Well, this one is a rather strange tale, but short at least. I have a Harvester/Planter setup that is 25 x 25 running emerald upgrades, these are currently just using excess seeds that I have accumulated, and I've probably placed at least 200 seeds within this part of my system. It is all self-contained, pushing anything not-seeds to an ender chest, and this is pulled into my ME system, the seeds go straight to the planter. The issue is, I've discovered that I have a significant reduction in the number of seeds I have, which is inconsistent with the fact that Magical Crops are either neutral or positive in crop numbers, never negative. Is there any known issues associated with such a setup that would eliminate most of my crops? They are all within a claim, and if someone were taking them, I'd have thought they'd have taken all, not just most. It's the second time I've noticed this, the first I just thought I was miscounting the number I started with. Edit: Just to add, I have tested the system by manually breaking and adding seeds to a chest next to the harvester, or directly to the planter, and I've noticed no issues, it all seems to operate exactly as expected. I do have other harvester/planter setups that have had no issues with loss of crops, as far as I'm aware.
I think the cause of your issue is possibly because MFR doesn't always pull all the drops from Magical Crops directly when it harvests, meaning that sometimes the seeds can drop on the ground as item entities and eventually despawn, which can lead to an eventual loss. Try linking a chest into the system, set to automatically send its contents to the part of your system that sorts between essence and seeds, and put an Advanced Item Collector from Random Things on top of the chest and set it to cover the area the planted crops take up. The Advanced Item Collector can cover up to a 10 block radius so effectively covering a 21x21 area.. so obviously you would need at least 4 to fully cover your 25x25 farm and they would ideally want to be placed just above the crops or just below the farmland/fertilized dirt so they don't cover too much area outside the farm itself, but give that a try and watch it for a while to see if you're still noticing a loss. Off to work now, but if you'd like me to come and have a look at your setup at some point then feel free to ask.
Thanks for the reply, I'll give that a go, and check it out over the next day or so. I myself should really be in bed by now, got work in the morning. I'll give that a go, I'll need to gather a batch of new seeds anyway, at least an amount with any kind of statistical possibility for testing purposes. My other harvester/planter setups are all 5x5, so certainly much smaller, though, they don't have any problems at all. This might be some sort of anomaly associated with larger fields, but a friend of mine has 3 25x25 fields, with a similar setup, but no problems, it's possible it's the itemducts themselves that are having problems. Just a further question, is there a possibility that the problem could be that the harvester and planter are in different chunks, with a small probability that the planter chunk didn't load (It was in a chunk loader, but I've removed that now for testing purposes as well), with the item ducts still sending, but the items being lost in the void?
It's certainly worth investigating. It also occurred to me that there is a bug with magical crops were sometimes you get seeds with a meta ID (basically instead of the item ID being a single number like 1234 it gives a copy that has another number after a colon like 1234:5) and if your sorting mechanism is only set to send seeds with the normal ID back to the planter but not the variant copy then that copy might be getting sent into your ME system, though that should be easy to check for just by seeing if there are seeds in the ME system.
I had the same problem with my 25x25 magical crop farm as well. Turns out some areas were just a bit too dark and the plants tended to break and drop the seeds. After setting up some more light sources the problem was solved. I dont know if this will help you, just a thought .
Like Maddogz said, light is an issue when dealing with these crops. I'm guessing you've heard this before, but if you press F9 the areas that are too dark for the plants will have a red X over them and you'll need to illuminate all of these areas to make sure the crops stay planted. Good luck! - Ipozi
The way I have it set up, is to send all seeds to the planter (anything the planter can accept), the rest goes to my ME system, and if it can't be accepted by either, it won't leave the chest next to the harvester. As for the lighting possibility, that would only be a problem if inverted lamps have issues with giving out light. I'll be setting up the advanced item collector after work, see if that helps, that should indicate if light might be a problem
Ok, well, the problem is with the TE Itemducts, I'm using the Opaque ones, so it might just be those, as the other kind allows you to see the items, which might make for a safer journey. I put in place the advanced item collectors, and then added a whole bunch of seeds (around 30 or 40), all of them vanished before reaching the planter or ender chest. The ender chest is linked directly to my ME system, but if the item ducts are obeying their own orders, all the seeds would have been sent to the planter, if not, they're broken anyway. It seems to be specifically with the length of the itemduct I'm using in this specific farm, as I have smaller segments (around 8 pieces per section, split between two pipes a section), the problem pipes are around 32 pieces, mostly in a straight line. The fact that none of the seeds made it through is a rather big problem, and I believe this will be a problem with other systems. Edit: The system basically looks like: Chest -> Item Duct x 32 -> Split (Planter | Ender chest) I've checked my ME system, which doesn't contain the seeds, so I'm 99% certain the seeds didn't make it the Ender chest
If you want I can bring some ender io item conduits and clear TE ducts and you can try with those to see if it's really just the TE Opaque Ducts. Other than that I wouldn't have a clue what's going on.
I'll need to spend some time rebuilding my stock of seeds before I try again, I'll just build the other pipes, and test them as I go, it's a rather odd problem, and worst comes to worst, I'll just ender chest the whole system, no pipes allowed.
I use a buildcraft pipe into a chest and then put it directly into my ME system with a import bus. Seems to work alright.
Well, Buildcraft pipes, in combination with the advanced item collectors, and I don't seem to be losing any items. Harvesters do in fact drop the items they break, I don't know if this is what they always do (and collect the item asap), or it's bugging out on me, but I have noticed the advanced item collectors have been collecting items harvested. The pipes are slightly buggy, and a bit slow, especially considering they show items within them, and the game is currently experiencing low TPS, which is normal at this time of the day (or night, as it is), by buggy I mean the item is jumping around inside the pipe, and taking a lot longer than it should. As for the OpaqueTE Itemducts, they probably need to be investigated a little more, I've no problems with short segments, but the long segments might be experiencing problems, it is also possible the issue occurs when the lag clean is done, which could only be replicated with another set up. I'll probably spend some time seeing if I can cause the problem again, such as sending a stack of seeds down various pipe lengths, from/to ender chests and see what the end result is, should be rather simple to check if any have been lost, I just need to get on when the server isn't lagging so much to test. I consider my original problem "fixed" but the actual problem is still very much alive, it might just be that I had some super bad luck or something, but I doubt that.
I've set the thread to "on-hold" for the time being then, report back with any findings you think we should know about or investigate further.
My two cents; take a serious look at Ender IO Item Conduits. Both versions instantaneously transfers items (so they don't get stuck in the pipe) and the empowered version can transfer items a stack at a time which usually means 2 stacks / tick. The conduits also have better white/black list capabilities and overall give you more control about where your items go with the help of item channels. Currently I haven't seen an issue with length as I've got a 48 length conduit running to tree and magical crops farms which is, and has been, working perfectly.
Ok, so results on my testing, I will only provide details on results that: 1) Had a weird reaction OR 2) Long enough to be conclusive Technique: This was only testing the TE Itemducts, I tested both the Clear and Opaque versions I placed 62 pipes, in a loop, that started from a vanilla wooden chest, and ended back at the same chest. The pipes were laid out in the same sequence, just mirrored, and ran over the same chunks. I placed 2 stacks of Wheat seeds into each chest, spread evenly over all spaces. Result #1: My first run was a short run, as this was during a time of great server upheaval a few days ago, whenever the server restarted, while this was operational, I would sometimes get a quantity (around 12) seeds that would jump from the Clear pipes, to the Opaque pipes. This is clearly not ideal, but at least this can be worked around. Result #2: I tested it again, same parameters, but this was during the great reactor chunk corruption of 2014, which meant it was shorter, but this time, rather than having items pop, my Opaque pipes GAINED 12 seeds, so I managed to duplicate items. Result #3: This was a much longer period test, I ran it over about 6 hours, spread over a couple of days (This test just ended today). This test has shown that, Itemducts, both Clear and Opaque, can lose items, as I no longer have any of the seeds that I used to test with. So by conclusion: Shorter pipes, or periods of activity, greatly reduce the likelihood of problems arising. I have had no troubles with short pipes over long periods of activity, though I have had problems (Result #1 and #2) of long pipes over short periods. Longer pipes, especially when coupled with long periods of activity, do have issues, especially when the pipe is active when a chunk is no longer loaded, either due to server shutdown, or no nearby players. A chunk loader, when a player is online, does seem to prevent the problem, but it's my understanding chunk loaders only load if the player is online, if not, then they have no effect. I can run similar tests using other pipes, if you'd like, buildcraft doesn't seem to have any problems, and I haven't tried ender IO yet, and honestly, I have no idea if there are other pipes. Let me know if you'd like me too, but for now, I think people should be careful of using TE Itemducts, especially long ones.
Do you have a ME system? It really easy just to place 1 BC pipe into a chest and then place a import bus onto your chest. Then you will have no problems .
I do, but that isn't the problem here. The problem is that TE Itemducts are seemingly bugged, and can lose items, duplicate items, or forget which pipe the items should be in. There are alternatives, yes, of which I'm using, but I'm providing the details of my research, rather than looking for a solution.
