Alveary Heaters

[Icarus White]

Right, so I was trying to get some Modest Princesses breeding in my Extreme Hills biome when I ran into a little hitch. As you know, Modest Princesses prefer Hot/Arid, but have tolerances of Both_1/Up_1, which means that Warm/Normal should be fine.

First, I tried hooking up several biogas engines to a single heater block. However, the Alveary only had its heat increased by 20%, no matter how much power I pumped into the block, even when I stuck on a redstone cell. The MJ reader noted that the heater was requesting 24 MJ/t, but from what I've read I should only need 8 MJ/t...

So I tried sticking on a few more heater blocks, and eventually found that I needed five or six, and they only used about 8 MJ/t total. Needless to say, this has me rather confused.

Worse, the Modest Princess still complained! The Alveary still said that the environment was hostile, even when I took out the queen and put it back in.

So what am I doing wrong?

 

[DoctorOr]

Works fine for me in a normal/normal base biome with two heater blocks. One heater block does nothing, two has the alveary bounce back and forth between warm and hot.

 

[Loke2]

Right, so I was trying to get some Modest Princesses breeding in my Extreme Hills biome when I ran into a little hitch. As you know, Modest Princesses prefer Hot/Arid, but have tolerances of Both_1/Up_1, which means that Warm/Normal should be fine.

First, I tried hooking up several biogas engines to a single heater block. However, the Alveary only had its heat increased by 20%, no matter how much power I pumped into the block, even when I stuck on a redstone cell. The MJ reader noted that the heater was requesting 24 MJ/t, but from what I've read I should only need 8 MJ/t...

So I tried sticking on a few more heater blocks, and eventually found that I needed five or six, and they only used about 8 MJ/t total. Needless to say, this has me rather confused.

Worse, the Modest Princess still complained! The Alveary still said that the environment was hostile, even when I took out the queen and put it back in.

So what am I doing wrong?

I am seeing the exact same thing. I was hoping to automate some demonic bees in the overworld, but it seems to me it is bugged.

 

[Hydra]

It's much MUCH easier to just get the ExtraBees machines, get a temp tolerance both 5 serum, and inoculate the bees you want to use for breeding with it. Those machines pose a rather hefty investment in both materials and power but I'm assuming you have all that already when you dive into bees.

 

[Loke2]

I didn't even know that there was a Both 5 serum possible. I'll have to breed a lot more, I guess (breed the bees, that is ;-) ).

But tolerance is not the only reason to use the alveary. It has a huge effect bonus as well.

I did some experimenting last night, and was able to figure out what was up, I think. Each heater and fan needs 2mJ (maybe just 1, only tested with electric engines) to operate. They will change temperature 20% relative (if biome is T:Normal 60%, one powered heater will make the alveary T:Normal 80%, two will make it T:Normal 100% and vice versa). They will happily accept and use 25mJ each, but that is total waste. The hygroregulators can change humidity, but needs water (or sand? not tested) to operate instead of power. The alveary lighting and rain shield just needs to be present to work. Mutator works as soul frames on steroids, with the possibility to raise mutation chance to 100%. And Frame Housing adds the possibility to add frames to the alveary, boosting it's efficiency even more.

I had a single lifespan (long) of a fast working demonic queen yielding more than 70 combs and 35 glowstone in my testing run with 3 impregnated frames in the alveary.

 

[Xetian]

Have you had trouble using frame housings in SMP? Before mindcrack 8.1 prompted a map restart for us, I crashed the server by using a frame housing in an alveary. Server operator said the error report was pretty unintelligible other than that.

 

[Loke2]

No problems so far, with 8.1.1.