Applied Energistics 2 p2p tunnels for Dummies
Introduction
This article contains a basic guide to understand just enough about ae2’s p2p tunnels to use them and enjoy the following advantages :
- Overcome channel limitations
- Save dense cables
- (almost) infinitely expand your ae2 network
- flex on ae2 scrubs
/!\ Please note that the guide will only cover the ME variant of p2p tunnels.
Guide
The main purpose of using p2p tunnels is overcoming the 8 channels limit on ae2 cables. To demonstrate how they work, we will go over a typical channel issue :
We’re trying to connect the molecular assemblers and the row of ME Drives to the controller using regular cables. This however will pose a problem since 4 assemblers + 6 Drives = 10 > 8 available channels. We can predict that the two drives that are the furthest from the controller won’t be connected to the network.
As expected, the rightmost drives are not connected (indicated by the red cubes). This is when p2p tunnels come in. Theses devices allow you to wirelessly ‘transport’ channels from one point of the network to another. What we want to do here, is ‘transport’ the channels of the row of drives to a dense cable hooked straight to the controller.
To start, place a p2p tunnel at the part of the network that can’t connect. the cable need to go ‘inside’ the widest part of the p2p, just like so :
Now that the channels entered the first p2p, they need to exit somewhere. You now need to place a dense cable directly on the controller and place the second p2p tunnel with the widest part facing the dense cable.
This way the channels that entered to first tunnel will exit the second and go into the dense cable.
/!\ Important step /!\ Now, you need to link the p2p tunnels. To do so, you need a Memory Card. Once you got it, Shift+Right Click the EXITING tunnel (closest to the controller) and then Right Click the ENTERING tunnel (closest to the drives). If done correctly, a message in the chat will notify you that the configuration has been copied succesfully.
For the last step, you need to connect the back of both tunnels to your network, I used glass cable for demonstration purposes :
If you’ve done everything accordingly, everything should be connected to your network:
As you can see, the rightmost drives are now online and the pink line represents how the channels of the drives travel wirelessly from one p2p to another.
Final Notes
Once you’ve understood the principle behind p2p tunnels, do not hesitate to abuse them, they are super usefull !
In fact, each tunnel can carry 32 channels, and you can put 32 tunnels on a single dense cable, wich means that you can connect up to 32*32=1024 channels per dense cable !
The reason behind me writing this guide is that every other one I found sucked and either when into way too much details about advanced networking, or poorly explained the basic principles with overly complex setups. So I hope that this guide will help even a tiny bit.
Yes, I know that refined storage is a thing.
If you have any suggestion or spotted a mistake, please let me know.
Thank you for reading.