From fb93388f06fe87ee75aaaf04cf6edcf01a26d981 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: SmallJoker <mk939@ymail.com>
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2018 14:36:21 +0200
Subject: [PATCH] Replace deprecated invsize[] with size[]
---
manual.md | 1339 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
1 files changed, 1,325 insertions(+), 14 deletions(-)
diff --git a/manual.md b/manual.md
index 331983d..4ad01fc 100644
--- a/manual.md
+++ b/manual.md
@@ -20,11 +20,13 @@
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
+guidance, use the unified\_inventory mod, with which technic registers
its specialised recipe types.
-ore
----
+substances
+----------
+
+### ore ###
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
@@ -34,7 +36,7 @@
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.
-Elevation is measured in metres, relative to a reference plane that
+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
@@ -94,7 +96,7 @@
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 metre away or when mined.
+It is safe when more than a meter away or when mined.
Silver is supplied by the moreores mod. It is found from elevation -2
downwards, with no elevation-dependent variations in abundance beyond
@@ -129,8 +131,7 @@
from elevation -256 downwards. It is a precious gemstone. It is used
moderately, mainly for reasons connected to its extreme hardness.
-rock
-----
+### rock ###
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
@@ -160,17 +161,1327 @@
so impedes mining when it is encountered. It has mainly decorative use,
but also appears in a couple of machine recipes.
+### 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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+Raw latex isn't used directly. It must be vulcanized to produce finished
+rubber. This can be performed by alloying the latex with coal dust.
+
+### 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, armor, 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.
+
+### 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. 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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+### 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
+similar to the cooking found in the basic Minetest game. Each uses
+an input consisting of a single item type, and produces a single
+output. They are all performed using powered machines, respectively
+known generically as a "grinder", "extractor", and "compressor".
+Some compressing recipes require the input to be a stack of more than
+one of the input item: the quantity required is part of the recipe.
+Grinding and extracting recipes never require such a stacked input.
+
+There are multiple kinds of grinder, extractor, and compressor. Unlike
+cooking furnaces and alloy furnaces, there are none that directly burn
+fuel; they are all electrically powered.
+
+Grinding recipes always produce some kind of dust, loosely speaking,
+as output. The most important grinding recipes are concerned with metals:
+every metal lump or ingot can be ground into metal dust. Coal can also
+be ground into dust, and burning the dust as fuel produces much more
+energy than burning the original coal lump. There are a few other
+grinding recipes that make block types from the basic Minetest game
+more interconvertible: standard stone can be ground to standard sand,
+desert stone to desert sand, cobblestone to gravel, and gravel to dirt.
+
+Extracting is a miscellaneous category, used for a small group
+of processes that just don't fit nicely anywhere else. (Its name is
+notably vaguer than those of the other kinds of processing.) It is used
+for recipes that produce dye, mainly from flowers. (However, for those
+recipes using flowers, the basic Minetest game provides parallel crafting
+recipes that are easier to use and produce more dye, and those recipes
+are not suppressed by technic.) Its main use is to generate rubber from
+raw latex, which it does three times as efficiently as merely cooking
+the latex. Extracting was also formerly used for uranium enrichment for
+use as nuclear fuel, but this use has been superseded by a new enrichment
+system using the centrifuge.
+
+Compressing recipes are mainly used to produce a few relatively advanced
+artificial item types, such as the copper and carbon plates used in
+advanced machine recipes. There are also a couple of compressing recipes
+making natural block types more interconvertible.
+
+### centrifuging ###
+
+Centrifuging is another way of using a machine to convert items.
+Centrifuging takes an input of a single item type, and produces outputs
+of two distinct types. The input may be required to be a stack of
+more than one of the input item: the quantity required is part of
+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
+multiple outputs.
+
+Generally, centrifuging separates the input item into constituent
+substances, but it can only work when the input is reasonably fluid,
+and in marginal cases it is quite destructive to item structure.
+(In real life, centrifuges require their input to be mainly fluid, that
+is either liquid or gas. Few items in the game are described as liquid
+or gas, so the concept of the centrifuge is stretched a bit to apply to
+finely-divided solids.)
+
+The main use of centrifuging is in uranium enrichment, where it
+separates the isotopes of uranium dust that otherwise appears uniform.
+Enrichment is a necessary process before uranium can be used as nuclear
+fuel, and the radioactivity of uranium blocks is also affected by its
+isotopic composition.
+
+A secondary use of centrifuging is to separate the components of
+metal alloys. This can only be done using the dust form of the alloy.
+It recovers both components of binary metal/metal alloys. It can't
+recover the carbon from steel or cast iron.
+
+chests
+------
+
+The technic mod replaces the basic Minetest game's single type of
+chest with a range of chests that have different sizes and features.
+The chest types are identified by the materials from which they are made;
+the better chests are made from more exotic materials. The chest types
+form a linear sequence, each being (with one exception noted below)
+strictly more powerful than the preceding one. The sequence begins with
+the wooden chest from the basic game, and each later chest type is built
+by upgrading a chest of the preceding type. The chest types are:
+
+1. wooden chest: 8×4 (32) slots
+2. iron chest: 9×5 (45) slots
+3. copper chest: 12×5 (60) slots
+4. silver chest: 12×6 (72) slots
+5. gold chest: 15×6 (90) slots
+6. mithril chest: 15×6 (90) slots
+
+The iron and later chests have the ability to sort their contents,
+when commanded by a button in their interaction forms. Item types are
+sorted in the same order used in the unified\_inventory craft guide.
+The copper and later chests also have an auto-sorting facility that can
+be enabled from the interaction form. An auto-sorting chest automatically
+sorts its contents whenever a player closes the chest. The contents will
+then usually be in a sorted state when the chest is opened, but may not
+be if pneumatic tubes have operated on the chest while it was closed,
+or if two players have the chest open simultaneously.
+
+The silver and gold chests, but not the mithril chest, have a built-in
+sign-like capability. They can be given a textual label, which will
+be visible when hovering over the chest. The gold chest, but again not
+the mithril chest, can be further labelled with a colored patch that is
+visible from a moderate distance.
+
+The mithril chest is currently an exception to the upgrading system.
+It has only as many inventory slots as the preceding (gold) type, and has
+fewer of the features. It has no feature that other chests don't have:
+it is strictly weaker than the gold chest. It is planned that in the
+future it will acquire some unique features, but for now the only reason
+to use it is aesthetic.
+
+The size of the largest chests is dictated by the maximum size
+of interaction form that the game engine can successfully display.
+If in the future the engine becomes capable of handling larger forms,
+by scaling them to fit the screen, the sequence of chest sizes will
+likely be revised.
+
+As with the chest of the basic Minetest game, each chest type comes
+in both locked and unlocked flavors. All of the chests work with the
+pneumatic tubes of the pipeworks mod.
+
+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
+----------------
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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).
+
+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.
+
+powered machines
+----------------
+
+### powered machine tiers ###
+
+Each powered machine takes its power in some specific form, being
+either fuel-fired (burning fuel directly) or electrically powered at
+some specific voltage. There is a general progression through the
+game from using fuel-fired machines to electrical machines, and to
+higher electrical voltages. The most important kinds of machine come
+in multiple variants that are powered in different ways, so the earlier
+ones can be superseded. However, some machines are only available for
+a specific power tier, so the tier can't be entirely superseded.
+
+### powered machine upgrades ###
+
+Some machines have inventory slots that are used to upgrade them in
+some way. Generally, machines of MV and HV tiers have two upgrade slots,
+and machines of lower tiers (fuel-fired and LV) do not. Any item can
+be placed in an upgrade slot, but only specific items will have any
+upgrading effect. It is possible to have multiple upgrades of the same
+type, but this can't be achieved by stacking more than one upgrade item
+in one slot: it is necessary to put the same kind of item in more than one
+upgrade slot. The ability to upgrade machines is therefore very limited.
+Two kinds of upgrade are currently possible: an energy upgrade and a
+tube upgrade.
+
+An energy upgrade consists of a battery item, the same kind of battery
+that serves as a mobile energy store. The effect of an energy upgrade
+is to improve in some way the machine's use of electrical energy, most
+often by making it use less energy. The upgrade effect has no relation
+to energy stored in the battery: the battery's charge level is irrelevant
+and will not be affected.
+
+A tube upgrade consists of a control logic unit item. The effect of a
+tube upgrade is to make the machine able, or more able, to eject items
+it has finished with into pneumatic tubes. The machines that can take
+this kind of upgrade are in any case capable of accepting inputs from
+pneumatic tubes. These upgrades are essential in using powered machines
+as components in larger automated systems.
+
+### tubes with powered machines ###
+
+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 they 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 ovar 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 remeniscent 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
+----------------
+
+### fuel-fired generators ###
+
+The fiel-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.
+
+The MV and HV fuel-fired generators can accept fuel via pneumatic tube,
+from any direction.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+### solar generators ###
+
+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:
-* alloying
-* electrical networks
-* the powered machine types
-* how machines interact with tubes
-* 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
--
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