User:Korlus/sandbox

Writing a tutorial to be moved when it's completed. At the moment it's very much a stream of consciousness.

If you have any suggestions/comments, please leave them on my user talk page.

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Tutorial: Applied Energistics 2

This article is part of the Feed The Beast Wiki's Tutorials section.

Applied Energistics 2 is a large and comprehensive mod that adds many miscallaneous features. This tutorial is designed to cover the basics and provide the player with enough experience and understanding to create their first comprehensive ME Network.

ME Functionality

Autocrafting

Creating a proper autocrafting system requires a functioning ME Network (typically an ME controller with storage & a crafting interface) before you begin. I am hoping that I do not need to explain exactly what constitutes a functioning ME Network here.

It also requires the following:

• **One or more Autocrafting CPUs** - This is a multi-block structure that can be optimised for various tasks.
• **Multiple Assemblers** - Assemblers need to be connected to ME Interfaces to function as a part of an AE System. They can be connected in either a one:one, a many:one, or a one:many ratio. In theory you can also set up many:many setups, but due to Minecraft's layout, it becomes much harder to do on a large scale.
• **Processing Factories** - Beyond the rudimentary assembler, you will often also need to set up more complex "factory" style processing setups - where interfaces interact directly with machines.
• **A Pattern Terminal and Blank Patterns** - You need to encode recipes that you want the system to craft onto "patterns", which can then be inserted onto machines.

Crafting CPU

To explain a simple setup, the CPU is a multi-block structure that must always be a cuboid - that means structures such as 1x1x2 or 2x2x3 or even 4x4x4 (etc) are all valid shapes. The CPU must be made up of the following components:

• Crafting Storage - At least one of these is mandatory per Crafting CPU. This block comes in four varieties, 1k, 4k, 16k and 64k storage sizes. It is used to store any materials required for the crafting job both before and during the crafting process.
• Crafting Co-Processing Unit - This allows the CPU to undertake sub-jobs simultaneously, which will often speed up a job significantly. Having at least one Co-Processing Unit is recommended in larger CPU Multi-blocks.
• Crafting Monitor - This is a purely aesthetic part, and shows the viewer what is currently being worked on.
• Crafting Unit - This is mostly a piece in the recipe for all other CPU parts, but is also a blank block in the multi-block structure that is the crafting CPU.

In Applied Energistics 1, patterns that used the vanilla crafting grid could be inserted into a central crafting CPU, which would then craft the recipes for you. In Applied Energistics 2 this is no longer the case. The multi-block Crafting CPU of AE1 has had its functionality replaced by two scaleable multi-block structures - the Assembler (which does the actual crafting) and the CPU (which now simply coordinates autocrafting amongst ME Interfaces).