Pipster

🔔 Future Development — QuantaNetwork

Pipster

Readable pipes for items, fluids, gas and energy, with filters right at the port, channel-based tesseracts and the Energy Pulse Amplifier. Works on Fabric and NeoForge.

New in 1.2.0: the Singularity Energy Cable (8× Quantum), a creative-only energy cable, a filter field with suggestions for fluid and gas pipes, and less server time per tick. Worlds from 1.1.0 and 1.0.0 load without changes.

• Pipes look like pipes. Every pipe and cable is a real, narrow shape (no full blocks), with a clear flange where it connects to a machine.
• Four kinds, five tiers. Item pipes, fluid pipes, gas pipes and energy cables, each from Copper (T1) to Quantum (T5), and energy cables up to Singularity (T6). Upgrade placed pipes in place with a bolt; they keep their settings and contents.
• Filters live in the port. No filter blocks in the way. Put a filter card straight into the port where the pipe meets the machine.
• Tesseracts. Send resources through named channels: any distance in one dimension (Resonant) or across all dimensions (Quantum).
• Overcharge. The Energy Pulse Amplifier stores energy and releases it in short, powerful pulses.
• Built for servers. Everything runs on the server in bounded steps. Pipes do not tick, and Pipster never loads chunks.

• Copper: 2 items/t, 100 mB/t, 1,000 E/t
• Reinforced: 8 items/t, 400 mB/t, 8,000 E/t
• Precision: 32 items/t, 1,600 mB/t, 64,000 E/t
• Resonant: 128 items/t, 6,400 mB/t, 512,000 E/t
• Quantum: 512 items/t, 25,600 mB/t, 4,096,000 E/t
• Singularity (energy cables only, new): 32,768,000 E/t
• Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious Energy Cable (creative only, new): 1,000,000,000,000 E/t; no recipe, drops nothing

Gas pipes move as much gas per tick as fluid pipes move mB. Throughput is shared per pipe segment, so a bottleneck is a real bottleneck. Nothing ignores limits: even the creative cable has a finite rate, and a thinner cable between two of them keeps its own limit.

• Right-click a port: mode (insert, extract, both, off), redstone control, priority, distribution (round robin, nearest, sticky). The status line says why nothing moves.
• Accept port (new): a side next to a block that pushes but has no storage of its own (AE2 Export Bus, Create funnels, Oritech item and fluid pipes) can be set to Accept. It takes what the block pushes in and never pulls.
• Sneak + right-click an arm: disconnect just that side; the same on the centre reconnects it, elsewhere it dismantles the pipe.
• Copy and paste port settings with 3 profiles (cards are never copied).

• Basic (9 rules): exact item, fluid or gas; allowlist or denylist
• Advanced (27 rules): tags, whole mods, exact components such as enchantments
• Precision (54 rules): “keep 64 in the source”, “fill the target up to 256”
• Rule Card: per-port rate limit and energy reserve

Patterns are ghost items: nothing is used up.

New: fluid and gas pipes have a filter field with suggestions. Type a name and pick a fluid, gas or (with Mekanism) chemical from the list, no filled container needed. # lists tags, “Everything from <mod>” covers a whole mod, and entries with the same name show their mod in brackets.

• Resonant Tesseract: any distance, same dimension, T4 speed
• Quantum Tesseract: all dimensions of the server, T5 speed
• One channel per resource type per tesseract, private, invite-only or public, filters per side

The Energy Pulse Amplifier takes energy evenly, stores it at 90 % efficiency and releases it for a short time at a higher rate than it takes. It never creates energy.

• Front = output, every other side = input. The pulse respects the cable at the front, so a thin cable limits it; on Singularity and creative cables the amplifier’s own pulse limit applies.
• Capacitor Banks around it add capacity and pulse power (up to 8 banks).
• Modes: Auto, Charge, Pulse (fired by redstone or the Fire button).
• Screen: stored energy, input and output per tick, efficiency, banks, pulse limit, mode, status (Charging, Ready, Pulsing, Empty).
• Looks and sounds: a coil that spins faster with the charge and glows during a pulse, charge lights, sparks and own sounds.
• Defaults (server config): 1,000,000 E store, +1,000,000 E per bank, 16,000 E/t input, pulse 32,000 E/t + 4,000 E/t per bank.
• Breaking it keeps the energy in the item; creative pick-block never copies it.

Pipster belongs to the QuantaNetwork by cptgummiball:

• Pipster: readable pipes for items, fluids, gases and energy.
• QuantaVolt: industrial power generation.
• QuantaWorks: from raw matter to advanced industry.
• QuantaRift: endgame dimensional extraction.

Pipster itself needs none of them.

Pipster connects to other mods through the standard interfaces of each loader:

• Fabric: Transfer API for items and fluids, Team Reborn Energy for energy (included). Extract ports actively pull energy (can be switched off in the config).
• NeoForge: item, fluid and energy capabilities
• Gas: Pipster’s own small gas API, fluids you tag as gaseous, and Mekanism chemicals (NeoForge 1.21.1)

Tested with the real mods (server, client and automated game tests that send items, fluids and energy through their blocks and back without loss or duplication):

• Storage Drawers: drawers and compacting drawers, 1.21.1 to 26.3, both loaders
• Sophisticated Storage: NeoForge 1.21.1 to 26.3; Fabric 1.21.1 (unofficial port)
• Energized Power: battery box and fluid tank, 1.21.1 to 26.3, both loaders
• Oritech: energy storage and tank, 1.21.1 both loaders, NeoForge 26.1.2 (beta)
• Powah!: energy cell, NeoForge 1.21.1 and 26.1.2 (alpha)
• Mekanism: energy cube, fluid tank, chemicals through gas pipes (NeoForge 1.21.1)
• Create: fluid tank, and the Mechanical Arm can target item pipes (NeoForge 1.21.1)
• Applied Energistics 2 (also with Applied Mekanistics) and Immersive Machinery: start and run together with Pipster

Not every version in a range had its own run, and not every block of these mods is covered. Please report problems.

Built-in optional support (never required):

• Jade: port mode and status, tesseract channels (only with access), pulse amplifier charge and status
• CC: Tweaked: computers read pipes, tesseracts and pulse amplifiers; with the redstone mode “Computer” they switch ports
• Open Parties and Claims, FTB Chunks: pipes respect claims, nobody pipes out of your claimed chests
• FTB Teams, OPAC parties: teammates share channels, tesseracts and pipes, also ones placed earlier
• LuckPerms and other permission mods: nodes pipster.admin and pipster.command (operators keep them without a permission mod)
• The Conduit Wrench counts as a wrench for other mods

Minecraft 1.21.1 to 26.3, Fabric and NeoForge. Some files cover a few neighbouring Minecraft versions (for example 1.21.2 to 1.21.4), but only where that very file was started and tested on each of them: client and server start, automated game tests for transport, throughput limits, filters, tesseracts, the pulse amplifier, claims and teams, saving and loading, plus a manual test round. Please pick the file whose name contains your Minecraft version.

• Some Minecraft versions only have NeoForge beta builds (1.21.2, 1.21.6, 1.21.7, 1.21.9, 26.1, 26.1.1); Pipster was tested with those betas.
• NeoForge 26.1.2, 26.2 and 26.3 need at least 26.1.2.122, 26.2.0.93 and 26.3.0.97.

Measured for 1.1.0 on an Intel Core i7-13700H with dedicated 1.21.1 and 26.3 servers, both loaders:

• 10,000 idle pipes: about 0.01 ms per tick
• 10,000 pipes with 100 active ports: about 0.8 to 1.2 ms per tick (95th percentile)
• 50,000 pipes with 500 active ports: about 3.4 to 5.0 ms per tick (95th percentile)

1.2.0 compared with 1.1.0 (same machine, 50,000 pipes with 500 active ports, alternating runs): 8 to 11 % less time per tick on 1.21.1 (both loaders) and 26.3 Fabric, no measurable change on 26.3 NeoForge, and less than half the memory per tick on 1.21.1 Fabric.

That is one machine and a few test scenes, not a promise for every server.

• Fabric: Fabric API. Team Reborn Energy is included.
• NeoForge: nothing else.
• Install on both client and server.
• Optional: Jade, CC: Tweaked, Open Parties and Claims, FTB Chunks, FTB Teams, a permission mod, Create, Mekanism.

• Wiki: https://github.com/CptGummiball/Pipster/wiki
• API for mod developers: https://github.com/CptGummiball/Pipster/blob/main/api/README.md
• Issues: https://github.com/CptGummiball/Pipster/issues

You may include Pipster in any modpack, public or private, free or paid, as long as the jar files stay exactly as published.

Pipster is made by cptgummiball (bandlaufwerk at CurseForge). All rights reserved: modifying, decompiling or re-uploading Pipster outside of modpacks is not allowed. Mod developers may compile against the Pipster API. Full license: https://github.com/CptGummiball/Pipster/blob/main/LICENSE