Pipeworks

Supplies a complete set of nice, round mesh-based water pipes, boxy item-transport tubes, and devices that work with them.

Building Machines / Electronics

Download (1.1 MB)
For Luanti 5.5 and above

How do I install this?

Reviews

Review

Do you recommend this mod?

  • Tubeswork, but pipes don't

    This mod is great for setting up factories to automatically process materials, I created a storage system using chests and sorter tubes.

    Unfortunately, the liquid (pipes) part of the mod doesn't work that well, which is ironic

    0 comments
  • Great, but...

    So this is essentially Minecraft's Buildcraft mod, minus the machines and power system. Which is fine, because having to convert between BC and IC power was a hassle anyway.

    As useful as this mod is, it does have its shortcomings:

    • Accelerator tubes are rather expensive, requiring 8 iron, 4 copper, and 19-ish plastic sheets (although you get those back) (assuming I did my math right) each.
    • High-priority tubes, while supposedly a low-cpu alternative to using filter tubes for directing things, don't actually do anything as far as I can tell. Items will exit them even in directions that aren't visually connected to adjacent tubes. Maybe I'm doing it wrong, but there aren't any directions for them as far as I can tell.
    • One-way tubes only connect on their fronts and backs. This means that while they do have their uses, if one wants to replicate the function of Buildcraft's iron tubes (which accept items from all directions but only output them in one), one's only option is filter tubes.
    • Tubes overall seem to cause quite a bit of lag when used en masse, with items continuing past pipe corners before getting rubber-banded back in. This even happens in singleplayer.
    • Sometimes, the visible connections on tubes don't get updated like they should. The most common case for this is when connecting one-way tubes. An easy fix for this would be to have pipes re-check their connections when hit with a screwdriver.

    As for the good:

    • Filter pipes are much less expensive than in BC, costing a tube segment and 4 mese shards, versus BC's cost of 1 glass and 2 diamonds. This is good, since you'll be using them a lot on account of the issues mentioned in the previous section.
    • Teleport pipes. That's it.
    • No engines needed for item extraction/output.

    This mod isn't without its flaws, but you need to have it if you use technic (or just want to do any sort of automatic item transport.

    0 comments
  • The core of automation

    Pipeworks, aka Tubeworks (see the last paragraph), is the best item transportation mod I've ever seen. While Minecraft-like hoppers could only transfer items down, Pipeworks could transfer items in different directions, or even sort them on-the-fly.

    Many mods, like Technic, have support for Pipeworks, or even heavily depend on it, as Pipeworks provides an easily usable API for automation. You couldn't imagine how important Pipeworks is on the LinuxForks Minetest Server; most large factories and shops use Pipeworks to deliver items. Just be aware of the lag, which is the only disadvantage of installing Pipeworks on your own Minetest server.

    An ironic fact is, as Rubenwardy mentioned, that the water pipe sucks, though the mod is named "Pipeworks". You should never download this mod if you are expecting a water transfer system, but you should definitely install this mod (the "Tubeworks" mod) if you want to move items around.

    0 comments
  • Nice mod for basic automation

    Let tubes do heavy lifting, sorting and filtering. Nice automation mod especially when coupled with Technic

    0 comments
  • Great Mod, though has some issues.

    This is the best item transportation mod but has a lack of a "splitter tube" (unless you use the lua tube but that is not very easy to configure). Other than that I have yet to see another problem. Thanks for a great mod!

    1 comments
  • Nice

    I like it, but I love the teleporters tubes: Too useful. I allowed me to make an E-mail system. Very nice and goes perfectly with mesecons. And, could you make an add-on with tubes that can take and place stuff in player invetory, because it would be sooooooooo helpful. Great mod.

    0 comments
  • Wonderful mod

    I have used this mod for so many things. My only disappointment (and a very minor one at that) is that the fluid storage tank doesn't work at all no matter how it's connected. I also wish that the spigot created a watersource block when it empties into a container such as a bucket or one made from other blocks.

    0 comments
  • Highly useful and widely used, however....

    Autocrafters cannot accept item groups in their crafting grid, for example leaves, tree, wood, and many other groups which work naturally with crafting guides and user interfaces. (Listed on GitHub)

    Injectors and tubes are not smart, and do not provide any versions that are smart which don't require extensive digilines detectors and Lua, which can know to stop pushing items if the next-in-line storage or tubeline are inoperable or full. It can even be lazy and deactivate the line on single spillage.

    Injectors erroneously push items into the wrong containers, possibly skipping or losing instructions.

    Tube routing is not intelligent, causing backups, spills, breakages, empty machines, and other problems. There should be automatic load-balancing with a toggle to select the old random switching or splitting/ round-robin.

    Vacuum and other tube segments cannot properly interact with source liquids and flowing blocks, or falling blocks.

    Large or complex constructs using pipeworks are known to have a major impact on server performance, and which some objects become out of sync or break when flooded. Abstracting the systems out of physical gamespace, and generalizing, network/ route mapping, scheduling, balancing, backgrounding, and offloading may have a positive impact on any server that runs this. Additional ways to allow servers the freedom to use pipeworks may include removing or reducing active objects and activities, reducing the thrashing of registered entities, simplifying and optimizing looping scripts, and scheduling all calculations while accurately tracking simulation speed and correcting for hiccups.

    There are probably other common-use-case issues as well that are intuitively and reasonably desired which other players have discovered.

    5 comments
  • Awesome mod

    Must-have for every automated factory

    0 comments
  • Very useful for every automated system

    • good graphics
    • many ways of automate a huge amount of work, like storage system, farms, crafting, etc
    • good integration with other mods (eg mesecons and technic)
    • pretty good API

    Seriously, this mod is near perfect :)

    0 comments
  • minetest mod

    cool mod ok im you like!

    12 comments

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