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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.

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  • Just log in and stand around. After a while (lag might make this take a very long time) the items should start to vanish.
    – John the Green
    Dec 12, 2011 at 23:23
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    @JohntheGreen But if new items are being produced at the same rate that they are disappearing, you'd never gain any ground.
    – Sonic42
    Feb 11, 2012 at 23:49
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    @Sonic42 True. I assumed he would shut that off first.
    – John the Green
    Feb 12, 2012 at 0:42
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    If you're playing tekkit try using Pneumatic tubes rather than industrial pipes...they are a lot smarter when it comes to transporting items. If a chest or machine is full they will stop producing cobblestone from your factory, until a viable destination is empty.
    – user34241
    Oct 10, 2012 at 10:15
  • There's a bukkit mod designed to reduce lag which condenses dropped items, but I can't recall its name
    – shanodin
    Aug 18, 2013 at 20:33

7 Answers 7

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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.

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  • Risky, but one of the quickest ways to exterminate items laying around.
    – John the Green
    Dec 12, 2011 at 23:33
  • Right. I haven't been able to find a better automatic way.
    – SaintWacko
    Dec 12, 2011 at 23:34
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    Ah, out-of-game solution. Download MCEdit. I believe it has a Delete Entities command, which will remove all items with the selected area. It says it's just compatible with 1.8 right now, so you may want to make a backup of the world first.
    – SaintWacko
    Dec 12, 2011 at 23:43
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    I don't actually have access to MCEdit right now, but it looks like once you select an area, the Delete Entities option will appear on the left side of the screen. You will have to select each area where they pile up, it won't just remove them from the whole map. And make sure you make that backup first, just in case.
    – SaintWacko
    Dec 13, 2011 at 0:07
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    15? I thought it was 5.
    – badp
    Dec 13, 2011 at 14:19
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I did some research and I found out that you can turn this situation in your favor in two ways:

  1. 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).

  2. 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.

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The WorldEdit Bukkit command /remove drops 3000 (3000 being the radius) works.

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  • I believe this is from the WorldEdit bukkit plugin.
    – Schism
    Nov 4, 2012 at 5:53
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    The /remove drops command is a worldedit command.
    – user36878
    Nov 12, 2012 at 21:27
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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

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    The problem is that storage is full up, so allocators are not really a solution to the problem.
    – fredley
    Dec 13, 2011 at 12:07
  • I'm sure with some clever placement, you could have it sort and filter unwanted items to a cactus or lava pit. It would only happen when one chest was full, and then dispense from the full chest to the empty one then into the lava. Not sure how, but it's worth asking on that post.
    – AncientSwordRage
    Dec 13, 2011 at 12:10
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    @fredley I've edited my answer to show a quick vid on how someone has solved this. A combination of the two waste disposal systems might do the trick.
    – AncientSwordRage
    Dec 13, 2011 at 12:21
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Floating items are entities that de spawn after 6000 ticks. This is around 5 minutes provided there is no lag.

Items despawn after 6000 game ticks (5 minutes) of being in a loaded chunk, unless another item of the same kind was dropped next to them and added to its stack. Merging dropped item stacks resets the counter to 6000 ticks.

In the worst case, the stack grows by one each 4mn59s. It's over 5h 20minutes. Depending on the source of your dropped items (statistics of items times, frequency of drops) you can make an assumption of the quantity of items that will stay on the ground.

If you prefer to avoid spilling items out, you should try approach like :

  • use diamonds pipes to filter valuables from junk and trash useless items.
  • if you have access to gates, put some to suck items out full chests (preferably with a unique item type) into void pipes
  • if you cannot do this, a good alternative is to connect a void pipe next to the last stone pipe that inputs into the chest. 1 of 2 items will go to the chest, the other will be destroyed. This can be used for cheap items mostly.
  • increase the storage capacity, stone pipes directly next to a chest won't send items into it if they are full. The drawback is that items will be scattered between multiples chests.
  • another technic I used for my quarries is a line of double wood chests connected to stone pipes directly on top of them (only one input is ok). For safety, I connected a gate at the last chest to send a red stone signal to stop the qua y as soon as there is an item in that last chest.

P's. I thought a server restart might help removing floating entities but I cannot find a valid source to confirm this. Might just be a plug in I used. I'll try to find more information later.

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  • Since when does a server restart remove floating items?
    – SevenSidedDie
    Aug 18, 2013 at 17:43
  • Couldn't find some source to confirm. I am probably mistaking this with some plug in feature. Change the question to state this.
    – M'vy
    Aug 18, 2013 at 19:31
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Go OP mode, get in creative and just run over the items. They go away'

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Make a container that holds lava, and let the items get destroyed that way.

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