Not Enough Patterns in FTB Evolution 2

Not Enough Patterns (NEP for short) makes automating other mods much simpler by using AE2's built-in Pattern Providers. You encode a pattern for a process, drop it in a Pattern Provider, and your network drives the machine and its recipes.^[1]

This pack ships version 0.6.0 of the mod.^[2]

How it works

Every integration is a single auto-crafting step. A Pattern Provider feeds the machine, then collects the result and marks the step done.^[3]

• Point the Provider at the block that the machine's page names. Sometimes that is the machine itself, and sometimes it is the block the machine works over, like a Depot or a Crafting Core.^[3]
• Most modded machines leave their result in their output buffer, so you install an Import Card on the Provider to let it collect the result. Without one, some crafts may never finish.^[3][4]
• The Machine Hub is for machines whose inventories are scattered across several blocks. You link its hatches, ports and buffers to the Hub, put a Pattern Provider against the Hub, and your network sees the whole machine as one inventory.^[5]

Supported mods

Each supported mod gets its own section in the in-game guide, and a section only appears while its mod is installed. The guide pages in the sources cover Mystical Agriculture and Apothic Enchanting.^[1][6][7]

• Mystical Agriculture: infusion and awakening run as ME auto-crafting steps, either on the real altars with their pedestals or on a Matrix.^[7]
• Apothic Enchanting: enchantment infusion runs as an auto-crafting step on the Table of the Raven, whatever shelves are around it.^[6]

Most mods that NEP supports also have a Matrix machine, a late-game one-block solution to that mod's crafting methods. The only Matrix listed so far is the Infused Awakening Matrix for Mystical Agriculture.^[3]

Not Enough Patterns (NEP) turns a machine's craft into a single auto-crafting step on your ME network. A Pattern Provider feeds the machine, then collects the result and marks the step done. Here is the order I would set things up in.^[3]

First, make an Import Card

Most modded machines leave their result in an output buffer, and without something to collect it some crafts may never finish. Slot an nep:import_card into a Pattern Provider and that Provider collects its own results. It only takes the exact results it is waiting for, so it leaves everything else in the machine alone.^[3][4]

If you cancel a job partway through, the card still collects what was already sent out for a short period afterwards. That grace period is 200 ticks, set by provider.importCardGrace, which is the same as the mod default.^[4][9]

Second, build a Pattern Decoder

This pack has patternDecoder.requireDecoder switched on. That means a Pattern Encoding Terminal only encodes a NEP pattern when your network holds a powered nep:pattern_decoder carrying that mod's Encoding Module. Anything else encodes as a plain Processing Pattern.^[9]

The pack made the Decoder pricier to run than the mod default. It takes up 4 channels (default 1) and draws 100 AE per tick while idle (default 5), so plan your network for it.^[9]

Third, add the Encoding Modules

Decoder requirements are switched on in this pack for both Apothic Enchanting and Mystical Agriculture. Patterns for a mod only encode on a network whose Decoder carries that mod's module. The pack adds both module recipes as fabricating recipes.^[6][7][8][9]

• nep:apothic_enchanting_encoding_module: put a Pattern Provider against any face of the Enchanting Table of the Raven. No shelves are needed, and only infusion recipes can be automated.^[6][8][10]
• nep:mystical_agriculture_encoding_module: covers infusion on an Infusion Altar with eight Pedestals, and awakening on an Awakening Altar with four Pedestals and four Vessels.^[7][8]
• For awakening, add an Import Card to the Provider so the finished item comes back off the altar's output slot.^[11]

Later, the Infused Awakening Matrix

The nep:infused_awakening_matrix is NEP's late-game one-block answer for Mystical Agriculture. It runs both infusion and awakening in a single block with no altar.^[3][7]

Not Enough Patterns lets AE2 Pattern Providers drive machines from other mods. You encode a pattern for a process, drop it in a Pattern Provider, and the network runs the machine and its recipe. Every integration is a single auto-crafting step: the Provider feeds the machine, collects the result and marks the step done.^[1][3]

How a craft flows

Each machine's page names the block to point the Provider at. Sometimes that is the machine itself, and sometimes it is the block the machine works over, like a Depot or a Crafting Core. Most modded machines leave their result in an output buffer, so you slot an nep:import_card into the Provider to let it collect the result. Without one, some crafts may never finish.^[3][4]

The Provider remembers which recipe it still owes and which side it sent the pattern to. It collects only those exact results, from that exact side, up to the amount it is still waiting for. Anything else in the inventory is left alone, including ingredients it just staged for a job in progress. Two Providers working the same block never take each other's items.^[4]

Besides AE2's own Pattern Provider (block and cable form), the card fits Advanced AE's Advanced and Small Advanced Pattern Providers, ExtendedAE's Extended Pattern Provider and MEGA Cells' MEGA Pattern Provider.^[4]

Pattern Decoder and Encoding Modules

The nep:pattern_decoder is a network block that decides whether your Pattern Encoding Terminal writes a mod's NEP patterns. In this pack patternDecoder.requireDecoder is true, so the terminal only encodes a mod's NEP patterns when a powered Decoder on the same network carries that mod's Encoding Module. Both Apothic Enchanting and Mystical Agriculture are gated, through patternDecoder.mods.apothic_enchanting and patternDecoder.mods.mysticalagriculture.^[9][12]

• The Decoder takes up 4 channels in this pack (the mod default is 1) and draws 100 AE per tick (the mod default is 5). It only counts while it is powered and has its channel.^[9][12]
• Each module fits only its own slot. One Decoder covers the whole network, and several Decoders on one network add their modules together.^[12]
• A wireless terminal counts as part of the network it is linked to, so it encodes whatever that network's Decoders unlock while it is in range.^[12]
• Without the module, encoding never fails. The terminal writes a plain AE2 Processing Pattern with the same ingredients and result. Patterns already encoded keep working whether or not a Decoder is around.^[12]

Pattern conversion

Any NEP pattern can be crafted back into a plain AE2 Processing Pattern with the same ingredients and result: put one pattern alone in a crafting grid. This is on in this pack (patterns.processingPatternConversion). It helps when you want to feed a recipe to something that is not a NEP machine.^[9][14]

The converted pattern remembers its recipe. Put it in the pattern slot of a Pattern Encoding Terminal and press Encode to get the NEP pattern back. Patterns that keep an ingredient, such as Deploying and Filling, will not convert.^[14]

Mystical Agriculture machines

An Infusion Altar needs nine items at once and an Awakening Altar needs nine across three kinds of block. A Provider cannot reach a pedestal, so the whole craft goes in as a single push. The altar then starts itself, with no redstone pulse needed.^[11][15]

• Infusion: an Infusion Altar with eight Pedestals, using an Infusion Pattern. The centre item goes into the altar and one ingredient goes on each pedestal. The altar runs one craft at a time.^[7][15]
• Awakening: an Awakening Altar with four Pedestals and four Essence Vessels, using an Awakening Pattern. The four essences are part of the pattern, so the network sources them and the push fills the vessels. A vessel holds 40, and the vessels must be empty when a pattern arrives.^{[7][9][11][16]}
• Both altars leave the result in their own output slot, so add an Import Card to the Provider. The pack has both modules switched on through modules.mysticalagriculture.infusion and modules.mysticalagriculture.awakening.^[9][11][15]

A push is refused and retried later whenever the altar cannot take a whole craft. The usual causes are an input already in the altar, a finished item still in the output slot, a pedestal or vessel that is not empty, or the wrong number of pedestals or vessels.^[11][15]

Infused Awakening Matrix

The nep:infused_awakening_matrix runs both altar types in one block, with no pedestals, vessels or ring to build. Put a Pattern Provider against any face and it buffers the ingredients as they arrive. It is an ME machine that joins the network itself and returns finished items to the Provider on its own, so it needs no Import Card.^[7][16]

• Power: it takes no FE. The only running cost is ME network drain, which this pack raises to 50,000 AE per tick while crafting (mod default 500) and 1,000 AE per tick while idle (mod default 10). Progress stops whenever the network cannot supply that much.^[9][16]
• Channels: it takes up 15 channels, and anything above 8 has to pass through dense cables. A network that cannot spare them leaves it offline.^[9][16]
• Speed: it spends 20 ticks on a craft, whichever recipe it runs. Both altars normally take 100 ticks.^[9]
• Essence tanks: four tanks replace the Essence Vessels. Each takes one essence at a time and is free for any other essence once empty. Capacity is 40 per essence here, the same as a vessel, and can be raised as far as 512 with modules.mysticalagriculture.infusedAwakeningMatrix.essenceTankCapacity.^[9][16]
• Auto-request is on, so a Matrix left short of materials pulls or requests them from the ME network. If it is turned off, a short Matrix stalls until you restock it by hand.^[9]

Essence reaches the tanks through the input buffer, whether it comes from your hand, a hopper or an export bus. Full tanks never refuse a pattern, because spare essence waits in the buffer until a tank frees up. Infusion recipes never touch the tanks, and only the essences an awakening recipe names for its vessels are banked.^[16]

You can also start a craft by hand. Open the Matrix, find the recipe in the recipe viewer and press the transfer button. The ingredients come out of your inventory all at once or not at all, and holding shift queues several crafts at once, up to sixty-four, limited by what your inventory can pay for and what the input buffer has room to stage. The result waits in the output buffer, and no network crafting job is created. This relies on machines.manualCrafting, which is true in this pack.^[9][16]

The screen has Clear Pending Recipes, which drops every craft the Matrix still owes and cancels the network jobs waiting on it, and Empty Buffers, which returns everything staged to your inventory. A Comparator beside the block reads the output buffer from empty up to 15.^[16]

Apothic Enchanting

Apothic Enchanting infusion runs on the Enchanting Table of the Raven. Put a Pattern Provider against any face of the table. You do not need bookshelves, because the table's eterna, quanta and arcana are set to whatever the recipe asks for, and your own values are put back afterwards. You do not need an Import Card either. The craft finishes in one tick and the result goes straight back to the Provider that asked for it. No other enchanting table accepts patterns.^[9][10]

Only infusion automates, because ordinary enchanting gives three random offers with no fixed result. Encode it by picking an infusion recipe from JEI's Enchanting category in a Pattern Encoding Terminal, which makes an Enchanting Pattern that names the recipe. A plain processing pattern with the same three inputs is upgraded to one when you encode it.^[10]

Infusion recipes are always the third offer, so they cost 3 lapis, and the experience varies per recipe. Since no player is at the table, a pattern pays that experience as a fluid or as bottles. In this pack modules.apothic_enchanting.infusion.preferExperienceFluid is true, so the pattern asks for the first fluid with the #c:experience tag and falls back to Bottles o' Enchanting if none is loaded. The table accepts either payment.^[9][10]

• Required eterna 0: 26 experience points.^[10]
• Required eterna 20: 155 experience points.^[10]
• Required eterna 60: 1091 experience points.^[10]
• Required eterna 80: 1631 experience points.^[10]

The pack changes both payment rates. A point costs 100 mB of experience fluid (mod default 20), and a Bottle o' Enchanting pays 50 points (mod default 70). Lower bottle values make automated infusion more expensive. The fluid and bottle columns in the mod's own guide table assume the defaults, so expect different amounts here. A pattern always pays the full cap, so an automated infusion never costs less than doing it by hand.^[9][10]

If nothing happens, check that the Provider is on the Table of the Raven and that the pattern carries the lapis and the experience. The experience must be a #c:experience fluid or Bottles o' Enchanting. Where two recipes fit the same inputs and result, a processing pattern is refused, so encode from JEI instead. You can also turn on debug.verbose_logging, which is false in this pack, to log why each push was refused.^[9][10]

Machine Hub

The Machine Hub presents several linked inventories (item hatches, fluid hatches, output hatches) as one inventory, so a Pattern Provider can load a multiblock whose parts are separate blocks. This pack switches it off: machineHub.enabled is false, which means a placed Hub stops offering storage and Providers ignore it. The pack also removes its recipes and hides the Machine Hub and Hub Linker from the recipe viewers, so you will not meet it in normal play.^[5][9][13]

Not Enough Patterns doesn't have a long ladder of tiers in this pack. It has a small starter kit, a set of encoding modules, and one late-game block at the top. Here's how that breaks down, using the recipes this pack actually ships.^[3][8]

Tier 1: the starter kit

The nep:import_card is the first thing worth making. Slot it into a Pattern Provider and that Provider collects its own results. Most modded machines leave their output in their own buffer, and without a card some crafts may never finish.^[3][4]

The nep:pattern_decoder is a placeable block, and it's what your encoding modules go into later. Its recipe uses the mod's own decoder_shaped type. nep:matrix_circuitry is crafted with a plain shaped recipe from the mod.^[8][17]

Tier 2: encoding modules

The nep:apothic_enchanting_encoding_module and nep:mystical_agriculture_encoding_module are where the pack steps in. The pack removes the mod's own recipes for both and adds its own fabricating recipes instead, so use the recipes below, not the mod defaults.^[8][13]

The Apothic Enchanting module matters when a server turns on Require Decoder. In that case, Apothic Enchanting patterns only encode on a network whose Pattern Decoder carries this module. Without it they encode as plain Processing Patterns.^[6]

What the Apothic module unlocks

It lets AE2 run enchantment infusion as an auto-crafting step. You put a Pattern Provider against the Table of the Raven, and no shelves are needed. Only infusion automates, and only that table accepts the patterns.^[6][10]

Infusion always costs 3 lapis, and the experience cost depends on the recipe. A pattern always pays the cap, so an automated infusion never costs less than the same craft done by hand.^[10]

• Required eterna 0: 3 levels charged, 26 experience, 520mB of fluid, or 1 bottle.^[10]
• Required eterna 20: 20 levels, 155 experience, 3,100mB, or 3 bottles.^[10]
• Required eterna 60: 60 levels, 1,091 experience, 21,820mB, or 16 bottles.^[10]
• Required eterna 80: 80 levels, 1,631 experience, 32,620mB, or 24 bottles.^[10]

Tier 3: the Infused Awakening Matrix

The top of the mod's progression is the nep:infused_awakening_matrix. NEP's guide describes matrices as a late-game "one-block solution" to a mod's crafting methods, and this is the one currently listed, for Mystical Agriculture. Its block only drops when Mystical Agriculture is loaded.^[3][18]

Not available in this pack

The nep:machine_hub and nep:hub_linker are not part of the progression here. The pack removes every recipe that makes or uses them and hides them from recipe viewers, so you won't find them in JEI.^[13]

All of these options live in config/nep-server.toml. This pack changes several values from the mod defaults, mostly around power draw, channel use and the cost of automated infusion. The rest are left as they come.^[9]

Values this pack changed

• machineHub.scanBudget is 16 here (mod default 128). It limits how many blocks the Machine Hub's scan may walk through before stopping. The config notes you can raise it for a machine larger than the budget covers.^[9]
• modules.apothic_enchanting.infusion.experiencePerBottle is 50 (mod default 70). It decides how many Bottles o' Enchanting a pattern asks for, and lower values make automated infusion more expensive.^[9]
• modules.apothic_enchanting.infusion.millibucketsPerExperience is 100 (mod default 20). It sets how many millibuckets of experience fluid one experience point costs, which decides how much fluid a pattern asks for.^[9]
• modules.mysticalagriculture.infusedAwakeningMatrix.meNetworkDrain is 50,000 AE per tick while crafting (mod default 500). Progress stops whenever the network cannot supply that much power, and this is the whole running cost of the machine.^[9]
• modules.mysticalagriculture.infusedAwakeningMatrix.idleMeNetworkDrain is 1,000 AE per tick while idle (mod default 10). It is read once when the Matrix joins a network, so changing it needs a world reload.^[9]
• patternDecoder.idleMeNetworkDrain is 100 AE per tick (mod default 5), also read once when the Decoder joins a network.^[9]
• patternDecoder.meNetworkChannels is 4 (mod default 1). A Pattern Decoder without its channel does not count towards encoding, so plan your ME network for it. Setting it to 0 makes the Decoder take no channel.^[9]

Settings that decide whether features work

machineHub.enabled is false in this pack. With it off, a placed Machine Hub keeps its links but stops offering storage, so pattern providers ignore it entirely. If you want a provider to load a multiblock through a Hub, this is the option to check first.^[9]

patternDecoder.requireDecoder is true. A Pattern Encoding Terminal only encodes a NEP pattern for a mod when its network holds a powered Pattern Decoder carrying that mod's Encoding Module. Otherwise you get a plain Processing Pattern. Both patternDecoder.mods.mysticalagriculture and patternDecoder.mods.apothic_enchanting are true, so both mods' patterns need their module. Patterns you already encoded keep working either way.^[9]

patterns.processingPatternConversion is true, so a NEP pattern can be crafted back into a plain AE2 Processing Pattern, one pattern per crafting grid. Patterns that keep an ingredient instead of consuming it, such as Deploying and Filling, are refused.^[9]

machines.manualCrafting is true. You can start a recipe by hand from a machine's own screen with the recipe-viewer transfer button. The ingredients come from your inventory, and the result waits in the machine's output buffer instead of going back to the ME network.^[9]

Module toggles

The Mystical Agriculture integration is on through modules.mysticalagriculture.allow_mysticalagriculture_module, along with modules.mysticalagriculture.infusion, modules.mysticalagriculture.awakening and modules.mysticalagriculture.infusedAwakeningMatrix.enabled. The Apothic Enchanting integration is on through modules.apothic_enchanting.allow_apothic_enchanting_module and modules.apothic_enchanting.infusion.enabled. When a master option is turned off, every module below it is disabled regardless of its own toggle.^[9]

modules.apothic_enchanting.infusion.preferExperienceFluid is true, so automated infusion pays with an experience fluid when one is loaded and falls back to Bottles o' Enchanting otherwise. modules.mysticalagriculture.infusedAwakeningMatrix.autoRequest is also true, letting the Matrix pull and request missing ingredients from the ME network.^[9]

Left at the mod default

• machineHub.linkRange is 16 and machineHub.maximumLinks is 24.^[9]
• machineHub.meNetworkChannels is 11, plus machineHub.meNetworkChannelsPerLink of 1 per linked inventory.^[9]
• machineHub.casingDepth is 3.^[9]
• modules.mysticalagriculture.infusedAwakeningMatrix.craftTicks is 20 and modules.mysticalagriculture.infusedAwakeningMatrix.meNetworkChannels is 15.^[9]
• modules.mysticalagriculture.infusedAwakeningMatrix.essenceTankCapacity is 40.^[9]
• provider.importCardGrace is 200 ticks, which is how long an Import Card keeps collecting after a job is cancelled.^[9]