Alveary - Which setup is the best for mutation?

Hey Guys,

ive built my first alveary now and would like to mutate looots of bees. What is the best setup for this? I made the bottom line mutators and the middle line frame housing blocks. Which item into the mutators and are 8 enough or too much? Thanks in advance

 

I use ender eyes in 5 mutator blocks, but 2 uranium in mutators also works the same both give 100% mutation chance. (provided you haven't updated forestry to the nerfed version)

 

i thought that 5 mutators with uranium = 100% mutation for all bees

 

Bees each have different mutation chance, for a bee with 10% chance then 1 mutator with uranium will give you 100% chance (uranium is x10), a 5% bee will require 2, a 2% chance will require 5 (using uranium),* or a 2% can use 1 nether star.

Check these pages for mutator info and mutation chances respectively:http://ftbwiki.org/Mutator, http://ftbwiki.org/Bee_Species

My current breeder has 5 mutators, though for most mutations I only use 1 or 2, I've also got 4 frame housings for chocolate frames to speed up the process and a rain shield and light so rain/night doesn't affect my breeding.

*see Ex13's post below

 

any math on how many chocolate frames required to kill bees in one bee tick(or whatever its called)? i`m currently using 8, but i`m not sure if its optimal

 

in my last world I didn't wanted to waste uranium, so I tried using frame housings with soul frames, and dang, it worked well enough to get a 100% mutation rate for a pretty cheap price.
it's a bit hard to tell how many soul frames you need, as ako said each bee has a different mutation rate, but about 14 frames usually worked for me

 

i`d say that there is no such thing as wasting uranium with bees. you just need to dig enough to get nuclear bees.

 

The mutation modifiers of the mutators multiply, they are not added. Thus, two uranium increase the mutation chance by 10*10=100 (and not 10+10=20). Therefore, 2 mutators with uranium are enough to get 100% mutation rate for any bee. As do 10 soulframes (gives a multiplier of x57.66), 3 eyes of ender or 6 ender pearls (mutation multiplier x64) or a single nether star.

Have a look at http://ftbwiki.org/Lifespan to see how many ticks your bees live. Each chocolate frame divides the number of ticks by two. Thus, if you have a bee with longer lifespan (60 ticks), you need 6 chocolate frames, which result in 60/(2*2*2*2*2*2) = 0.9375 ticks - killing the bee in the first tick. This means you need exactly:
Longest lifespan: 7 frames
Shortened to Longer lifespan: 6 frames
Shorter or Short lifespan: 5 frames
Shortest lifespan: 4 frames

 

Ooh, I've often thought I was doing something wrong but didn't find any thing to tell me otherwise. 2 uranium for any bee seems a little cheap, especially when making uranium producing bees is pretty straight forward, that said even 5 is still cheap heh.

thanks for the info on chocolate frames too

 

its a bit strange. 2%(lowest mutation chance)*50(nether star)=100% mutation chance. if uranium is used it would be 2%*10=20%, and if second uranium used it would be 2%*10*10=200%. multiplies being additive will result in 2%*10*5=100% which makes more sense, but not sure if its true, but i hope it is.

 

Well, of course a mutation chance higher than 100% is not possible, so the value is capped. But, yes, 2 uranuim for bees with a 2% base mutation chance would indeed yield 200%.

I think exactly the cheapness to reach really high mutation (and production) chances because of the multiplication of the modifiers is the reason why the new forestry for minecraft 1.5 makes it risky to increase the modifiers above a certain value.

 

balance, lol... an alveary consist of 27 alveary blocks, only 6 of them(middle 2nd layer, middle 3rd layer, and outer middle 3rd layer blocks) hs to be an alveary blocks, other can be an extrabees alveary blocks. instead of making limit on alveary extrablock, they`ve added a chance past limit to turn your princess into a swarmer. imho it isnt a good design. and there should be a limit on extrabees alveary blocks(1 mutator, few frame housings and 1 lighter and rainshield block)

 

Here's an example of a mutator alveary I have in my base:

Spoiler

As you can see it has 1 rainshield and 1 light block, 3 mutator blocks, 4 regular alveary blocks (the top center blocks need to be normal ones) and 18 frame housings. The AE systems keeps those stocked with chocolate frames so most bees only last a single tick and tend to always get mutated (I use uranium in the mutators).

The other alvearies get supplied by impregnated frames (also autocrafted by AE) and the products get sucked out through buildcraft pipes (with the princesses and drones being reinserted).

 

In my opinion, the best fix would be to make all modifiers stack additively. It makes no sense for me that one frame should increase the production from 100% to 200%, while the second frame increases it from 200% to 400% (double the gain!) and so on. With the current system, it makes no sense to run apiaries or alvearies with only a few frames, using as many as possible makes each of them much more effective - if frames would stack additively, each frame would always give the same boost, no matter how many frames you have. And of course, you could not reach ridiculous numbers that easily.

And the chance for degeneration of bees is something that sirsengir could add to forestry, limitations of framehousings and mutators would actually needed to be added to extra bees (if it is even possible with the current forestry api) - so thats definitely the easier solution. But I can see a lot of complaints coming, once FTB is released for minecraft 1.5/1.6 and suddenly many people have their bees dieing.

 

There really isn't a point in nerfing everything. Getting a 'free fuel' supply with bees for example is a MUCH larger time investment than other comparable means. I mean, if people take the effort to get refined bees instead of just pumping lava from the nether let them. At least they're building something moderately complex.

 

12 soul frames and 2 chocolate frames will make sure that even the longest life bee dies in 1 "tick" and every bee will have a 100% mutation chance. Keep in mind in the 1.5 version of forestry anything beyond a 10x mutation mult or 16x production mult will turn your princesses into swarmers. You are safe in 1.4 though.

 

In 1.5, what's the optimal setup however?
Is it 4 impregnated frames or something?
And do we have exact numbers on the bonuses provided by the Thaumic bees frames?

 

In 1.5 4x standard frames in an alveary will perfectly hit the 16x production cap. 1x mutator with uranium will perfectly hit the mutator cap. These are probably your best options. (assuming the numbers do not change between 1.4 and 1.5, which afaik they are not)

 

Ahh thanks.
Also does the chance increase the further you go above the limit?
So if I really don't want to deal with purifying resolute bees I can take a gamble and go for a 100x mutation chance via nether star/5 uranium for glittering? Or would this also give me a 100% chance of a swarmer?