Tired of your sprawling Minecraft base becoming an unmanageable spaghetti of wires, pipes, and machinery? You're not alone. In complex modpacks like All the Mods 10 (ATM10), optimizing space and performance is paramount, and that's precisely where ATM10 Compact Machine Models & Types shine. These ingenious blocks let you condense massive, intricate contraptions into a single, unassuming cube, transforming your base into a paragon of efficiency and tidiness.
Imagine building an entire power generation facility, a multi-block farm, or a sophisticated item sorting system, then collapsing it all into one block that you can place anywhere. This isn't just about aesthetics; it's about making your game run smoother, reducing chunk updates in your main base, and giving you unparalleled organizational power.
At a Glance: Your Pocket Dimensions in ATM10
- What They Are: Single blocks that contain a separate, isolated cubical dimension for building.
- The Mod: Created by Davenonymous, a staple in many major modpacks, including ATM10.
- Core Benefit: Drastically reduces base footprint, improves performance, simplifies complex builds.
- Interaction: Each face allows input/output for items, fluids, Redstone Flux, and even advanced cables (AE2, ProjectRed, OpenComputers).
- Access: Requires a Personal Shrinking Device to enter and exit.
- Chunk Loading: The internal room is always chunk-loaded, but the external block needs its surrounding Overworld chunk loaded to interact.
- Sizes: Six distinct sizes, from Tiny (3x3x3) to Maximum (13x13x13), determined by crafting materials.
- Crafting: Based on the 'World Resizing Cube' surrounded by specific materials.
- Advanced: Quantum Entanglers allow linking two separate machine blocks to the same internal room.
The Magic Behind the Cube: What Exactly Are ATM10 Compact Machines?
At its core, a Compact Machine is a marvel of spatial engineering. It's a block that, when placed in your world, acts as a portal to a dedicated "pocket dimension" – a contained, cubical room where you can construct almost anything you desire. Think of it as a TARDIS for your Minecraft contraptions: bigger on the inside, and all contained within a single block visible from the outside.
In the demanding environment of ATM10, where sprawling automation is key, these machines are not just convenient; they're essential. They allow you to isolate computationally intensive processes, preventing lag spikes in your primary base. Building a massive Industrial Foregoing tree farm, a Draconic Evolution fusion setup, or a complex Refined Storage array inside a Compact Machine means your main world only has to render one block, not hundreds of moving parts. This significantly boosts your game's performance and allows for much more ambitious projects.
Interacting with these encapsulated worlds is straightforward. Each side of a Compact Machine block functions as an independent interface. You can pipe items in and out, transfer fluids, send and receive Redstone Flux (power), and even connect advanced networking solutions like Applied Energistics 2 channels, ProjectRed bundled cables, or OpenComputers cables. This makes integrating your internal builds with your external base fabric seamless and highly versatile.
The Heart of the Machine: Understanding Room Sizes for Your Needs
The true utility of Compact Machines in ATM10 lies in their scalability. The mod offers six distinct sizes, each tailored for different levels of complexity and resource investment. Choosing the right size is a crucial decision, as it dictates the scope of your internal build and the resources you'll commit. All Compact Machines start with a World Resizing Cube at their core, then surrounded by a specific material to define its internal dimensions.
Let's break down each model and its ideal applications:
1. Tiny Compact Machine (3x3x3 Room)
- Crafting Material: Wood (any type) surrounding a World Resizing Cube.
- Use Cases: These are your go-to for incredibly simple, single-purpose automation. Think basic furnace arrays, early-game mob grinders with minimal drops, or a simple Redstone clock.
- Example: A single automated furnace with an input chest and an output chest, fed by a basic hopper system.
- Example: A simple Redstone circuit for timing or signal inversion.
- Pros: Extremely cheap to craft, perfect for modularizing small tasks.
- Cons: Very limited space. You'll quickly outgrow it for anything moderately complex.
- When to Choose: When you need to hide away a minor utility that takes up too much ground space or looks messy. Ideal for beginner automation challenges.
2. Small Compact Machine (5x5x5 Room)
- Crafting Material: Iron Ingots surrounding a World Resizing Cube.
- Use Cases: A significant step up, offering enough room for small-to-medium automated setups. Good for basic ore processing, compact power generation (e.g., a few Stirling Generators), or a contained water wheel.
- Example: An early-game pulverizer/furnace setup for simple ore doubling.
- Example: A small array of Mekanism generators or basic power storage.
- Example: A simple auto-farm for vanilla crops with a single planter/harvester.
- Pros: Still relatively cheap, much more versatile than Tiny.
- Cons: Can still feel cramped for more advanced or multi-machine setups.
- When to Choose: When you're consolidating a small chain of machines or a minor production line. This is often the first "workhorse" size for many players.
3. Normal Compact Machine (7x7x7 Room)
- Crafting Material: Gold Ingots surrounding a World Resizing Cube.
- Use Cases: This is where Compact Machines start to feel truly spacious for mid-game automation. Ideal for more extensive ore processing lines, small-to-medium AE2 or Refined Storage setups, or a moderately sized power plant.
- Example: A complete ore processing line involving a pulverizer, furnace, and a couple of enrichment chambers from Mekanism.
- Example: A dedicated crafting grid and a few storage drives for an AE2 system, with all necessary controllers and power.
- Example: An automated potion brewing station or a small industrial fermenter setup.
- Pros: Good balance of cost and space, suitable for many mid-game automation needs.
- Cons: For truly large-scale or multi-tier setups, you might still feel constrained.
- When to Choose: When you need to build a complete, self-contained functional module that isn't excessively sprawling. It's a popular choice for good reason.
4. Big Compact Machine (9x9x9 Room)
- Crafting Material: Obsidian surrounding a World Resizing Cube.
- Use Cases: Now we're talking serious space. Big Compact Machines are excellent for complex mid-to-late game automation, larger-scale resource generation, or consolidating major parts of your factory. Think large-scale industrial farms, advanced refining setups, or a substantial power generation cluster.
- Example: A full-fledged passive mob farm (e.g., Mob Grinding Utils) with item collection and processing.
- Example: A significant power generation setup, perhaps with multiple generators and energy storage from mods like Powah! or Mekanism.
- Example: A dedicated crafting automation hub using sophisticated patterns and assemblers.
- Pros: Ample space for multi-machine arrays and more complex logistics. Obsidian is readily available in the mid-game.
- Cons: Crafting cost starts to become more noticeable, though still manageable.
- When to Choose: When your automation is growing beyond a single process and requires multiple interconnected machines and substantial logistical pathways.
5. Giant Compact Machine (11x11x11 Room)
- Crafting Material: Diamonds surrounding a World Resizing Cube.
- Use Cases: These are for your serious late-game powerhouses and mega-factories. Ideal for large-scale resource duplication, expansive multiblock structures (if they fit the cubical constraint), or a centralized processing unit for your entire base.
- Example: A full-scale Mystical Agriculture farm with multiple tiers of growth accelerators, harvesters, and seed reprocessors.
- Example: A high-tier industrial processing line, perhaps for producing large quantities of specific alloys or compounds.
- Example: A dedicated fusion reactor setup from Draconic Evolution, assuming you can fit the components within the cube.
- Pros: Tremendous amount of space, allowing for incredibly intricate and powerful builds.
- Cons: Diamonds are a valuable resource, making this a more significant investment.
- When to Choose: When you are pushing the boundaries of automation and need to consolidate extremely complex or large-footprint builds into a single block.
6. Maximum Compact Machine (13x13x13 Room)
- Crafting Material: Nether Stars surrounding a World Resizing Cube.
- Use Cases: The ultimate Compact Machine. This behemoth is reserved for the most ambitious and resource-intensive late-game projects imaginable. Think ultra-high-tier resource generation, complete end-game power solutions, or an entire manufacturing campus consolidated into one block.
- Example: A full-scale production line for creative items or highly processed resources using multiple parallel processing chains.
- Example: A fully contained reactor or power generation system designed to produce immense amounts of energy.
- Example: Your entire end-game automated base, with every production line, storage system, and utility consolidated into one block.
- Pros: Unrivaled internal space. If it can fit, you can build it.
- Cons: Nether Stars are among the rarest and most difficult items to acquire, making this a very expensive endgame investment.
- When to Choose: When you have unlimited ambition and the resources to match. This is for players who want to push ATM10 to its absolute limits and hide away their most monumental achievements.
Crafting Your Compact Space: Recipes and Requirements
The journey to building your pocket dimension begins with a World Resizing Cube. Once you have this core component, you simply surround it in a crafting table with the material corresponding to your desired room size (as outlined above).
To actually enter and exit your newly crafted Compact Machine, you'll need another essential tool: the Personal Shrinking Device. This handy gadget is your key to teleporting between the Overworld and the interior of any Compact Machine you own. Simply right-click on the Compact Machine block with the device to enter, and right-click with it inside the machine to exit.
For more specialized setups, you might also consider the Quantum Entangler. This advanced item allows you to link two separate Compact Machine blocks to the same internal room. This means you could have one machine in your main base and another across your world (or even in another dimension) both accessing the identical internal space. To use it, you must first upgrade both Compact Machine blocks by right-clicking them with a Nether Star (consuming the star), and the target machine must be brand new, never having been entered before. This is an incredibly powerful feature for distributed automation or remote access.
Beyond the Room: Advanced Compact Machine Concepts
While the core concept is straightforward, mastering Compact Machines in ATM10 involves understanding a few advanced nuances that can dramatically impact your build efficiency and performance.
Seamless Interaction with the Outside World
The brilliance of Compact Machines lies in their ability to interact with your main world as if they weren't hidden away. Each of the six faces on the Compact Machine block acts as an I/O point.
- Items: Hoppers, item conduits, pipes, and transport systems can connect directly to any face to move items in and out. You can configure filters and priorities on external pipes just as you would with any other inventory.
- Fluids: Similarly, fluid pipes and tanks can transfer liquids directly through the faces.
- Redstone Flux (RF/FE): Power conduits and cables (like Mekanism's Universal Cable or Powah!'s cables) can supply or extract energy.
- Advanced Cables: This is where things get truly powerful for ATM10 players. Compact Machines support specific complex cable types:
- Applied Energistics 2 (AE2) Channels: You can run AE2 cables into a Compact Machine, allowing your internal AE2 setup (interfaces, storage buses, P2P tunnels) to connect to your main AE2 network. This is incredibly useful for offloading processing units.
- ProjectRed Bundled Cables: For intricate Redstone logic, these can be passed through.
- OpenComputers Cables: For integrating internal OpenComputers systems with your external network.
Navigating the Dimension: Chunk Loading
An important distinction to remember: the interior of a Compact Machine is always chunk loaded by the mod itself. This means whatever you build inside will continue to run and process even if you're thousands of blocks away or in another dimension.
However, for the Compact Machine to interact with the Overworld (or whichever dimension it's placed in) – meaning for items, fluids, or power to flow in and out – the chunk the Compact Machine block itself is in must also be chunk loaded. You'll need to use standard chunk-loading methods (e.g., chunk loaders from FTB Chunks, Industrial Foregoing, or other mods) to ensure continuous external interaction.
Quantum Entanglement: Sharing a Space
The Quantum Entangler feature is an endgame game-changer. Imagine having an extensive processing facility inside a Maximum Compact Machine. With a Quantum Entangler, you can place one Compact Machine block next to your main storage in the Overworld, and another in your mining dimension, both accessing that identical processing facility. Items mined in the distant dimension can immediately enter the processing unit without needing to be transported back to your base.
Remember, both machines need a Nether Star upgrade, and the second machine block you link must be empty – never entered before. This prevents conflicts and ensures a clean link. It's a fantastic way to distribute access points to a central, powerful hub without worrying about long-distance item transport.
Mastering Your Mini-Dimension: Practical Tips and Best Practices
Building effectively within a Compact Machine is an art form. It requires forethought and smart design to maximize your limited space and ensure efficiency.
- Plan Your Layout Meticulously: Before placing a single block, visualize or even sketch out your internal design. Consider where inputs and outputs will go on the external faces, and how to route power, items, and fluids internally with minimal spaghetti. Use void space for conduits and wires.
- Utilize Verticality: Don't just build on one layer. Maximize your vertical space by building multi-tiered setups. Platforms, ladders, and even flight modules can help navigate larger rooms.
- Conserve Space with Compact Solutions: Look for mods that offer space-efficient alternatives. Instead of massive chests, use storage drawers or compact storage systems. For power, use dense energy cells instead of sprawling battery arrays.
- Centralize I/O: Group your input and output connections on one or two external faces for easier management in your main base. Label them clearly.
- Debugging Made Easier: The isolated nature of Compact Machines means you can debug a complex system without affecting the rest of your base. If something goes wrong, you know the problem is contained within that single block.
- Performance Considerations: While Compact Machines reduce external lag, an extremely dense internal setup can still be laggy inside the machine. Be mindful of excessive entities, complex Redstone, or rapidly updating blocks.
- Modular Design: Consider breaking down very large automation tasks into several smaller, specialized Compact Machines. For instance, one machine for ore processing, another for ingot production, and another for storage, each communicating via external bus systems. This makes troubleshooting and upgrading much simpler.
Common Questions About Compact Machines
Let's address some frequently asked questions that arise when dealing with these pocket dimensions in ATM10.
Are Compact Machines chunk loaded by default?
Yes, the interior of a Compact Machine is always chunk loaded, meaning anything running inside will continue to function. However, the exterior Compact Machine block itself must be in a chunk that is actively loaded in the Overworld (or whatever dimension it's in) for it to interact with external systems.
What happens if I break a Compact Machine block?
Don't worry! All the contents and the internal structure you've built are safely preserved. When you place the Compact Machine block again, you'll find everything exactly as you left it inside. You can safely move them around your base or even transport them to different dimensions.
Can multiple players enter the same Compact Machine?
Yes, if multiple players have Personal Shrinking Devices and the necessary permissions on a server, they can all enter and interact with the same Compact Machine simultaneously. This makes them excellent for collaborative projects.
How do I get my items/power/fluids out of the machine?
You simply connect pipes, conduits, or cables to any of the six external faces of the Compact Machine block. Inside the machine, ensure your internal setup has inventories, power sources, or fluid tanks connected to the walls of the room, which act as the internal counterparts to the external faces.
Can I reset a Compact Machine?
There's no direct "reset" button. If you want to clear a Compact Machine, you'll need to enter it and manually break all the blocks and machines inside. However, you can move the block and rebuild, or simply craft a new one if it's a cheaper size.
Choosing Your Perfect Pocket Dimension: A Strategic Approach
Deciding which ATM10 Compact Machine model to use boils down to a balance of need, resources, and future-proofing.
- Assess the Task: How complex is the automation you're trying to contain? Is it a single machine, a small line, or an entire factory floor?
- Evaluate Resource Cost: Are you in the early game with limited iron and gold, or late game with an abundance of diamonds and Nether Stars? Don't overspend on a Maximum machine for a Tiny task.
- Consider Future Expansion: While planning for exact future needs is impossible, try to anticipate if your chosen setup will need significant upgrades later. A slightly larger machine now might save you the trouble of tearing down and rebuilding a smaller one.
- Modular vs. Monolithic: For truly massive operations, decide if one Giant or Maximum machine is better, or if several smaller, specialized machines linked via external buses offer more flexibility and easier management. Often, a combination of both is ideal.
Remember, the goal isn't just to make things smaller, but to make them smarter, more efficient, and easier to manage. By thoughtfully selecting among the various ATM10 compact machine models, you can revolutionize your base design and elevate your automation game in All the Mods 10.
Elevate Your ATM10 Experience Today
The struggle for space and performance in ATM10 is real, but Compact Machines offer a powerful, elegant solution. By understanding the different models and types available, based on their room sizes, you gain the ability to organize, optimize, and scale your creations like never before. From containing a simple furnace to an entire end-game factory, these pocket dimensions empower you to build bigger, cleaner, and more efficiently.
So, next time you're facing a messy build or a laggy chunk, remember the power of the cube. Dive into a Compact Machine, and transform your sprawling contraptions into hidden masterpieces of engineering.