Beamline
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Wireless items, fluids, energy and redstone on beams of light between ancient altars. Built to stay fast on huge networks.
Beamline
Wireless transport of items, fluids, energy and redstone, carried on beams of light between ancient altars, and built to stay fast on huge networks.
Put an altar against each inventory, link the altars with a dowsing rod, and carve runes into their faces: an Extract rune where things come from, an Insert rune where they go. That's a network. It can be two chests or ten thousand machines; it costs about the same per item either way.
NeoForge 1.21.1 · works with any mod that exposes item, fluid or energy capabilities · JEI optional
Performance
Beamline was built around one rule: a network must never be the reason a server lags. Every number below was measured in game with the mod's own /beamline benchmark command (single player, Intel i7-10700K, 60 s of measures after 5 s of warmup). You can run the same tests on your own server.
Big networks, one tick
| Scenario | Moved | Server TPS | Beamline's time per tick |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1,000 altars, one rune each (500 chest pairs, one network) | 160,000 items/s | 19.99 | 0.28 ms |
| 1,000 altars, 5 chests and 10 filtered runes each (10,000 runes on one channel) | 1.47 million items/s | 19.98 | 2.9 ms |
| The same, held to the base 0.5 ms budget | 415,000 items/s | 19.98 | 0.55 ms |
| The same with barrels | 1.47 million items/s | 19.99 | 2.1 ms |
| 8,320 altars in one network: 64 AE2 interfaces emptied into 4,096 Functional Storage drawers | 2.7 million items/s | 19.94 | 3.6 ms |
| 10 AE2 interfaces feeding 990 chests | 28,000 items/s | 19.98 | 0.05 ms |
A tick lasts 50 ms. Beamline gets 0.5 ms of it, and up to 5 ms only while the server has room to spare; what doesn't fit simply waits for the next tick.
Into every kind of storage
1,000 altars, a chest of cobblestone above each one and the storage to test below it: 320,000 items/s in every case.
| Storage | Beamline's time per tick |
|---|---|
| Chests | 0.36 ms |
| Barrels | 0.37 ms |
| Functional Storage drawers | 0.35 ms |
| Storage Drawers | 0.52 ms |
Next to Laser IO
Laser IO 1.9.11, same world, same chest pairs, same items per second. "Cost" is the server's time per tick minus an empty world's (1.47 ms).
| Scenario | Laser IO | Beamline |
|---|---|---|
| 100 nodes in one network, 16,000 items/s: cost per tick | 0.55 ms | 0.30 ms |
| 1,000 nodes in 500 separate pairs, 160,000 items/s: server time per tick | 3.26 ms | 1.80 ms |
| Growing one network to 500 nodes: linking 50 more | 7.7 s | 1 ms |
| Growing one network to 1,000 nodes: linking 50 more | 49.6 s (server frozen) | under 1 ms |
Changing a network
On the 10,000-rune network above: changing a rune costs about 4 ms, once. Adding or removing a link about 15 ms, once. Nothing is rebuilt while nothing changes.
Why it stays fast
- No ticking blocks. One manager runs every network on the server in a single tick, within its time budget.
- Rebuilds only what changed. A rune change only reads its altar again; a link change, or altars loading and unloading, only rebuilds the networks around them.
- Filtered routing. Each item only looks at the destinations whose tablet may take it, worked out once per item. Destinations known to be full are skipped.
- Lean transfers. At most three inventory calls per lot, with cached capabilities. Vanilla containers are changed directly and marked changed once instead of twice, so comparators around update half as often.
- Quiet when idle. Runes with nothing to do slow down on their own; a network at rest costs almost nothing.
- Event-driven redstone. Signals are pushed when they change, never polled.
- Cheap beams. The client gets beam updates at most once a second and draws them from cached GPU buffers.
Blocks and items
| Altar | The heart of a network. It works with the inventories touching its 6 faces, through 9 runes per face. Links reach 16 blocks and go through walls. |
| Standing Stone | A relay with no runes that carries beams 32 blocks. |
| Cairn | Links to another cairn at any distance, even in another dimension, with no beam to keep clear. |
| Dowsing Rod | Click two altars or relays to link them; again to unlink them. |
| Runes | Item, fluid, energy and redstone. |
| Power Stones | Up to 4 per rune, for bigger and faster transfers. |
| Tablets | Basic, count, tag, mod and data filters. |
| Rune Case | Carries 18 runes, tablets and power stones. Its contents show next to the altar's screen. |
| Astrolabe | Copies a rune's settings onto other runes of the same type. |
| Codex | The in-game guide, a page for every item. |
Runes
- Modes: Insert (receives from the network), Extract (sends into it), Stock (keeps an inventory supplied from the network's storage, optionally sending back the excess) and Sensor (turns a redstone channel on when an inventory matches).
- 16 channels per type, priorities, round robin (off, on or strict), exact transfers, the side of the inventory to use, and a redstone condition.
- Power stones raise the limits: items 8 → 64 per transfer, fluids 1,000 → 16,000 mB, energy 1,000 → 256,000 FE, from every 20 ticks down to every tick.
- Redstone runes carry a signal wirelessly: read it on one face, emit it (weak or strong) on any other.
Tablets
- Basic: the listed items, allow or deny, optionally matching their data exactly.
- Count: a number per item: keep that many, fill up to that many, stock that many.
- Tag: the tags you pick from a sample item, fluid tags included.
- Mod: everything from the mods of the listed items.
- Data: items carrying the same data as a listed item, an enchantment for example.
With JEI, drag items or fluids straight from its list into a tablet.
Make it yours
Each network picks its own colors: any RGB color and opacity for its beams (or hide them, they keep working) and a color for the crystals turning in its altars. A dye used on an altar works too.
Commands (operators)
/beamline monitor: a live bar with TPS, MSPT, Beamline's time per tick and what moves every second./beamline stats: links, nodes, networks and the time per tick./beamline benchmark ...: the tests above, built around you in a few seconds.
FAQ
Does it need to be on the client? Yes, on both the client and the server.
Does it work with mod X? If X's blocks hold items, fluids or energy through NeoForge's standard capabilities (nearly every mod does), yes. Tested with AE2, Storage Drawers and Functional Storage.
Can I use it in my modpack? Yes. The mod is MIT licensed.
Languages: English and French.
Beamline Team
