Universal Duct and Storage

Universal Duct & Native Storage

Stage 8 introduces the Universal Duct — one duct that carries items and fluids on a single network — and native storage that the network indexes.

Universal Duct

The universal duct is the new default conduit. A single line carries both items and fluids (energy stays on Energy Cables); each resource is routed to the matching neighbour — items to inventories, fluids to fluid storages. It is cheap to craft (8 per recipe).

• One line, two media. Internally the duct joins both the item and fluid networks at the same positions, so you no longer run parallel item and fluid lines.
• Faces. Set per-face input / output / disabled with the Configurator; the mode applies to both items and fluids on that face.
• Item filter. Bare-hand right-click opens a whitelist: drop sample items into the slots and only those pass; an empty filter passes everything. (Per-face fluid filters are a later refinement.)
• Interop. A universal duct placed against a legacy Item Duct merges with its item network, and against a Fluid Duct merges with its fluid network — so old and new lines mix freely.

Item Storage

The Item Storage block is a native network warehouse: a 54-slot store that the network reads and writes.

• Right-click to open its double-chest GUI.
• On the network. Universal ducts route items into and out of it, and the Storage Request Terminal aggregates its contents into the searchable network index — no extra setup, because NeroLogistics discovers inventories through the vanilla container contract.
• Interop. Hoppers, and the standard item capability (on all three loaders — Fabric, NeoForge and Forge), expose it to other mods; when AE2 is present its interface is just another inventory on the network, read the same way — no hard AE2 dependency, no duplication.

Roadmap (Stage 8 follow-ups)

These are designed and scheduled but not in this build:

• Gas as a third universal-duct medium (pending a confirmed gas capability / Mekanism interop).
• Native fluid tanks and gas containers as first-class storage endpoints.
• Typed storage cells (item / fluid / gas) with capacity tiers and partition / priority, held in storage drive/host blocks.
• A controller-unified network index (the controller aggregating all storage into one index) and deeper AE2 crafting delegation.

See also

• Network Controller — manages the network and scales its throughput.
• Conduits — legacy item/fluid ducts and energy cables.
• Terminals — the storage request terminal that indexes native storage.