Forestry - Tree Farm Idiots guide

[wolvyn]

This thread is to help me get help and maybe help others out too. It assume zero knowledge of anything beyond vanilla MC and no knowledge of vanilla redstone stuff at all.

To set up an automatated tree farm.

One needs an Arboretum.

You need a Carpenter to make the Small Circuit Board (how do do i power this? Redstone generators? converter from IC2 MFE, if yes What items used?

You also need a Thermionic Fabricator.
Seems that sand or glass goes on the left to make the tubing around the stuff you put into it.
How do i power it?

I did find a video by a nice sounding asian lady but the sound cut out halfway through. But i did learn how to make fertilizer with the apatite gems. Ive got 8 stacks of fertalizer and 9 stacks of Humus. I have 13x13 area walled in with stone fencing. 1 piece of gravel in the center. But after i couldnt hear anything, even with pc sound turned all the way to the max and my headset set all the way up. What i could hear was vary helpful.

So at the moment ive got 3 machines the Thermionic Fabricator, Carpenter and Squeezer.

I dont know where to go from here..

 

[Evil Hamster]

This thread is to help me get help and maybe help others out too. It assume zero knowledge of anything beyond vanilla MC and no knowledge of vanilla redstone stuff at all.

To set up an automatated tree farm.

One needs an Arboretum. TRUE

You need a Carpenter to make the Small Circuit Board (how do do i power this? Redstone generators? converter from IC2 MFE, if yes What items used? An engine. This is one of the (very) few machines a redstone engine will power, but it will be painfully slow. If you have a MFE, just use an electrical engine.

You also need a Thermionic Fabricator. True
Seems that sand or glass goes on the left to make the tubing around the stuff you put into it. Glass or glass panes, never tried sand so can't say
How do i power it? Also needs an engine which will cause the glass to heat up. When the glass melts, you can take your tubes.

I did find a video by a nice sounding asian lady but the sound cut out halfway through. But i did learn how to make fertilizer with the apatite gems. Ive got 8 stacks of fertalizer and 9 stacks of Humus. I have 13x13 area walled in with stone fencing. 1 piece of gravel in the center. But after i couldnt hear anything, even with pc sound turned all the way to the max and my headset set all the way up. What i could hear was vary helpful.

So at the moment ive got 3 machines the Thermionic Fabricator, Carpenter and Squeezer.

I dont know where to go from here..

When you're done with your arbretum, you drop it in the middle of the area you want your farm, give it hummus and saplings and power it with an engine.

You can then start on your logger. When that's done, you set it near your arboretum and start attaching pipes- saplings and apples come out the top and wood out the side. You can set it up so saplings automaticaly go back into the arboretum to save yourself some work. Further automation beyond that is also possible, but that should get you started.

 

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Here is the guide I wrote for Forestry. It answers many of these questions.

 

[wolvyn]

I read your guide, was actually kinda more confused then i started with - just because i just want a stupid tree farm so we dont have to worry about vanilla wood and have plenty of charcoal. and you mentioned sooo many different options my adhd went into overdrive.

EDit, What is a MJ? I know EU's. I did really enjoy your writing style, genreally run with with alot of dwarfs..

Edit 2 : Glass Tubes, Copper Glass Tubes I cant find the recipes for these in game if i type in tubes into the search bar.

 

[SunnyDaze]

MJ is BuildCraft's power - MineCraft Joules. EU is IndustrialCraft. Forestry uses MJ.

An Electrical Engine (Forestry) takes EU from a batbox or MFE and converts it to MJ.

To make the Arboretum:

Small Circuit Board - 6 Redstone and 1 Tin (ingot) in a Carpenter, shaped like an H (tin in the middle). You need to put some water in the tank (click a bucket of water on the GUI). Power the Carpenter with your electrical engine, with LV power wired from your MFE. When you can see the circuit board in the very middle slot, you can take it. If you can't see it, your recipe is wrong, you need more water, or you need power. You can look up Small Circuit Board in NEI.

Sturdy Casing - 8x bronze shaped like a Chest in the Crafting Table. You make bronze with 3 Copper Ingots and 1 Tin Ingot in a square shape (Tin in lower right). You can look up how to make both in NEI.

Golden Electron Tubes x3 - 5 Gold bars and 2 Redstone in the Thermionic Fabricator: click to place the Gold like an upside down T, and then redstone on either side in the middle row, and then put your ingredients in the inventory space. Put glass up in the top left, and power it with an electrical engine next to it. There should be a meter with an arrow - as it gets hot it will fill with red, and you'll get molten glass. Once the red is higher than the arrow, you can take your Electron tubes. You should get 4.

Glass x4

Put them all in the crafting table like this:
Glass | Tube | Glass
Tube | Case | Tube
Glass | Circ | Glass

Now take your shiny new Arborteum to a clear spot, and put it on the ground. You need to put 2+ stacks of Humus and some Saplings in it (any Vanilla sapling or rubber tree). Power it with an engine - it should start building the farm.

Really, once you can make one machine in Forestry, you can make them all.

 

[SunnyDaze]

Edit 2 : Glass Tubes, Copper Glass Tubes I cant find the recipes for these in game if i type in tubes into the search bar.

It's xxx Electron Tube. If you're typing in "tubes" it probably won't come up because the item name is not plural.

 

[wolvyn]

Another wiring question and I think that may be all i need to know.

I do have an ee hooked to a rolling machine.
Can i run copper cables to a batbox and then 4 more copper cables and place an EE with a lever on each of them?
Then run the rolling machine off one. skip a space and run the Thermionic Fabricator off it?

Ive got 3 MFE's running off my hydro plant So ive got no issues if its feasiable to power them that way? without having to figure out BC power. Basically am sitting on a about 2 mill EU counting my batboxes and MFE lines..

 

[Evil Hamster]

Another wiring question and I think that may be all i need to know.

I do have an ee hooked to a rolling machine.
Can i run copper cables to a batbox and then 4 more copper cables and place an EE with a lever on each of them?
Then run the rolling machine off one. skip a space and run the Thermionic Fabricator off it?

Ive got 3 MFE's running off my hydro plant So ive got no issues if its feasiable to power them that way? without having to figure out BC power. Basically am sitting on a about 2 mill EU counting my batboxes and MFE lines..

Yes.

Don't even need the space, unless you're doing it for looks.

You should have more than enough power, don't know how much your plant generates but sounds like you have enough stored.

 

[Nanakisan]

this is why i prefer turtles. no hummus,no fertilizer etc etc just a mining turtle with the right program can replant,harvest and deliver your trees safely.

 

[lindyhopfan]

Here is the guide I wrote for Forestry. It answers many of these questions.

What great guides! How come I haven't seen these before! Awesome!

 

[wolvyn]

Got it, Ill run a line of bat boxes over to it.. as I am leary of strilings as mine blew up the refinery i had set, but thank goodness the oil tanks were 2 squares away from the blast. Dont have the resourses to make a world anchor yet. no ender eyes

 

[wolvyn]

Instead of running all this power could i just build some dirt over my lake and set it up there? Does the base that the logger/arbor use need to be more then 1 thick? Then it would just be right above my hydro plant about 5 blocks.

 

[wolvyn]

answered my own question, went creative in sp, it planted my trees, and the logger chops them down.. but they grow soo slowly.

 

[lindyhopfan]

answered my own question, went creative in sp, it planted my trees, and the logger chops them down.. but they grow soo slowly.

Ah but that's where catalyst comes in...

 

[wolvyn]

its draining all 26 of my watermills, so i can either run the tree farm or everything else atm

 

[ShneekeyTheLost]

its draining all 26 of my watermills, so i can either run the tree farm or everything else atm

Make a Peat Bog and a Turbary. You can do it manually for a couple of peat to run in a peat-fired engine. Peat-fired engines can then run your arboretum and logger.

 

[wolvyn]

I dont think i said it yet in this thread, BUT.... THANKS. Every thread i have started here so far has always had great answers and alot of help, once i figure out what it is I am actually asking.

I did discover with the tree farm and logger I could build up from the ground to Y-whatever -10 above the hydro plant level -. Then i just needed a non-glass block to place the EE upon and place the Arbor ontop of that with a non-glass block next to it with the switch on to power the EE, likewise the same with the logger. Then I started the Arbor and put the humis "floating" in mid-air. Looked pritty cool, until the sand started falling into the lake and negating some of my watermills from producing any energy. So i framed the whole tree farm with glass, under the humis (thank you scafolding) and went three out from the humis to catch the saplings that fall..

We had some server issues, with our reotorary macers casuing crash after crash after crash, then updated bc manually and reset them and things have been smooth for the past three hours.

 

[Hydra]

this is why i prefer turtles. no hummus,no fertilizer etc etc just a mining turtle with the right program can replant,harvest and deliver your trees safely.

Yes. And that's why turtles are borderline cheating

I created a program to 'harvest' the big redwood trees. Just a simple LUA program that could handle a tree with a 4x4 base. With 3 diamonds and just an hour worth of programming it was done. It would be easy to extend so that it would cycle and wait for a tree to regrow and drop the wood in a chest but even with manualle starting it I was just swimming in charcoal.

 

[Hydra]

its draining all 26 of my watermills, so i can either run the tree farm or everything else atm

Electrical Engines are incredible inefficient. You really don't want to use them unless there's no other option. It's much better to just generate MJ for the components that need MJ and generate EU for the IC stuff. My own base is completely MJ based, I only have a macerator, extractor and compressor that I use whenever needed and those are powered by a single geothermal generator that's idle most of the time.

Forestry gives you multiple options for free renewable energy. The first is peat: this system is build to generate free fuel that's ideal to power your treefarm and stuff. All the farming machines require 1 MJ per 'tick' (a tick is gametime, at full speed the game is running at 20 ticks per second). The peat-fired engine generates 1MJ/tick. It also can run VERY long on a single stack of peat (over 4 hours!).

Secondly: you have biomass engines. These generate a lot more power (5MJ/t) and just require biomass which can easily be created from saplings, wheat, sugar cane or cactucs in a fermenter.

And last: this biomass can be distilled in a still to biofuel. This is compatible with Buildcraft fuel and can be used in combustion engines or put into a railcraft steam boiler (which is VERY efficient).

Generally, when I set up a new base I first start out with charcoal because it's easy to power both IC and Buildcraft stuff. I then move on to getting Forestry farms up and running. First the peat bog because that will fuel the other farms (and itself). Secondly a tree farm to give me more charcoal and also building materials. Third I start my Biomass production which then will also allow me to easily run a quarry off of 2 bio-gas engines. The last step is then to distill biomass into biofuel and build a steam boiler. That last step is complex and costly but generates a LOT of power.

 

[wolvyn]

I think the reason we went with the IC2 machines is because at least in my case and another guys its the only mod in the ftb-b-pack that we have ever used before, so its what we knew. In the past when IC and BC first came out was there alot of conflict with the two devs over power types? Cuz its soo darn confusing to look thru the the list of craftable items and wonder does this work with my power network or does it not. So basically if its not on the IC2 wiki it wont work with the current network of power.