Minecraft – How to Efficiently Configure Working Item Counts From Applied Energistics

The most resource efficient way I can come up with to power a horizontal line of droppers is this

with the redstone line on the left being connected to a clock. This works because the repeaters strongly power the dropper they are pointing into causing the droppers to the left and right to be indirectly powered.

The vertical line of droppers is powered as described in this Youtube video, with a comparator being used to send a (inverted by a redstone torch) signal to a vertical stack of redstone torches powering repeaters pointing into every 2nd vertical dropper.

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With regards to the specific situation you are in the most resource efficient way to get the mobs from the exit of the spawner to the 'home' area would be to bring them up high enough using a mob elevator (a 1x1 tube filled with alternating water blocks and signs will cause the mobs to swim themselves up to the top) to a point where they can be dropped down the required number of blocks.

The only pitfall with this type of system is ensuring that the mobs fall a consistent distance everytime. All that is required to do this is to ensure that the water stream at the top of the elevator is set up like this

XXXXXXXXXX
X        X
X~~~~~S  X
XSXXXXX  X

(where ~ = water and S is a sign)

So that mobs get pushed into the drop shaft by other mobs pushing against them instead of directly by a water stream.

I'm sure there are more compact ways, so if someone shows me one I'll give them the answer, but this is what I came up with:

It's kind of hard to see, so let me explain what happens if it's setup for Advanced Processors:

A Chest is setup with a Precision Exporter, crafting/exporting an Advanced Processor Assembly into the chest, configured to pulse mode, with a Level Emitter setup to emit a signal if the Advanced Processor Levels are below or equal to the limit you desire -1 (so if you want a buffer of 16, it would be 15). This serves as the trigger to the system.

A Comparator is setup on the Chest as well, feeding into both an AND gate and into a Precision Import Bus, set to to be active without signal. When the trigger from the Comparator hits the Import Bus, the item is sucked out of the chest. This provides a locking mechanism to only put one item in the furnace at a time.

Another Level Emitter is setup exactly like the first, but serves as the other input to the AND gate.

The output of the AND gate is fed via a RedNet Cable into another Precision Export Bus, set to export an Advanced Processor Assembly with a redstone pulse. This ensures that an Advanced Processor Assembly is only ever inserted, if more Advanced Processors are still required (Left side of the AND) and an item has just come out of the furnace (Right side of the AND)