How can I clean up item drops on my server?
I'm running a private Minecraft server for a few friends. It's running the SMP technic pack for Minecraft Beta 1.8.
We've started building some rather complex machines which produce a large amount of items. Sometimes, storage becomes an issue - and - with nowhere else to go, the items "pop" out of pipes and start to pile up in the world. The server begins to slow down gradually over time as the number of items continues to grow. I guess this is just something to expect from a mod like this.
If the machine "malfunction" is left untreated for too long, it can cause the game to be unplayable; which is why I ask this question:
Is there any way to remove excess items from the world? (i.e. floating items, not solid blocks or items in containers).
Preferably looking for an automated solution (mod) which caps the number of items in the world at one time. However, a manual solution would be great also.
Solution 1:
You could just put lava/fire under where the items are popping out of the pipes. That would destroy them before they piled up. Or, if you have time to wait, after 15 minutes or so the items vanish.
Solution 2:
I did some research and I found out that you can turn this situation in your favor in two ways:
You can place an iron transport pipe instead of the [cobble-]stone pipe that connects the chest - then items will just go backwards, if there isn't enough space. However, I don't know what is the capacity of pipes themselves, and is it going to give more/less lag (are they optimized for this or not).
You can place an obsidian transport pipe two blocks under the pipe connecting to the chest and direct it to an IC Recycler. That's very useful, if you aren't transporting diamonds or something expensive (but I think you wouldn't let them burn in lava too), helps to utilize a lot of trash like dirt or cobblestone, and sometimes gives something interesting (for example, probability of getting diamond in the latest IC is 19 out of 10000 scrap boxes, so 90000 of random materials will give you 18-20 diamonds). Read more here.
P.S. The official Technic Pack is kinda outdated, try to use the unofficial one. A lot of bugs were fixed in IC since TPMP 0.0.4 (I mention this, because Recycler chances were changed tremendously, previously diamond had 29/1000).
Hope this will help you.
Solution 3:
The WorldEdit Bukkit command /remove drops 3000 (3000 being the radius) works.
Solution 4:
This might not be ideal, but there is a mod called the allocator. It allows items to be picked up from the ground and put into storage automatically. So whilst not destroying anything, it will tuck it away some where, hopefully reducing server lag.
Here is a video on youtube for reference/ideas