Best starter power source?

[whythisname]

Personally I prefer to go with Combustion Engines and Oil from a nearby spout. Oil generates a lot of power (even unrefined) for early game and 1 bucket doesn't generate enough power to cause an explosion. So if you let the engine cooldown (which can be done instantly by breaking and replacing the engine) after every bucket of oil you put in you'll have a great power source.

The hardest part is the 1 piece of redstone and the 12 pieces of iron (8 for the gears, 3 for the recipe and 1 for the piston) you need. Generally I have 2-3 stacks of iron ore before making any machines, so I really don't mind the iron cost.
Personally I'd rather pull 12 iron from the ground than have to find 1 nugget of gold for an engine that imho has no use after you've got a more reliable source of power.

I can't deny Force Engines are the indisputable king of early power though.

 

[DREVL]

2 sterlings until I can get 2 steams. Then I build a TC logger axe with a smelt, moss, IC upgrade for whatever boiler I want.

 

[cynric]

Depending on what I find in the area - lava, oil or wood/charcoal if nothing else is around in sufficient quantities.

 

[Seraph089]

For MJ I usually jump right to magmatics, since I would be upgrading to them pretty quick if I used something else. They aren't too hard to make early.

 

[Conguy97]

To be completely honest, oil. Just 11 iron and some water proof pipe and you can run your base for long enough to get a farm going


Ask me about a 1.6.2 modded server.

 

[Noby07]

If you want to go directly forward to boilers, try making a small starter source (3 steam engines should be alright) and then gather all the resources for 2 ranchers and 8 biofuel reactors. Then place many squids in front of the ranchers and they will produce 1 ink per sec if the rancher gets active.
That way you will have OVERFLOWING biofuel even if fueling a liquid fueled 36 HP Boiler. The most great, coolest and effective way of Power if you want something ridicilous.
That because people are bored of treefarms.

 

[Drawde]

If you add water as a throttle (just a simple Aq Accumulator does the trick) the power output doubles. So you get 80,000 MJ out of a single bucket of force, and you get 1.5 buckets out of a single crystal using a squuezer. You can easily have 3 engines powering a quarry and have that quarry dig up a LOT more crystals than is used to power it.

MFR farms with oaks and fertilizer are completely rediculous currently. I have 20 36 HP boilers running off of 1 oak, 1 birch and one rubber tree farm currently and the oak tree is supplying most wood by far. I currently have 10 furnaces only processing oak wood and I still have a surplus. It seems oaks are currently 'bugged' or something because they grow much faster and right next to each other (unlike other trees that need space).

I consider a quarry to be mid game. Until then a force engine can eat up your force gems.

I do agree that MFR tree farms with fertilizer is quite rapid though. I usually set mine up with just a single place to plant the trees and I still get surplus wood and saplings.

 

[MigukNamja]

tl;dr : Peat



I've tried every starter engine except the Force engines and my favorite starter engine is Peat for RP aspects of it. It feels so...natural. It's carbon neutral and doesn't require babysitting like clockworks and stirlings do. A nice by-product from the peat engine is the ash, which stretches the apatite for fertilizer longer than sand. What pairs well with the peat-fired engine is a TC Excavator for quickly harvesting the peat. For extended Bog Earth production, an MFR liquicrafter is a good investment. If one continues to use Peat and gets basic bee production early on, Bituminious Peat is a nice upgrade and also has a nice RP aspect to it.

It only takes a modest-size Bog Earth-into-Peat setup to get 6 to 8MJ/t, which is enough to process materials for a small boiler and process the initial fuel, whether charcoal or biofuel (ethanol). I used to try to jump straight to a 36HP with Industrials, but find it easier and more rewarding to take a medium step to a 16LP-ish with some Commercials. Iron seems very abundant in Unleashed. The Fermenter --> Biomass --> Still --> Biofuel path is a fun progression path and getting an optimal layout is sometimes a challenge. The Fermenter, for instance, requires 4 inputs and has 1 output, which consumes 4 to 5 of its 6 faces !

Paired with that is a Forestry Multifarm with Apple Oaks to start, and then higher-tiered Forestry-bred trees later on. The higher-tiered saplings really are worth it and a nice way to have 1 tree farm providing close to 1000 MJ/t of gross power and provides a nice incentive to do bees and trees. Personally, I find the Forestry MultiFarms to be more rewarding than the MFR tree farms. An MFR Oak Tree farm is, IMHO, way OP.

For a non-DartCraft power-start, oil into a Combustion or lava into a Magmatic is hard to beat. A nice bonus about lava into Magmatic is the pump clears out the lava and there's often diamond or gold beneath the lava pool.

But, I've done that before and I'm now in no rush to get to the end-game. I usually get bored when I have near-infinite resources and energy, so it's more about the journey than the destination and, if you can't tell, Forestry is one of my favorite mods to take along that road.

 

[AlanEsh]

If you're going steam, the TE "Steam Engine" is better than the Sterling by far. It needs 1 sliver and some copper, a piston, not much else. Hobbyist Steam Engine is more efficient still, but only if you run it for a half stack or more as it has significant warmup.
Also, if you're going to do steam, just do that and don't worry about making tesseracts and pumping nether lava prior. If you can do all that, you can have a large MFR tree farm cranking out thousands of charcoal per day to power boilers.

 

[MigukNamja]

Agreed, yes. A good combo might be TE Steam Engines for burst power and Hobbyists for longer-duration power, like ore processing following an extended spelunking session.

I prefer Hobbyists myself for purely RP/aesthetics. The puffs of steam, wheeshing sound, and warm-up time add some fluff to the game. I feel a small sense of accomplishment when my first Hobbyists is wheeshing steam.

 

[snooder]

Hmm, sounds the DartCraft force engines might be the best bet for a small early game power setup. How many force gems do you need to make them worthwhile (i.e. for a few days of minor use) I have about half a stack right now, is that enough?

 

[MigukNamja]

Please note that TE Steam Engines are now 4 MJ/t in 2.4.6.0, which is part of the recommended Unleashed 1.1.3, i.e. the version of Unleashed the FTB Launcher will prompt you to upgrade to.

The advantage of Steam Engines over DartCraft force engines is renewable fuel.

 

[netmc]

Up until the new forestry multi-farms, peat was always my go-to source of power for starting out, and even into mid-late game. Now, I tend to go for the hobbyist engine. It's a lot more fuel efficient than the sterling, and still usable into mid-late game with boilers. If I have issues with finding gold, I will sometimes break down and make a sterling, or if I need a little extra boost in power I will make one. The hobbyist is my main energy production, and the sterling boosts it when I need the little extra. This keeps me going with ore processing until I get a farm set up.

 

[Grydian2]

Please note that TE Steam Engines are now 4 MJ/t in 2.4.6.0, which is part of the recommended Unleashed 1.1.3, i.e. the version of Unleashed the FTB Launcher will prompt you to upgrade to.

The advantage of Steam Engines over DartCraft force engines is renewable fuel.

Force engines work just like combustion engines but at 1/2 power but with throttle (water is x2) you can get right up to a combustion engine... So Biofuel can run in force engines... They are MUCH better then any other engine out there. They also stop right when you shut them off and dont waste fuel. But the steam engines are pretty cool too.