Getting Started (RotaryCraft)

RotaryCraft
RotaryCraft (also known as RC or RoC) is a technological mod based on realism and power transmission through shafts. It has uses in automating many tasks, such as ore processing, mining, and farming. The main differentiating features of RotaryCraft are the high-tier machines and the new power system.

Before getting started with RC, it is best to obtain the RotaryCraft Handbook which contains information on the mod, the Screwdriver which is used to change the direction in which machines face (green is input, red is output), and the Angular Transducer which gives information on the machines.

What mods will work well with RotaryCraft?
RotaryCraft allows shaft power to be converted between Minecraft Joules (Buildcraft), Energy Units (IndustrialCraft 2), Redstone Flux (Thermal Expansion), and Joules (Universal Electricity). Also remember that all of Reika's mods generally play well together, and so you may have a better experience overall with ReactorCraft and ElectriCraft installed as well as RotaryCraft.

What should I have before I begin?
To start with RotaryCraft, you will need a few stacks of iron, a few stacks of dirt, a few pieces of sand, a bucket of Lava, some gunpowder, Ender Pearls, sugar cane, and gold. Leaves can also be useful. Having access to the Nether will be a requirement shortly after starting with RotaryCraft.

The Power System
The power system in RotaryCraft is based on rotational power from the real world. It uses torque (Newton meters) and speed (Radians per second) to power machines. When multiplied together, the resulting power unit is Watts. Torque and speed can be transmitted through gearboxes and shafts, which are explained below.

Gearboxes and Shafts
Gearboxes and Shafts come in five tiers: Wood, Stone, Steel, Diamond, and Bedrock. Shafts are used to transmit torque and speed, which will be referred to as power throughout the rest of this guide. No power will be lost, no matter how far the power is transmitted. Each tier has a different maximum power that it can carry. Stone will be sufficient for most of the early machines. Bevel Gears are used to change the direction of power transfer around corners, and will be needed for machines that must be powered from below (Extractor, Fractionation Unit, etc...)

Gearboxes are slightly more complicated than Shafts. They require Lubricant, except for the wooden gearbox, whose only requirement is to be kept cool. All gearboxes below diamond level will continuously consume lubricant, while a diamond gearbox will only require a single bucket. Bedrock gearboxes do not require lubrication, with the High-Ratio Gear being the exception. Gearboxes have different modes: speed and torque. In speed mode, they reduce the torque and increase the speed. They do the opposite in torque mode. For example, a 8:1 ratio gearbox set to speed mode will divide the outgoing torque by 8, and multiply the outgoing speed by 8. To change the mode, sneak right click with a Screwdriver.

Due to there being a large number of different types of gearboxes, (Different materials and different ratios), to learn more about Gearboxes you can visit the gearbox page here which shows the recipes for the different types of gearboxes.

If Botania is installed you can also craft two other gearboxes: Livingwood and Livingrock. The livingwood gearbox is unique because it repairs itself over time on the condition that it is not transmitting power. Livingrock gearboxes can also repair themselves when not transmitting power, though they require Mana to do so.

Power Storage
[Insert Industrial Coil recipe]

Power can be stored in an Industrial Coil. Accessing the UI will let you change the power output setting. The coil will only output power if it is receiving a redstone signal. It cannot receive power when it is outputting power, and vice versa. There are two versions of the Industrial Coil: Steel and Bedrock.

Warning: The Industrial Coil has a maximum energy that it can store! It will explode if you attempt to pass this limit!

Steel Industrial Coil: Max storage 720 MJ, Max output: 1024 Rad/s and Nm

Bedrock Industrial Coil: Max storage 240 TJ, Max output 4096 Rad/s and Nm

Getting Started
Note: Use the RotaryCraft Handbook to learn what each machine does. A pump will pump water, which is obvious, but you might not be able to figure out what the boring machine does! If some more info is needed, it will be provided. Don't be shy to ask questions!

If you have some basic materials set-up, and you somewhat understand the power system, then it's time to get started! The first thing you will want to make is the Blast Furnace, so that you can obtain HSLA Steel Ingots.

Put the Blast Furnace over a source block of lava and let it heat up to 600ºC. You can see the temperature of the Blast Furnace in the UI. When it is sufficiently hot, you will need to put gunpowder, sand, and coal into the Blast Furnace, as well as iron in at least one, but preferably all 9 center slots. Gunpowder and sand will occasionally be used, while coal will be used in every cycle. Smelt a stack of iron into HSLA Steel. You will receive some experience, about .80 per steel ingot. It is recommended to turn coal or charcoal into coal coke for use in the Blast Furnace, as coal coke decreases the chances of gunpowder and sand being used up by 50%, and it also gives a chance for extra steel in the output. To make coal coke, simply place coal or charcoal in the Blast Furnace by itself.

Now that you have HSLA Steel, it is time to create the Worktable. The Worktable is the RotaryCraft equivalent of the Crafting Table. This is where you will craft the machines of RC. Notice! Usually only the final assembly step is carried out in the Worktable, with the parts being assembled in the regular crafting table! Also, there is a config file to make the machine recipe craftable in a regular crafting table.

Powering Time
The first three engines you will be able to use do not consume fuel: The DC Electric Engine (powered by redstone signal), the Wind Turbine (powered by "wind") and the Steam Engine (powered by boiling water). The DC Electric Engine has a limited power output, and so it cannot be used for many things, but most auxiliary machines (Eg the fermenter, the autocrafting unit and the fluid crystallizer. Although more power will be required to run these machines at a high rate of speed.) can be powered using this engine. The Wind Turbine requires a minimum altitude of 128, which will result in a lot of Shafts being needed. There must also be a lot of turbines for it to be effective. The Steam Engine requires a Pump and a trip to the Nether for Netherrack or lava and a Cooling Fin. You will need those to be able to run the advanced engines.

Yeast, Sludge, and Ethanol Crystals
Many players won't have access to the Nether at this point. Therefore, we will use the DC Engine and the Fermenter to move along and a steam engine with a cooling fin on a pump to keep on going. If you do have access to the Nether, use a piece of Netherrack with fire instead of the cooling fin and lava. The fermenter will require water to work. To create Yeast, put dirt and sugar in the Fermenter, and run until you have about a stack of Yeast. Apply a redstone signal to the Fermenter, and you will be able to create Sludge. Insert the Yeast and any plant material to create Sludge. Then, smelt this sludge to get Ethanol Crystals.

Pro tip! Magic leaves, such as the ones from Thaumcraft 3/Thaumcraft 4, and the Twilight Forest can produce up to 64 sludge per Yeast and Rainbow Leaves from ChromatiCraft produce 8 sludge per leaf. Other plant materials may only create up to 2. Using leaves will always produce two times more then the sapling version.

Ore Processing
The Grinder is one of the most useful machines in RotaryCraft. It is used to triple ores, create Lubricant, and create the base materials for Jet Fuel. First of all, we will need to power it. Remember those Ethanol Crystals you got while smelting sludge? Get those back out. Also, get some gold and craft a Gasoline Engine. This engine will give you just enough power for the Grinder. The Grinder will take 17.95 seconds to grind an item while the Ethanol Crystal will power the engine for 60 seconds. This means that a single stack of items being ground will cost 19.14 Ethanol Crystals, or 20, if you round up, in the same amount of time! Unfortunately, the Grinder is a fairly slow machine. However, it is an important machine for acquiring the large quantity of materials needed by RotaryCraft. For mass ore processing, you will probably need more than one Grinder, or a better way to power it! Another way to power it which is equivalent to the gasoline engine, will involve four steam engines and three Shaft Junction. The junction can be oriented with the screwdriver.

Farming Basics
The first step in getting lubricant is farming Canola. Go punch some grass and bring back a few Canola Seeds. Bone Meal would be useful at this point. You will probably need some more HSLA Steel as well. Now, make a 9x9 Canola farm. It will cover your lubricant needs.

Note: You don't need to automate it; you can make do with a manual farm.

To make an automatic 9x9 farm in RotaryCraft you will need: 4 Steam Engines, 3 Fans, 3 Clutches, 1 Item Vacuum, some water, some fire, 1 Hopper, 1 Chest, 1 Redstone Comparator, and some Redstone (Redstone, Comparator, Hopper and the Chest can be exchanged with any "Stop when overflow system" like ComputerCraft or Applied Energistics).


 * 1) Make your 9x9 farm.
 * 2) Place a Fan on the second, fifth, and eighth rows.
 * 3) Behind each Fan, place a Clutch. Then, a Steam Engine with fire/Netherrack under, and water flowing in the back.
 * 4) On the other side that you placed the Fans, place the Item Vacuum with the Steam Engine powering it.
 * 5) Place a Hopper under it, with the output side facing the chest.
 * 6) Put the Comparator going out of the hopper in Subtraction mode.
 * 7) Invert the signal and make a redstone wire to the Clutch. (I've put the torch under the clutch which seems to work, other ways of monitoring this farm are recommended)

The Comparator will give a positive redstone signal when the Hopper gets filled and will stop the Clutch. The Fans will then stop running.

Note that the Clutch will let the power out when it has a positive redstone signal.

Now, we need to get the lubricant!



Note: This is only one row of 3, you can triple this fan setup without needing another water source block or a better item vacuum.

Note 2: The fan will only push the items in the row right in front of it, but will harvest each one beside it.

Lubricant
Remember that slow machine that tripled your ores? The Grinder? Well, I hope you do, since you will need it now! Create a Reservoir, or any tank system you want, and a Lubricant Hose, or another liquid transport solution. Place the Hose under (In later version, it will also work from sides) the Grinder and pipe it to your Reservoir or tank. You need at least one Hose to move the Lubricant. Get yourself a stack of Canola Seeds and put them in the Grinder. Don't forget to put Ethanol Crystals in the Gasoline Engine!

The Lubricant will be used in the Gearbox, but also in a powerful but costly engine called the Hydrokinetic Engine. These engines cost about one stack of HSLA Steel each, and their power needs to be passed through a gearbox or transmitted with a Diamond Shaft or better.

Smelting
RotaryCraft has two main ways to smelt items: The Friction Heater and the Lava Smeltery. They both require power, but the Lava Smeltery also requires lava. The Frictional Heater, when connected to a Furnace and powered by a Steam Engine will let you smelt for free, though it will be quite slow. The Lava Smeltery is a very quick smelter, smelting up to 18 items at one time and is the easier machine to power out of the two. The Rock Melter can be used to get lava for the smeltery. To keep up with the smeltery, the rock melter will need a decent power input (Gasoline Engines are a good starting point) and the use of Netherrack. It's powered from the bottom requiring a bevel gear. You can use a steam engine to power it. It's recommended to have a good amount of lava before starting to use the smeltery since it will consume it as soon as you input the lava.

[Insert Lava Smeltery recipe]

Note that the lava smeltery is not affected by the speed of the engine powering it. It requires 2048W. Any engine will be able to power it.

Tip: A boring machine (see below) in the nether will net you a ton of Netherack, even on low speed. A pump can also be used to get lava.

Into the deep
Now that you have ore tripling and easy smelting, it's time to start gaining some resources. Build a Boring Machine, as well as a Scalable Chest or any other storage device. (Note that you need at least one chest beside the boring machine) Powering the Scalable Chest with one steam engine will give you 105 inventory space. Two of them will give you 233 while four of them, or a gasoline engine, will get you an impressive 489 spaces out of the maximum of 560. Go to around y=10 and make yourself a small room to work with. Place your Boring Machine and open the GUI. Complicated isn't it? Not as much as you might think. The X represents the borer position. Every square you click will be one that will be mined. It will mine in front of it, forever. You can go with "strips" and mine in the walls after, get every block possible or do any combination you like! The borer will need 512 Nm of torque and will need about 32 kW of power, which is 62.5 Rad/s minimum. This is about 40 seconds per movement. With geostrata installed, you will need more then 512 Nm to get the full 7x5 mining. Four gasoline engine will provide 512 Nm of torque which can easily mine a 5x4 area without problem. One last item you might want, is a flood light. The power of a steam engine will be enough for a good distance! It will keep your mining operation safe!

The Scaleable Chest is optional. You may use any kind of chest. The flood light is also optional, but will protect you from spawning a load of mobs in there. There is also another machine that can be used for automated mining, The Sonic Bore. While it uses less power, this machine drops the items instead of putting them into inventory storage. So depending on what you're trying to achieve, will decide which machine you use.

Note that the Boring Machine, when it has enough power, will mine up to 700 blocks per second, or 35 per tick.

Tip: The Boring Machine can be enchanted with enchanted books! The same ones you use on a pickaxe!

[Insert Boring machine recipe][Insert Scaleable chest recipe][Insert Boring machine GUI][Insert Flood light recipe]



Jet Fuel, some crazy liquid
Before you get into this section, you will need a trip into the nether and get one ghast tear and a stack or so of netherrack, soul sand, blaze rods and slime balls (or magma cream). Make a performance engine, an 8:1 gearbox (Stone is enough, unless you use a 16:1 for more speed) and a Fractionation Unit, with some fuel line or fluiducts (Recommended to use a tank with ducts since fuel line have unlimited storage in them). Go back to your grinder and grind a few netherack and soul sand to get netherack dust and tar. You will need to turn the blaze rod into powders (Use a grinder for this, you get 6 powder per blaze rod) and make a few magma cream. Finally, get some ethanol crystals and coal. Place your performance engine, your 8:1 gear on speed mode (Shift-click with a screwdriver), a bevel gear and the unit. Don't forget lubricant into the gearbox. Place a ghast tear and a few of each: Netherrack dust, Tar, Ethanol crystal, Blaze powder, Magma cream and Coal. You can now activate it. It's recommended to pipe the jet fuel into a tank for future use.

[Insert Fractionation Unit unit recipe][Insert performance engine recipe]

Note that a Performance engine with a 8:1 gearbox on speed mode will get you the required power for the fractionnation unit. This will require some Ethanol crystals and redstone/gunpowder/blaze powder. After you get going with Jet Fuel, you might want to get a microturbine to power it.

Getting Tungsten
Time for 5x ore processing! The first bit will be tedious since it will be very slow until you get a gas turbine or a reactor, which will require tungsten. To get tungsten, you must first process iron ore in the extractor, then get the tungsten flakes into a furnace powered by a frictional heater at least 1350 C.

At first, the extractor will be run into two different machine. The first machine will do the stage 1 and 4 and will require 512 Nm of torque. The second machine will do stage 2 and 3 and will require water and 8192 rad/s of speed. They are many ways to power those machine. The two main engines used will be the performance engine and the microturbine.

To power the first extractor (Stage 1 and 4) you can either use a performance engine with a 4:1 gearbox on torque, or a microturbine with and 16:1 and 2:1 gearbox or torque. Note that when you will only have to do the stage 4, you will be able remove the 2:1 gearbox for faster speed.

To get the second extractor (Stage 2 and 3) you can either use a performance engine with a 8:1 gearbox on speed, or a microturbine. The latter will be considerably faster.

To get those tungsten flakes going, you will be in one of two situation: Either you are in a desert or a very hot biome, or not. In a hot biome, a microturbine hooked up to a 16:1 and 4:1 gearbox, both on torque, with the heater at sunlight, will give you 1355 C. The other way is two microturbine without a gearbox, which will give you approx 1400 C. With a single bucket in each engine, you will be able to smelt more than a stack of flakes. You will either want to aim for four tungsten for a gas turbine or 20 for a reactorcraft turbine.

[Insert Extractor recipe]

Unbreaking
Next step is to get the Bedrock Breaker up and running. You have three main options for this: Two microturbines with 2 16:1 Gearboxes and a 2:1 Gearbox, all set to torque mode (4 MW), A tier 4 Magnetostatic with 8:1 gearbox on torque (8 MW) or a gas turbine with an 16:1 gearbox on torque (65MW). Note that the bedrock breaker requires a large amount of power to get to 0.05s operation and so therefore it's recommended to have a few running at the same time, instead of having one at the absolute maximum speed.

Ingots
To get bedrock ingots, you will need a blast furnace at 1000 C and four bedrock dust and a HSLA Steel ingot in it. You will need a frictional heater to achieve this temperature. It will need 512 KW > 1024 KW of power to achieve this temperature. Note that there is an efficiency bonus if the torque and speed are the same value. Industrial Coils can be used to achieve this.

Ex: A frictional heater with 8192 rad/s and 16 Nm will be less hot then one with 512 rad/s and 256 Nm which will be less hot then one at 512 rad/s and 512 Nm.

Tools
Most of the bedrock tools have a special ability. The bedrock pickaxe can mine spawners, the bedrock sword has Looting 5 and Sharpness 5 and the bedrock axe will chop down an entire tree in one go (Even for massive trees). They are all unbreakable and can all be enchanted.

Other use for Bedrock
Bedrock is very useful. It can be used to make armor pieces, gearboxes and CVTs. The gearboxes made out of bedrock are unbreakable and do not require lubricant. They allow infinite amounts of power to flow through them, like the bedrock shaft. The High-Ratio gear is basically a 256:1 gearbox, but will consume lubricant in a large quantity. The CVT Unit is a redstone toggle-able gearbox and is very useful for an efficient extractor setup.

DC Engine
Torque: 4 Nm

Speed: 256 Rad/s

Power: 1024 W

Requirement and Danger: Redstone

[Insert DC Engine Recipe]

Wind Turbine
Torque: 4 Nm

Speed: 1024 Rad/s

Power: Up to 4096 W

Requirement and Danger: 16 blocks of free space in front and a 128 altitude

[Insert Wind Turbine recipe]

Steam Engine
Torque: 32 Nm

Speed: 512 Rad/s

Power: 16 kW

Requirement and Danger: Requires fire and water, can explode at too high of a temperature

[Insert Steam Engine recipe]

Gasoline Engine
Torque: 128 Nm

Speed: 512 Rad/s

Power: 65.5 kW

Requirement and Danger: Ethanol

[Insert Gasoline Engine recipe]

AC Electric Engine
Torque: 512 Nm

Speed: 256 Rad/s

Power: Up to 131 kW

Requirement and Danger: Redstone Clock and magnetized shaft core

Performance Engine
Torque: 256 Nm

Speed: 1024 Rad/s

Power: 262 kW

Requirement and Danger: Ethanol and Redstone/Gunpowder/Blaze Powder, Explosion at 1000 Celsius

Hydrokinetic Engine
Torque: 16384 Nm

Speed: 32 rad/s

Power: up to 524 kW

Requirement and Danger: 3 to 64 falling water and lubricant, paddles hurt

Microturbine
Torque: 16 Nm

Speed: 131072 rad/s

Power: 2097 kW

Requirement and Danger: Jet Fuel

Gas Turbine
Torque: 1024 Nm

Speed: 65536 rad/s

Power: 67.1 MW

Requirement and Danger: Jet Fuel, explosion if you (or any entity for that matter) gets stuck in it

Solar Tower
Torque: Scales

Speed: 1024 rad/s

Power: Scales

Requirement and Danger: Burns stuff around

What Now?
Now? You can probably do whatever you want! More mining, more automating, more power, etc! The possibilities are endless with this mod!

Usually, people try to go for bedrock armor, tools and gearbox since they have no durability. Getting your extractor to run faster is another good idea. More efficient making of HSLA steel is done with the pulse jet furnace and it also serves to recycle old armor or tools you don't need anymore! We have not looked at all of the machines that you might want to try, including all the defence and security machines!

Some tips!
Grinder can grind AE Certus Quartz into dust

You may put shafts through portals, transferring power inter-dimensionally

Bedrock sword has Looting V and Sharpness V

A gas turbine with a 2:1 Gearbox set to speed will power the borer at max speed.