FTB Ultimate: Fusion Coil Starting Point

Back to my FTB Ultimate world on the laptop.  I was trying to refresh my brain on how to make the ultimate GregTech build in the pack: the fusion reactor.  It will clearly need a ton of blocks, with the obvious bottleneck being chrome.  I saw some old reddit posts about how you can get it from redstone ... but yeah, it's pretty low yield:

[Ind. Centrifuge] 10 rs + 4 [] gives 1 ruby dust and some other stuff, then
[Ind. Electrolyzer] 9 ruby dust + 3 [] = 1 Cr dust with 2 Al dust and 3 air cells.
So, 90 redstone -> 1 Cr.

The way I was doing it: [Ind. Centrifuge] 16 yellow garnet dust = 3 uvarovite dust & misc, then
[Ind. Electrolyzer] 20 uvarovite dust + 12 [] = 2 Cr dust & misc.
Here, 16*7 yellow garnet -> 2 Cr.  And yellow garnet is hard to get in any amount.

In the scrapboxes there's a 0.01% chance of one Cr dust and a 0.16% chance of one yellow garnet.

I have 81 Cr in storage, but all the building tips I saw said you need more like 400 for a fusion reactor.  I will build what parts I can...

It also looks like you need a lot of emeralds for the data cores and such.  I am just about out.  I have a lot of emerald dust from bees, but it takes 20 industrial TNT to blast the dust back into the gems.  So I need more sulfur.  That's plentiful, just electrolyze the stacks of pyrite (3 FeS2 -> Fe + 2S) and sphalerite (ZnS) in storage, or use the industrial grinder on those ores.

Now, the fusion coils ...
ABA/CDC/AEA (energy flow circuit, superconductor, nichrome heating coil, highly advance machine block, iridium neutron reflector)

That's a hoot.  For the EFCs, there's an expensive recipe with iridium plate, or just run elite circuit board (ECB) + lapotronic crystal in the assembling machine.  Well, the ECB is Pt plate + advanced circuit.
advanced circuit = advanced circuit board + 2 advanced circuit parts in assembling machine
advanced circuit board = Si plate + 2 El plate in assembling machine
advanced circuit parts = lapis + glowstone dust in assembling machine
Those are manageable but the machine is really slow.  I get most of the parts from my scrapbox factory.

nichrome heating coil = [Rolling Machine] 4 Ni + Cr.  (Chrome again.)
Do I even have a rolling mavhine?  Can't find one, so I crafted a new one (3 pistons, 4 iron, crafting table).

[Ind. Electrolyser] 16 ender pearl dust + 16 [] = 1 Be [] + side products
[Compressor] 8 Cu plate = 1 dense Cu plate (DCP)
4 Sn dust + 4 coal dust + DCP = neutron reflector (unstackable)
4 neutron reflectors around Be [] = dense neutron reflector (DNR) <- for some reason the fabricator won't make these, using a project bench
8 DNR around Ir plate = iridium neutron reflector (IrNR)

Well, back in my ender house, I have a project table to convert pulsating propolis from bees into ender pearls:
5 pulsating propolis = 1 pulsating mesh
[Carpenter] 5 pulsating mesh = 1 ender pearl
and I have over 6400 pulsating propolis in storage, so that won't be a problem.

Finally, a work line to get the superconductors:
AAA/BCB/DDD (60k He coolant cell*, Ti plate, Ir plate,EFC) giver 4 superconductors
* can use 60k NaK coolant cell: 4 Sn, 2 Na [], 2 K [], 10k coolant cell, where the 10k cell is 4 Sn around water
None of the coolant cells stack.

I got fabricators set up for 10k coolant cells, 60k NaK coolant cells, superconductors.  Got my first 4.
Then neutron collectors, thick neutron collectors, Ir neutron reflectors.  This line is very expensive and slow.  Actually, I'm almost out of copper.

I went for a long run in an abandoned mine and found NO copper at all.  That's really odd.

I went to the Desert-2-Suns world, the one with the old reamed-out quarry pits and nuclear reactor.  I spent about 20 minutes laser drilling long tunnels in various directions and found 55 copper ore.  A lot less than teh other major ores.  Looking for the best output from those, you can get 3x using the Indsutrial Grinder and persulfate cells, or the induction smelter with rich slag.  Or the factorization setup, which I now see had 137 srystalline copper in the final chest just waititng to be smelted.  The chest also has 4x64+5 Fe, 76 Au, 4x64+35 Pb and 5x64+36 Ag.  All just begging to be mass smelted.

Done.  The induction furnace (Advanced Machines) can run them two at a time with a hopper on top, and speeds up as it goes.  It's the best single machine for big lots.  My row of 5 redstone furnaces can take a stack each.  

For some reason, I now have a villager walking around my lab messing with doors.

All factoriztion crystals have been smelted.  Plus a stack of sand+pyrite in industion smelters to get more rich slag.  I'm back up to 446 Cu ingots, but it still feels strangely uncommon in this world.

Still hundreds of steps to go on the fusion reactor.

In the middle of the night I realized that the chrome shortage is why I had 10 hives of ruby bees working away out on the plains.  The combs produce tiny piles of ruby dust, x4 = ruby dust, x9 makes one Cr dust.  I turned those off about a year ago, forgot why I had them, now I have turned them back one, and added 4 hives of copper bees.

Also, 7 UU matter (-AA/AAA/AA-) can make 2 rubies, and I have over 7000 UU.

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A quick visit after work.  I popped over to the Desert-2-Suns world (which actually has 3 suns, but I guess one wasn't visible back when I named the place) to set up a new quarry,  Super simple arrangement, just the quarry, an energy tesseract set to "BC Power" (channel 99), and 3 pipes leading into the ender chest that matched the one back at the main ME import bus.  Confirmed that the goods are flowing into my main ME storage.

Well, that was interesting.  My whole ME network back at the bee lab started flickering.  It was also on tesseract channel 99.  Big drain from the quarry, so I switched the bee lab back to channel 100.  Poof, it's all running again.

I made 4 stacks of rubies from UU matter and dropped them in the pulverizer then the industrial electrolyzer where 9 dusts makes one Cr dust.  Not a bad supply, actually.  Still 6500 UU matter left and probably another chest full out by the lightning rod.

Also, I went to configs years ago to re-enable the base IC2 mass fabricator where one UU matter takes about 10MEU of power, where GregTech massively nerfed that, removing the mass fab and adding his own matter fabricator that takes 10x or 100x the power and time.  I saw a video tutorial where a guy built the whole nuclear reactor just to run 10 plasma generators through those super top end power cables just to run a matter fabricator at a reasonable speed.  I'me never that seupr-high-end guy with millions of items at my disposal.  So I un-nerfed it to suit my own pace.

GregTech is still one of my favorite tech trees of all time, even if it is right at the edge of what I can stand.

-- 10pm

I dropped a fabricator next to the chest of UU Matter out by the lightning rod.  Chest was almost full so I made 4 stacks of rubies.  Then I saw that Iridium plates aren't just iridium in the plate bender, no ... it's 4 Ir ingots (throw Ir in compressor) + 4 advanced alloy + diamond dust in a rolling machine then blast it to hell with 8 industrial TNT in the implosion compressor.  Made 5 of those.

I moved the quarry a few blocks over.  After 1-1/2 entire default quarry holes, I only got 17 copper ore.  I was not expecting that to be so rare.  Almost wish I hadn't made those 600 copper wires a while ago.  Anyway, for max output, I ran junk ores in the induction furnace with sand to get some rich slag, the in the same machine rich slag + copper ore = 3 copper ingots instead of 2.  And without waiting for the whole factoriztion process.

I do have a handy lab just for mixed metal ingots.  It's right under the advanced machines lab.  It has a plate bending machine and two fabricators, each with a recipes producing 3 AA (steel, brass, aliminum) or 4 AA (titanium, brass, aliminum), just using different plates.  I just added a compressor and second plate bending machine there.  I made two stacks of the mixed alloy ingots in just a few minutes.

Well, I have 140 Cr ingots, 432 Cu, 130 Cu plates, 10 Ir, 94 Ir ingots, 6 Ir plates, and 257 advanced alloy.  Finished the first iridium neutron reflector then the first fusion coil.  Woo hoo!

Sometimes I just want to make the materials, other times get the crafting of the final pieces done.  Remembering that some of the same high-end materials are used in the top solar panels, I made another hybrd solar panel.