Biodiesel useless in Continuum?

[DaLagga]

So I haven't played Minecraft in over 5 years and this is my first time playing with mods but a few friends wanted to try Continuum out so here I am. I just spent over 10 hours setting up a biodiesel production center to power my base, complete with a Fermenter, Industrial Squeezer, 20 Garden Cloche's (10 potato, 10 Industrial Hemp), Refinery and 2 Biodiesel Generators.

Now, I understand this is suppose to be a "hardcore" modpack, but why is this form of power generation such a joke? A Diesel Generator makes 1024 RF/t and it seems the above setup can support roughly 2 of them. But the Fermenter itself takes 800 RF/t and the Squeezer eats up a further 640 RF/t. Add another 160 RF/t for the Garden Cloches (8 per) and we're up to a total of 1600 RF/t just to maintain the basic production facilities to produce 2048 RF/T.

Am I missing something? I mean, what the hell? Why does 80% of my power just get eaten up in the process of producing it and who in their right mind thought this was a good idea? I basically just wasted 10 hours of my life. What's worse is that after looking it up the generators are supposed to produce 4 times as much RF/t but I guess they nerfed that into oblivion to make this pack more "hardcore" (Read: tedious and pointlessly grindy to waste the player's time and make the game seem much longer than it really is). And to top it off, it looks like the squeezer and fermenter used to take 10 RF/t until a patch bumped it up to ludicrous levels.

So is this the developer's idea of a bad joke or am I just doing something wrong? Thanks!

 

[LordPINE]

This is one of the reasons Continuum got so much hate. If you can convince your friends, you should probably go play something different, because the pack isn't exactly great. Bees are the best power gen option for some reason. Have you guys considered Enigmatica 2 Expert?

 

[DaLagga]

Thanks for the response! I guess hopping on another mod is an option. I do actually like most of the mods in this pack but for some reason the devs decided to increase the costs of everything by a factor of ~5 and decrease your power production by a factor of ~20. Is there a modpack similar to this one but without all the nonsensical costs and nerfs?

 

[LordPINE]

If you don't want any recipe changes, FTB Revelation or Enigmatica 2 are good. If you do want recipe changes, Enigmatica 2 Expert is pretty great.

 

[Cpt_gloval]

I used canola in Continuum. Empower it to get maximum output and run 9 oil generators. This produces a butt load of power and once you build out to where all inventories are full it is not that power hungry to keep operational.

 

[DaLagga]

If you don't want any recipe changes, FTB Revelation or Enigmatica 2 are good. If you do want recipe changes, Enigmatica 2 Expert is pretty great.

What about SevTech: Ages? That one looked interesting.

I used canola in Continuum. Empower it to get maximum output and run 9 oil generators. This produces a butt load of power and once you build out to where all inventories are full it is not that power hungry to keep operational.

Is there a way to automate that though? I was actually doing this for the earlier stages of the game but having to empower all those canola seeds by hand just got too tedious so I ended up just automating a small system off of refined canola.

 

[Cptqrk]

What about SevTech: Ages? That one looked interesting.

It's good, but be prepared for a slow slog in the beginning. Ores are in clusters, that you have to find by prospecting/looking for ore samples on the surface. Technology/ores/items you don't have unlocked yet via progression are either not visible (literally, you see a hunk of stone on the surface, if it doesn't break in one hit, it's an ore), or you can't hold on to them (you will literally drop them if you hold them in your hand)

Some of the mods you use are going to be new to most people, like Totemic. You must use different dimensions to get some ore items you need. Creatures hit harder, bows are locked away until you progress, unless you take on Totemic's boss fight, food variety is a factor, and crafting is awkward at the start. Some of the items you need are extremely difficult to get (Looking at you Shoggoths...) and have low drop rates.

It does get better though!

If you need to, there are plenty of let's plays on youtube to check it out.

 

[Cpt_gloval]

Yes Canola is automatable. Once you have transfer nodes you can go hole hog easily. Not cheap, but not that hard.

 

[DaLagga]

I know you can automate refined canola. I was talking about empowered though because I have no idea how you'd automate the empowerer and all that. Either way, it doesn't really matter now. We hopped on over to Revelation because Continuum is just too poorly designed to be worth the trouble. Thanks for the tips!

 

[Hambeau]

Look at any of the last few Direwolf20 YouTube series using his pack. He automates Canola all the way to the top tier. While his packs have minimal modifications, Continuum isn't bound by that... But you can get an idea of the type of machines used.