Cable

The **Cables** are the primary means of transferring EU from one device to another. There are several different types of cable, each type made from different metals, and each type can tolerate a different maximum EUP, usually referred to as Voltage. If an applied Voltage exceeds a cable's maximum, the cable will instantly melt. This is NOT to be confused with (EU/t), usually referred to as Current; all cables can handle an infinite amount of current.

All cables suffer from energy losses over distance. Long cables will lose energy in the process of transferring it. There are several ways to reduce losses - Transformers , insulation, and daisy-chaining storage devices.

Un-insulated cables shock entities that wander too close, dealing damage proportional to the voltage.

Insulating cables with rubber reduces energy losses (only in earlier versions of the mod), reduces shocks, and allows the cable to be painted using the Painter. Painted cables will not connect to different colored cables. This also greatly reduces the strain on CPU, as large cable meshes with many intersections require the game to perform many CPU-heavy calculations.

## Note

Not all of this information is as updated as it should be, so I (BlueBanana45) am fixing up this article.

## Video Tutorial

A Basic Tutorial on How to Make And Use All Cables!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1ll6RUQ8yI

## Insulation

Cable can be insulated by adding 'rubber'. Insulation reduces the EU loss over distance of cable.

Placed cable can have insulation added or removed with Insulation Cutters.

Uninsulated cables (except glass fibre) cannot be coloured with the Painter.

## Cable Types

More detailed information and a larger recipe list is available by looking at the page for each cable type.

In the most recent versions of IC2, Tin Cable  can only tolerate **Low Voltage** (up to 32 EUP), which means they can handle the energy outputted by basic Generators, but they're very cheap to make and have extremely low energy loss (0.20 EU/block).
In older versions, Tin cables could only tolerate **Micro Voltage** (up to 5 EUP). Since no transformer can "step down" voltage this low, Tin cables were only suited for lower-output generators like Solar Panels, Water Mills, or Wind Farms.

### Copper Cable

In the most recent versions of IC2, Copper cables  are the most common cable tier. They are only capable of handling **Medium Voltage** (up to 128 EUP), however, they suffer the smallest, distance-related energy losses out of all the conventional cables (same as tin cables, 0.20 EU/blocks).
In older versions, they were only able to handle **Low Voltage** (up to 32 EUP)

### Gold Cable

In the most recent versions of IC2, Gold cables  can transport **High Voltage** (up to 512 EUP) but has higher energy loss than copper (0.40 EU/block) However, since the energy loss applies to each package of energy, if carrying full 128EUP, the gold cable will lose less energy than copper over distance, see below for more information.

### HV (Iron) Cable

HV Cables  can handle the highest amount of current possible at **Extreme Voltage** (up to 2048 EUP OR higher) however it loses energy very quickly over distance (0.80 EU/block). When operating at 2048 voltage using transformers, HV Cable is actually far more energy efficient than either Gold or Copper Cable. Only Glass Fibre cable is more energy efficient over distance (at 512 EUP), at the expense of Glass Fibre's diamond material cost.

### Glass Fibre Cable

Glass Fibre cable  is a special type of cable capable of transporting **Insane Voltage** (up to 8192 EUP). It does not shock anything standing too close and has only a tiny amount of energy loss, however it is very expensive to make. If you have a mod installed that adds Silver as an ore, then you can use Silver to replace the Redstone to create cables at an improved rate; however, Silver does not spawn in a regular IC2 installation.

### Detector Cable

The Detector Cable  is a special cable which outputs a redstone current when EU is flowing through it. They can handle any Voltage.

### Splitter Cable

The Splitter Cable  is a special cable which prevents EU from flowing through it when a redstone current is applied. They can handle any Voltage.

## Cable Efficiency

All cables suffer distance-related energy losses, and depending on the tier and insulation of the given cable, the losses can vary greatly. The general unit for cable efficiency is EU/block. It shows how much EU every EU Packet looses per block. The number is accumulated along the whole length of the cable, and then rounded down to the nearest integer. Therefore, if a distance is short enough, there EU loss will remain zero. For example, since Copper Cable loses 1 EU every 5 blocks, a 4 block long Insulated Copper Cable won't lose any EU.

## Voltage Efficiency

Depending on the EUP traveling trough a cable it may be more efficient to use higher voltage cables and packets. This is because EU/b isn't applied on the total EU/t that travels the cable but on every single EU-Packet.
So a copper cable carrying 384 EU/t over 10 Blocks of insulated copper cable is really carrying 12\*32 EU-Packets and instead of: 384EU-2EU=382EU you get: 32EU\*12-2\*12=360EU. But when using 128 EU-Packets and 2x insulated gold cables you get: 128EU\*3-4\*3=372EU. In this example this is a difference of 12 EU over 10 Blocks.

What can be concluded from a cursory glance over the numbers is that, when using maximum allowable voltage, Copper cables are actually the most lossy cable type (at 25.0% per 40 blocks), followed by Tin (at 20.0% per 40 blocks), then Gold (at 12.5% per 40 blocks), then Iron (at 1.56% per 40 blocks), and the most lossless is Glass Fibre (at 0.195% per 40 blocks). ***Remember, these values only apply if current is passed at the highest voltage available for that cable type.***

The formula for overall EU/b is: Combined EU/t divided by Desired packet size multiplied by Cable's EU/b per Packet equals **Combined EU/b**

Below is an example of different EU/t packed into different EU-Packets and carried with different cables, cables are full insulated, EU-P equals EU-Packet, results are in **Overall / Combined EU/b**  (not EU/b per Packet), results can't be rounded down to nearest integer.:

* Blue color indicates that EU-Packets under 32 EU can't be obtained by transforming. They can only be generated with generators as they always emit EU-Packages the size of their output EU.
* Green color indicates the optimal EU-Package for that EU/t example. Blue fields are ignored.
* Orange color and red color indicates sub-optimal EU-Packages.

## Cable Splitting

Up to 6 cables can connect to one other cable. Current will only flow through a cable when requested by a consumer if the loss from the cable length will allow some energy to get to the consumer. i.e. a Batbox (32EU) will send across insulated copper to a furnace up to 155 blocks away (5x31). No energy will be sent to a furnace 156 blocks away.

Keep in mind, however, that an excessive number of cable intersections will increase strain on your CPU (and more importantly, the server, when playing on a multi-player server). Don't do things like having rows of adjacent cables with every block connected to every other block. Also, separate cables connected to an energy storage device (BatBox, etc.) or transformer do not count as a cable intersection, so take advantage of that when possible.

## Trivia

Shock damage is dealt to entities standing near an uninsulated cable at a rate of 1 point of damage per 64 EU/packet. Thus, Micro-Voltage (32 EU/p) will not harm entities, while High-Voltage (2048 EU/p) will deal 32 points of damage. The maximum damage that can be dealt by a shock under normal conditions is 128 points, via one Extreme-Voltage (8192 EU/p) packet through an uninsulated HV cable (which will immediately be destroyed), killing all non-boss mobs, and instantly killing a player with Protection IV Diamond armor.

The maximum amount of shock damage that can possibly be dealt without any supporting mods is with an EU Nuclear Reactor at 0.63% heat, filled with 45 Quad MOX fuel rods, 2 Dual MOX fuel rods, and 7 RSH Condensators, which will output 26497 EU in one tick, dealing 414 damage to an unarmored player and 2 damage to a player with Quantum Armor.