Forestry's Bio Generators are terrible.

[Froghandler]

With Bio Generators, you generate 8000 EU per bucket of biomass. With Biogas Engines used to fuel Magma Crucibles converting netherrack to lava used to fuel Geothermal Generators, you generate 125,000 EU for the same bucket. That's a little bit more than 15 times per bucket.

Maffs:

Biogas Engine: 50,000 MJ per bucket biomass

Magma Crucible: 8000 MJ per bucket lava (netherrack)
20,000 MJ per bucket lava (cobblestone)

Geothermal Generator: 20,000 EU per bucket lava

Bio Generator: 8000 EU per bucket biomass.


50,000 MJ / Bucket Biomass * Bucket Lava / 8000 MJ * 20,000 EU / Bucket Lava = 125,000 EU / bucket biomass


The conversion ratio for MJ to EU using lava is 2.5, and for EU -> MJ using electrical engines is 3 (this prevents infinite energy cycles and seems well balanced.) The only reasonable conclusion is that Bio Generators are terribly underpowered.

Note: putting this here because this is how three mods interact (Forestry, Thermal Expansion, and IC2) in FtB.

 

[Bibble]

Ok, firstly, balancing one mod (particularly the specific mod interactions) against another is more than a little silly, and isn't going to get anywhere.

Secondly, I'm not entirely sure what your equations are trying to show. I can see a MJ cost for the lava, but not for the biomass (surely, if you're comparing, then you should do it fairly). I quite liked biomass as a fuel, because I had a tree farm powering a steam boiler, and producing a massive amount of saplings as a side effect. The result was that I had masses of saplings, and massed of BC power, so I put the two together, and started making biomass (and, subsequently biofuel). This gave me a reasonable stream of IC2 power for my development when needed, and stopped me having to go hunt and gather another oil/fuel source for the combustion engines powering my quarry.

Biomass isn't usually intended to be used for EU power on it's own, it's typically used in the biogas engines, as it means that you get a decent stream of power (4MJ/tick) and they don't explode (always a plus). For any more advanced uses, I'd advise converting to biofuel, with is much more potent.

 

[Antice]

Biomass is nerfed like this, because it's a 100% renewable resource. you can build up the infrastructure for mass producing it, then have everything automated and it will run forever without further inputs. so even tho it's less bang per unit of fuel, it's so cheap that and effortless to make once set up, that it totaly replaces all other fuels sources if you don't feel like spending time searching for non-renewable sources.

 

[Froghandler]

Ok, firstly, balancing one mod (particularly the specific mod interactions) against another is more than a little silly, and isn't going to get anywhere.

The point was to show why using Bio generators is a terrible idea and to use lava as a go-between instead

Secondly, I'm not entirely sure what your equations are trying to show. I can see a MJ cost for the lava, but not for the biomass (surely, if you're comparing, then you should do it fairly).

I compared the EU generated per bucket of biomass using two different methods. The energy it takes to generate the bucket of biomass is irrelevant to the comparison.

 

[Bibble]

Ok, still trying to get my head around this. You're point is that, instead of generating EU directly, you'd be better off putting the biomass into a biogas engine, using that to produce lava, and pumping that lava into geothermal generators?

So, for the price of extra setup and effort, you get more output? Have you counted the biofuel method in this? I'm actually genuinely interested in how favourably that comes in comparison to the two.

Also, it's not intended, but yes, I suspect it would be entirely within the aims of both mods to reward extra effort and an extra complicated system (particularly if you've got an aqueous accumulator and igneous extruder producing the cobblestone for the transformation).

Pumping biomass directly into generators is easy, and therefore doesn't get much out of it, adding refinement steps gets more out at the end.

 

[Codex]

Personally there is no right or wrong. It isn't so much to the point of efficiency later on to the point of design. Biomass is much easier to produce in large quantities, something you failed to note. At that point, something very rudimentary that can also be used is Biofuel. As I don't exactly know how the conversions work out, I cannot say anything for sure, but directly from the wiki there is this:

A combustible liquid created by the Still using liquid Biomass at a 10:3 conversion ratio or, if BuildCraft is installed, in a Refinery at a 4:1 ratio. Can be used to power combustion engines from BuildCraft. Provides 5 MJ/t for 40,000 ticks, making it 33% as efficient as normal Fuel (6 MJ/t for 100,000 ticks). It can also be used in a Bio Power Generator for 32,000 EU at 16 EU/t.

So biofuel is worth 32,000 EU in a bio power generator, that is 12,000 EU higher then a geothermal.

 

[Meldiron]

First off, it's not really a conversion if it includes netherrack, then you'r adding a second fuel, and you'd be much better of just dropping the biomass alltogether and just using some of the lava as fuel for magmatic engines.
Running the conversion of cobble give you a more fair 50 000 EU for a 1:1 conversion.

Secondly, as mentioned before is it tricky to compare balance across mods since there are different gains, drawbacks and reasons for the mods beeing like they are.

But thirdly, i also believe the bio generator to be very underpowered, but for other reasons.
One bucket of biomass produce 50 000MJ or 8000EU.
One peat will produce 5000MJ or 5000EU (the wiki states 4000 but this is wrong, making peat produce 25% more EU then coal)
Peat is MUCH quicker and easier to mass produce.

 

[Zelfana]

Biomass might be underpowered but you're basically comparing it to magma crucible's netherrack conversion instead of complaining about the generator itself. The netherrack melting into lava is pretty OP while the other options for it are lossy. It's supposed to be like that but it could be made more costly to balance it.

 

[netmc]

Biomass in a bio-generator is pretty pathetic. It is supposed to be that way. It's far better to convert it into bio-fuel first, then run the bio-generator. And because of the nature of the bio-generators, it is bet to feed the power into a batbox, then feed your energy network. Its purpose of running on biomass is a way to get a little bit of energy before you have your biofuel production up and running.

As others have stated, this energy is basically free as in solar and wind. It can run completely automated after setup. As such, it isn't supposed to be the optimal option. It is the free option.

 

[Omicron]

I agree that the biogenerator is a little on the weak side. However, consider this:

SirSengir balanced the ouput of the biogenerator on the differences of scaling between Buildcraft and IC2. You can read his reasoning in the Forestry thread on Minecraftforums. Most other IC/BC conversion mods base their conversion rates on the MJ output of coal in a stirling engine compared to the EU output of coal in a generator, which completely ignores this scaling. Buildcraft starts off generating less MJ than IC2 generates EU, but then ramps up sharply - lately made even more dramatic by Railcraft's steam boilers which are 10 to 20 times as efficient with solid fuels as regular Buildcraft engines. So, once you hit endgame, MJ is worth less than EU in terms of fuel cost, yet regular conversion mods keep giving you multiple EU out of single MJs. Therefore it's always a better idea to generate MJ and transform it into EU than it is to generate EU directly. The biogenerator, balanced as it is, intentionally stays clear of this issue.

(As an aside, liquid fuel boilers are actually pretty much in parity with Buildcraft, it's just the solid fuel ones that have broken scaling. That's because Buildcraft uses solid fuels for earlygame things and liquid fuels for endgame things, while Railcraft uses both in an endgame context, thereby vastly overvaluing solid fuels compared to the rest of the Buildcraft ecosystem.)

Also note that you're comparing the biogenerator to the magma crucible, which is (even after the nerf) still completely overpowered in terms of efficiency for effort, especially when run off solid fuel boilers. In fact, you could nerf it much, much harder and it would still remain an excellent choice.

I've described testing this in another thread, here's the summary.

Imagine that you just set up the infrastructure to produce a steady stream of biomass/biofuel. You now have multiple choices:
1.) Just plop down a biogenerator. Quick, easy, zero maintenance, cheap, just works. 200,000 MJ -> 32,000 EU.
2.) Set up magma crucibles, powered by either biogas engines on biomass, or combustion engines on biofuel, or a liquid fuel boiler on biofuel. All three are equivalent options, since converting biomass to biofuel is a zero sum game (you don't gain or lose any MJ in the process) and liquid fuel boilers orient themselves on the efficiency of combustion engines. Also set up an igneous extruder and have it generate cobblestone, which you then melt down for lava and feed to geothermal generators. This costs a lot more resources and effort to set up initially than the biogenerator, but it is also completely maintenance-free and gives you a great conversion ratio of 20,000 MJ -> 20,000 EU. Considering the scaling differences between normal IC and BC, this technically is already too efficient, but we're living in a world of GregTech and GraviSuit so I'm sure all those EUs will find a use somewhere.
3.) Use the same magma crucible -> geothermal setup, but use netherrack instead. This gives you a better conversion ratio, depending on the exact value the netherrack melting recipe is set to. However, it also introduces a maintenance overhead, because you now need a constant supply of netherrack which is difficult to automate.
4.) Use a liquid fuel boiler + steam turbine instead of the boiler + magma crucibles. The steam turbine is very expensive (although it becomes slightly cheaper in newer Railcraft versions) and requires you to occasionally replace the rotor, which is also very expensive. However, the setup converts 32 MJ/t -> 50 EU/t for you. That is a really excellent conversion ratio, and if you go through the trouble of maintaining a steam turbine, I'd say that's only fair.

However, isn't netherrack giving an even better conversion ratio for less maintenance cost? Yes it does, because the magma crucible is still overpowered. So what would you need to set the netherrack recipe to, in order to place it comfortably in between the infinite cobblestone setup and the expensive steam turbine? My testing has shown: about 16,000 MJ is fair. That's four times what it originally was, and still twice as much as it currently is. Keep that in mind when you try and make balance comparisons off of the magma crucible.

All in all, in the above list of options, the biogenerator is proooobably underpowered still. I'd maybe place it at 200,000 MJ -> 100,000 EU if I had the option in the config files. Unfortunately I don't, so I guess it stays where it is.

 

[Codex]

Thanks for the nice summary Omicron!

Personally the biogenerator is underpowered and underused, but still viable once you get biofuel processing.

 

[Antice]

Considering how quickly biofuel production can outpace the needs for MJ's the biogenerator makes fore a nice fuel sink that allows you to keep those forestry machines moving instead of stuttering and stopping because you don't have anywhere to put surplus items. or worse yet. lagging you to death by spewing thousands of entities into your world by overflowing the tubes.
In forestry the entire setup is partly balanced through the secondary products of each farm/machine feeding into some other process to make them use less non renewable resources. even to the point where you could easily end up having it entirely run without needing external inputs. not only that. you get tonnes of bonus resources in the form of lumber, charcoal, peat and food.

 

[Froghandler]

4.) Use a liquid fuel boiler + steam turbine instead of the boiler + magma crucibles. The steam turbine is very expensive (although it becomes slightly cheaper in newer Railcraft versions) and requires you to occasionally replace the rotor, which is also very expensive. However, the setup converts 32 MJ/t -> 50 EU/t for you. That is a really excellent conversion ratio, and if you go through the trouble of maintaining a steam turbine, I'd say that's only fair.

However, isn't netherrack giving an even better conversion ratio for less maintenance cost? Yes it does, because the magma crucible is still overpowered. So what would you need to set the netherrack recipe to, in order to place it comfortably in between the infinite cobblestone setup and the expensive steam turbine? My testing has shown: about 16,000 MJ is fair. That's four times what it originally was, and still twice as much as it currently is. Keep that in mind when you try and make balance comparisons off of the magma crucible.

All in all, in the above list of options, the biogenerator is proooobably underpowered still. I'd maybe place it at 200,000 MJ -> 100,000 EU if I had the option in the config files. Unfortunately I don't, so I guess it stays where it is.

My point was more along the lines of practical application for people using the modpack than game balance, but you bring up excellent points I was wonder where and if the point of unbalance in this process was. The liquid fuel boiler and steam turbine from Railcraft is an option I haven't yet gotten around to playing with, but it seems like lots of fun and I'll definitely try it. You make a convincing case for the Magma crucible being a bit overpowered; as it stands magma crucibles give a much better conversion ratio (2.5) than steam (1.56) which doesn't make much sense as it's easier to set up and maintain magma crucibles.

It seems that the wheat to EU process of bio generators was attempted to be balanced with the EU output of Wheat to Industrialcraft biofuel cells used to fill empty fuel cans. In this case, it is quite a bit better, not requiring tin for cells and giving a bit improvement per wheat used.

 

[StarLiner]

Biofuel is inefficient as heck, modeled after IRL?



*Goes back to destroying the environment*

 

[SilvasRuin]

Interestingly, ethanol from sugarcane is actually pretty effective in place of gasoline.

 

[Antice]

Interestingly, ethanol from sugarcane is actually pretty effective in place of gasoline.

Ethanol is not a bad energy carrier. but the manufacture of ethanol is incredibly land intensive. you need a LOT of sugarcanes to make any decent amount of ethanol for biofuel.+
worse still. growing, refining,fermenting and distilling sugarcane into biofuel actually consumes quite a bit of energy by itself. so a hefty fraction of the produced biofuel get's consumed in the making of biofuel.
Sengir has aparently modeled his system on this, and done a fairly decent job of it too. it does produce more than it consumes, but it is very land intensive since you have to grow a lot of crops to feed such a beast.
Luckily for us. farm are stackable in minecraft.

 

[Greyed]

Not sure what the point of the OP is. You've found a conversion which doesn't work to your liking compared to another conversion. And? The point of these modpacks isn't to present a single way of doing any given thing. It is to present multiple ways so the people who are playing can explore options and ideas to find what fits best for them in any given situation.

Personally I am rocking the Biogas because it was a neat challenge to set up a tree farm, pipe the saplings into a fermenter, pipe it into a Railcraft tank and then out to 6 biogas engines. Those in turn feed into my TE power grid which has power converter into EU hanging off the side that tops off 1 bat box that feeds the few IC2 machines and single charging station. Not only did I like the challenge of laying it out but the biogas engines provide more than enough power for my needs on the MJ side so if there are any inefficiencies in one piece, eh, it's no biggie.

The time and material costs of converting back to magma crucibles feeding either magmatics or geothermals just isn't worth the effort for what little EU I use (a pittance, really).. Certainly not when you consider I have to make regular trips into the Nether. I've got 576 buckets of biogas stored up, another couple thousand waiting to be grown and fermented. I've burned through enough netherrack to not want to even trying to build up that much.

Also, for those who are saying that the netherrack -> lava conversion is OP, you have to remember the context in which TE's author was designing it. He said that once you get to the nether you have effectively unlimited lava via BC pumps. He designed the netherrack -> lava conversion to provide an alternative to cross-dimensional lava-pumping via either Mystcraft portals or Enderchests so as to reduce server lag. So comparing Netherrack -> lava against other engines is the wrong comparison. You should be comparing it to lava pumping.

 

[ICountFrom0]

Wasn't there something about converting biomass or biofuel into real fuel using a buildcraft refinery at some point though, would that help if it's still in there?

I'm going to join in with the team of reasonable voices here, in this situation nethrack is a fuel. You are comparing a system that uses two fuels, together, vs the output of a system that uses only one of those fuels.

It would be as if the biogas generator side also had 10 hidden geothermal generators with a netherpump that you where not counting for some reason.

So, biofuel, not very good (unless you really can refine it into fuel with a refinery) but you can still use it to make steam with a boiler in the liquid fueled mode, and then use a tubine with the steam, just build them next to each other so the steam moves in directly instead of limiting the flow to the limit of the gold pipe. Course now you are paying for this better rate with broken turbines, so still not ideal. (costs iron, technically unlimited, but golem farms, really?)

Option 3. Same as you described, but with a cobble gen feeding the crucibles. Now that is an unlimited supply and not really a fuel. This is also lower efficency numbers, but worth looking at.

In the future there's the ability of a perfect philisophers stone to convert (if in the nether) cobble (genereated free) into netherrack. This gives you only the cost of repairing the stone to work with.

My point is that everything has costs, and if you limit yourself to unlimited resources (like biofuel) you will either have to do lots of work, or get lower returns.

 

[Omicron]

Wasn't there something about converting biomass or biofuel into real fuel using a buildcraft refinery at some point though, would that help if it's still in there?

Actually the Buildcraft refinery can work as a biomass to biofuel converter in place of the Forestry still. It is less efficient than the still, though, which by extension means you're actually losing MJ in the conversion.

Converting biofuel to fuel, I doubt that was ever considered. Fuel is a limited, non-renewable resource that you need to put effort into procuring. It would make no sense to implement an alternate way to produce the same thing from fully renewable input. If you could do that, why would you ever actually bother finding oil anymore?

 

[FMan_0000]

You're having the same issue than using steam boilers to get EU. Steam is not efficient with EU and turbines take tons of steel, normal Ic2 generators are better for that task. This is exactly the same.