Hi guys

I'm trying to implement a multi-block machine (geometrically unsymmetrical, irregular shape, need to interact with BuildCraft pipes and vanilla hoppers), i got 2 plans:

 

Plan A: 

like immersive engineering, give each component block a tileentity and store its offset from the master tileentity, so that each block knows exactly where its master is. The master block do most of the logic stuff.

concern: my machine can be as big as 9*6*6 (huge!) and it is going to add a lot of tileentities to the game. Will they cause lagging problem? (slave blocks do nothing in updateEntity())

 

Plan B:

only few block have tileentity, the others dont. Slave blocks use some kind of CustomChunkDataProvider to find out the position of their master block.

challenge: implementation of the CustomChunkDataProvider, custom data are stored in chunk NBTs. minecraft seems only send block information to the client, not the original chunk NBT data. so i have to manually sync my custom data to clients. sending packets are easy but i have no idea when to send the packet, i can not find any related forge event.

 

I would like to hear your suggestion & opinion QAQ. Thanks

 

I'm making a mod, its called simElectricity, source code avaliable on Github.

https://github.com/RoyalAliceAcademyOfSciences/SimElectricity

1.7.10 is no longer supported here, for help you will need to update.