Currently, as soon as the furnace stops burning, all power is lost instantly.

Adding to this, it'd be cool if there were different types of flywheels as well, with the amount of wind-up time to reach max capacity as well as the wind-down time to stop being based on the material type used; i.e. denser materials take longer to wind up but also take longer to wind down. I'd also make the wind up and wind down speed also a function of the stress throughout the system so less stressed systems wind up faster and wind down slower, and vice versa.

Accidentally closed it, oops.

Adding to this, it'd be cool if there were different types of flywheels as well, with the amount of wind-up time to reach max capacity as well as the wind-down time to stop being based on the material type used; i.e. denser materials take longer to wind up but also take longer to wind down. I'd also make the wind up and wind down speed also a function of the stress throughout the system so less stressed systems wind up faster and wind down slower, and vice versa.

I have thought about this as well, An interesting variation on this would be a torsion spring block that can store a finite amount of energy

i dislike this idea because it would render infinite power using furnace engines and fans viable because you would not lose all power for the 1 tick the fan took the item out of the furnace

i dislike this idea because it would render infinite power using furnace engines and fans viable because you would not lose all power for the 1 tick the fan took the item out of the furnace

I am not sure I follow your thought process @7NV3S

I am curious why you think the furnace wouldn't consume the fuel to be powered as the proposal heavily implies that a flywheel would lower its power buffer during the process of slowing down; in other words with no active furnace it slows until it halts. The only way what you are saying would work is if during that 1 tick interval a furnace could active its smelting state before actually consuming the fuel, which I don't believe to be the case but would have to confirm after looking at the code.

xisumavoid demonstrated the infinite fuel problem on his first or second YouTube video of his recent Create Together series. He's exploiting the hell out of it.

Yes, but the comment I was replying to didn't say it would make it nonviable it said viable, which implies that it would create a new method of infinite power generation.

In regards to the existing exploit...well it is an exploit and it should be fixed, and to compensate a new method of generating power with a flywheel attached to some other type of block besides a furnace engine should exist because the flywheel is acting as part of a Stirling engine essentially, meaning that there would be other things it could attach to in order to generate power easily. My first thought is a way to heat water to produce steam which eventually decomposes back into water by using blasting fans to boil a water source, and having an engine which stores the steam and outputs water to create a closed loop generation system that doesn't rely on game mechanic quirks to work.

It is not an exploit, nor a bug. it is simply something to do with the way furnace engines work. If the team felt that it was an exploit, they would have patched it already as it is widly known and used. The idea of having a steam engine that relies on a non-furnace system has been discussed by one of the team members, however such a system has not been created.

@SpottyTheTurtle if it were intended, it'd have been more likely that a block would have been added that just let you burn a fuel source and made it able to be subbed out for a furnace/smoker/blast furnace. The fact that there was not makes the assertion that it is intended more likely to be a false one than a true one.

As such I believe it is absolutely nothing more than a consequence of the way they programmed flywheels, and an exploit of its mechanics. If it is intended, submit a PR adding such a block and see if it gets merged because the only likely reason it wouldn't be included is because it isn't intended.

The team is aware of the mechanic of infinite blast furnaces.
Any "patch" will reduce the inner logic of the furnace engine. The furnace is hot, so you can harvest energy from it. How a player gets it to be hot is the players job to figure out in creative ways. Which can include fuel/smeltable farms such as charcoal/kelp based farms or glass cycling (saw/furnace to do create and vanilla glass back and forth)
The only "patch" that might come eventually, depending on what route we go, is the idea that has been there since 0.1 of replacing the furnace engine with a proper steam engine; however, that'd be a full mechanical rework of the engine, and not really a dedicated patch to this detail. Don't expect such to be soon.
Second, Create aims at keeping modularity with blocks, to give the option of building something complex out of simple components. In an environment in which the player is completely free to do so however they want. That obviously means the create components aren't expensive, the entry level is knowledge and willingness to experiment. That, in turn, also justifies the furnace engine trick: everyone getting such a fragile system working reliably did so much work for it I'll be happy to let them "abuse" it
Third, CSH who is good with compacting tried to tile the infinite blast furnace gen trick, and that resulted in worse power per block performance than his regular furnace engine tile with hybrid glass cycle/charcoal. So it isn't even more compact to blast furnace abuse, just a little cheaper on fuel if you are really needing to save on that.

-Grimmauld, a member of the Create team.

This paragraph was written in response to a PR made by a community member which would have patched the furnace engine "exploit" if it was accepted. as you can see, it was not.

@jbarrineau06 apologies your thread got hijacked a little.
I appreciate the suggestion; we will take it into consideration when we rework the furnace engine.
I will go ahead and close this issue