Reactor Outlet

alaindustrial:reactor_outlet

NuclearHVImplementednuclearreactormultiblockshieldingenergy-transfertier-hv

Summary

The Reactor Outlet is the socket a cable plugs into. It is the counterpart of the reactor inlet: water goes in there, power comes out here.

The block exists not out of a wish for one more block, but because without it the reactor could not be plugged into anything. By construction the controller stands in a wall, which leaves it with four faces buried in the shell, a fifth opening into a sealed room a cable could never leave, and a sixth — the front — that the mod's machine convention reserves for the player's panel and keeps energy-inert (R-NRG-03: a cable must never draw an arm across the interface). The result before stage 3: a reactor that ran perfectly, reported its output on the panel, filled its buffer — and had nowhere to connect.

The answer is the one the water loop already uses: if something has to cross a sealed shell, it crosses through a purpose-built piece of that shell. Water through the inlet, power out of the outlet.

What it does

A socket, not a battery. Its capacity is one tick of HV — the same sizing decision, and for the same reason, as the fluid inlet next door: the block has to behave as a hole in the wall that power passes through, not as a place worth hoarding in. The reactor itself is the store: 200,000 EU/FE.

The controller pushes; the outlet never pulls

There is one direction and it is fixed: the controller pushes, the outlet receives. An outlet has no idea which room it belongs to, and teaching it to go looking would mean a search from every socket every tick. The controller already walks its own shell when it scans the room — that is where it collects its outlets. One owner, one direction, and no back-reference to keep valid when a wall is rebuilt.

Sharing is even-handed rather than first-come: runs in rounds, each round hands every socket an equal share of what is left in the buffer, and the rounds stop as soon as one changes nothing. Otherwise a room with two sockets on opposite walls would starve whichever the scan happened to reach second, every time the buffer was short. A side benefit: a room whose sockets are all full costs a single pass.

The top-up happens every tick and regardless of whether the reactor is running: cutting the redstone signal scrams the reaction but does not stop what is already in the buffer from being handed out.

The list of outlets is rebuilt on the scan, not when a block is placed: = 40 ticks (2 s). A socket set into a wall joins the room within those two seconds rather than instantly.

How many outlets you need

One outlet gives up to 512 EU/FE/t — exactly what the reactor makes at the HV ceiling. What you have to count is not the socket but the cable: an outlet set into a flat wall has one face exposed outward, and a single electrum cable segment carries = 192 EU/FE/t (a cable's throughput is its segment buffer — the lesson of

The same principle as the water loop: six inlets in, six out, three sockets for power. The numbers differ (water is capped at 50 mB/t per line, power at 192 EU/FE/t) but the rule is one — the station's bottleneck sits in the wall, and every line costs a cell of shell.

An outlet on an edge or a corner of the shell has two or three faces exposed and can carry several cables, up to its own 512 EU/FE/t ceiling. That is a legitimate way to make do with fewer sockets, but it ties the whole power run to one corner of the room.

The room stays sealed

The outlet is a shell block, and the scanner reads it as casing — not as a port and not as glass. Three practical consequences:

it is never a breach — a socket may go into any cell of wall, floor or ceiling; it is outside the = 30 % limit — any number of sockets may be placed, and the shell loses nothing by it, neither toughness nor scanner standing; it carries formed/edge and switches to the bezel-less texture with the rest of the wall once the controller accepts the room (see "The seamless look").

Only the price limits you — that, and the fact that every socket eats a cell casing could have had.

Energy

The only path into the buffer is, called by the controller. It returns what was actually taken, so the controller can put the remainder into another socket instead of discarding it.

No face is reserved: a machine has a front to keep a cable off, an outlet has no front — the whole point of the block is that whichever face happens to stick out of the wall is the working one.

Block properties

The numbers match the rest of the shell: the socket must not be the spot where the wall is easiest to open.

Recipes

Craft — ×2 at a time.

P I P P = shielding plate ×4
I C I I = iron ingot ×4
P I P C = copper cable ×1

The copper cable in the middle is not a conductor but a statement of purpose: this is a piece of wall with a contact brought out through it. The shielding plates in the corners hold the same line as the rest of the shell, and the iron is cheap bulk that keeps the price out of palladium.

Progression

Tier: HV (the socket gives at the HV ceiling). Requires: shielding plates and a copper cable — the palladium branch and the most basic power tech. Unlocks: connecting the reactor to a grid. Without an outlet a reactor is a building closed on itself: fuel burns, the buffer fills, and nothing can take the power out.

Related

Reactor Controller — what fills the sockets, and why it cannot be the connection point itself. Reactor Inlet — the same idea for fluid: the one place water and steam cross the shell. Reactor Casing — the rest of the shell, the geometry, the seamless look and the crafting chain. Electrum Cable — what HV is drawn with; its 192 EU/FE/t is what sets the number of sockets. Copper Cable — what sits in the middle of the recipe.

Crafting

Shaped Crafting

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Reactor Outlet