BuildCraft Mod (1.12.2, 1.7.10) – Adding Pipes to Minecraft

BuildCraft Mod is a very big mod that allows for automation in Minecraft. It is a mod that extends Minecraft with a system of powered machines and tools…

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BuildCraft Mod is a very big mod that allows for automation in Minecraft. It is a mod that extends Minecraft with a system of powered machines and tools. It adds many machines for automating tasks, and pipes for transportation of items, liquids, and energy.

The biggest additions of BuildCraft are Pipes and MJ (Minecraft Joules). Pipes are used to transport items, fluids, and mechanical energy between inventories/machines. There are many different types of pipes all with unique functions, including Wooden, Cobblestone, Stone, Sandstone, Iron, Gold, Diamond, Emerald and Obsidian. Pipes can be combined with Pipe Sealant to allow them to make Fluid Pipes that can transport liquids or with Redstone to make Kinesis Pipes to allow them to transport mechanical energy. MJ is used to power BuildCraft and BuildCraft-compatible machines. For example, Thermal Expansion’s machinery needs MJ.

Features:

Machines

In BuildCraft, there are a variety of machines that can be used to automate processes. They all require Redstone Flux (RF) energy to function, provided by one or more engines.

Quarry: This machine will mine an area down until it reaches lava or bedrock.
Mining Well: This machine will dig straight down until it reaches lava or bedrock. It is used in the making of a Pump.
Pump: This machine will pump liquids and transport them through waterproof pipes.
Autocrafting Table: This machine, when supplied a recipe and ingredients, will pump out crafted items. A nearby chest will have materials pulled out of it to be used.
Refinery: This machine, when powered by a stirling engine or better, will slowly convert oil into fuel, which is much more efficient for powering combustion engines than crude oil.
Tank: A simple stackable tank rather than a machine, it can store liquids, including lava, water, Oil , and fuel.

Engines

Engines are used to power the machines and builders. They can also be used to pull items out of inventories with a wooden pipe. Other mods included in FTB such as Forestry and Railcraft add more engines to the game, e.g. the electrical engine which uses IC2 power (EU), and produces MJ power. Engines turn on when they are powered by redstone, and slowly speed up as they heat up. If the engine gets too hot then it will explode. Redstone engines however cannot explode if they are connected to anything that accepts energy such as a wooden pipe.

Transport

Pipes are used to transport items, liquids and power between inventories. There are 8 different types of pipes all with unique functions, these are Wooden, Cobblestone, Stone, Sandstone, Iron, Gold, Diamond and Obsidian. Pipes can be combined with Pipe Waterproof to allow them to make Waterproof Pipes that can transport liquids or with redstone to make Conductive Pipes to allow them to transport energy.

Building

These will all allow for the automated building and, in some cases, destruction of blocks.

Filler: This machine does a variety of options depending on the pattern that is defined within the GUI.
Builder: This machine will build the anything defined by a blueprint provided it has access to the requisite resources, which it shows in its GUI.
Architect Table: An architect table is used to copy a volume of interest and ‘scan’ and save it to a blueprint for later use in a builder.
Blueprint: This is used in an architect table to save the scanned area for later use in a builder. It stores the actual block type.
Template: Similar to the blueprint, this stores a description of the blocks within an area allowing it to be recreated by a builder, however the template only stores the blocks location, not its type.
Land Mark: You can use these to select an area for the architect table, as well as the Quarry and Filler.

Gates

Gates are the BuildCraft way to make advanced detections and interactions possible. They are capable of many things, such as detecting engine heat, inventory, MJ energy storage, machine states, items flowing in pipes and redstone signals.

Gears

Gears are key components in BuildCraft, and are used to make everything from Engines to Quarries and Autocrafting Tables. They are available in 5 varieties which all build upon each other. Other mods add additional gears to the mod pack such as Forestry which adds tin, copper and bronze gears for its machines, while Thermal Expansion also adds Tin and Copper Gears as well as Invar gears, however none of these are used in BuildCraft machines.

Pipes

Wooden Pipes are used to suck items out of inventories (or tanks, engines..). They don’t connect to each other, and they will need a Redstone Engine or better, or an Autarchic Gate to function. Wooden Pipes come in a Standard, a Waterproof and a Conductive version. Wooden conductive pipes are what engines need to connect to in order to send power elsewhere.
Cobblestone Pipes are your most basic transport pipes. They do not connect to Stone Pipes, and they are a very cheap means of getting items (only items, not liquids or power) around. Stuff sent through cobblestone pipes will slow down, and will eventually stop flowing.
Stone Pipes are a little bit better than Cobblestone, and won’t connect with them. They can be made into Waterproof or Conductive pipe, but they won’t be as good as Gold versions. They will also experience drag and eventually slow things down if they go a distance in them, but it won’t be as bad as with Cobblestone Pipes.
Sandstone Pipes won’t connect to machines. This makes them very useful for running a pipe directly behind or underneath a machine that you do not want to connect to your pipe network.
Iron Pipes are the start of your logic system. They are one-way pipes – items can come in in any direction, but they can only leave in one direction. Whack it with a wrench to change which facing is the output. Very useful when you have multiple machines all outputting to the same place, or when you have a ‘serial’ setup.
Golden Pipes will accelerate things that go through it. Space them out to keep your stuff flowing faster. Golden Fluid Pipes can hold more mB of liquid than other pipes. Golden Conductive Pipes have the least amount of energy loss per square.
Diamond Pipes are the most advanced of all above ones. Right-clicking it will open a complicated interface, which can prove very useful in sorting lots of stuff in your network. Basically, you put something in your diamond pipe on a color line, and all of that kind of item goes through that direction. Colors are assigned by cardinal direction, and are not affected by facing or player interaction.
Quartz Pipes have a low drag so items won’t slow down as much as in other pipes. Quartz Pipe won’t connect to Cobblestone or Stone Pipes.
Emzuli Pipes are advance extraction pipes which need to be used in conjunction with logic gates to function. Only four items can be chosen in accordance with the four wire colours. Additionally this pipe can paint items for routing later.
Lazuli Pipes paint items as they pass through with a chosen colour. This colour can then be used to help with routing.
Daizuli Pipes will route all items of a given colour to a chosen location.

MJ (Minecraft Joules)

Redstone Engines produce the least amount of power. It is only good for powering pumps and wooden pipes. No, enough of them will not add up to a useful amount of power, it will just lag out your system trying.
Stirling Engines produce 1 MJ/t, and run on the stuff that you can use in furnaces too – Coal, Wood, Lava Buckets… It’s a reliable engine, and probably what you are going to start off with.
Combustion Engines produce a varying amount of MJ depending on the fuel they are supplied. They can also explode if they aren’t supplied with water. Combustion Engines have the highest theoretical MJ/t output of any engine other than Railcraft’s Steam Engines, with 6 MJ/t when running on Fuel.