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Applied Energistics 2 guide

Channels Explained

Why some ME devices stay dark: how many channels a cable carries, how the controller hands them out, and how to plan a network that never runs out.

Updated Applied Energistics 2 19.2.18 Minecraft 1.21.1
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Contents (3)
  1. The numbers
  2. What uses a channel
  3. Plan a bigger network

Most ME devices need a channel to work: terminals, drives, buses, interfaces, pattern providers and the like. A channel is a dedicated connection from the device back to the controller. If a device does not get one, it stays dark (shows offline) even though it has power. Every number on this page was checked on our own AE2 19.2 test server.

The numbers

PartChannels
Glass, covered or smart cableup to 8
Dense cable (covered or smart)up to 32
One face of the controllerup to 32
Network without a controller (ad-hoc)8 in total
Fluix ME Glass CableItemFluix ME Smart CableItemFluix ME Dense Covered CableItemFluix ME Dense Smart CableItemME ControllerBlock

A normal cable can feed at most 8 devices, a dense cable 32. The 32 is a limit per controller face: in our test two faces, each with its own dense cable, served 48 devices — but one dense cable fed by two faces still carried only 32.

Warning Without a controller the limit is hard: with 8 devices everything works, but a 9th device takes the channels away from all of them, and the whole network goes offline.

What uses a channel

  • Uses one channel: all terminals, ME Drive, ME Chest, Interface and Pattern Provider (as block and as part), import / export / storage buses, ME and item P2P tunnels, Wireless Access Point, ME IO Port, Spatial IO Port, annihilation and formation planes, Conversion Monitor.
  • Uses none: all cable types, Energy Acceptor, energy cells, Quartz Fiber (it only carries power), toggle buses, level emitters, Storage Monitor, cable anchors, Molecular Assembler, Inscriber, Charger, Growth Accelerator and Vibration Chamber.
Note The two monitors look alike but differ: the Storage Monitor only shows an item count and needs no channel, the Conversion Monitor also lets you insert and take items and uses one.

Plan a bigger network

  1. Put the controller in the middle and give each face its own dense cable — up to 32 channels each.
  2. Lead each dense cable to a group of devices, then split into normal cables with up to 8 devices per branch.
  3. Keep the busy parts close: drives and pattern providers next to the controller, terminals at the end of short branches.
Tip Server owners can change the channel limit for everyone: the option “channels” in AE2's common config takes DEFAULT (8 / 32), X2, X3, X4 or INFINITE. In our test one normal cable then fed 8, 16, 24, 32 or all 40 devices.
ME P2P TunnelItemQuartz FiberItemME Storage MonitorItemME Conversion MonitorItem
Loading the 3D view…

Tap or click a block to see what it is.

  2. Controller with an Energy Cell and a Vibration Chamber.

  3. A dense cable from the controller's east face carries up to 32 channels.

  4. A smart cable branch with 8 terminals uses 8 of the dense cable's channels.

  5. A second branch with 8 more terminals: 16 channels in use, 16 still free.

Materials 6 kinds · 30 items
Layer planLayer 1 is the bottom · north is up · 6 × 1 × 9 blocks

The layer plan appears with the 3D view.

    One controller face, one dense cable, two branches of smart cable with eight terminals each.Textures, models and item names © AlgorithmX2, Ridanisaurus and the Applied Energistics 2 team, used with permission. Vanilla textures © Mojang.

    Textures, models and item names © AlgorithmX2, Ridanisaurus and the Applied Energistics 2 team, used with permission.

    Recipes, names and numbers are read from the mod files of Applied Energistics 2 19.2.18 for Minecraft 1.21.1 (NeoForge). Not affiliated with the mod authors, Mojang or Microsoft.

    More of the Applied Energistics 2 wikiEvery machine, item and recipe of Applied Energistics 2 19.2.18, with the exact numbers from the mod files.
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