Codex Reference Plant Parts

Plant Parts

Every plant is built from the same kinds of parts: a controller, casings, sight glass, ports and Energy Input Hatches. This page explains the parts that many plants share: what each port does, how much energy each hatch lets in, which casing belongs to which plant and how the walls join into one smooth surface. How to put a plant together in general is explained in Building Plants; the page of each plant lists its own size, parts and ports.

How ports work

A port is a wall block that connects the plant to the outside world. It holds nothing itself:

1. While the plant is not formed, the port is dead: pipes, cables and other mods find nothing in it.
2. When the controller has checked the structure and it is formed, the controller links every port of the plant.
3. From then on each port hands everything to the controller: a pipe that fills an Item Input Port fills the controller's input slots, a cable on an Energy Input Hatch charges the controller's buffer.
4. When the plant breaks (a block removed, a wrong block placed), the ports are unlinked at once.

Rules for every port:

• Only the outer face works. A port connects only on the side that faces out of the plant. Pipes on the other sides, or inside the plant, get nothing.
• Only in walls, floor or roof, never on an edge. Edges and corners take only the frame blocks of the plant. A port on an edge is a wrong block.
• Only the ports the plant uses. A port the plant has no use for stops it from forming with "Port not allowed here". The page of each plant names its ports.
• Clicking a port of a formed plant opens the controller's window, so you can look inside from any side.
• A click with the Quanta Linker on a port counts as a click on its controller, for example to add the plant to a Grid Monitor.

The ports

Port	What it does
Item Input Port	Pipes and hoppers put items into the plant's input slots, only items the plant accepts.
Item Output Port	Pipes take the products out of the plant's output slots.
Fluid Input Port	Fluids go into the plant's input tank (water, coolant, fuel, process fluids).
Fluid Output Port	Pipes take fluids out of the plant's output tank (steam, hot coolant, products).
Gas Input Port	Gases go into the plant through Pipster's gas pipes.
Gas Output Port	Pipes take the plant's gases out.
Energy Output Port	Generators and storage plants push their energy out of this port by themselves.
Heat Port	Passes process heat between the plant and the block in front of it.
Energy Input Hatch, tier 1 to 6	Lets energy into the plant, up to the rate of its tier.

Output ports are passive: the plant offers its products, and a pipe in extract mode pulls them. The Energy Output Port is the exception: the plant pushes its output through all of its Energy Output Ports together, shared fairly between them. More output ports do not push more energy; they only give you more places for cables.

Tip

Input and output in one recipe An input port and its output port turn into each other in the crafting grid, one for one: an Item Input Port alone makes an Item Output Port, and the Item Output Port alone makes an Item Input Port again. The same goes for fluid and gas ports, and for the Energy Output Port and the tier 2 hatch.

Recipe: see JEI, REI or EMI.

Heat ports

A Heat Port works in the direction its plant needs:

• Plants that make heat give it out through their heat ports to the block in front: the Solar Receiver, the Tokamak, the Little Star, the Gas Engine, the Gas Turbine, the Molten-Salt Store, and the SMES with the heat of a protected quench.
• Plants that use heat take it in through their heat ports: the Industrial Boiler, the Foundry, the Tunnel Furnace, the Chemical Plant and the Molten-Salt Store.

Two plants connect when the heat port of one faces the heat port of the other. A Stirling Generator in front of a giving heat port takes the heat as well. Blocks of other mods can hand heat to a QNet heat port through QNet's public heat interface. In the Foundry, 1 HU of process heat replaces 1 E.

Recipe: see JEI, REI or EMI.

Energy Input Hatches

Plants take energy only through Energy Input Hatches. Each hatch lets in at most the rate of its tier per tick, whatever is connected to it; the tiers match the cable tiers of Pipster.

Hatch	Most energy per tick
Energy Input Hatch (Tier 1)	1,000 E/t
Energy Input Hatch (Tier 2)	8,000 E/t
Energy Input Hatch (Tier 3)	64,000 E/t
Energy Input Hatch (Tier 4)	512,000 E/t
Energy Input Hatch (Tier 5)	4,096,000 E/t
Energy Input Hatch (Tier 6)	32,768,000 E/t

• No plant demands a tier. Every plant forms with any hatch. If a plant needs more than one hatch lets in, use a higher tier or add hatches.
• Several hatches add up. Each hatch has its own limit, so two tier 3 hatches let in twice as much as one. Feed them from separate cables, otherwise one cable still carries only its own rate.
• The Build Projector shows a suggested tier. The plan of a plant places hatches of the tier its normal use needs; you may build any other tier instead.
• Telemetry shows the hatches. The chart button in the title row of a plant's window opens its telemetry. Its last line reads "Energy in: …, … hatches (… full)": the energy of the last second and how many hatches ran at their limit. Point at the line to see every hatch as "Hatch 1: … of …" (for the first 8 hatches). A hatch that is always full is the bottleneck: add one or use the next tier.

Some plants allow only a few hatches:

Plant	Most Energy Input Hatches
Foundry Controller	4
Chemical Plant Controller	4
Assembly Complex Controller	4
Agricultural Facility Controller	4
Deep Core Extractor Controller	4
Matter Reconstructor Controller	8
Particle Facility Controller	8
Quantum Facility Controller	8

One hatch more than the limit stops the plant from forming with "Too many ports of one kind". The Tunnel Furnace allows at most 5 Heat Ports in the same way. Plants without a line here have no limit of their own.

The tier 1 hatch is made from copper wire on an Industrial Casing. The tier 2 hatch needs redstone dust below the casing as well, or comes from a Boiler Casing and a block of redstone. Every tier from 3 up is made from the hatch of the tier below.

			→ Energy Input Hatch (Tier 1)

			→ Energy Input Hatch (Tier 3)

Note

The Rift uses the same blocks The structures of the Rift are built with the same Item, Fluid and Gas Output Ports and the same Energy Input Hatches.

Casings

Each tier has its own casing. Plants without a special casing of their own are built from the casing of their tier; other plants have their own casings (boiler, turbine, reactor casing and more), which their pages describe.

Casing	Tier	Walls of
Industrial Casing	I	Chemical Plant, Assembly Complex, Agricultural Facility, Gasifier
Reinforced Casing	II	Centrifuge Cascade, Battery Hall
Precision Casing	III	Matter Reconstructor, Particle Facility, Deep Core Extractor, Warehouse
Resonant Casing	IV	no plant walls; a component of tier IV blocks and of the Quantum Casing
Quantum Casing	V	Quantum Facility

Each casing is made from the one below it: four Reinforced Casings from Industrial Casings, polymer sheets and a Basic Circuit, and so on up to the Quantum Casing.

			→ Reinforced Casing

Tip

Casings of other mods A data pack can add blocks to the tag qnet:multiblock/casing; they then count as Industrial Casing in every plant. The tag qnet:multiblock/industrial_sight_glass does the same for sight glass.

Sight glass

Sight glass takes the place of casing in walls, floors and roofs (never on edges), so you can see the life inside a running plant.

• Industrial Sight Glass: the glass of most plants (QuantaWorks plants, boiler, gasifier, turbines, storage halls). Two from an Industrial Casing and four glass blocks.
• Shielded Sight Glass: the glass of the plants with radiation (fission reactor, tokamak, SMES, the black hole plants, dimensional store). It also shields radiation like a block of lead, also outside plants.

	Glass
Glass		Glass	→ Industrial Sight Glass
	Glass

Inspection Hatch

The Inspection Hatch is a wall part of many large plants (boiler, turbines, gasifier, centrifuge cascade, fission reactor, tokamak, storage plants and more). A click on it opens the window of the plant it belongs to, so you do not have to walk to the controller.

Recipe: see JEI, REI or EMI.

Connected textures

The walls of a plant join into one surface:

• A casing joins the same casing and every other part of its wall (glass, ports, hatches, controllers and the plant's components) and draws no frame towards them. Those parts keep their own frame or rim.
• Two different casings keep a frame between them, so two plants side by side stay apart.
• Sight glass shows no faces between two glass blocks, so a window of several blocks looks like one pane.

Tips

Tip

Plan your pipes before you close the walls Ports work only on their outer face. Put them where your pipes and cables will run, and keep the block in front of each port free for the pipe.

Important

Hatches limit, cables carry A full hatch never takes more, whatever the cable could carry. If a plant shows "Waiting for energy" while your generators have power to spare, open the telemetry and look at the hatches.