[illogicalsong]

Hello all!! Today we're gonna talk about hoppers! 
Yeah that's right, those things that take a chest and iron to make, that pick things up and move things, super helpful!

Unfortunately, they're also, really laggy. For a run-down on lag and what causes server lag and why, please visit my other post over here cause, I've explained that in depth already, but it basically has to do with hoppers constantly checking for items and server getting overloaded.

So in the past- we've had a limit of 40 hoppers per chunk. This rule has gone without enforcement for a long time, due to there not really being a need to be so strict on hopper usage. However, with 1.15 being a super heavy load on servers, coupled with the increase in players, we are going to have to start enforcing a hopper limit again.


The current hopper limit is now- 400 hoppers per Loaded Area


"Well that's all fine and good but what is a loaded area?? What does that even mean????"

So, a loaded area is, well, the area the server loads around you. The area it figures out where mobs can spawn, what redstone is going off, etc. On our server, this is a 5 chunk radius with your player in the center.
What is a chunk?
Well I'm glad you asked cause I didn't spend all this time prepping this post for nothing. A chunk is 16 blocks by 16 blocks, you can see chunk borders by pressing f3 + g or if you're on a laptop it'll likely be fn + f3 + g




So that's what a chunk looks like


And this is what a loaded area looks like:



So as you can see, the server loads a pretty large area, it's calculating a lot. It may feel like a farm on the outer edges is far enough away to not matter, but the server is still running through all those calculations.

Now, lets look at what 400 hoppers looks like, cause that's a pretty abstract number



Now if you're looking at this going 'What! That's not nearly enough!!' You might need to take a look at how your redstone is being organized. Lets take a look at a few things

How about a super smelter?



This super smelter took 48 hoppers. 16 furnaces is far more than enough for pretty much anything you would need. If you were to make a smelter bigger than this, you would start to eat into your hoppers pretty quickly. So it's down to, is it worth it to me to have an extra 16 furnaces I likely won't use 90% of the time and using another 48 of my hoppers? Or do I wanna use those on another project? It's your decision.

Now, how about a small autosorter?



This sorter for mining items only took 33 hoppers, with 2 chests per item. But you see how quickly it can eat up your hopper supply



Now this has 99 hoppers - and most of these chests will be left empty for a very long time. What might be a better solution is to use the sorter and move the items elsewhere when the chests fill. The items are already sorted, so the machine has done it's purpose. Again, up to you, but this is another way you can conserve hoppers to use on other projects.

Let's look at a final example, a large farm. 



In the initial picture, you can see a hopper line is used to move and catch the items. Which is understandable, after all, that is what hoppers are for, is it not? However, not only is this laggy for the server, it costs a lot more resources, and is actually a far slower means of transport

Water moves items far faster than hoppers can, especially during peak hours. So we ask that you please use water to transport items instead of items wherever possible. If you need help knowing how to do this, check out /warp autofarmtutorial for a visual tutorial, or ask for help 


So
Takeaways from this

- We are now enforcing a 400 hopper limit per 11x11 chunk area


- You can still fit multiple farms with hopper usage in said area if you are using hoppers wisely

- It is easy to waste hoppers, and there are many more resource friendly options

Thanks for reading!