Biofuel the Stoo42 way... DW20 public beta SMP

[Stoo42]

So I just thought I'd post up a vid I made of a biofuel production building idea I had.
Having gone through a few server restarts, this time I decided on something a little different.

I know its probably not the most efficient, but the way I look at it, automatic farms are basically free energy anyway. This building runs non stop, 100% automated, and is self-limiting (so my AE network doesn't get swamped), as well as easily meeting my current power needs. Hopefully it will also provide enough power for uranium refining at a reasonable speed also.
Created on the DW20 public beta pack (my server is currently v1.0.11)

With a bit of luck I'll get some more vids happening to show some of my other setups.

 

[Yusunoha]

I'd have used IC2 crops myself for a build like this, as with some crops you can plant more of them down then in a vanilla setup, and you don't have to use plants aswell, because the harvest is not actually breaking the crops.
I also would have used the sludge aswell, as it'd be a nice income for some extra bonus things like clay and coal. nonetheless, nice build

 

[Stoo42]

I'd have used IC2 crops myself for a build like this, as with some crops you can plant more of them down then in a vanilla setup, and you don't have to use plants aswell, because the harvest is not actually breaking the crops.
I also would have used the sludge aswell, as it'd be a nice income for some extra bonus things like clay and coal. nonetheless, nice build

Hey, thanks for the feedback! Yeah I will do something with the sludge at some point, I have with previous builds and yeah its a pretty good source of clay I've found.

Good tip on the IC2 crops as well. I've looked at them before, but they seem so fiddly to get going. Almost every "howto" starts with "Find jungle biome, build to 245 height, NO exceptions". While thats not super hard to do, it just doesn't appeal for some reason. Maybe its time to give it a go...

 

[Yusunoha]

Hey, thanks for the feedback! Yeah I will do something with the sludge at some point, I have with previous builds and yeah its a pretty good source of clay I've found.

Good tip on the IC2 crops as well. I've looked at them before, but they seem so fiddly to get going. Almost every "howto" starts with "Find jungle biome, build to 245 height, NO exceptions". While thats not super hard to do, it just doesn't appeal for some reason. Maybe its time to give it a go...

I think that's mostly meant for cross-breeding them. if you just want to normally grow the crops, that doesn't really apply
though do note that the crops are not affected by methods of speeding up plant growth, but crops grow pretty fast themselves already
plus in some cases they might even give more drops then when you do it the vanilla way

 

[Stoo42]

I think that's mostly meant for cross-breeding them. if you just want to normally grow the crops, that doesn't really apply
though do note that the crops are not affected by methods of speeding up plant growth, but crops grow pretty fast themselves already
plus in some cases they might even give more drops then when you do it the vanilla way

Also good to know. Will definitely have to give it a try.... especially as I've had an.... "event"... Basically logged in to find biofuel drained, and everything completely stopped. Complete pain to recover from - I really need to diversify, or at least have an alternate power source for my AE at the least. I'm thinking a backup biofuel tank with manual cutover is probably the easiest to start with.

Anyway, the TL;DR; is that I think the tree farms just use too much power - IC2 crops may have to at least replace those, maybe wheat, carrots and potatoes as well as they are the slower ones to produce.

 

[Yusunoha]

Also good to know. Will definitely have to give it a try.... especially as I've had an.... "event"... Basically logged in to find biofuel drained, and everything completely stopped. Complete pain to recover from - I really need to diversify, or at least have an alternate power source for my AE at the least. I'm thinking a backup biofuel tank with manual cutover is probably the easiest to start with.

Anyway, the TL;DR; is that I think the tree farms just use too much power - IC2 crops may have to at least replace those, maybe wheat, carrots and potatoes as well as they are the slower ones to produce.

I think the big problem with the treefarms is that they first cut the leaves down first, which uses up alot of power and produces nothing extra that you could use... perhaps only use birch for the treefarms and see if that could solve the problem, as birches produce alot less leaves as they can only grow to a certain size

 

[Racemol]

I have something like this setup and apart from wheat, only use ic2 crop sticks for the crops. I'm the crop sticks ambassador

What I have:
Jungle tree farm (the 2x2 farm - yes, smaller then the default 3x3) with fertilizer. Grows a big tree in a second and again after it has been chopped down and again... Basically unlimited jungle logs / charcoal and saplings. Tip: More harvesters increases the chopping down speed a lot! I use 4 harvesters myself (though that would use 4x 240RF/t, keep that in mind)

Then another tree farm with cherry tree's. Since they grow so fast by default no fertilizer is needed. (this one is not even on all the time. I use this farm for all the different logs I need)

Then for the crops I use:
9x9 Wheat farm. Not on crop sticks b/c I need the seeds and they don't drop off the crop sticks. I use the overflow of fertilizer from the jungle tree farm here. Generates way too much wheat and seeds though, could be smaller.
50x Melon on crops (cyclic assembler converts the slices to seeds)
50x Pumpkin on crops (cyclic assembler converts the blocks to seeds)
50x Potato on crops
50x Carrots on crops
50x Netherwart on crops (on regular dirt!, though they need a lot of light)
2 squids with an MFR rancher for ink sacks. (catch them with a jailer's safari net so they won't despawn)

All of the crops that grow on crop sticks are harvested by just one harvester with an emerald upgrade. No planter is needed either. Especially for melon, pumpkins and (not used in the above example) sugar canes the crop sticks are handy. You don't need water directly next to the canes and melons/pumpkins grow on 1 block instead of 2. You do need water within 4 blocks though like you would when growing wheat as vanilla.

There is a downside to crops and that is weeds. When you leave one crop stick empty a weed can grow on it and it will spread to nearby crops, destroying them. Easy fix is to never have an empty crop stick on your farm.

This makes 9 items to put in a bioreactor. I use routers to insert the items into the reactor to make sure each slot only occupies one item. This produces a lot of biofuel. I don't even see the biofuel level moving in the tank, even though I have a lot of biofuel generators hooked up. And as a bonus.. Unlike the dynamo's, biofuel generators do not use any fuel when no power is needed.

As for backup power. Couldnt you use the wood from the farms as charcoal/planks in steam dynamo's? You could even disable those dynamo's by applying a redstone signal and release that signal when your energy cell is empty. So they will turn on automatically when your biofuel system is stuck or something.

 

[Yusunoha]

I have something like this setup and apart from wheat, only use ic2 crop sticks for the crops. I'm the crop sticks ambassador

What I have:
Jungle tree farm (the 2x2 farm - yes, smaller then the default 3x3) with fertilizer. Grows a big tree in a second and again after it has been chopped down and again... Basically unlimited jungle logs / charcoal and saplings. Tip: More harvesters increases the chopping down speed a lot! I use 4 harvesters myself (though that would use 4x 240RF/t, keep that in mind)

Then another tree farm with cherry tree's. Since they grow so fast by default no fertilizer is needed. (this one is not even on all the time. I use this farm for all the different logs I need)

Then for the crops I use:
9x9 Wheat farm. Not on crop sticks b/c I need the seeds and they don't drop off the crop sticks. I use the overflow of fertilizer from the jungle tree farm here. Generates way too much wheat and seeds though, could be smaller.
50x Melon on crops (cyclic assembler converts the slices to seeds)
50x Pumpkin on crops (cyclic assembler converts the blocks to seeds)
50x Potato on crops
50x Carrots on crops
50x Netherwart on crops (on regular dirt!, though they need a lot of light)
2 squids with an MFR rancher for ink sacks. (catch them with a jailer's safari net so they won't despawn)

All of the crops that grow on crop sticks are harvested by just one harvester with an emerald upgrade. No planter is needed either. Especially for melon, pumpkins and (not used in the above example) sugar canes the crop sticks are handy. You don't need water directly next to the canes and melons/pumpkins grow on 1 block instead of 2. You do need water within 4 blocks though like you would when growing wheat as vanilla.

There is a downside to crops and that is weeds. When you leave one crop stick empty a weed can grow on it and it will spread to nearby crops, destroying them. Easy fix is to never have an empty crop stick on your farm.

This makes 9 items to put in a bioreactor. I use routers to insert the items into the reactor to make sure each slot only occupies one item. This produces a lot of biofuel. I don't even see the biofuel level moving in the tank, even though I have a lot of biofuel generators hooked up. And as a bonus.. Unlike the dynamo's, biofuel generators do not use any fuel when no power is needed.

As for backup power. Couldnt you use the wood from the farms as charcoal/planks in steam dynamo's? You could even disable those dynamo's by applying a redstone signal and release that signal when your energy cell is empty. So they will turn on automatically when your biofuel system is stuck or something.

is there a reason why you specifically need wheat seeds? as I think nowadays you can use other type of seeds for seed related things aswell...

 

[Racemol]

is there a reason why you specifically need wheat seeds? as I think nowadays you can use other type of seeds for seed related things aswell...

For purely creating biofuel, there is no reason to use wheat seeds over any other type of seed/plant.
Though, I use wheat to automatically breed cows for their beef and leather. Might as well use the seeds to make biofuel.

To elaborate a bit more. When making biofuel I always try to pick plants I can use for more than just biofuel. Jungle tree's for example give a lot of wood, so nice for charcoal. Netherwarts, Carrots and Melons are used in potions, always handy etc..

 

[Stoo42]

I have something like this setup and apart from wheat, only use ic2 crop sticks for the crops. I'm the crop sticks ambassador
...

This makes 9 items to put in a bioreactor. I use routers to insert the items into the reactor to make sure each slot only occupies one item. This produces a lot of biofuel. I don't even see the biofuel level moving in the tank, even though I have a lot of biofuel generators hooked up. And as a bonus.. Unlike the dynamo's, biofuel generators do not use any fuel when no power is needed.

I had a play with the crops last night after reading yusunoha's post. I'm definitely going to have to play with them more. I've found that my current setup with 16 bioreactors cant keep up with my farm setup, so I'm only running 8 at the moment. This is enough to keep my base running with short bursts of extra crafting/processing. My AE network alone uses around 120EU/t. My processing and on-demand crafting can use a LOT more, as every machine is transformer upgraded, and at least 7 overclockers (When I tell AE to make me a semifluid generator from scratch, it makes it pretty fast).

As yusunoha pointed out, leaves cost the most to cut down, unfortunately they are pretty much what you need for the saplings. I think for this to work I'm going to at least swap my birch and oak out for yellow and red dyes from flowers on crops. The default way for pumpkins/melons/cocoa/netherwart seems to be fast enough. Just wheat/carrots/potatoes need a speed up or a swap to something faster. As I want to stick with the building design, anything I put in is going to have to fit in the confines of the existing floors.

As for backup power. Couldnt you use the wood from the farms as charcoal/planks in steam dynamo's? You could even disable those dynamo's by applying a redstone signal and release that signal when your energy cell is empty. So they will turn on automatically when your biofuel system is stuck or something.

In the testing I've done, the compression dynamos don't seem to use any biofuel once their buffers are full. The thing with these are things like forestry machines, assembly tables, and the rolling machine from railcraft. All of these machines draw power when you're not using them. I tend to turn them off at their local storage cell, which means I don't have to manage turning the whole generating system on and off.

I also have 6 generators burning excess wood and charcoal to help with power generation, but this is only half of what I need to run my full AE network... When I recovered from my biofuel loss, I cut most of the AE network off and reduced the load down to ~30EU/t, which allowed the generators to power it.

I dont like lava gen, as it seems too cheaty, and I've done it to death on the first couple of spawns we've had.

I also really try to have no waste and use everything I get. I know I'm not doing that at the moment. Wheat and sludge being the two standout things that I am just voiding the surplus on. I'll get some boilers going for sludge at some point, as well as hopefully finding a decent wheat alternative that suits my needs

 

[Yusunoha]

As yusunoha pointed out, leaves cost the most to cut down, unfortunately they are pretty much what you need for the saplings. I think for this to work I'm going to at least swap my birch and oak out for yellow and red dyes from flowers on crops. The default way for pumpkins/melons/cocoa/netherwart seems to be fast enough. Just wheat/carrots/potatoes need a speed up or a swap to something faster. As I want to stick with the building design, anything I put in is going to have to fit in the confines of the existing floors.

if you feel like taking up the challenge you could try to do some treebreeding. try to breed a tree that has alot of wood, a normal amount of leaves, but gives much higher sappling chance per leave

 

[Dark0_0firE]

if you feel like taking up the challenge you could try to do some treebreeding. try to breed a tree that has alot of wood, a normal amount of leaves, but gives much higher sappling chance per leave

Ah, but would MFR be able to work with Forestry altered trees? Last I heard that was a no no.

 

[Yusunoha]

Ah, but would MFR be able to work with Forestry altered trees? Last I heard that was a no no.

hmm, I never tried... I just expected it would

 

[MigukNamja]

if you feel like taking up the challenge you could try to do some treebreeding. try to breed a tree that has alot of wood, a normal amount of leaves, but gives much higher sappling chance per leave

I have bred trees the old-fashioned way and it was interesting the first time. But, man, was it a long process. It took a real-life week to get a sapling that was:

Sappiness : High
Saplings : High
Maturity : Fast
Growth : Fast
Height : Large or Largest

Getting each species with a particularly desirable trait in each one was relatively quick. It was the breeding for traits into a single sapling that took the longest. Gendustry makes this process far, far less frustrating and of course faster.

I now have a super-sapling that, when planted in a mimimal-size 3x3x4 Forestry Multiblock, yields enough saplings of high enough quality for 100's of MJ/t (1000's of RF/t) worth of power. I'm guessing a 5x5x4 would be capable of 1,000 MJ/t (10,000 RF/t) of power.

 

[Stoo42]

Ah, but would MFR be able to work with Forestry altered trees? Last I heard that was a no no.

I've tried it, and the bioreactors didn't work with those saplings last time I tried. :-( Sad Panda.

I've taken up the IC2 crops challenge though. Just trying to get a decent setup for a couple of dyes, and then will do a proper swap out of one of my emerald farms for an IC2 crop farm instead. Stay tuned, I'll post up a vid of it once I get a design sorted that I'm happy with.

 

[Yusunoha]

I have bred trees the old-fashioned way and it was interesting the first time. But, man, was it a long process. It took a real-life week to get a sapling that was:

Sappiness : High
Saplings : High
Maturity : Fast
Growth : Fast
Height : Large or Largest

Getting each species with a particularly desirable trait in each one was relatively quick. It was the breeding for traits into a single sapling that took the longest. Gendustry makes this process far, far less frustrating and of course faster.

I now have a super-sapling that, when planted in a mimimal-size 3x3x4 Forestry Multiblock, yields enough saplings of high enough quality for 100's of MJ/t (1000's of RF/t) worth of power. I'm guessing a 5x5x4 would be capable of 1,000 MJ/t (10,000 RF/t) of power.

wow, that's alot of time. I'm surprised binnie hasn't added machines for trees yet. but it's awesome that gendustry does give us the option to do so.
I love Forestry, but I hate how much time it can take to get a specific breed you want. there are ofcourse ways to speed things up, but I have to admit, I love machines that help you with this

 

[Stoo42]

wow, that's alot of time. I'm surprised binnie hasn't added machines for trees yet. but it's awesome that gendustry does give us the option to do so.
I love Forestry, but I hate how much time it can take to get a specific breed you want. there are ofcourse ways to speed things up, but I have to admit, I love machines that help you with this

I'm with you on the machines. I have the same relationship with bees... The genetic machines from extra bees take a bit of the pain out of it, but still has a slight challenge to it (at least at the start). I'm also trying to steer away from bees this time around though, they are a bit like using lava for power. Once you get it set up, you can get anything you want, as much as you want. It devalues everything and the only challenge left is the same challenge you have in vanilla MC - who can build the most epic structure.

I've never done tree breeding. Maybe this time around I'll have to give it a go. I'm enjoying the IC2 crops now that I'm into it a bit (thanks for the tip, yusunoha!). I think I'm close to a design thats probably complete overkill, but should be fun to build

 

[budge]

I may take inspiration from this someday. Regarding covering up the holes that your Buildcraft pipes make in the floor, have a look at facades.

 

[MigukNamja]

I'm also trying to steer away from bees this time around though, they are a bit like using lava for power. Once you get it set up, you can get anything you want, as much as you want. It devalues everything and the only challenge left is the same challenge you have in vanilla MC - who can build the most epic structure.

I agree that bees can comprise the core of an automatic resource-generation system, yet building said system requires a substantial amount of time, planning, and real estate, rivaling just about any system possible in modded minecraft. For me, the joy is not simply the end product. Having a bee-centric system whereby all possible resources are generated at a sufficiently high rate is indeed approximating creative mode. The enjoyment is rather in the process of progression.

I'm 5+ weeks into my MF2 world and I've (still) only bred 30 or so species of bees and haven't quite yet automated the production and insertion of Impregnated Frames into the Alvearies. The vast majority of the real estate of my base and my power goes into bees directly or indirectly. I estimate I have a good 5+ weeks left in RL before I'm anywhere close to "creative mode" in terms of automatic resource generation. 10+ weeks for a world is just about right for me. I'm ready to move on to different mods and try something new after 2+ months.

Contrast that with "pumping the Nether", and you'd be hard-pressed to pick more polar opposites than lava-power and bees.

Some highlights of my base and bee-centric system:

• Bred saplings for maximum power efficiency in terms of power per square meter
• Bred lemon trees for efficient juice production (also for power production)
• Bred chestnut trees for seed oil for Impregnated casings and sticks (for frames)
• 16 Alvearies (plan to build a total of 32)
• AE-less automated frame production
• Automated Alveary re-insertion and bee product processing (lots of Centrifuges)
• Set of Extra Bees machines with ample supply of Genetic fluid
• Gendustry Sampler and Imprinter to streamline trait imprinting (so much nicer than the Incolator-->Sythensizer-->Purifier shuffle)
• Thaumcraft for Essence of False Life (Metabolic Frames are much more effective than Soul Frames in MF2)
  
• Thaumcraft for Thaumastatic Harness to fly around in Nether to find hives
• Thaumcraft for Thaumic Grafter and Scoop
• Osmotic Enchanter for Repair II on said Grafter and Scoop
• Infusion Altar to make said Osmotic Enchanter and Harness (among other things, of course)
• Apiaries and chunk loaders in several different biomes for biome-specific breeding
  
• Large chunk of my power for all the above
• Large chunk of my AE storage for all the above

Indeed, there's hardly a mod or part of my base that is not somehow involved with bees. Bees are the thing which touch just about everything and you'd be hard-pressed to design and build a system more complex than one with the simple requirement of:

"Use bees to continuously make all resources possible, and make it look nice"

As a side note, while I like Gendustry, I think the Mutatron takes away from the breeding experience. There's a reason for breeding mechanics like biome-specific and special-block-under-the-Apiary/Alveary in the traditional Forestry ecosystem.

 

[MigukNamja]

I've never done tree breeding. Maybe this time around I'll have to give it a go.

It's easier than bees once you get into it. Getting a new species is super-easy:

1. Clear out area of any trees - you don't want surrounding random Oak, Birch, Jungle, etc.,. accidentally interfering
*2. Put decent number of bees in the center (between 4 and 20 Bee Houses, Apiaries, or Alvearies is good)
*3. Make sure bees have Flowers Pollination (and not Rocks Pollination !) - Rocks pollinators will not visit leaves
4. Plant 2 to 6 saplings/trees of each source (use bonemeal to speed up growth)
5. Let sit for a few hours or overnight
6. Put on Spectacles to help find mutated leaf blocks
7. Graft away ! (Having a Thaumium Grafter with Repair II helps a lot)
8. Once you get enough of the target saplings, chop down all trees
9. Plant new saplings somewhere else, bonemeal, and graft until you get a decent set of saplings
10. Ideally, let bees rest over 1 MC night
11. Repeat step 4 for the next tree species

*You can use butterflies rather than bees ! Omicron made a nice post with pictures and explanations about butterfly-based tree breeding.

As for specific species, you will want Mahoe and the path to Mahoe for most of your traits for Biofuel/Ethanol product. Jungle is nice for easy growth and size traits, though if you want the Largest size trait, you'll need Sequoia. For fruit juice for the Fermenter, you will want Plum for the fruit maturity and Lemon for the fruit. I've never done Papaya - the yield per piece of fruit is higher, but the fruit density per farm is lower due to Papaya needing a trunk to grow on like Cocoa. For seed oil, it's hard to beat Chestnut.

Getting the desired species is relatively easy - it's mostly waiting around for the bees (or butterflies !). The hard/tedious/frustrating part is then breeding for combined desirable traits in a single sapling. Please see my signature for a link to Omicron's advice on this. If that's too frustrating or you've done it already and want to skip it this time around, look at Gendustry's Sampler and Imprinter.