Redstone Engine

Redstone Engine
Name	Redstone Engine
Source Mod	BuildCraft
ID Name	BuildCraft\|Energy:engineBlock
Type	Engine
Stackable	Yes (64)
Blast Resistance	25.0
Hardness	5.0
Solid	Yes
Transparent	No
Affected by Gravity	No
Emits Light	No
Flammable	No
Required Tool

The Redstone Engine is the most basic and cheapest type of BuildCraft engine. To run, all that Redstone Engines require is a direct Redstone signal (e.g. from levers), but they also provide the least amount of power (1MJ/s or 0.05MJ/t), they cannot connect to Kinesis Pipes, but as of a recent BuildCraft update they can be daisy chained with other Redstone Engine. They will not accept a signal from Redstone Dust running past unless it directly connects to the engine.

Redstone Engines are most commonly used for powering wooden pipes to transport items, and BuildCraft pumps. Most machinery requires more energy than a single Redstone Engine can supply to be effective or will simply refuse to work with a redstone engine.

Railcraft and Thermal Expansion machines will accept power from a Redstone Engine.

Like the Stirling and the Combustion Engine, a Redstone Engine will explode when left running on a red stage for too long, which can happen when running without anything to output to or when they are being daisy chained, however the explosion radius is only 1 block and often results in simply 'dropping' the engine without even breaking it.

At red stage, when not being daisy chained, the Redstone Engine is unable to keep up with its cycle rate and will quickly revert to yellow, thus starting to fluctuate between yellow and red stage, causing a "blinking" effect. This state is harmless and does not mean the engine is about to explode.

Energy Output[edit]

Redstone Engines operating at peak stable (yellow/red) efficiency.

The numbers show how quickly the piston moves per tick. "Ticks to extract" refers to minimum ticks required for the engine to output energy. Meaning, a Redstone Engine in its blue stage will take 102 ticks to do one stroke and generate 1 MJ, whereas in its yellow stage it will take just 26 ticks to bring the same amount of power.

Max Output per Stroke	Ticks To Extract/Piston Speed
Max Output per Stroke	Blue	Green	Yellow	Red
1 MJ/s	102	52	26	14
1 MJ/s	0.01 MJ/t	0.02 MJ/t	0.04 MJ/t	0.08 MJ/t

Blue - 1 MJ every 5 seconds (0.01MJ/t).
Green - 1 MJ every 2.5 seconds (0.02MJ/t).
Yellow - 1 MJ every 1.25 seconds (0.04MJ/t).
Yellow/Red - 1 MJ every 1 second (0.05MJ/t).
Red - 1 MJ every 0.625 seconds (0.08MJ/t).

Energy Input[edit]

The amount of energy stored determines the colour of the piston. Blue indicates <25% of maximum storage capacity. Green indicates <50% of max. capacity. Yellow indicates <75% and red indicates <100%. The number below shows the corresponding Piston Speed. A Redstone Engine will accept a maximum of 50MJ at once.

Max Energy Storage	Max Input	Efficiency/Piston Speed
Max Energy Storage	Max Input	Blue	Green	Yellow	Red
1000 units	50	<=250E	<=500E	<=750E	<=1000E
1000 units	50	0.01 MJ/t	0.02 MJ/t	0.04 MJ/t	0.08 MJ/t

Energy for any Machine[edit]

Although not recommended, there are methods to use Redstone Engines to power any machine requiring MJ, but not directly.

These engines can be used to power a Magma Crucible to produce Lava for a Stirling Engine or Combustion Engine. To keep the pace of 1MJ/t for 1000 seconds it requires 6 Magma Crucibles with 4 Redstone Engines each (24 engines total), the other 2 sides of the Magma Crucible will be used to receive Cobblestone from an Igneous Extruder and to output lava for the engine. Since the Stirling Engine doesn't directly receive lava it requires the extra use of 2 Redstone Engines, one to power a Liquid Transposer (to fill lava buckets) and the other to power an emerald pipe filtered to only remove empty buckets from the Stirling Engine. With this method it's possible to have 1MJ/t from 24 Redstone Engines (26 engines when using a Striling Engine).

Other alternative is to have 3 Redstone Engines powering a Liquid Transposer to fill water buckets into a single Water Mill. The other sides of the Liquid Transposer will be used for water input (ex: Aqueous Accumulator), water buckets output and empty buckets input. Since the Water Mill uses the same slot for water buckets and empty buckets it requires the use of a single pipe for input and output, which requires a diamond pipe to sort water buckets that exits and empty buckets that enters the Liquid Transposer. One extra Redstone Engine is needed to power a wooden pipe to output empty buckets from the Water Mill. From this 4 Redstone Engines it gets an almost constant 1EU/t which can be used on a Electrical Engine with a Circuit Board with an Iron Tube to get, on average, almost 0.4 MJ/t, although the power comes from the Water Mill.