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Routing Network

Saereth edited this page May 27, 2026 · 1 revision

Routing Network

Hauling materials by hand is beneath a blood mage of your stature.

The Routing Network is NeoVitae's logistics layer, moving items, fluids, and Forge Energy through invisible channels at your decree, sorted and filtered face by face. This page is more technical than the dungeon material; read it once, build a small test network, then come back for the details.

For spatial transport of blocks themselves, see Teleposer.

The Three Components

A complete Routing Network has exactly three kinds of node, and a network needs all three to do work.

Block Role
Master Routing Node The brain. One per network. Holds upgrades, energy throttle, and the graph itself.
Input Routing Node Pulls items, fluids, or FE out of an adjacent inventory / tank / energy buffer.
Output Routing Node Pushes items, fluids, or FE into an adjacent inventory / tank / energy buffer.
Routing Conduit A passive relay that extends reach between active nodes. Pure plumbing.

Every network requires exactly one Master. All other nodes must trace a path back to it, either directly or via conduits. Input and Output nodes interact with any adjacent block that supports item, fluid, or energy transfer; they have no internal storage of their own.

How Connections Happen

Auto-Bind

Place an Input, Output, or Conduit within 16 blocks of an existing network. It seeks a connection on its own, first the nearest Master in range; failing that, the closest already-bound node, inheriting that node's Master; failing both, it sits unbound. A successful auto-bind manifests as a brief violet thread arcing to the partner. No arc means no bind.

The Node Router

When auto-bind is insufficient (long runs, dense layouts), the Node Router performs manual linking.

  • Shift-right-click a Master: stores that Master's position.
  • Subsequent right-clicks on non-master nodes within 16 blocks: binds each to the stored Master.
  • Shift-right-click a non-master node instead: stores that position. Every subsequent right-click links them, and the stored position advances to the just-clicked node. Walk down a chain and the router links step by step.
  • Right-click empty air: clears the stored position.

Each successful link emits a violet arcane bolt.

Configuring a Node Face

When placed, an Input or Output Node detects every adjacent block, but it remains dormant on every side until configured. No external filter items are required; each of the six faces carries its own filter woven into the node itself. By default every side is disabled, and nothing flows.

Open the node's UI. The right column hosts directional buttons Down, Up, North, South, West, East, with a block icon on sides facing inventories. The UI opens to the side facing an inventory by default (or Down if none does). Button orientation follows your facing direction; top is always "forward."

On the left column there are three controls:

  • Enable / Disable. Wakes the selected side. A disabled face blocks everything regardless of filter configuration.
  • Items / Fluids tab. Switches the central 3×3 ghost grid between item and fluid filtering.
  • Mode. Toggles the filter behaviour. See below.

The center of the UI is the 3×3 ghost grid. The currently-selected side uses these nine slots to record what it permits or denies. Below the grid, Priority buttons let you raise and lower the side's weight; higher priority is served first within the network.

Items

With the Items tab selected, left-click a slot while holding an item to copy it into the ghost; right-click to clear.

Mode Empty grid Grid with ghosts
Whitelist Nothing passes Only listed items pass
Blacklist Everything passes Everything except listed items passes

Fluids

The Fluids tab works the same way; left-click with a bucket or fluid vessel to copy its contents into the ghost. Fluids support a third mode unavailable to items, Auto-Match, which mirrors whatever fluid is currently in the neighbour tank. This is the default for fresh sides, so an enabled face pointing at a Blood Tank begins moving Essentia Vitae immediately.

Energy

Energy has no whitelist or blacklist. Any enabled face carries Forge Energy to compatible neighbours alongside items and fluids. The only gates are the face's Enable flag and the Master's Energy Throttle.

The Master Routing Node

The Master is where you tune the network's behaviour as a whole.

Stack and Speed Upgrades

Stack upgrades raise the ceiling on transfer rate for all three resource types simultaneously, governing items per pulse, mB of fluid per pulse, and FE/t. Speed upgrades shorten the pulse interval. Combine them according to taste and resource budget.

Energy Throttle

Below the upgrade slots sits an Energy (FE/t) field. The value you type is the rate the network requests from the energy channel each pulse, defaulting to 500 FE/t.

The true ceiling is set by the Stack Upgrades installed above. Each upgrade raises the maximum FE/t the network can physically move; the field's label shows this ceiling. Type a figure higher than the ceiling and the ceiling prevails; the network moves the smaller of the two.

Why throttle at all? A modest setting spares your generators and prevents one network from collapsing a fragile power grid. Start low; raise once your sources can sustain it.

The throttle only affects Forge Energy. Item and fluid transfer rates scale automatically with Stack Upgrades.

A Worked Example: Auto-Smelting Farm

Pull cobblestone from a generator, smelt it, drop smooth stone into storage.

  1. Master Routing Node somewhere central, within auto-bind range of every worker node.
  2. Input Node against the cobble generator's chest. Enable the face, items tab, Whitelist, drop cobblestone into a ghost slot.
  3. Output Node against the input side of your furnaces. Enable, Whitelist + cobblestone ghost.
  4. Input Node against the output side of the furnaces. Enable, Whitelist + smooth stone ghost.
  5. Output Node against storage. Enable, Blacklist with empty grid (everything through; the input filter already enforced "only smooth stone").

If all four are within 16 blocks of the Master or a previously-linked node, they auto-bind. Look for four violet threads. If any miss, hit them with the Node Router.

Topology and Reach

Chained Conduits

A single auto-bind is limited to 16 blocks, but a chain of conduits can extend arbitrarily far. Each new conduit auto-binds to the previous one, inheriting the same Master.

Unloaded Reach

The Master remembers the full shape of its network, and the Routing Conduits threading it together do not need to stay in loaded chunks for the network to function. So long as the Master and the Input/Output nodes you care about are loaded, the conduits between them may rest in unloaded space. Break a conduit mid-network while you are present and the Master forgets it instantly; everything downstream recalculates.

Self-Mending and Rescan

Once per minute the Master sweeps loaded portions of its graph, scrubbing positions that no longer hold a routing-node block. Individual nodes stamp their own coordinates into save data; if a node awakens at a different location it discards its old allegiance and seeks a new Master.

For a truly ruined network, an administrator may invoke /neovitae routing rescan while looking at or standing near the afflicted Master. The Master abandons every remembered connection and walks nearby loaded chunks, rebuilding its graph from scratch. Use it after save-file surgery, chunk regeneration, or world-edit catastrophes.

Practical Tips

  • Start every face disabled and turn them on one at a time. The most common bug is a forgotten Enable flag.
  • Use priorities sparingly. Raise priorities only for known-critical inputs and outputs.
  • Throttle FE before you trust the network. 500 FE/t default is conservative; raise once generation matches.
  • Fluid Auto-Match is the right default for a face pointing at a single-fluid tank. Switch to Whitelist/Blacklist only when triaging multiple liquids.
  • For block-level transport (spawners, structures, vertical elevators), the Teleposer is the correct tool, not the Routing Network.

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