Sizing a Dyson Swarm on Horus (power factor 3.37) against the wireless throughput of a single UHV lapotronic capacitor — including the laser hatch pair that carries the power, and what the quest's explosion warning is actually worth today.
Drag to size the swarm; readouts show Horus output against the nominal wireless throughput of the chosen capacitor bank. Nominal is not a hard cap — every rebalance pushes the full excess — so slight overshoot is harmless.
A laser source hatch counts as a dynamo hatch, so the ground unit takes one directly. Both ends must be the same voltage tier — a source above the target detonates the target hatch — and each hatch carries amps × tier voltage per tick. Amps are adjustable down with a screwdriver, so buy the smallest variant that covers the load and dial it to the amps you actually need.
Swarm output on Horus is linear in module count. Dashed rungs mark whole-capacitor nominal throughput; the marked points are the first module counts clearing each rung (297 / 594 / 891).
| Modules | EU/t | UHV caps (nominal) |
|---|---|---|
| 100 | 3 370 000 000 | 0.34 |
| 297 | 10 008 900 000 | 1.00 |
| 594 | 20 017 800 000 | 2.00 |
| 891 | 30 026 700 000 | 3.00 |
| 10 000 | 337 000 000 000 | 33.70 |
What the quest warning is actually worth in 2.8.4, from source and git history.
Saturating the dynamo still calls explodeMultiblock() — but TecTech
emptied that method in Sept 2024 ("yeet explosions", PR #3207). It and
doExplosion() are no-ops, and explodeMultiblock() is
final, so no subclass can restore it. The quest text and wiki are stale.
The source hatch compares itself to the target: a higher-tier source calls
doExplosion() on the target hatch, a lower-tier source transfers nothing
at all and backs the swarm up into its own explosion. Only an exact tier match moves
power.
Work-enable state (mallet, machine controller cover) is checked only when the current recipe finishes — a 72 000-tick, one-hour cycle. Mid-cycle the swarm keeps pushing EU regardless, so redstone shutoff cannot outrun a buffer that fills in seconds.
Laser hatches move power once every 20 ticks, up to amps × 20 × tier voltage per
burst. The source buffer holds 24 ticks' worth (V × 24 × A), which is why
amps × tier voltage ≥ swarm EU/t keeps the buffer from ever topping out.
EU that will not fit in the hatch buffers is silently voided. The method returns
false, but energyFlowOnRunningTick ignores the return and
reports success, so the swarm keeps running — burning cryotheum and modules to make
power that goes nowhere. Wasteful, not fatal.
Hatches are plain MTEHatches with no TecTech protection: an exposed
dynamo hatch can still explode from rain, thunder or adjacent fire like any GT machine
(BaseMetaTileEntity.java:406–479). Roof the hatches. A laser tier mismatch
also detonates the target hatch for real.