Can Barely do a moderate infusion

[ghost]

I don’t know why I can’t even do moderate infusions peacefully! I have 12 candles and 24 skulls around my altar. I have 5 stabilizers directly pointing at the matrix that are receiving from a source producing 16k RF per tick and everything is symmetrical, even the stabilizers. Even with all that, my altar goes crazy at a moderate level infusion. It starts out as Very Stable and goes to dangerously unstable within a few seconds. I have 4 speed boosters if that matters. I’m not sure how I’m supposed to make the item that closes rifts if I can't even handle a moderate infusion!

[aycfes]

so, first off, now you are limited to only 10 occult items, such as candles and skulls. secondly, did you place the items in radial symetry or bilateral symetry (the correct is the prior). did you place the items in the pedestals in the same arrengement as in the thaumonomicon and, once again, with radial symmetry? if possible can you provide me/us with pictures of your setup and it doing an infusion?

infusion is quite broken currently, but with such a ridiculous (positively so) setup as yours, i don't think it would be so unstable.

also, sorry if i sound rude, i tend to, but that is not my intention.

[ghost]

ignore the area beyong the arcane stone floor, its either decorational or essentia and yes i placed them in radial symmetry according to the thaumonomicon.

[Reassembly]

Oh wow...you're using a powerful RF source from an external mod instead of the wimpy Vis Generators, and a Moderate infusion is still dangerously unstable? I was under the impression that the Vis Generators were currently the weakest link.

That's extremely troubling. Your setup looks like it should not just be fine, but over-the-top excessively fine.

[ghost]

I managed to pull off a brain in a jar infusion but it was extremely irritating and it was always at dangerous instability. I tried headband of knowledge and it almost destroyed my entire setup

[Reassembly]

It looks like Stabilizers are also capped in the amount of energy they can receive per tick, at 100 RF/t. This is enough to provide 0.02 stability/tick, or 0.1 stability/5 ticks. Candles and other passive stabilizers provide 0.015 stability/5 ticks, to a maximum of 0.15 stability/5 ticks. In your setup, with max candles + 5 Stabilizers at max power, you should gain 0.15+(5 x 0.1)=0.65 stability/5 ticks.

A "Moderate" instability infusion loses... 0.8 to 1.0 stability per 5 ticks, for a shortfall of 0.15 to 0.35 stability/5 ticks. The most "buffer" stabilizers can provide before infusion starts is 12.5 units, which would be used up in 9 to 21 seconds, after which the infusion would become unstable, and "Dangerously Unstable" (-25 stability) in 18 to 42 seconds.

...that is, if you have no Infusion Speed Stones. You have four.

Each speed booster reduces the time for each "crafting cycle" by 0.5 ticks (rounded down). This speeds up the stability loss from the recipe and the stability gain from candles, but does not affect Stabilizers. Re-doing the math: your candles add 0.15 stability/3 ticks, the recipe loses 0.8 to 1.0 stability/3 ticks, and five stabilizers at max power provide 5 x 0.02 x 3=0.3 stability/3 ticks. Total stability delta: 0.15-(0.8..1.0)+0.3 = -0.35 to -0.55 stability/3 ticks, which would consume a 12.5 unit buffer in 3.4 to 5.4 seconds, and reach "Dangerous" in another 6.8 to 10.7 seconds.

This seems to line up with your description of the infusion going "dangerously unstable within a few seconds". If you're brave enough to try this infusion again under the same conditions and measure how long it takes to go unstable to the nearest second, I'd be curious to know how close my estimates are. If you don't want to test my theory and just want your infusion to not-explode, my first recommendation would be to remove those speed boosters, and only use them for "Negligible" instability infusions.

Actually, this suggests a possible further improvement: the Infusion Cost Stones slow down the infusion, which might indirectly "amplify" the effect of Stabilizers by reducing the speed at which infusions inherently lose stability. Maybe try installing four Cost Stones instead...by my calculations, that should just barely keep a "Moderate" infusion stable with your setup.

[ghost]

Wow, that was a lot to process. But now I understand how these stabilizers work but I have 6 stabilizers so I should have 0.75. According to your calculations moderate takes 0.8 to 1 so removing speed would probably bring me up to that and adding cost stones while would increase my boredom level from 0.5 to 1 would allow time to do all moderate infusions. I still find it a little insane that 5 stabilizers with 10 vis generators each are required to do moderate infusions in a Thaumcraft only world. Seems a little overkill

[apmax]

The numbers are obviously still being balanced, but I find it incredibly interesting. Actually needing to swap out the cost/speed stones based on the recipe you're making is really cool, and the careful stability balance feels like it could be super fun if it were a tiny bit more forgiving.

[ghost]

I managed to do a moderate infusion that left the altar switching between stable in very stable mid infusion by having max candles 6 max stabilizers and 4 cost stones. But I still doubt I’ll be able to do a very high infusion

[belathus]

It looks like you can have more than 6 stabilizers. From my experience, stabilizers do not block each other and can stabilize a matrix through solid blocks. In other words, you can have up to around 22 stabilizers on an infusion matrix.

[Reassembly]

@belathus I've just tested that - you can fit 23 within range of the Matrix. (Three below, four in each other direction.) It seems to work, although some of the stabilizers seemed to cut out midway through a Moderate infusion - that many Vis Generators in a small area might be putting a strain on the aura. I think I might get even better results after building a few dozen more Vis Batteries to keep the Generators fed.

@apmax @IMewco Agreed - while it's been interesting working out the details of how to perform infusions under such unforgiving conditions, the current balance seems to be tilted towards absurdly aggressive min-maxing.

[corhydrae]

@Reassembly I'm afraid just a few dozens of vis batteries will not be enough. In my tests with a series of runic shield infusions, each infusion used around 300k RF for +1 (moderate instability), 650k RF for +2 (moderate) and 1.1M RF for +3 (high). Another test with grinning devil infusion (very high) used around 1.8M RF. These values correspond to around 30 vis batteries for runic shield +1, around 65 for +2, around 110 for runic shield +3, and around 180 for grinning devil. (As a side note, 10 candles + 13 fully powered stabilizers were enough for the grinning devil infusion.) The balance does indeed seem to be off.

[ghost]

Do the stabilizers have to be directly facing the matrix?

[belathus]

They do.

[ghost]

How would one set up 20 stabilizers? There would need to be a block or wire connecting them to a power source between each stabilizer

[apmax]

If they take up 2 blocks each in the axis pointing towards the matrix, you could fit about 4 in each direction within an 8 block range, with 5 directions possible, for roughly 20 of them total. Needing 20 stabilizers seems wholly unintended, though it's very possible there will end up being more ways to improve the function of your infusion altar beyond the stabilizers, as more development occurs.

[ghost]

I managed to fit 16 and I’ll try to make a collapser hopefully I don’t run into any errors

Edit: I made a collapser while altar was switching between stable and very stable during infusion

[belathus]

Sounds like it worked. Awesome.

[yunruiwatts]

Related to the issue I created earlier - https://github.com/Azanor/thaumcraft-beta/issues/1093

[Reassembly]

@yunruiwatts Thanks for linking that - I was just thinking of looking that up myself. If Azanor is making Stabilizers able to accept power on five sides, that should increase the amount of stability they're able to output (without RF mod wires) - requiring fewer Stabilizers using more Generators each.

@corhydrae 180?!? ...I'm going to need more quartz.

EDIT: ...more quartz won't help me, as it turns out. For starters, I observed that with 23 Stabilizers+Generators and 60 fully-charged Vis Batteries, carrying out a "Moderate" infusion (Sounding II on a pickaxe) seemed to barely deplete the Batteries - while still becoming Unstable for about the second half. (Not Dangerously Unstable, just Unstable. Got a little Warp, but nothing exploded.) Without an external RF mod to provide wires, I'm still limited to 23 Generators - and those Generators can still only output 10 RF/tick.

In the case of your "Grinning Devil" example, 1.8M RF / (10 RF/tick) / (20 tick/second) / (23 Gen's) = 391 seconds, or about 6.5 minutes. I can't imagine a Grinning Devil infusion not going unstable if it ran for 6.5 minutes, at the least because something would have to have interrupted the infusion to make it take that long (which spikes instability by itself).

Even with effectively bottomless Vis and fully-stacked Stabilizers, the current Vis Generators simply cannot turn Vis into RF quickly enough to keep a Moderately-unstable infusion fully stabilized, let alone a Very High instability infusion...that is, without RF wires from an additional mod, or the (hopefully upcoming) ability to plug Generators directly into the sides of Stabilizers, in addition to the back.

[corhydrae]

@Reassembly I am fairly certain that the power of just 23 generators is not even near to the power required for very high instability infusions. Note that my grinning devil infusion test was actually finished in roughly a minute I think, because my setup was using 1300 RF/t (13 stabilizers * 100 RF/t/stabilizer), which corresponds to the power of 130 vis generators.

[ghost]

I think rather then increasing the power of a single stabilizer a good solution would be to provide better generators (20RF/t, 30RF/t, etc) and a way to transfer energy from afar (some sort of wire maybe) so that players will be able to max stabilizer power. Another enhancement I can think of is that stabilizers need not be facing the matrix directly instead anywhere within a 4 block radius or 8 block diamanter of the matrix. And maybe add a stabilizer limit as well so it doesn’t go out of hand. Upgraded stabilizers could also be another solution

[belathus]

Power (RF) storage could also help with limited power generation. As an example, a vibrant capacitor bank holds 25mRF. If 6 stabilizers took 1.8mRF for one infusion, you could do 13 such infusions with just one fully charged capacitor. With smaller storage or more stabilizers, you'll need to wait between infusions while your capacitor charges.

[aycfes]

well, in my opinion there should be RF batteries, the stabilizers should be slightly stronger, and, as you add more of them, the stability should grow exponentially, and not linearly.

[Azanor]

Hmm, looks like the numbers need some tweaking.

[Azanor]

Also I should note - having MORE than 10 candles/skulls/etc. around the altar will actually worsen the stability.

In b18 I will up the stability they provide to .02 and up the max amount to 12 (for a total of .24 stability). 12 is a much easier number to get a nice symmetrical formation with. I will also make it a bit clearer in the research entry that 16 is the limit.

[Reassembly]

@Azanor Did that change very recently? There doesn't seem to be anything in the code (b17) that would reduce stability for more than 10 candles. Also, after running a few tests (identical except for number of candles, restoring from backup between tests) there doesn't seem to be an observable difference between 10, 12, and 68 (symmetrical) candles - but there was a very noticeable loss of stability between 10 and 0 candles. If there was something added in b17 that was supposed to penalize excess candles, it doesn't seem to be having any effect.

[Azanor]

Nope, you are right. I checked the code again and more than the 10 candles won't do anything.