The EnderTurtle & The AnchorTurtle

I assume everyone has heard of the Enderchest mod? Well here comes the Ender Turtle.

As predicted this turtle has an inventory (one which can be coded with a series of 3 colours(e.g. red-blue-red) which is shared between multiple other turtles/chests of the same colour code.

This colour code could also be changed to use a specific ID instead (e.g. ender1 is the 1st enderturtle created and all ender turtles labeled ender1 will also share that inventory)

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So why would this be useful? Well firstly there is the obvious.

Mining turtle mines and you can get the items instantly out of the turtle so it never needs to return until it is about to go into an unloaded chunk. (otherwise the turtle will be erased)

2. It can also be used for special systems which require more control than the current inventory allows but it can do it on the go.

e.g. you want your mining turtle to leave all ores while mining and let's say you have industrial craft and redpower installed

There are a tonne of ores the mining turtle needs to compare and if the turtles inventory is full of ores then it can't collect materials. Now let's say it's an EnderMining Turtle. It can have only 1 ore in 1 slot at all times but back at your base there is another Ender Turtle, with the same code/ID, which changes the ore type of the ore in the EnderMining Turtle's inventory.

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If the EnderTurtle were implemented then it would provide a lot of new and efficient functionality to the turtles. This is especially the right time to implement this now that the item systems are just being implemented in 1.4

Because this upgrade is also very overpowered it may be a good idea to give it a relatively high price. Maybe some diamonds? But that's up to Dan or any other modder who wishes to make this turtle.

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Ever got annoyed because one of your turtles strayed to far away from home and minecraft decided that it never existed? Well look no more! The AnchorTurtle is here!

The AnchorTurtle is based upon the world anchor block from forge. It literally keeps the surrounding 5 chunks around it loaded. Combine this with a mining turtle and there is no limit to how far this dynamic duo can go! Well apart from the far lands of course. Of course if you combine the power of the AnchorTurtle and the EnderTurtle you get a stupidly overpowered system and therefore I think AnchorTurtles recipes should be looked at. But these would make any moving system work even when you are away which could be useful!


But that is pretty much it for this suggestion. I believe the EnderTurtle and the AnchorTurtle would definitely both compliment each other and would seriously improve functionality with what computer craft can do. I hope you think the same! =D

I like the idea but it seems over powered..
Taking the items out of a turtle like an enderchest.. Set it for an excavation of 200 and you'll have so many items. I give it a + but again, too OP.

Craft it with an EnderChest, then. And really, probably all turtles (and computers) should be anchors for the chunks they're in. That's not so much an OP issue…though sometimes I'm glad that turtles can't just keep going forever. You gain a lot by having automated base production going on but the permanent loss of a few badly programmed turtles (or having your base somehow get flooded with lava [I'm looking at you, Boxbot!] while you're off on an adventure) will tend to offset those gains a bit.

Really, though, since the next version turtles are apparently going to be able to pick up dropped items (and perhaps use chests?), I think that the Enderturtle isn't really needed if you have turtles and computers acting as load anchors for their chunks. You can just program the turtle to come back and drop off its inventory, and have a few turtles there to pick it up. Or you can have a turtle drop items far enough away from it's working that they'll be saved in the unloaded chunk till you get around to coming back and picking them up…I still think having the turtle be able to use chests would be an easier solution.

Heh, I just thought about this. For the enderturtle: In 1.4, they will be able to use chests. So while it would be. . . less time-consuming to create one, you could just as easily have an enderchest in slot 1 of the turtle's inventory. Have it dig, when it runs out of space, place the chest, fill it, then keep moving on.

Isn't this just like railcraft? Like their Endercart and Anchorcart?

I think that the point is that with turtles they really do lose a lot of logical functionality because they get frozen when they leave the loaded chunks, which is kinda an 'artificial' limitation in that it's something that breaks the immersion of the game. Since the entire point of computers and turtles is that they can carry out complex tasks while you aren't around, it makes sense to make them able to carry out those tasks when you aren't around.

As for the use of EnderChests…I'm rather curious about what will happen when I have a turtle place (or access) an EnderChest, now that it's been mentioned. Does it still count as your EnderChest in multiplayer, or will it be open to anyone? Or will it be open to nobody at all? Will it even work in Singleplayer?

I would like to see the Anchor Turtle, perhaps what might be an idea now we have 1.4 is to have someone way more clever than me, write a periphial for the turtles that has this functionality. Though I also think EnderTurtles might be a step too far, currently I have a set up with my script that comes back dumps contents using pipes into a ender chest and from there its sorted back at base.

I had an idea about mining turtle while ago that would have 2 world anchors in the inventory and it would be placing them one by one (move first, move second, move first etc.) to mine away from my base without being unloaded. But i had no way to quickly transport mined items back to the base (excluding slow ride back home), so I scrapped it.

But now with 1.4 it might be worth another shot. Turtle would carry ender chest and when is full, it would place down ender chest, drop all items into it and pick it back up. Then buildcraft or redpower system in my base would suck items out of ender chest.

But will the items in the EnderChest be available to anything other than the turtle that placed it? The inventories for those are now player-specific, so where does an item placed in the box by a turtle even go?

As for Anchors, would it be necessary for the turtle to anchor anything other than its current chunk? And is there any gameplay reason (aside from the chance of losing a badly programmed turtle) for not having all computers and turtles anchor their current chunks?

I've already programmed in to my turtles placing an enderchest and dropping all its items in and then picking the chest back up, so i don't think an enderturtle is very necessary its takes out some of the problem solving to deal with those kinds of issues and is more convenience then necessity. however turtles leaving loaded chunks is an issue I think, should be worked on and while keeping 5 surrounding chunks loaded is a bit much it would be nice to have turtles anchor their chunks, i would make this optional however, because i think it would murder a computercraft server

I'd say that it could murder a server if intentionally abused, but lots of things in CC can already do that. Still, it probably should be an option that can be disabled.

I don't see why the option shouldn't be available. Again, have it as something that has to be enabled in the files, but it's still a good idea and can come in handy.

There is ofc a way to manage this as it is, but it's complex and time consuming:

When a turtle's space gets past a certain point. have it call out it's location to another turtle, which then goes over to it when called. Then have the main turtle slow down so the dispatch turtle can catch up, then when it catches up, the main turtle makes a bit of room, then commences with placing its blocks for the other turtle to collect, telling the dispatch turtle when it does so the dispatch knows to dig and collect the block. When the main turtle has an empty inventory, the dispatch turtle returns to base and the main turtle continues.

As I said, simple idea but a good hour of hell to program.

An Anchor Turtle would be easy to find if you have ChickenChunks, just type in /chunkloaders and it will show you all your loaded chunks.

Why did you bump this?

Locked. The ender chest bit is already possible with placing and breaking an ender chest (from the mod, not a vanilla one) and miscP adds the chunk loader turtles.