Creating Steam in 1.12

[Golrith]

I'm creating a Factorio style modpack, and I need to create steam.

Turns out in 1.12 scene, steam is nearly obsolete (no railcraft ) but I need steam for early game power generation.

I found a mod called Better Boilers, which back in July was working perfectly, so I've continued developing the pack, adding & upgrading mods. I've gone back to my test world to test something else, and now the steam system isn't working. I'm trying to work out what exactly has changed, but I was wondering

"Does anyone know of any other ways to create steam?"

in case I need to switch to an alternative option. I can't find much steam released on curse, but there might be solutions buried within other mods that I'm not aware off.

Thanks in advance for any assist.

 

[Pyure]

I'm creating a Factorio style modpack, and I need to create steam.

Turns out in 1.12 scene, steam is nearly obsolete (no railcraft ) but I need steam for early game power generation.

I found a mod called Better Boilers, which back in July was working perfectly, so I've continued developing the pack, adding & upgrading mods. I've gone back to my test world to test something else, and now the steam system isn't working. I'm trying to work out what exactly has changed, but I was wondering

"Does anyone know of any other ways to create steam?"

in case I need to switch to an alternative option. I can't find much steam released on curse, but there might be solutions buried within other mods that I'm not aware off.

Thanks in advance for any assist.

There's the nuclear stuff from various mods. Extreme Reactors, with its janky 1:1 water:steam ratio. I don't think that's what you want.

Advanced Generators might be a good bet. Its by bdew, its really stable, and its fairly configurable.

https://bdew.net/generators/

 

[Celestialphoenix]

Modular Machinery will let you make some crude boilers that'll turn X fuel into Y steam. I say crude as it'll be a direct conversion rather than anything involving a heat level.

Gregtecg:CE has a steam age- though its probably a bit excessive to drop the entire mod in just for that (and a lot of crafttweakering to make the recipes palatable)

Theres also an Immersive Engineering add-on that has a massive solar boiler and steam turbine multiblocks.

 

[GamerwithnoGame]

I’m pretty sure Thermal Expansion actually adds it’s own steam as well; as the steam dynamos can be modified with a boiler augment so they actually produce steam that needs to be transported to other steam dynamos with turbine augments.

 

[Golrith]

There's the nuclear stuff from various mods. Extreme Reactors, with its janky 1:1 water:steam ratio. I don't think that's what you want.

Advanced Generators might be a good bet. Its by bdew, its really stable, and its fairly configurable.

https://bdew.net/generators/

Thanks. Couldn't tell from the wiki if the steam was just an internal value, or something you can actually transport. I've given steam a fuel value, and it's "burned" in the IE Diesel generator as the first step in power generation.

Modular Machinery will let you make some crude boilers that'll turn X fuel into Y steam. I say crude as it'll be a direct conversion rather than anything involving a heat level.

Gregtecg:CE has a steam age- though its probably a bit excessive to drop the entire mod in just for that (and a lot of crafttweakering to make the recipes palatable)

Theres also an Immersive Engineering add-on that has a massive solar boiler and steam turbine multiblocks.

MM might be a good solution. The IE addon is overkill for my needs (but might be useful as an extra later game power gen)

I’m pretty sure Thermal Expansion actually adds it’s own steam as well; as the steam dynamos can be modified with a boiler augment so they actually produce steam that needs to be transported to other steam dynamos with turbine augments.

I'm trying to avoid Thermal Expansion this time round in a mod pack, great mod with easy to use GUIs, but 80% of the mod content is already covered by other mods, and the remainder is tech that has no value or real use in the mod pack. Plus even if you disable machines, it still registers that machines processes in JEI, making JEI a confusing mess when looking at recipes.

 

[GamerwithnoGame]

Thanks. Couldn't tell from the wiki if the steam was just an internal value, or something you can actually transport. I've given steam a fuel value, and it's "burned" in the IE Diesel generator as the first step in power generation.


MM might be a good solution. The IE addon is overkill for my needs (but might be useful as an extra later game power gen)


I'm trying to avoid Thermal Expansion this time round in a mod pack, great mod with easy to use GUIs, but 80% of the mod content is already covered by other mods, and the remainder is tech that has no value or real use in the mod pack. Plus even if you disable machines, it still registers that machines processes in JEI, making JEI a confusing mess when looking at recipes.

Ah, fair enough

 

[LordPINE]

Just so you know, the Nuclearcraft dev is working on an update that will allow you to produce steam, from what I've seen. Might not be as useful for your pack, but it will be a way to make steam.

 

[Pyure]

Thanks. Couldn't tell from the wiki if the steam was just an internal value, or something you can actually transport. I've given steam a fuel value, and it's "burned" in the IE Diesel generator as the first step in power generation.

Ah ok, it depends on which multiblock you use.

In this case, for advanced generators, you'd want a Heat Exchanger system.

https://bdew.net/generators/heat-exchanger/

Basically works how you'd expect: Hot Coolant (or lava) + Water --> Steam + Cold Coolant + Byproducts

 

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Assuming you want to go that route, Mekanism has a multiblock boiler now.

Also, '80% of content is handled by other mods' is the same as 'I could significantly reduce the number of mods by just using CoFH Suite', but that's a matter of personal preference. For myself... I use CoFH Suite as the core foundation for the tech side of things, then go from there. Thermal Dynamics is, I believe, almost the only transportation system in my mod pack (I don't use EnderIO). And I really get a use out of the majority of the entire suite that way.

Also, it's not just the steam dynamos that can get the boiler upgrade, any of the dynamos can, with the caveat that you can only have one specialization augment per machine, so you couldn't (as an example) use the ignition plugs for hella efficient fuel consumption from the combustion dynamos AND do the boiler upgrade to turn it into steam, one or the other but not both. However, tree oil production line can produce a HECK of a lot of steam.

 

[Golrith]

Assuming you want to go that route, Mekanism has a multiblock boiler now.

Also, '80% of content is handled by other mods' is the same as 'I could significantly reduce the number of mods by just using CoFH Suite', but that's a matter of personal preference. For myself... I use CoFH Suite as the core foundation for the tech side of things, then go from there. Thermal Dynamics is, I believe, almost the only transportation system in my mod pack (I don't use EnderIO). And I really get a use out of the majority of the entire suite that way.

Also, it's not just the steam dynamos that can get the boiler upgrade, any of the dynamos can, with the caveat that you can only have one specialization augment per machine, so you couldn't (as an example) use the ignition plugs for hella efficient fuel consumption from the combustion dynamos AND do the boiler upgrade to turn it into steam, one or the other but not both. However, tree oil production line can produce a HECK of a lot of steam.

Mekanism has a boiler? I've missed that... Better open my eyes further.

True about my statement, but the pack is IE at it's foundation, with late progression into Mekansim (as a miniaturization path from multi-block to single block machines). So in this themed pack, TE is not required, if it was a generic pack I'd have it included and not worry about overlapping functionality.

 

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Mekanism has a boiler? I've missed that... Better open my eyes further.

Mekanism also has a multiblock steam turbine as well, capable of producing stupid amounts of energy.

 

[GamerwithnoGame]

Also, it's not just the steam dynamos that can get the boiler upgrade, any of the dynamos can, with the caveat that you can only have one specialization augment per machine, so you couldn't (as an example) use the ignition plugs for hella efficient fuel consumption from the combustion dynamos AND do the boiler upgrade to turn it into steam, one or the other but not both. However, tree oil production line can produce a HECK of a lot of steam.

Ahh that’s interesting! I think it might be restricted to Steam, Magmatic and Compression dynamos, but yeah it’s a lot more than just the one. I think when you look at the figures it works better in the steam Dynamo than in the other two which is why I discount them in my head, that’s my bad.

 

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Ahh that’s interesting! I think it might be restricted to Steam, Magmatic and Compression dynamos, but yeah it’s a lot more than just the one. I think when you look at the figures it works better in the steam Dynamo than in the other two which is why I discount them in my head, that’s my bad.

Combustion Dynamos can be set up to run passively through tree oil.

Set up a 2x2 Spruce tree, with four tree sap extractors around it, feeding into a Still to produce Tree Oil. This can feed multiple Compression Dynamos, and the only thing that needs power is the Still itself. So you can start off with just running it on Tree oil, then upgrade it still running on Tree Oil, then you can set them up for Steam production. A single 2x2 tree can easily provide enough Tree Oil to produce 2k mB/t needed to keep a max-size Extreme Reactors turbine running... and do it almost entirely passively. You might even be able to run more than one Turbine, depending on how many Compression Dynamos you can run. Those numbers have been tweaked over the updates, so I'm not absolutely certain how much each dynamo provides just yet.

 

[GamerwithnoGame]

Combustion Dynamos can be set up to run passively through tree oil.

Set up a 2x2 Spruce tree, with four tree sap extractors around it, feeding into a Still to produce Tree Oil. This can feed multiple Compression Dynamos, and the only thing that needs power is the Still itself. So you can start off with just running it on Tree oil, then upgrade it still running on Tree Oil, then you can set them up for Steam production. A single 2x2 tree can easily provide enough Tree Oil to produce 2k mB/t needed to keep a max-size Extreme Reactors turbine running... and do it almost entirely passively. You might even be able to run more than one Turbine, depending on how many Compression Dynamos you can run. Those numbers have been tweaked over the updates, so I'm not absolutely certain how much each dynamo provides just yet.

Yeah, the tree oil route is a really nice renewable energy source I used that in Horizons III and supplemented it further with other things as I went on. I did end up putting in a fossil fuel source once my void ore miner was making great guns with coal and oil sand/shale. Had two routes (liquefacted coal and crude oil) being refined into the same liquid and then further refined, and put into compression dynamos with ignition plugs. My final power sources before we moved on were an ET solar panel and - because I hadn’t done much with it before - a deep resonance generator. I used a set of 8 crystals in a spherical chamber with a central collection point, basically because I thought it looked cool

The IE addon that @Celestialphoenix mentioned looks really cool from what I’ve seen - I’ve only seen a little, mind, but it’s definitely one I want to look into further.

 

[KingTriaxx]

Yeah, Immersive Tech is quite amazing. Decidedly expensive on the steel though.