Vacuum Collector
alaindustrial:vacuum_collector
Summary
The tier-I Vacuum Collector draws loose dropped items into a nine-slot buffer. Item pipes on its top or bottom take them out by themselves, with no face to configure. It is a powered item source for automated farms.
Purpose
Tier I gathers dropped items on farms. It does not break or move blocks and does not reach into containers. What it collects stays inside until a pipe, a hopper below it or a player takes it out.
Energy
- Input: LV, through the lid and the floor only. The four sides are funnels: a cable does not connect to them.
- Use while working: 8 EU/FE/t, paid per pulse: 8 × 5 = 40 EU/FE every 5 ticks.
- Energy buffer: 800 EU/FE; takes up to LV voltage.
- Energy is spent only for a pulse that pulled or picked up something. An empty field, a full buffer or drops with nowhere to go cost 0 EU/FE.
- Without enough energy the whole pulse is skipped: drops stay in the world, their lifetime untouched.
Collection
- Server side only.
- The reach is a cube centred on the block, 5 blocks out along each axis; every candidate is checked by position against the same cube. It is not a sphere: a corner of the cube is in reach.
- Only live item drops with a non-empty stack, past their pickup delay and not in lava are considered. Players, experience, other entities, container contents and world blocks are left alone.
- Every 5 ticks at most 4 drops are chosen: the nearest to the centre first, ties by UUID. A drop the buffer cannot hold is neither chosen nor pulled.
- A drop touching the block (its box meets the block's box grown by 0.25) is picked up. The others moving towards the centre — the electromagnet's pull, never a teleport.
- Exactly as many items as fit are moved into the buffer: matching stacks (item and components) grow first, then empty slots are used. The rest stays in the world as the same drop.
- The collector never changes a drop's pickup delay, age or owner.
- A drop that has not come closer for eight pulses in a row (behind a wall, in a hole) is let go for 2 seconds, so a stuck drop does not cost energy at every pulse.
- The world is not loaded for it: the entity search sees loaded chunks only.
Buffer and transport
- 9 output slots; ordinary stacks up to 64 items each, up to 576 ordinary items in all. Each item keeps its own stack limit.
- The machine screen shows a 3×3 grid; items can be taken out but not put in.
- Nothing can be put in by hand, hopper or pipe. The lid and the floor expose the nine slots for extraction only; the four sides are funnels — no items pass through them and a pipe does not connect to them.
- The collector pushes nothing anywhere. An item pipe pulls from the container next to it by itself; since the collector only gives, a plain pipe on its lid or under its floor carries items away with no face configured.
- Drops are still drawn in from every side: the connections are limited, the collection zone is not.
- An eye button right of the grid shows the player who pressed it the cube of the collection zone in the world; other players do not see it.
State and recovery
Slots and EU/FE are saved with the block, as for every machine of the mod. The pulse schedule is not saved: after loading, the collector pulses on its first tick. World entities are saved by vanilla; the collector keeps no references to them.
Block properties
The model is the chosen concept B2: a flat lid, a cold grey and graphite casing, four deep recessed side funnels, no external ports or feet. The collision box is a full 16×16×16 cube. The LIT key shows that the last pulse worked: a green status pixel lights under every funnel. There is no emissive material.
Because the funnels are recessed, the block hides none of its neighbours' faces (an empty occlusion shape) and lets light through like glass without shading its neighbours: otherwise the recessed walls render black — the lesson of the block breaker.
Crafting and progression
Shaped crafting PHP / EXE / PMP: an electromagnet (X) in the centre, surrounded by iron plates (P), a hopper (H), two electronic circuits (E) and a machine casing (M). The recipe unlocks once the player holds all five ingredients. This document specifies tier I only.
Checks
Shared VacuumCollectorScenarios scenarios (both loaders): picking up a touching drop, pulling without a teleport, the cubic reach, the pickup delay, a full and a partly free buffer with the rest left as the same drop, two collectors side by side, no energy, the nearest four per pulse paid once, the 5-tick period, a plain pipe on the lid carrying the buffer into a chest, no pipe or cable joining a side, the saved buffer, and no input through any face.
Crafting
Shaped Crafting
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Vacuum Collector
Used in
Shaped Crafting
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Electric Mob Trap