren stops sounding without signalling all-clear, then it was stopped
+by meltdown.
+
+If meltdown is imminent because of damaged reactor structure, digging the
+reactor core is not a way to avert it. Digging the core of a running
+reactor causes instant meltdown. The only way to dismantle a reactor
+without causing meltdown is to start by waiting for it to finish the
+week-long burning of its current set of fuel. Once a reactor is no longer
+operating, it can be dismantled by ordinary means, with no special risks.
+
+Meltdown, if it occurs, destroys the reactor and poses a major
+environmental hazard. The reactor core melts, becoming a hot, highly
+radioactive liquid known as "corium". A single meltdown yields a single
+corium source block, where the core used to be. Corium flows, and the
+flowing corium is very destructive to whatever it comes into contact with.
+Flowing corium also randomly solidifies into a radioactive solid called
+"Chernobylite". The random solidification and random destruction of
+solid blocks means that the flow of corium is constantly changing.
+This combined with the severe radioactivity makes corium much more
+challenging to deal with than lava. If a meltdown is left to its own
+devices, it gets worse over time, as the corium works its way through
+the reactor structure and starts to flow over a variety of paths.
+It is best to tackle a meltdown quickly; the priority is to extinguish
+the corium source block, normally by dropping gravel into it. Only the
+most motivated should attempt to pick up the corium in a bucket.
+
+administrative world anchor
+---------------------------
+
+A world anchor is an object in the Minetest world that causes the server
+to keep surrounding parts of the world running even when no players
+are nearby. It is mainly used to allow machines to run unattended:
+normally machines are suspended when not near a player. The technic
+mod supplies a form of world anchor, as a placable block, but it is not
+straightforwardly available to players. There is no recipe for it, so it
+is only available if explicitly spawned into existence by someone with
+administrative privileges. In a single-player world, the single player
+normally has administrative privileges, and can obtain a world anchor
+by entering the chat command "/give singleplayer technic:admin\_anchor".
+
+The world anchor tries to force a cubical area, centered upon the anchor,
+to stay loaded. The distance from the anchor to the most distant map
+nodes that it will keep loaded is referred to as the "radius", and can be
+set in the world anchor's interaction form. The radius can be set as low
+as 0, meaning that the anchor only tries to keep itself loaded, or as high
+as 255, meaning that it will operate on a 511×511×511 cube.
+Larger radii are forbidden, to avoid typos causing the server excessive
+work; to keep a larger area loaded, use multiple anchors. Also use
+multiple anchors if the area to be kept loaded is not well approximated
+by a cube.
+
+The world is always kept loaded in units of 16×16×16 cubes,
+confusingly known as "map blocks". The anchor's configured radius takes
+no account of map block boundaries, but the anchor's effect is actually to
+keep loaded each map block that contains any part of the configured cube.
+The anchor's interaction form includes a status note showing how many map
+blocks this is, and how many of those it is successfully keeping loaded.
+When the anchor is disabled, as it is upon placement, it will always
+show that it is keeping no map blocks loaded; this does not indicate
+any kind of failure.
+
+The world anchor can optionally be locked. When it is locked, only
+the anchor's owner, the player who placed it, can reconfigure it or
+remove it. Only the owner can lock it. Locking an anchor is useful
+if the use of anchors is being tightly controlled by administrators:
+an administrator can set up a locked anchor and be sure that it will
+not be set by ordinary players to an unapproved configuration.
+
+The server limits the ability of world anchors to keep parts of the world
+loaded, to avoid overloading the server. The total number of map blocks
+that can be kept loaded in this way is set by the server configuration
+item "max\_forceloaded\_blocks" (in minetest.conf), which defaults to
+only 16. For comparison, each player normally keeps 125 map blocks loaded
+(a radius of 32). If an enabled world anchor shows that it is failing to
+keep all the map blocks loaded that it would like to, this can be fixed
+by increasing max\_forceloaded\_blocks by the amount of the shortfall.
+
+The tight limit on force-loading is the reason why the world anchor is
+not directly available to players. With the limit so low both by default
+and in common practice, the only feasible way to determine where world
+anchors should be used is for administrators to decide it directly.
subjects missing from this manual
---------------------------------
This manual needs to be extended with sections on:
-* the miscellaneous powered machine types
-* how machines interact with tubes
-* the generator types
-* the mining tools
-* radioactivity
+* powered tools
+ * tool charging
+ * battery and energy crystals
+ * chainsaw
+ * flashlight
+ * mining lasers
+ * mining drills
+ * prospector
+ * sonic screwdriver
+* liquid cans
+* wrench
* frames
* templates
-* chests
--
Gitblit v1.8.0