Seriously, Is there any other way to view the mechanics for 1.19.2 the scavenger hunt is insane, gotta love extreme reactors no wait big reactors.... Nvm its Bigger reactors
Man, I've played with Big/Extreme Reactors dozens of times, and this is the first time I've actually seen someone explain the mechanics of coolants beyond GELID CRYOTHIUM GOOD! Thank you!
@@TheTAEclub well thats how, you clearly have your fps locked ;) reply to this message if you still only get 165, ill help you get that uncapped. Its a huge difference! :)
I haven't touched extreme reactors and if the port did not change too much then the following information may still be valid. To maximize power and efficiency is to understand radioactivity, coolant range and temperature thresholds. If the reactor gets too hot beyond a certain threshold it will start to become less efficient. Majority of my knowledge is based off of my time playing Crash Landing when I creating the most efficient reactor to use a turbine (actively cooled reactor) but yet use as little blocks and coolant blocks as possible. The best cooling in the terms of rod to wall placement was 4 blocks. I had found going out by 5 blocks for example was not worth the resources for next to no improvements to power or temperature. This also made the use of gelid cryotheum easier to use. Namely because coolant blocks do not need to be a source block. So for example resonant ender can be used at the top most part and allowed to flow downwards giving the same results as if they all were source coolant blocks. As radioactivity of the fuel rods they use the same cardinal direction rules. I believe to be most efficient they look up to 4 blocks in either direction. In the example of a 9x9 rod layout I believe only the center most rod would be 'capped' out. Don't hold me to that information as I never went that far to research it fully as that size is already ridiculously huge of a reactor.
@@RRKS_TF applied energistics2+Erebus+minefactory reloaded+draconic evolution+avaratia If you don't know how to use these mods to destroy your world then scroll down. Alright so do know this is an endgame process and REQUIRES the infinity armor (Avaritia) and World Breaker (Avaritia). It also requires The wand Of Animation (Erebus) it also requires a Spatial IO setup for a 2x2x2 Cell (Applied Energistics 2). So step one: obtaining chaos crystals. Just head over and kill a chaos dragon. Use the wand of Animation on the chaos crystal and use a safari net on the animated block you spawned. You will no longer need the wand of Animation. Step two: use a minefactory reloader spawner with the animated chaos crystal block safari net and turn "Exact copy" on. Also have a decent essence collector, an example is a draconic evolution pig spawner with an awakened core on it combined with some grinders. Combining all that you can get placeable chaos crystals (the same ones as you'd find in the chaos island). Step three: coordinates Search up the coordinates of where you can place the chaos crystal (because you can't just place it normally) and try placing it in a 3x3 square if the coordinates don't work. Once it's placed do not break it. Step four: Spatial IO Make the 2x2x2 Spatial IO setup with a Spatial controller and 9 Spatial pylons (3 in each direction) then put a disk in it. Then put a lever on it and break the crystal. Step five: CHAOS Once the white orb appears flip the leaver. If you did everything correctly you now have a way to farm chaos crystals and disaster explosions. These explosions take out a circle of around 22 chunks in diameter (bigger than a DE reactor explosion) You now also have a way of mass producing these explosions. Gl blowing up your world
Only quibble to add is that both the irradiation and the cooling are affected by the coolant(s) you use. I think the checkerboard patterns came out in 1.7.10 using gelid cryotheum as the coolant, so the marginal differences may be due to the use of resonant/liquid ender.
Seriously! Great video! It really knocks out the initial question of, so, basically what am I supposed to do and only takes about 8 minutes to power through. The best on UA-cam.
you just changed the fundamental way i built reactors, thank you so much for the excellent video , i just saw your hermit skies and was floored by how good the reactor in that series is! 8 rods 3 tall and 250k+ rt/t, absolutely floored
i still found your vid a very informative and helpful thank you again for putting it out, i am really enjoying your skies series keep up the magnificent work welsknight
This might have changed from big reactors. iirc the only blocks that mattered were the ones directly adjacent to the fuel rods. The checkerboard was efficient because rods could share coolant with no ill effect and it was how you achieve maximum fuel efficiency while still making tons of power. Placing rods next to each other would make the reactor too hot and radioactive, a ton more power and a ton less efficient. Great video to demonstrate how the old designs are either outdated or perhaps the community didn't know in the first place
Nice. Thanks for doing the research on this Wels. Back when I was playing Sky Factory 2.5, I did a max reactor with a checkerboard pattern and it just ate through the yellorium. Makes me wonder how much more efficient I could have made it. When I reach that point in Ozone Lite, I now know how to build it more efficiently. :)
Thanks for that. I was literally in the middle of putting together components to build my first big reactor ever when this video was published. I only have water cooling for now, but the 8 rods in my 9x9x6 reactor at 90% insertion generate ~1300 RF/t at about .131 mb/tick. Way more than I need.
I love these in depth vids as Wels clearly and concisely puts things in a way for everyone to understand. Also I never thought of the position of the where the fuel cores go as important.
This is highly dependent on what coolant you're using. For example, in a 5 core reactor with iron blocks as coolant, the X form factor outperforms the + form factor.
Does Gelid Cryothium make a great coolant for any build of reactor (pure fission not turbine)? I so badly wanna use this mod but all the variables are hard to keep up with.
@@Stafarns Wrong its the second best coolant but its used mostly for how common it is the best coolant is a much more expensive one, its from ender io and its called vapor of levity if you had a mod that shows how cold/hot certain liquids are you will find that vapor of levity is 5k and cryotheum is 50k (K as in kelvin)
As always, I love your videos and your approach here. I'd like to share some of my thoughts as this is one of my favorite mods. When playing on a survival server with other players two other factors matter, that is the amount of resources that go into crafting these and how much lag I am going to generate. Also, I start with a reactor only but then level through as quickly as possible to get to turbines then upgrade those as I get material for the coils. I have found you need 8 yellorium fuel rods per 2000 mb of steam (max per turbine). To this end I start out with a 5x5x6tall reactor with 16 cores. This is a hotter reactor, but compact and has enough fuel rods for exactly 2 max turbines down the road. I start with the power tap but after the turbines are set up can just change that out for steam and water ports without the need to rebuild a structure. The savings on material and time as one levels through more than make up for the slight inefficiency for less coolent loss as you level through the reactor only stage. I would really love to see you content creators move more toward more efficient, less laggy builds as most of my time spent on the server is spent hunting down and teaching players about making small more efficient builds and managing their lag. Just the other day I had to world edit a chunk sized reactor out because of lag. I really think there is a market in Minecraft youtube content against the bigger is better crowd. That is why I love your channel so much as you build quality smaller builds over massive lag machines and eye sores as most seem to like. Thanks. Longshore.
Hi Wels, I think a lot of us watched an older series, Agrarian Skies etc., and got our ideas of fuel rod placement from other youtubers. Thanks for the information!
Thanks a lot. I've experimented a lot with reactors but I still learned a lot from this video. Wouldn't have called myself a reactor-noob (written multiple lua control programs so far), but you still taught me a lot. Edit: but if I recall correctly, there are some blocks that do a better job in transporting heat away from the core and others that do a better job in cooling it. I'd assume that some mix of materials, that allows the reactor-core to send out the heat fast, surrounded by a large cooling-pool, would be the best possible design.
graphite... low cost quick heat dispersion material. at least that is what i recall in 1.7.10. so much fun in those days. now all the mods are grindfests and crafting chains.
Omg, I knew people were going to complain about the way you built your reactor, but I was confident you knew what you were doing. Also, nice explanation and clean tutorial. Keep it up.
im glad you cleared this up, i got a lot of changes to do on my sky factory server lol... i have 3x 21x21x21 reactors to experiment with your designs to see how much of a difference it makes. thank you!
Have read that Ender IO vapor of levity works better then gelid cryotheum. Also having the outer layer only as resonant ender, and internal as gelid cryotheum or vapor of levity.
Oh my gosh thank you so much! I just started playing POLite and made my first reactor last night. I had no idea what I was doing lol. Thank you thank you thank you!
I’ve always used a checkerboard style as i was taught this in 1.7.10 by using youtube and recommendations of a former friend. Now that i’ve seen this i need to test it myself for my custom modpack. My reactor always generated a ton of power but with this i might actually have found something that will boost production ever so slightly.
well, for my custom mod pack this tutorial isn't true. my checkerboard style generator generates 12 KiRF/t with roughly 0.16 mB/t of waste (actually fluctuates between 0.160 and 0.163). the one i did following this tutorial generates 11.7 KiRF/t with roughly 0.164 mB/t. the only thing that did lower is the fuel reactivity. from my checkerboard style generator staying between 425% to 430%. and with the one i did using this tutorial having between 419% to 421% of fuel reactivity.
In my testing in ATM7, checkerboard designs are best in terms of balanced efficiency and output. Why? Because they allow for the most benefit from graphite blocks. Graphite blocks help improve output without increasing fuel consumption like another fuel rod would. Straight line reactors are great on simulations, and/or with gelid cryotheum. At least when making a large reactor. So to anyone reading this and playing a newer version (like Bigger Reactors in ATM7), it's worth doing some testing in a creative world, because most of these older videos are inaccurate for recent versions.
I've really been staying away from big/extreme reactors since the YogscastCompletePack and I've been going with much more enjoyable and complicated systems that aren't as efficient, but are ten times cooler but I think I might go back into it for a little while just to see how everything is doing. Thanks for the video, it's also helping with my current skyblock :')
Rods will irradiate up to 4 blocks way, so having the casing more than 5 blocks away is a material waste. It also means that Tod contact is not required for core irradiation. Coolant affects radiation transmission so the coolant you want outside the rod cluster and inside the rod cluster are different. Resonant Ender for example is basically a radiation wall, perfect for use outside the cluster but terrible inside the cluster. In your last example, you will find further improvement if you change the inner cluster coolant. Running temperature is also important for design. You want a hot core but not too hot, especially if the current mod author adds failure states. Casing Temperature on the other hand you want as low as possible. Distance between the rods and casing again affects this, as does coolant choice. This means that as the reactor scale changes, the ideal design changes as well. In larger reactors, a compact rod cluster can result in extreme amounts of heat. So much heat that no available coolant can handle it. This will affect efficiency and potential future failure states. Every reactor needs to be custom built if you want the best output and efficiency.
Can you do another video on stuff like this? I mean there are a ton of mods out there. Some are very in depth an complex. It would be awesome if you did a video like this on M-E systems or tinkers construct.
power is improved by high flux and low heat in the rods, but high heat in the case. To keep a high flux in the rods you want a material with low absorption between the rods if you use a material between the rods. To maximize heat in the case you want your outer layer to be highly conductive, with high absorption to change flux to heat. My best design so far has used graphite on inner layers to allow flux through and gel cryo to cool on the outside. Having graphite on the inside massively boosts my efficiency over having air, and even is an improvement on having cryo or enderium on the inside.
a good starter coolant is the purple/blue slime if have tinkers construct installed which most mod packs have , build a slime tree farm or a auto-collect from a bonsai / drawers setup the blue and purple slime melt them in tinkers smelter and bucket the lot to fill the volume
only one minute in. this was a must needed video since i never took time to make all the test to understand this damn meckanic. actually even not perfectly build thoses produce great power for reasonable fuel. Every time i build one i wonder about optimising it but never did so thank for the vids! let see what you found out. ;)
The actual math is each rod checks in 3 tiles in each cardinal direction for coolant. With 1 tile in each cardinal direction for other rods for reactivity. With that in mind, 2x2 blocks of rods intermingled with 2x2 blocks of coolant with a 1 wide ring of coolant around the outside. You get the most power possible.
3x3 blocks of rods mixed with 3x3 blocks of coolant may also work well. I haven't done enough of the math for huge scale designs to check. I would have to find out the exact amount of reactivity increase for each adjacent rod in order to be sure.
Also, checkboard patterns provide a good balance of efficiency and build cost, since you can cram (exactly or almost, depending on size) equal numbers of fuel rods and coolant blocks in a convenient shape. I.E.: 5x5x5 reactor (If you guys know calculus, you are aware that a cube has the most volume out of a fixed superficial area, so more space for rods and coolant for less reactor casings). F C F C F C F C F Means that the four corner Fuel Rods have access to two blocks of coolant each and the middle one four. So you have 12 coolant "uses" for 5 rods, an arbitrary efficiency of 2.4 What if you place in the middle? C F C F F F C F C 8 coolant uses for 5 rods, that's 1.6 efficiency, plus bonuses from irradiation (1.05 power and 1.1 efficiency?), roughly 1.85. So not only does it only generate only 5-10% more power, its efficiency is much lower. An actual build for this case could be: F C C C F F C F F (And similars) 12 uses for 5 rods too, plus irradiation from the bottom four? OFC, this build working depends on fuel using coolant that it is not touching, but anyways, don't build those contraptions with rods in the middle and coolant in a cross shape, because that wastes the space in the corners, making you spend more materials and space for just a bit of efficiency.
Resonant Ender has always felt like the proper solution to me, because I feel like once you activate your reactor all that heat gets teleported to somewhere, maybe The End.
And then a while later, an army of ender dragons with an uncountable army of Endermen invide your base in revenge, because you caused global warming in their dimension.
@@Tennouseijin Firstly that doesn't happen, secondly who cares about Global Warming? Our world was already terrible before it began, I'm referring to real life.
Well, as for our world, sure, it was quite often quite terrible throughout the past couple billion years, ranging from being a molten piece of rock, to being super toxic, to being filled with carnivorous reptiles to etc. etc. And global warming, as well as ice ages happened thousands if not millions of times throughout that period. With periods of moderate temperatures in between, although probably still terrible by many standards. And well, now that we have humans around, with another global warming, this time with likely major contribution from mankind (but even if it's not, global warmings still happen naturally, climate is not a constant), well... anyway, indeed mankind is causing a lot of other terrible things other than global warming, so your point still stands. ... but what does it have to do with Endermen? I was just saying that teleporting heat to The End might piss off Endermen and you're saying they don't care? Well... dunno. Maybe they don't. They seem to care more about their privacy, attacking you if you invade their personal space. With your vision.
@@Demon-ft1th > Dude A makes a comment about a video game. > Dude B replies with a comment about a video game. > Dude A replies about real life being terrible. > Dude B replies about real life being terrible. > Dude A replies that dude B should chill out. > ... > profit?
If you take the number of fuel eff and divide that by the number of rods in the 2 reactors you'll see that there isn't much of a difference in the 9 and the one with 8 rods. Also the check patterned and the plus pattern don't give enough difference in the power out to make a big difference. As you said you should be worrying mainly about the Fuel Eff and reactivity of your build more then the power output. The difference is only going to be 1-3k out most.
This helped me so much with my skyfactory reactor. I have a 7x7x7 cube reactor with the checker board and i couldnt figuir oit why it wasnt make more power than the 5x5x5 i built. Thank you so much.
What about an asymmetrical design, like having them in a diagonal line? You wouldn't get the touching bonus (though you could have them in groups of 2x2), but it would maximize coolant usage, as there's a lot of wasted coolant in the 4 corners in these designs.
You get the best (currently) known reactor setup if you take the o-shape and replace the sides of the o (not the corners) with carbon blocks. Then build it as tall as possible. (building tall is not possible with the o-shape without carbon)
Just a little note to add some info, the 3*3 solid is actually more efficient than the 3*3 with hole, solid produces 250.3 KRF/mB while with hole produces 243 KRF/mB When you say "efficient" you're actually talking about its fuel consumption rate, not its fuel efficiency BTW these are the efficiencies of the reactors in order 5-Checker: 179.5 KRF/mB 5-Plus: 221 KRF/mB 9-Checker: 203.6 KRF/mB 9-Square:250.3 KRF/mB 8-Square: 243 KRF/mB
You are mostly correct BUT if you have blocks (diamond for example) in between the rods, it will be more efficient than touching. You DO NOT want coolant in between rods, you want conductor. (I tried it in the game, not just talk)
Different coolants are better in certain points too like gelid cryo is seems to be better between the rods, but ender is better between rods and case, i remember testing this myself a few years ago and I ended up with the same design as you at the end with 8 in a square with cryo in the center block and ender on the outside to the case.
i started laughing when you said that usually the most rods that you'll need because me and a friend made a reactor in stoneblock 2 that has 313 rods and its a 25x25x25 in a checkerboard pattern filled with gelid cryothium and it makes 2 million rf/t and i watched this to try and figure out how to upgrade it to make more power instead of just expanding it or making a second reactor
Aw man gettin that mint flavored gfuel gelid cryotheum stuff was a pain but dam did I do it. If ur playin on a pack i recommend using an ardite hammer head, ardite tool rood, copper plate, and bronze plate hammer embossed with firewood and go ham making tunnels to get xp, and a xp tome + fluid pipes leading to a fluid transposer. There you can make lots of blizz powder using snowballs, only issue is it will take some time
Loved the video. I was wondering why you decided on the less efficient model reactor as your most preferred variant? The Rf/mb is not dramatically different, but squeezing every last drop out of your reactor seems like the best way to go. (~243Rf/mb vs 250 Rf/mb based on the numbers i grabbed during the vid)
It may be true you get more power by over clocking on output, though it depends on if you have enough storage for that power. The reactor itself has storage, though if you are using it to power a couple of small devices, a slower burn would work better. Best to fizzle a bit of power from a slow burn then alot from over clocking having nowhere to store...
This mod is usually paired with Draconic Evolution and RFtools which both can store or consume immense quantities of power in a short period of time. I understand that it might be as useful for his setup, this much makes sense, but there are many ways to burn up that power with relative ease.
wouldn't it also depend on the specific version of the mod in conjunction with the specific version of minecraft because the 1.7.10 version of this mod may function differently when it comes to power generation and reactor setup as compared to this version for this modpack?
Thanks for this video, Wels! Not only because of the checkerboard versus touching, but mainly because you made me understand why I am generating so "few" power in Skyfactory 3 with the same design I was using on Project Ozone Lite. It's 17k in one, and was more than 200k on the other... lol... Project Ozone Lite seems to focus on make things easy for people to get fun, while in Skyfactory everything is a challenge... 8^)
Well in a lot of mod packs there isn't a need to be efficient due to the unlimited fuel you can get in a few ways. Also you can just turn down the cores fuel amount.
From the logik you where saying in the beginning should one diagonel line of rods not be more efficient sins all the rods have the max amount of cooling? Ex. If its a 9*9 reactor then there can be 9 rodskud in a diagonel line and they will all have 18 cooling blocks.
Would have been cool to see a combination of that last reactor and the one with iron blocks just to hammer home the point about coolant in cardinal directions. I'll have to experiment.
yeah i agree. also im wondering if the iron blocks are the cheapest place holder blocks for reactors. Is it maybe better to just leave air? or maybe the flowing blocks make too much lag?
So I booted up a creative world to test this, running the DireWolf 20 modpack, and I'm scratching my head because I got the opposite results. Packing the fuel rods closer together (5 rod reactor, cooled with gelid cryotheum) _decreased_ both power production and fuel efficiency. It might have to do with the coolant used, I'll see if switching to resonant ender changes things. Edit: I tested with different coolants. With gelid cryotheum, switching from checkerboard pattern to close pack decreased generation and increased fuel burn. With resonant ender, switching from checkerboard to close pack decreased generation _and_ fuel burn, which overall barely improved efficiency but it's a very, _very_ small improvement and you're not generating as much power. I suspect the differences in our results have to do with the version of the mod or the configuration being slightly different. I suspect the latter, since 40K RF/T is _really_ high for a 3 block tall reactor with 5 control rods. My 7 block tall 5 rod reactor only puts out about 15K RF/T with default config settings. Oddly enough, switching from checkerboard to close pack on a slightly larger reactor (9x9x7, 5 control rods) made zero difference in output or fuel consumption out to three significant digits. Moral of the story is to test this stuff for yourself and that nuclear engineers are actually wizards.
Hey Wels. I'm really glad you made this video, I always get frustrated trying to optimize my reactors and doing research only to find outdated or conflicting info. I like how you explained about the differences between packs and focused on mechanics of the mod. VERY HELPFUL. although, I will say i wish you talked more about coolant. What I mean is whether or not source blocks vs flow blocks matter? and how to place the fluids if you have rods taller than 1 block. I think a short follow up would be helpful. Also, if you don't mind, since im playing the same pack, can you test some of the solid coolant options?
also nice thumbnail. definitely intrigued me to watch video and I was pleased that it was actually relevant in summarizing the point of the video and not just click bait.
This is not always true. For example, in a internal 10x10 reactor with 36 rods, a solid block of 6x6 has less output than 9 2x2 strips arranged in a 3x3 grid with coolants between them. Also conserves coolant that way
5 years later and no one else has done a vid like this crazy. But thank you very much for this vid it’s incredibly easy to understand and comprehend
Seriously, Is there any other way to view the mechanics for 1.19.2 the scavenger hunt is insane, gotta love extreme reactors no wait big reactors.... Nvm its Bigger reactors
Man, I've played with Big/Extreme Reactors dozens of times, and this is the first time I've actually seen someone explain the mechanics of coolants beyond GELID CRYOTHIUM GOOD! Thank you!
Especially since Pyrotheum and Cryotheum were removed in the later versions.
700 FPS
Big flex
its not that hard my friend can get 700 to 1000 on a 960 just get Optifine
how i have a 1080ti and 7820x and the java edition barely stays above 165 fps because thats the refresh rate of my monitor.
@@TheTAEclub well thats how, you clearly have your fps locked ;) reply to this message if you still only get 165, ill help you get that uncapped. Its a huge difference! :)
@@drinkmorewater5388 thanks when I press f3 it shows hundreds of fps but its wierd since minecraft has 2 settings for fps
@@TheTAEclub ...And I peak at 103 FPS. With all the high FPS mods, and with the highest FPS settings. And no special mods.
So basically cube reactors are the best ones.
They're perfectly balanced, as all things should be
Thanos reference
ok mr inevitable.
@@Celticshade ok idiot
Cube Reactors Is A Perfectly Balanced Mod With No Exploits
@@dragontos I smell yorkshire tea
I haven't touched extreme reactors and if the port did not change too much then the following information may still be valid. To maximize power and efficiency is to understand radioactivity, coolant range and temperature thresholds. If the reactor gets too hot beyond a certain threshold it will start to become less efficient.
Majority of my knowledge is based off of my time playing Crash Landing when I creating the most efficient reactor to use a turbine (actively cooled reactor) but yet use as little blocks and coolant blocks as possible.
The best cooling in the terms of rod to wall placement was 4 blocks. I had found going out by 5 blocks for example was not worth the resources for next to no improvements to power or temperature. This also made the use of gelid cryotheum easier to use. Namely because coolant blocks do not need to be a source block. So for example resonant ender can be used at the top most part and allowed to flow downwards giving the same results as if they all were source coolant blocks.
As radioactivity of the fuel rods they use the same cardinal direction rules. I believe to be most efficient they look up to 4 blocks in either direction. In the example of a 9x9 rod layout I believe only the center most rod would be 'capped' out. Don't hold me to that information as I never went that far to research it fully as that size is already ridiculously huge of a reactor.
"high temp raises energyoutput" keep it around 2/3 of max for better efficiency
great info... love the science.
I just love the way you explain your video at the beginning it just seem so obvious but so much youtubers don't do it.
Sometimes you actually want a super low efficiency reactor, because you need blutonium. :D
is it for the alchemical chest from ProjectE ????
They should add a nuke ;)
@@RRKS_TF applied energistics2+Erebus+minefactory reloaded+draconic evolution+avaratia
If you don't know how to use these mods to destroy your world then scroll down.
Alright so do know this is an endgame process and REQUIRES the infinity armor (Avaritia) and World Breaker (Avaritia). It also requires The wand Of Animation (Erebus) it also requires a Spatial IO setup for a 2x2x2 Cell (Applied Energistics 2).
So step one: obtaining chaos crystals.
Just head over and kill a chaos dragon. Use the wand of Animation on the chaos crystal and use a safari net on the animated block you spawned. You will no longer need the wand of Animation.
Step two: use a minefactory reloader spawner with the animated chaos crystal block safari net and turn "Exact copy" on. Also have a decent essence collector, an example is a draconic evolution pig spawner with an awakened core on it combined with some grinders. Combining all that you can get placeable chaos crystals (the same ones as you'd find in the chaos island).
Step three: coordinates
Search up the coordinates of where you can place the chaos crystal (because you can't just place it normally) and try placing it in a 3x3 square if the coordinates don't work. Once it's placed do not break it.
Step four: Spatial IO
Make the 2x2x2 Spatial IO setup with a Spatial controller and 9 Spatial pylons (3 in each direction) then put a disk in it. Then put a lever on it and break the crystal.
Step five: CHAOS
Once the white orb appears flip the leaver. If you did everything correctly you now have a way to farm chaos crystals and disaster explosions. These explosions take out a circle of around 22 chunks in diameter (bigger than a DE reactor explosion) You now also have a way of mass producing these explosions.
Gl blowing up your world
@@shiroyatagami4780 y u do dis?
@@caboosendbutton4219 This lets you contain the explosion caused by breaking the chaos crystal so that you can farm it easily, I think
Only quibble to add is that both the irradiation and the cooling are affected by the coolant(s) you use. I think the checkerboard patterns came out in 1.7.10 using gelid cryotheum as the coolant, so the marginal differences may be due to the use of resonant/liquid ender.
Seriously! Great video! It really knocks out the initial question of, so, basically what am I supposed to do and only takes about 8 minutes to power through. The best on UA-cam.
you just changed the fundamental way i built reactors, thank you so much for the excellent video , i just saw your hermit skies and was floored by how good the reactor in that series is! 8 rods 3 tall and 250k+ rt/t, absolutely floored
+Dayus To be fair, the power gen rates in Project Ozone Lite are MASSIVELY increased from the default settings.
i still found your vid a very informative and helpful thank you again for putting it out, i am really enjoying your skies series keep up the magnificent work welsknight
No matter how ya look at it, you're still smoking all the other hermits!
Wat????
Watch some of the others... Way behind. Dude already has a reactor and an AE storage system... Seriously!
Etho barely plays so xp
This might have changed from big reactors. iirc the only blocks that mattered were the ones directly adjacent to the fuel rods. The checkerboard was efficient because rods could share coolant with no ill effect and it was how you achieve maximum fuel efficiency while still making tons of power. Placing rods next to each other would make the reactor too hot and radioactive, a ton more power and a ton less efficient.
Great video to demonstrate how the old designs are either outdated or perhaps the community didn't know in the first place
Nice. Thanks for doing the research on this Wels. Back when I was playing Sky Factory 2.5, I did a max reactor with a checkerboard pattern and it just ate through the yellorium. Makes me wonder how much more efficient I could have made it. When I reach that point in Ozone Lite, I now know how to build it more efficiently. :)
This gives me flash backs to when I was working out the math for the turbines.
Bro this video is great, really explained it well!
Thanks for that. I was literally in the middle of putting together components to build my first big reactor ever when this video was published. I only have water cooling for now, but the 8 rods in my 9x9x6 reactor at 90% insertion generate ~1300 RF/t at about .131 mb/tick. Way more than I need.
I love these in depth vids as Wels clearly and concisely puts things in a way for everyone to understand. Also I never thought of the position of the where the fuel cores go as important.
I FINALLY UNDERSTOOD!! THANK YOU BUDDY!!
this video is the best extreme reactors tutorial I could have asked for. It's informative and easy to follow and it was really helpful. thanks, man.
This is highly dependent on what coolant you're using. For example, in a 5 core reactor with iron blocks as coolant, the X form factor outperforms the + form factor.
Does Gelid Cryothium make a great coolant for any build of reactor (pure fission not turbine)? I so badly wanna use this mod but all the variables are hard to keep up with.
@@Haispawner I'm FAIRLY certain that gelid cryothium is overall a great coolant.
@@beewyka819 is overall the best coolant and most used coolant with big/extreme reactors
@@Stafarns Wrong its the second best coolant but its used mostly for how common it is
the best coolant is a much more expensive one, its from ender io and its called vapor of levity
if you had a mod that shows how cold/hot certain liquids are you will find that vapor of levity is 5k and cryotheum is 50k (K as in kelvin)
@@darkashes7086 Really huh, thanks for the information.
As always, I love your videos and your approach here. I'd like to share some of my thoughts as this is one of my favorite mods. When playing on a survival server with other players two other factors matter, that is the amount of resources that go into crafting these and how much lag I am going to generate. Also, I start with a reactor only but then level through as quickly as possible to get to turbines then upgrade those as I get material for the coils. I have found you need 8 yellorium fuel rods per 2000 mb of steam (max per turbine). To this end I start out with a 5x5x6tall reactor with 16 cores. This is a hotter reactor, but compact and has enough fuel rods for exactly 2 max turbines down the road. I start with the power tap but after the turbines are set up can just change that out for steam and water ports without the need to rebuild a structure. The savings on material and time as one levels through more than make up for the slight inefficiency for less coolent loss as you level through the reactor only stage.
I would really love to see you content creators move more toward more efficient, less laggy builds as most of my time spent on the server is spent hunting down and teaching players about making small more efficient builds and managing their lag. Just the other day I had to world edit a chunk sized reactor out because of lag. I really think there is a market in Minecraft youtube content against the bigger is better crowd. That is why I love your channel so much as you build quality smaller builds over massive lag machines and eye sores as most seem to like. Thanks. Longshore.
Hi Wels, I think a lot of us watched an older series, Agrarian Skies etc., and got our ideas of fuel rod placement from other youtubers. Thanks for the information!
Thanks a lot. I've experimented a lot with reactors but I still learned a lot from this video. Wouldn't have called myself a reactor-noob (written multiple lua control programs so far), but you still taught me a lot.
Edit: but if I recall correctly, there are some blocks that do a better job in transporting heat away from the core and others that do a better job in cooling it. I'd assume that some mix of materials, that allows the reactor-core to send out the heat fast, surrounded by a large cooling-pool, would be the best possible design.
graphite... low cost quick heat dispersion material. at least that is what i recall in 1.7.10. so much fun in those days. now all the mods are grindfests and crafting chains.
Omg, I knew people were going to complain about the way you built your reactor, but I was confident you knew what you were doing. Also, nice explanation and clean tutorial. Keep it up.
So glad you made this, awesome Wels, just awesome.
im glad you cleared this up, i got a lot of changes to do on my sky factory server lol... i have 3x 21x21x21 reactors to experiment with your designs to see how much of a difference it makes. thank you!
RevDragonus I'd recommend using the big reactor simulator on br.sidoh.org . I'm not sure though if the reactors above 1.7 function the same way.
Thank you so much. This was so eye opening. This has been the absolute most informative reactor video I have watched.
Have read that Ender IO vapor of levity works better then gelid cryotheum.
Also having the outer layer only as resonant ender, and internal as gelid cryotheum or vapor of levity.
Oh my gosh thank you so much! I just started playing POLite and made my first reactor last night. I had no idea what I was doing lol. Thank you thank you thank you!
Quick, informative, and simple. Great video. Thanks!
I’ve always used a checkerboard style as i was taught this in 1.7.10 by using youtube and recommendations of a former friend. Now that i’ve seen this i need to test it myself for my custom modpack. My reactor always generated a ton of power but with this i might actually have found something that will boost production ever so slightly.
well, for my custom mod pack this tutorial isn't true. my checkerboard style generator generates 12 KiRF/t with roughly 0.16 mB/t of waste (actually fluctuates between 0.160 and 0.163). the one i did following this tutorial generates 11.7 KiRF/t with roughly 0.164 mB/t. the only thing that did lower is the fuel reactivity. from my checkerboard style generator staying between 425% to 430%. and with the one i did using this tutorial having between 419% to 421% of fuel reactivity.
im only 3 minutes in, but ive already learnt more than i did in a 15 minute video from someone else. cheers!
Thank you Wells! This was eye opener!
In my testing in ATM7, checkerboard designs are best in terms of balanced efficiency and output. Why? Because they allow for the most benefit from graphite blocks. Graphite blocks help improve output without increasing fuel consumption like another fuel rod would.
Straight line reactors are great on simulations, and/or with gelid cryotheum. At least when making a large reactor.
So to anyone reading this and playing a newer version (like Bigger Reactors in ATM7), it's worth doing some testing in a creative world, because most of these older videos are inaccurate for recent versions.
Great, simple, helpful. Thanks Mate!
I've really been staying away from big/extreme reactors since the YogscastCompletePack and I've been going with much more enjoyable and complicated systems that aren't as efficient, but are ten times cooler but I think I might go back into it for a little while just to see how everything is doing. Thanks for the video, it's also helping with my current skyblock :')
Rods will irradiate up to 4 blocks way, so having the casing more than 5 blocks away is a material waste. It also means that Tod contact is not required for core irradiation. Coolant affects radiation transmission so the coolant you want outside the rod cluster and inside the rod cluster are different. Resonant Ender for example is basically a radiation wall, perfect for use outside the cluster but terrible inside the cluster. In your last example, you will find further improvement if you change the inner cluster coolant.
Running temperature is also important for design. You want a hot core but not too hot, especially if the current mod author adds failure states. Casing Temperature on the other hand you want as low as possible. Distance between the rods and casing again affects this, as does coolant choice. This means that as the reactor scale changes, the ideal design changes as well. In larger reactors, a compact rod cluster can result in extreme amounts of heat. So much heat that no available coolant can handle it. This will affect efficiency and potential future failure states.
Every reactor needs to be custom built if you want the best output and efficiency.
Very well explained,i was playing space astronomy 2 on cursed forge and this helped tons
Can you do another video on stuff like this? I mean there are a ton of mods out there. Some are very in depth an complex. It would be awesome if you did a video like this on M-E systems or tinkers construct.
Check bit by bit by Vallen, his channel is um I think mischief of mice?
And well Direwolf20 mod spotlights
ME systems are super simple lol, tinker's construct is the most used mod in all modpacks, you should know how it works, every modded series has it...
ME can get complicated for some people if they aren't familiar with the concept of channels and p2p's
are you guys saying that if welsknight made an in depth video on the mechanics of an ME system you wOULDNT watch it?
AwesomeVindicator nope of he did I would, but I was just recommending something for others in case he didn't and they were looking for info
I did already do my own testing but I'm sure this will help a lot of people since I could not find a video this detailed anywhere on UA-cam.
Direwolf20?
Thank you for this! I watched the one you built in Hermit Skies, and I couldn't figure out how to get it started myself. This was very helpful!
I love the checkerboard pattern for reactors mostly cause it just looks more clean
power is improved by high flux and low heat in the rods, but high heat in the case.
To keep a high flux in the rods you want a material with low absorption between the rods if you use a material between the rods.
To maximize heat in the case you want your outer layer to be highly conductive, with high absorption to change flux to heat.
My best design so far has used graphite on inner layers to allow flux through and gel cryo to cool on the outside.
Having graphite on the inside massively boosts my efficiency over having air, and even is an improvement on having cryo or enderium on the inside.
This is exactly what I know about the mod since big reactors came out.
expert audio quality.
Just starting on this mod years later, now i can make power without possibly nuking the land
Finally a final result with building big reactors. thx for the tutorial.
I need to know what to use power on... all I use is a saw mill with a resin funnel and an auto tree farm (the tree farm uses no RF)
RF Dimensions
best guide yet. Hea everyone else is wrong. Let me show you. Perfect. Thank you.
a good starter coolant is the purple/blue slime if have tinkers construct installed which most mod packs have , build a slime tree farm or a auto-collect from a bonsai / drawers setup the blue and purple slime melt them in tinkers smelter and bucket the lot to fill the volume
only one minute in. this was a must needed video since i never took time to make all the test to understand this damn meckanic. actually even not perfectly build thoses produce great power for reasonable fuel. Every time i build one i wonder about optimising it but never did so thank for the vids! let see what you found out. ;)
learned something! didnt know it was differant now. thanks wels
Levi Cooper it has always been like this
The actual math is each rod checks in 3 tiles in each cardinal direction for coolant. With 1 tile in each cardinal direction for other rods for reactivity.
With that in mind, 2x2 blocks of rods intermingled with 2x2 blocks of coolant with a 1 wide ring of coolant around the outside. You get the most power possible.
3x3 blocks of rods mixed with 3x3 blocks of coolant may also work well. I haven't done enough of the math for huge scale designs to check. I would have to find out the exact amount of reactivity increase for each adjacent rod in order to be sure.
I did the final one with 9 connected rods in the stoneblock one modpack but it returns only 5k rf/tick how can i make it work please ?
Also, checkboard patterns provide a good balance of efficiency and build cost, since you can cram (exactly or almost, depending on size) equal numbers of fuel rods and coolant blocks in a convenient shape.
I.E.: 5x5x5 reactor (If you guys know calculus, you are aware that a cube has the most volume out of a fixed superficial area, so more space for rods and coolant for less reactor casings).
F C F
C F C
F C F
Means that the four corner Fuel Rods have access to two blocks of coolant each and the middle one four.
So you have 12 coolant "uses" for 5 rods, an arbitrary efficiency of 2.4
What if you place in the middle?
C F C
F F F
C F C
8 coolant uses for 5 rods, that's 1.6 efficiency, plus bonuses from irradiation (1.05 power and 1.1 efficiency?), roughly 1.85. So not only does it only generate only 5-10% more power, its efficiency is much lower.
An actual build for this case could be:
F C C
C F F
C F F
(And similars)
12 uses for 5 rods too, plus irradiation from the bottom four?
OFC, this build working depends on fuel using coolant that it is not touching, but anyways, don't build those contraptions with rods in the middle and coolant in a cross shape, because that wastes the space in the corners, making you spend more materials and space for just a bit of efficiency.
Thanks for the comparative look at the reactor variants. Very helpful. Keep up the great works! :)
fantastic, did not know this. and it will change the way i build them. thanks wels!
When you thought you were being efficient but have just been drinking the cool aid all along
The chekers model seens to be more cooler, indeed.
So u we have poor coolant refrigerators, using checkers is a early game bet, dont you think?
Resonant Ender has always felt like the proper solution to me, because I feel like once you activate your reactor all that heat gets teleported to somewhere, maybe The End.
And then a while later, an army of ender dragons with an uncountable army of Endermen invide your base in revenge, because you caused global warming in their dimension.
@@Tennouseijin Firstly that doesn't happen, secondly who cares about Global Warming? Our world was already terrible before it began, I'm referring to real life.
Well, as for our world, sure, it was quite often quite terrible throughout the past couple billion years, ranging from being a molten piece of rock, to being super toxic, to being filled with carnivorous reptiles to etc. etc.
And global warming, as well as ice ages happened thousands if not millions of times throughout that period. With periods of moderate temperatures in between, although probably still terrible by many standards.
And well, now that we have humans around, with another global warming, this time with likely major contribution from mankind (but even if it's not, global warmings still happen naturally, climate is not a constant), well... anyway, indeed mankind is causing a lot of other terrible things other than global warming, so your point still stands.
... but what does it have to do with Endermen? I was just saying that teleporting heat to The End might piss off Endermen and you're saying they don't care? Well... dunno. Maybe they don't. They seem to care more about their privacy, attacking you if you invade their personal space. With your vision.
@@Tennouseijin Bro chill, it's just a game
@@Demon-ft1th > Dude A makes a comment about a video game.
> Dude B replies with a comment about a video game.
> Dude A replies about real life being terrible.
> Dude B replies about real life being terrible.
> Dude A replies that dude B should chill out.
> ...
> profit?
Just a quick note for you, vapor of levity is thr best coolant. It hast the same fuel consumption, but at a higher rf/t
Thank you brother
If you take the number of fuel eff and divide that by the number of rods in the 2 reactors you'll see that there isn't much of a difference in the 9 and the one with 8 rods. Also the check patterned and the plus pattern don't give enough difference in the power out to make a big difference. As you said you should be worrying mainly about the Fuel Eff and reactivity of your build more then the power output. The difference is only going to be 1-3k out most.
Woah... Gj man! Thanks for this hint!
This helped me so much with my skyfactory reactor. I have a 7x7x7 cube reactor with the checker board and i couldnt figuir oit why it wasnt make more power than the 5x5x5 i built. Thank you so much.
What about an asymmetrical design, like having them in a diagonal line? You wouldn't get the touching bonus (though you could have them in groups of 2x2), but it would maximize coolant usage, as there's a lot of wasted coolant in the 4 corners in these designs.
You get the best (currently) known reactor setup if you take the o-shape and replace the sides of the o (not the corners) with carbon blocks. Then build it as tall as possible. (building tall is not possible with the o-shape without carbon)
Just a little note to add some info,
the 3*3 solid is actually more efficient than the 3*3 with hole, solid produces 250.3 KRF/mB while with hole produces 243 KRF/mB
When you say "efficient" you're actually talking about its fuel consumption rate, not its fuel efficiency
BTW these are the efficiencies of the reactors in order
5-Checker: 179.5 KRF/mB
5-Plus: 221 KRF/mB
9-Checker: 203.6 KRF/mB
9-Square:250.3 KRF/mB
8-Square: 243 KRF/mB
You are mostly correct
BUT if you have blocks (diamond for example) in between the rods, it will be more efficient than touching.
You DO NOT want coolant in between rods, you want conductor.
(I tried it in the game, not just talk)
thank you so much, been trying to find whats the best way
Different coolants are better in certain points too like gelid cryo is seems to be better between the rods, but ender is better between rods and case, i remember testing this myself a few years ago and I ended up with the same design as you at the end with 8 in a square with cryo in the center block and ender on the outside to the case.
i started laughing when you said that usually the most rods that you'll need because me and a friend made a reactor in stoneblock 2 that has 313 rods and its a 25x25x25 in a checkerboard pattern filled with gelid cryothium and it makes 2 million rf/t and i watched this to try and figure out how to upgrade it to make more power instead of just expanding it or making a second reactor
Something you need to know Wels is Graphite acts as a irradiation block without using fuel to get the bonus.
Aw man gettin that mint flavored gfuel gelid cryotheum stuff was a pain but dam did I do it. If ur playin on a pack i recommend using an ardite hammer head, ardite tool rood, copper plate, and bronze plate hammer embossed with firewood and go ham making tunnels to get xp, and a xp tome + fluid pipes leading to a fluid transposer. There you can make lots of blizz powder using snowballs, only issue is it will take some time
Very helpful dude, thanks
Loved the video. I was wondering why you decided on the less efficient model reactor as your most preferred variant? The Rf/mb is not dramatically different, but squeezing every last drop out of your reactor seems like the best way to go. (~243Rf/mb vs 250 Rf/mb based on the numbers i grabbed during the vid)
It may be true you get more power by over clocking on output, though it depends on if you have enough storage for that power.
The reactor itself has storage, though if you are using it to power a couple of small devices, a slower burn would work better. Best to fizzle a bit of power from a slow burn then alot from over clocking having nowhere to store...
This mod is usually paired with Draconic Evolution and RFtools which both can store or consume immense quantities of power in a short period of time. I understand that it might be as useful for his setup, this much makes sense, but there are many ways to burn up that power with relative ease.
I've been playing for years and this has been the most informative video I've read.
I think the checkerboard pattern comes from IC2 where people are used to cooling the cell like that.
Thx 4 this video. every time i need to buid a reaktor i come back an watch this
wouldn't it also depend on the specific version of the mod in conjunction with the specific version of minecraft because the 1.7.10 version of this mod may function differently when it comes to power generation and reactor setup as compared to this version for this modpack?
You can always do creative mode tests yourself if you're unsure.
Huh. Interesting. I learned something new about a mod I thought I knew everything about. Lol. Thanks
This was awesome! Thanks
Really appreciate u video, thx for explaining 👍
really educational, I'd really like to know what's the most RF you can get from a reactor
Huh. I actually learned something here. Great job mate!
Thanks for this video, Wels! Not only because of the checkerboard versus touching, but mainly because you made me understand why I am generating so "few" power in Skyfactory 3 with the same design I was using on Project Ozone Lite. It's 17k in one, and was more than 200k on the other... lol... Project Ozone Lite seems to focus on make things easy for people to get fun, while in Skyfactory everything is a challenge... 8^)
Thanks. Very helpful. I bet most people build in the checker patterns is because that's the way Hypno builds his lol.
Good job presenting facts. That's what I care about.
ok can we all just agree that this is a really well explained tutorial?
the chekerboard pattern is for the gigantic reactors, those 23x23x23 oh higher ones
Jvl GhostKnight As hypno found, max in this pack is 16
You're a true hero.
i've built the exact same reactor with the 9 control rods touching each other, and only get 5k rf/t how did yours get so much power?
he litterally said in the video.. Its because of different modpack config
11:00
Well in a lot of mod packs there isn't a need to be efficient due to the unlimited fuel you can get in a few ways. Also you can just turn down the cores fuel amount.
From the logik you where saying in the beginning should one diagonel line of rods not be more efficient sins all the rods have the max amount of cooling?
Ex. If its a 9*9 reactor then there can be 9 rodskud in a diagonel line and they will all have 18 cooling blocks.
This was extremely helpful.
Would have been cool to see a combination of that last reactor and the one with iron blocks just to hammer home the point about coolant in cardinal directions. I'll have to experiment.
yeah i agree. also im wondering if the iron blocks are the cheapest place holder blocks for reactors. Is it maybe better to just leave air? or maybe the flowing blocks make too much lag?
So I booted up a creative world to test this, running the DireWolf 20 modpack, and I'm scratching my head because I got the opposite results. Packing the fuel rods closer together (5 rod reactor, cooled with gelid cryotheum) _decreased_ both power production and fuel efficiency. It might have to do with the coolant used, I'll see if switching to resonant ender changes things.
Edit: I tested with different coolants. With gelid cryotheum, switching from checkerboard pattern to close pack decreased generation and increased fuel burn. With resonant ender, switching from checkerboard to close pack decreased generation _and_ fuel burn, which overall barely improved efficiency but it's a very, _very_ small improvement and you're not generating as much power.
I suspect the differences in our results have to do with the version of the mod or the configuration being slightly different. I suspect the latter, since 40K RF/T is _really_ high for a 3 block tall reactor with 5 control rods. My 7 block tall 5 rod reactor only puts out about 15K RF/T with default config settings.
Oddly enough, switching from checkerboard to close pack on a slightly larger reactor (9x9x7, 5 control rods) made zero difference in output or fuel consumption out to three significant digits.
Moral of the story is to test this stuff for yourself and that nuclear engineers are actually wizards.
Hey Wels. I'm really glad you made this video, I always get frustrated trying to optimize my reactors and doing research only to find outdated or conflicting info. I like how you explained about the differences between packs and focused on mechanics of the mod. VERY HELPFUL. although, I will say i wish you talked more about coolant. What I mean is whether or not source blocks vs flow blocks matter? and how to place the fluids if you have rods taller than 1 block. I think a short follow up would be helpful. Also, if you don't mind, since im playing the same pack, can you test some of the solid coolant options?
also nice thumbnail. definitely intrigued me to watch video and I was pleased that it was actually relevant in summarizing the point of the video and not just click bait.
Thank you! I was looking for that info!
This is not always true. For example, in a internal 10x10 reactor with 36 rods, a solid block of 6x6 has less output than 9 2x2 strips arranged in a 3x3 grid with coolants between them. Also conserves coolant that way
Can you say that again but like with pictures it was quite hard to follow what you are even saying
@@powerful7845 you're not the brightest are you