Getting Started (BuildCraft)

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What is BuildCraft?

BuildCraft is a very big mod that allows for automation in Minecraft. It does so via the use of pipes which move items from place to place, whether it be into a machine or into storage. You can change the different ways that items will move through pipes with gates. Outside of automation, BuildCraft also adds it's own energy unit, the MJ (Minecraft Joule). MJ is used to power BuildCraft machines as well as machines from a few other mods, for example, Thermal Expansion.

What mods will work well with BuildCraft?


 * It’s more a case of what mods work well with this one. This is one of the ‘founding’ mods, nearly half of the mods in the pack are or at least started out as addon mods for this one.
 * Unless it’s IC2, or an addon mod for it, and it isn’t Mystcraft or Factorization, it’s probably a good bet that it’s going to work very well here, since it was probably written to be compatible with it.
 * Everything. No, really. Pipes get things back and forth. Gates and autocrafting tables let it happen automatically. This is going to constitute a significant portion of your infrastructure

What should I have before I begin?


 * Really, you should have everything after your first mining expedition down to gold/redstone level. Wood, glass, cobblestone, stone, iron, gold, and redstone.
 * Waterproof pipes need either cactus or bees
 * To really get your automation kicked into high gear, you’re going to need a good supply of diamonds. Like a couple dozen. But that’s higher-tier, you don’t need it to start with

This is one of the ‘grandfather’ mods, along with IndustrialCraft2. This mod invented piping stuff back and forth and MJ energy production. It brings so much to the table that I’m going to have an even harder time than usual keeping it brief, because there’s just so much to talk about. Right, so let’s get started.

How do Pipes work?

Right, this is one of those things that started off as a small thing that took on a whole new life. Basically, pipes are used to transport stuff, be it items, liquids, or even MJ Power, all over the place without you the player needing to do it.

I’d say ‘that’s all’, but really… that’s a fundamental game changing concept right there. Unless you are using Redpower2 Tubes, odds are you are going to be using these things a LOT. Even then, you’re still probably going to use them in some places.

So let’s start talking about pipes. The default recipe for them are two of some kind of material on either side of a piece of glass, and it typically produces eight of that pipe. But the material it is made of determines its function


 * Wooden Pipes are used to suck items out of something. Wooden pipes will need engines or a gate to pull items out of something. Wooden pipes come in Waterproof and Conductive versions as well. Wooden conductive pipes are what engines need to connect to in order to send power elsewhere.
 * Cobblestone pipes are your most basic transit pipes, and they will get your stuff from Point A to Point B. They do not connect to stone pipes, but they are a very cheap means of getting items (only items, not liquids or power) around. Stuff sent through cobblestone pipes will eventually start slowing down if it goes a significant distance.
 * 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 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 shouldn’t connect to it. This helps with compacting designs. They will connect to any other pipe. Not available in waterproof or conductive versions.
 * Iron pipes are the start of your logic system. They are one-way pipes, regardless of which direction they come in from, there’s only one direction they can leave. 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 you have a ‘serial’ setup.
 * Gold pipes are pretty nifty. Regular gold pipes will speed things up, letting them get from point A to point B faster. Space them out every so often to keep your stuff flowing faster. If you are worried about speed, use stone instead of cobblestone. Golden Waterproof Pipes have a higher ‘throughput’ (how much of the liquid can go through at the same time), making them invaluable. Personally, I very rarely ever create any other type of waterproof pipe from this mod (there’s a few from other mods I use). Likewise, golden conductive pipes have the least amount of energy loss per square, so I invariably use them. Good stuff.
 * Diamond pipes are really smart. Whack it with a wrench, and by Tesla’s Spark that’s a complicated interface! Yea, this is what was used for sorting systems back in the day… back when Minecraft was still in ‘beta’, before all you young whippersnappers came along and… ahem, sorry about that. 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. So if you want all of X to go in one direction, but all of Y to go in another direction, this is the pipe for the job.

Other mods may have additional pipes they bring to the table, but those are the ‘core’ BC pipes.

Pipes, other than diamond and iron, are pretty stupid when it comes to intersections, and will choose a direction randomly. Iron pipes, as we mentioned, will only output to the side they are configured to, and diamond pipes will sort things intelligently by item. For this reason, intersections can become a problem in your system. So if something isn’t going where it should be, that’s your most likely culprit. When a pipe intersects and an option is to go into a machine, then it will randomly decide to go into the machine or keep going, which is why the sandstone pipes exist. There are also some mods that bring pipes that have additional functionality at intersections, but those are going to be covered in their respective mod guides.

Wooden pipes need a redstone engine for them to pipe things through. That redstone engine needs a redstone signal to get going. Generally, there’s never a good reason to turn off the redstone engine as long as the wooden pipe is there. Golden pipes do NOT need a redstone signal to get things sped up, that was a function of a previous version which has since been fixed.

Power Production

Buildcraft invented MJ (Minecraft Joules) power, so it is no surprise they have ways of producing it. Currently, there are three types of engines:


 * 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.
 * Sterling engines produce 1 MJ/t, and runs on coal. Good ol’ reliable engine, 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. They have the highest theoretical MJ/t output of any engine other than a Commercial Steam Engine, with 6 MJ/t when running on Fuel.

Creating engines isn’t too hard, the same basic design works for all of them. They need a piston, glass, a couple of gears, and… wait, gears?

Yea, gears are new here. Four sticks will net a wooden gear. Then you put the wooden gear in the middle of four cobblestone to make a stone gear. Same thing up the line to iron, gold, and even diamond gears. For now, redstone engines require wood, sterling requires stone, and combustion requires iron.

Of course, power needs to be carried to the machines that need it. For that, use conductive pipes. Engines need to be facing a wooden conductive pipe, otherwise power simply won’t flow. That wooden conductive pipe then needs to be hooked up to either a stone or gold conductive pipe to transmit the power. Wooden conductive pipes have a nasty habit of not transmitting power to anything other than a pipe. You can put an engine directly against a machine, this works for some of them, but for a smoother power flow, a wooden conductive and golden conductive pipe is probably your best bet. The Thermal Expansion mod brings Redstone Power Conduits to the table, which don’t need wooden conductive pipes, check out more information in that guide.

Machines and Automation

So now we’ve got power, what do we do with it?

Well, first off, we’re going to look at an upgrade for the crafting table. Four wooden gears around a crafting table makes for an Automated Crafting Table. This really handy little device can be used to automatically craft things. It also never spits things out, so you can leave items in your crafting table, go back for that one item you forgot, and come back to it. You can also ‘set’ a recipe in an automated crafting table, then pipe in materials, and it will spit the resulting product out. It can also feed from an adjacent chest, in case the recipe calls for things which cannot be stacked.

Next, we’re going to be looking at a Pump. Pull up the recipe in NEI. There’s two pumps, the one you are looking for is a mining well and a tank. The other one is IC2 related. Looking up the sub-combines shows that you’ll need a good bit of iron for this recipe. Basically, it looks directly underneath it for a liquid source, then it will suck the liquid source up and automatically spit it out into an attached waterproof pipe. This machine is an exception to the rule, you do not need a wooden pipe to pump it out, it will automatically do it for you. However, you need to use four redstone engines directly attached to the pump to keep it pumping at optimal efficiency.

What can the pump be used for?


 * Pump water from an infinite spring to keep your combustion engines cooled (although Thermal Expansion has a better way of doing that with the Aqueous Accumulator)
 * Pump oil out of the ground to send to a refinery to be turned into fuel for your combustion engines
 * Pump lava out of a pool for various uses.

So in general, a pretty good machine to have around, particularly if you are wanting to get combustion engines running.

Next, let’s look at a Refinery. It turns Oil into Fuel. It also requires a good amount of power, so make sure to hook it up to your energy network. You might need to use a Sterling engine to get it going, but after you’ve got a bucket of fuel, switch it over to a combustion engine, because it’s just going to go a LOT faster with one. Now, let’s look at the recipe.

Yes, you’re seeing it right, a diamond gear. That’s four sticks, four cobblestone, four iron, four gold, and four diamonds. And three tanks, which is just some glass. Yes, it is worth it. In a combustion engine, Oil produces 2 MJ/t, wheras Fuel produces 6 MJ/t, that’s tripling your energy production.

The next machine we’re going to be looking at is also expensive. In fact, probably the single most expensive individual machine in this mod. It’s also one of the most useful. It’s called a Quarry. Go ahead, look it up in NEI.

Okay, don’t freak out now, I told you this was going to be expensive. Two diamond gears, an undamaged diamond pick, two gold gears, three iron gears, and a piece of redstone. That’s going to come out to 11 diamonds, 16 gold. a half a stack of iron, and some other stuff.

But is it worth it? Oh yes, very much so.

Ever wanted to do away with branch mining? This lets you do that. It will automatically mine from whatever level you put it at all the way down to bedrock. It also requires a lot of power, like 9 MJ/t at maximum speed. But you won’t ever need to go mining again. Oh, here’s another cute trick: Put a piece of Lapis on top of a redstone torch in your crafting square. See that landmark? Make three of them. Drop one down where you want your quarry to start digging. Now put one on the x plane and one on the z plane to denote the rectangle it is going to dig in. NOW drop your quarry directly adjacent to the corner landmark. Now you can dig up to 64 x 64 holes in one shot. Have fun with that.

A Quarry will automatically output what it digs into an adjacent chest or pipe, no wooden pipes necessary. I would suggest having some kind of sorting system set up to handle the input, because you’ll be getting a LOT of it.Some people also prefer to dig down to around y40 or so to place their quarry so they don’t completely wreck the landscape and to minimize the amount of cobblestone and dirt they get, although this will create large cavernous areas where mobs are very likely to spawn.

Gates and Pipe Wire

Now comes probably the most expensive piece of infrastructure you’ll ever have to make in this mod, yes even more expensive than that quarry. Don’t give me that look, it’ll be worth it. Trust me.

We’re going to need a LOT of diamonds. Like over a dozen of them. We’re also going to need quite a bit of gold, iron, obsidian, and redstone. We’re also going to want a LOT of MJ production. Like probably at least 16-20 MJ/t just devoted to this one system. It’s time to build your Assembly Table. Look up the recipe in NEI.

So yea, that’s a diamond gear, and another diamond. So wait, that’s only six diamonds, what’s up with this ‘over a dozen of them’ stuff? Well, unfortunately the Assembly Table doesn’t run off of regular MJ. All of the activity on the Assembly Table is done with Lasers, which needs to be within three blocks, and an unobstructed view to the table. And lasers are two diamonds. Each. And if you want them produced at ANY speed, you’ll want at least four of them. Oh, and you know how the assembly table doesn’t run off of MJ? Lasers do. Each one needs 4 MJ/t to run at optimal efficiency. So be sure you have enough energy production before starting this project.

But is it worth it? Oh yes.

Gates are great. They bring logic and automation to your piping. Let’s say you want to conserve fuel, and only want your combustion engines running when something actually wants power. Well, for this, you’ll need to make some Iron Gates and some Red Pipe Wire. One redstone and one iron ingot make an Iron Chipset. One iron chipset and one red pipe wire makes one Iron AND or an Iron OR gate. Red Pipe Wire is simply some redstone, iron and Rose Red (throw a rose into your crafting square to get a couple). For this particular setup, either one will work since we are only using one conditional, but for those who are logically minded, you’ll recognize how fun having an AND or OR gate can be.

Now then, gates go on pipes. That’s the only place they go. For this experiment, we’ll be putting an iron gate on the conductive pipe directly attached to a machine which draws power. Run red pipe wiring along the conductive pipe to your combustion engines. Run some redstone behind or underneath them, wherever you can fit it. The gate at the machine should say “Has Work -> Red Pipe Signal”, the one near the combustion engines should be “Red Pipe Signal -> Redstone Signal”. Now when the machine has work (has something to do) your combustion engines turn on. You can hook up an iron gate to each machine in your network if you like. That way, you won’t be wasting fuel if your factory is idle.

Here’s a cute trick: Combine a gravel with a cobblestone pipe. You get a structure pipe. This doesn’t pipe anything, but it can be used to run red pipe wire along, and you can put gates on it. So you can run some structure pipes along your engines and put in gates set to trigger redstone signal when it gets a red pipe signal, if necessary. They can also be used to run a red pipe signal across pipes that won’t connect (stone/cobblestone, or regular pipes and liquid pipes and conductive pipes).

That’s only one simple thing. To go into it in full detail would be a guide all its own. The only other gate I’ll mention right now needs an EnderPearl. It’s called a Pulsating Chipset. It’s used to make an Autarchic Gate. These things are basically a redstone engine built into the gate, so you can put them on a wooden pipe and not have to worry about where to put the redstone engine or worry about the signal either. And yes, autarchic gates can be triggered with red pipe wire, if you want. You can also tell it to pulse when there is a -lack- of redstone signal, if you just want it pumping constantly.

That’s it for now. Later on, there will be guides detailing some of the things we’ve touched on, but in greater detail But that should get you started, at least.