Efficient EU Production?
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Well, you could go Nuclear, but that will take a while, since you're just starting out. Matter of fact, the most efficient MJ to EU conversion you can get is through the use of Magma Crucibles and Geothermal's, since it takes 20kMJ to produce a bucket of lava from cobble, and 1 bucket of lava produces 20kEU on a Geothermal. Setting up a Nether Pump is kind of complicated, and the easiest way actually requires going messing around with Thermal Expansion Liquid Tesseracts and that requires a bit of tech in order to get to, so i don't think you can use that solution quite yet.
Watermills are terribly inefficient, don't use them. Seriously, they're bad. Seems to me like Solar Flowers is the way to go. What's really nice is that they're very upgradeable, since you can recycle the T1 Solars into the T2 and so on, so as your energy needs grows, you craft more solars, and go on like that. You might want to look into BC/TE though, because most of your power will have to be generated that way, for quarries, for farms, to produce lava, to generate cobblestone/obsidian, and lots of cool uses. IC is nice, but the only things i actually use a lot from the mod are the machines (extractor/macerator/induction furnace/Compressor), the Diamond Drill, and the Jetpack. Quantum Armor is too expensive for my tastes and i can find most of it's functionality in other mod's items, which i think are prettier and less OP.
So, yeah, go solar. You won't regret. It's set and forget, and quite frankly, obsoletes every other energy generation for EU once you get HV's going on.
Watermills are terribly inefficient, don't use them. Seriously, they're bad. Seems to me like Solar Flowers is the way to go. What's really nice is that they're very upgradeable, since you can recycle the T1 Solars into the T2 and so on, so as your energy needs grows, you craft more solars, and go on like that. You might want to look into BC/TE though, because most of your power will have to be generated that way, for quarries, for farms, to produce lava, to generate cobblestone/obsidian, and lots of cool uses. IC is nice, but the only things i actually use a lot from the mod are the machines (extractor/macerator/induction furnace/Compressor), the Diamond Drill, and the Jetpack. Quantum Armor is too expensive for my tastes and i can find most of it's functionality in other mod's items, which i think are prettier and less OP.
So, yeah, go solar. You won't regret. It's set and forget, and quite frankly, obsoletes every other energy generation for EU once you get HV's going on.
40 water mills with buckets can keep a MFSU filled when recharging a jetpack
Nuclear is a waste of resources and time, max is like 300 eu/t
I have to disagree with you on Nuclear. Some very efficient designs have been made, for instance, here http://forum.industrial-craft.net/index.php?page=Thread&threadID=7681 you can see a lot of the really good ones.
keep in mind those generate low amounts of power because they're stable, and so they run full cycle, instead of running intermittently. Reactors that are not stable, but have to use active cooling in order to keep it from exploding, can run in the neighborhood of up to 3000 EU/t. They're not really used that often anymore since Ice has been severely nerfed as a cooling mechanism, and coating the outside with Water doesn't work so hot anymore as well. So, yeah, you could have a massive, unstable nuclear reactor running off on Nuclear Control, and generate insane amounts of EU and store them in several MFSU's. Takes less resources to set up than HV solar's, as well. But yeah, no one uses them because they're really complicated to set up, control, and random tick fluctuations can still make them explode.
But 40 Water Mills can only output 40EU/t with buckets, and 80EU/t with cells (non renewable). They each take in quite a bit of Tin to construct as well, and you need to set up a Batbox as a buffer every 39 blocks or lose all of the energy produced if using Tin cables. I made an analysis of EU production in another thread, but bottom line is, the best ones are Geothermal and Solar, and the others don't even come CLOSE to being able to complete.
Except for the MFFS one, which is quite broken, i must admit. Really, scrap into massfab, into UU into Forcicium, giving you infinite 2048EU/t energy? And it's much less expensive than 4 HV Solars? Yeah. Totally not broken. AT ALL.
Both Water Mills and Wind Mills have the cabling problem. It's really not an easy one to solve, and also... Very much a space hog.
keep in mind those generate low amounts of power because they're stable, and so they run full cycle, instead of running intermittently. Reactors that are not stable, but have to use active cooling in order to keep it from exploding, can run in the neighborhood of up to 3000 EU/t. They're not really used that often anymore since Ice has been severely nerfed as a cooling mechanism, and coating the outside with Water doesn't work so hot anymore as well. So, yeah, you could have a massive, unstable nuclear reactor running off on Nuclear Control, and generate insane amounts of EU and store them in several MFSU's. Takes less resources to set up than HV solar's, as well. But yeah, no one uses them because they're really complicated to set up, control, and random tick fluctuations can still make them explode.
But 40 Water Mills can only output 40EU/t with buckets, and 80EU/t with cells (non renewable). They each take in quite a bit of Tin to construct as well, and you need to set up a Batbox as a buffer every 39 blocks or lose all of the energy produced if using Tin cables. I made an analysis of EU production in another thread, but bottom line is, the best ones are Geothermal and Solar, and the others don't even come CLOSE to being able to complete.
Except for the MFFS one, which is quite broken, i must admit. Really, scrap into massfab, into UU into Forcicium, giving you infinite 2048EU/t energy? And it's much less expensive than 4 HV Solars? Yeah. Totally not broken. AT ALL.
Both Water Mills and Wind Mills have the cabling problem. It's really not an easy one to solve, and also... Very much a space hog.
To be honest, with 400 eu/t you get one UU matter per 20 seconds with scrap in normal IC2, so you can get enough iridium for quantum armor in 1,5 hr, so less then one run. Everything else with UU is just replacing other game activities (mining/farming etc.). The only other energy hogs are teleporters and terraformers. With compact/advanced solars you can add metagame, produce UU matter to produce solars to produce UU matter, but it is just silly.
The conversion to FE (force energy) from EU is 1-1I have to disagree with you on Nuclear. Some very efficient designs have been made, for instance, here http://forum.industrial-craft.net/index.php?page=Thread&threadID=7681 you can see a lot of the really good ones.
keep in mind those generate low amounts of power because they're stable, and so they run full cycle, instead of running intermittently. Reactors that are not stable, but have to use active cooling in order to keep it from exploding, can run in the neighborhood of up to 3000 EU/t. They're not really used that often anymore since Ice has been severely nerfed as a cooling mechanism, and coating the outside with Water doesn't work so hot anymore as well. So, yeah, you could have a massive, unstable nuclear reactor running off on Nuclear Control, and generate insane amounts of EU and store them in several MFSU's. Takes less resources to set up than HV solar's, as well. But yeah, no one uses them because they're really complicated to set up, control, and random tick fluctuations can still make them explode.
But 40 Water Mills can only output 40EU/t with buckets, and 80EU/t with cells (non renewable). They each take in quite a bit of Tin to construct as well, and you need to set up a Batbox as a buffer every 39 blocks or lose all of the energy produced if using Tin cables. I made an analysis of EU production in another thread, but bottom line is, the best ones are Geothermal and Solar, and the others don't even come CLOSE to being able to complete.
Except for the MFFS one, which is quite broken, i must admit. Really, scrap into massfab, into UU into Forcicium, giving you infinite 2048EU/t energy? And it's much less expensive than 4 HV Solars? Yeah. Totally not broken. AT ALL.
Both Water Mills and Wind Mills have the cabling problem. It's really not an easy one to solve, and also... Very much a space hog.
It's because they're only listing the *stable* reactors, I.E, the ones that require neither cooling cells, nor periodic shut-off periods. The ones that can be run *Constantly*, or, at least, for a full cycle, without nothing breaking or exploding.
The most energy efficient designs are not stable designs, they are unstable designs that require some form of control, be it redstone or nuclear control, or *gasp* manual. And they can go as high as you dare.
This is another full cycle, infinite running time reactor: http://www.talonfiremage.pwp.blueyo...a6ns8n6qwsp5i0yw0gyt3difhhdjoncatf788eufv6pz4
520 EU/t, but requires periodic maintenance to replace components, so not optimal.
Basically, these infinite cycle/full cycle reactors are good for servers, where you are going to want to generate a constant, steady stream of power even when you're logged off and your reactor is happily chugging along thanks to all those chunkloaders.
Now those High efficiency high risk Mark III's and IV's reactors? Just plan your reactor to last you an average gaming session. Let's say you play for about 2 hours every day. So you want to make your reactor able to run without explosions for 1 hour and have one hour cooling off period, so that it's ready to run when you get back and play some more. These are the ones that can go up to really, really high amounts of energy produced... And when you're playing single player, you don't really care about being able to produce constant power. You want to be able to produce as much power as quickly as possible because it'll run only when you're playing. And it's quite possible to build really efficient designs...
People who play with Nuclear Reactors generally frown on people using CompactSolars or AdvancedSolars because they're so cheap in comparison. It's much harder to go into the same levels of energy producing without blowing up the reactor or requiring insane amounts of control... And most really energy efficient/powerful reactors need some form of UU-Matter producing cooling components in order to be run safely, because the components melt down so fast and it would be hard to manually replace them, soooooo....
Short Answer: In vanilla IC2, the best way to produce big amounts of EU is nuclear, if you know what you're doing, because it's very efficient if you have both a breeder and an energy producing reactor right next to eachother. Nearly infinite energy production, day and night. Closely followed by stacking Geothermals. 24 of them match some of the most energy efficient Mark I reactors. With Compact/Advanced Solars... Go for them, they're the best.
Wind Mills/Water Mills are EXTREMELY inefficient. You'll never be able to generate 512 EU/t with Water Mills in the same chunk. You'd have to stack them in a really smart way, because you'd lose so much packets of EU it's not funny.
And then, gregtech adds Fusion Reactors, which make 512EU/t look like a water mill. But it will take you close to 60 hours of in-game time in order to get the components for them, unless you know of a really cool way of generating the massive amounts of resources needed.
with gregtech, nuclear is really an option. one of the best setups I encountered so far is this one:
http://www.talonfiremage.pwp.blueyo...vtyat23qsucdxz1l07xnymxri6ukkymwz5of0pzzcyqrk
2 plutoniumcells receive 16 neutron pulses each, squeezing 170 EU/t out of each plutonium cell. together with the 6 quad thorium cells, that setup gives 420 EU/t. there are various sources for thorium, most notably the standard breeding process, and then put the reenriched cells into the ind. centrifuge to get 4 thorium cells, 1 plutonium and 3 near depleted cells. effictively that gives 4 thorium + 1 plutonium per 5 cells. since 2 ore block give 32 near depleted cells + 1 plutonium cell (if processed with the rockcutter), after breeding, you get 7 plutonium cells and 26 thorium cells and 2 near depleted cells (which can be turned into uranium cells).
additionally you can get thorium out of standard coal (4 coal ore blocks in a grinder, and you get 1 thorium dust) and from monazit ore (1 ore block gives 1 thorium dust as side product, again in the grinder).
if you want a setup that gives EU and BC-energy, you can always set up a boiler + steam turbines for EU. I would go straight to the largest one. by processing oil in the GT-distillation tower, you can even use partially nuclear energy in the boiler. as fuel, I'd consider BC-fuel as the best one, but then already lithium (redrock biomes, turn redrock into clay --> claydust --> lithium, silicon, aluminium and sodium... the sodium is used for sodium persulfate cells or in the semifluid generator) and nitrocoalfuel (it's a bit difficult to make... many process steps).
with regenerative fuel sources, you could get much more, even fire and forget setups. a simple steves carts treefarm, and run the boiler with wood or charcoal forever. (it's just I like to play with non regenerative setups).
in ultimate, you could also set up a weird energy production: the steam boiler powers oil fabricators. oil fabricators need 600k MJ or 1500k EU for generating one bucket of oil. refined to fuel and burned in a boiler, you get more . this setup would produce nearly 1,5 fuel per consumed bucket of fuel.
http://www.talonfiremage.pwp.blueyo...vtyat23qsucdxz1l07xnymxri6ukkymwz5of0pzzcyqrk
2 plutoniumcells receive 16 neutron pulses each, squeezing 170 EU/t out of each plutonium cell. together with the 6 quad thorium cells, that setup gives 420 EU/t. there are various sources for thorium, most notably the standard breeding process, and then put the reenriched cells into the ind. centrifuge to get 4 thorium cells, 1 plutonium and 3 near depleted cells. effictively that gives 4 thorium + 1 plutonium per 5 cells. since 2 ore block give 32 near depleted cells + 1 plutonium cell (if processed with the rockcutter), after breeding, you get 7 plutonium cells and 26 thorium cells and 2 near depleted cells (which can be turned into uranium cells).
additionally you can get thorium out of standard coal (4 coal ore blocks in a grinder, and you get 1 thorium dust) and from monazit ore (1 ore block gives 1 thorium dust as side product, again in the grinder).
if you want a setup that gives EU and BC-energy, you can always set up a boiler + steam turbines for EU. I would go straight to the largest one. by processing oil in the GT-distillation tower, you can even use partially nuclear energy in the boiler. as fuel, I'd consider BC-fuel as the best one, but then already lithium (redrock biomes, turn redrock into clay --> claydust --> lithium, silicon, aluminium and sodium... the sodium is used for sodium persulfate cells or in the semifluid generator) and nitrocoalfuel (it's a bit difficult to make... many process steps).
with regenerative fuel sources, you could get much more, even fire and forget setups. a simple steves carts treefarm, and run the boiler with wood or charcoal forever. (it's just I like to play with non regenerative setups).
in ultimate, you could also set up a weird energy production: the steam boiler powers oil fabricators. oil fabricators need 600k MJ or 1500k EU for generating one bucket of oil. refined to fuel and burned in a boiler, you get more . this setup would produce nearly 1,5 fuel per consumed bucket of fuel.
Eh, it's not really bad. You could for instance build hundreds of Stirling Engines and feed them Charcoal that was gotten from a logging turtle feeding into a vanilla furnace array using cobblestone and wooden pipes, with the turtle using the charcoal produced as fuel... And you'd need about 3 diamonds for this setup. It would be ugly, gargantuan, extremely ineffective... But it can be done with little more than cobblestone and wood, and a few pieces of redstone. In fact, you're able to build something like this in the first few hours of game... If you have patience. And it's infinite fuel, because the turtle consumes very little charcoal to chop down large trees, such as Redwood, for example, which then give a crapton of wood & saplings...
Basically, FTB rewards the people that go for renewable, a lot. Forestry is the easiest renewable energy source in the game, and is able to power any machine of the mod. Do it with electric engines, or do it with biofuel, but you can power IC2, TE, BC, Forestry, Railcraft, and everything else in the mod by using just trees and the power of NATURE!(tm). Takes a lot of space, tho, but it's pretty, so i really don't mind. It's what i'm using in the server i play on, anyway.
Basically, FTB rewards the people that go for renewable, a lot. Forestry is the easiest renewable energy source in the game, and is able to power any machine of the mod. Do it with electric engines, or do it with biofuel, but you can power IC2, TE, BC, Forestry, Railcraft, and everything else in the mod by using just trees and the power of NATURE!(tm). Takes a lot of space, tho, but it's pretty, so i really don't mind. It's what i'm using in the server i play on, anyway.
I know, it rewards people who go for renewable. setting up a forestry or steves carts farm (doesn't matter if it's wood or wheat or whatever, or even bee breeding... but it also takes the fun of it. you could sit next to a wood farm and watch it forever, not intervening ever again. it would produce wood for you, more than you could ever use.
but if you need to run after non renewable resources, search for coal, and squeeze the little bit of thorium out of it (it might be a bit OP right now... 4 pieces of coal for 1 thorium cell), or use more creative ways to harvest energy... that is, at least in my eyes, more fun in that game. it's just too easy to swim in biomass/biofuel.
but if you need to run after non renewable resources, search for coal, and squeeze the little bit of thorium out of it (it might be a bit OP right now... 4 pieces of coal for 1 thorium cell), or use more creative ways to harvest energy... that is, at least in my eyes, more fun in that game. it's just too easy to swim in biomass/biofuel
.I know, it rewards people who go for renewable. setting up a forestry or steves carts farm (doesn't matter if it's wood or wheat or whatever, or even bee breeding... but it also takes the fun of it. you could sit next to a wood farm and watch it forever, not intervening ever again. it would produce wood for you, more than you could ever use.
but if you need to run after non renewable resources, search for coal, and squeeze the little bit of thorium out of it (it might be a bit OP right now... 4 pieces of coal for 1 thorium cell), or use more creative ways to harvest energy... that is, at least in my eyes, more fun in that game. it's just too easy to swim in biomass/biofuel
And then DW, neptune and chickenbones ruin your day with an HV solar factory!
Nah, that's why you play on a server that has Advanced Solars instead of Compact Solars with the recipes turned up to "Uselessly expensive" so no one uses them. Then you will see some other forms of power generation. Personally, if I were running the server I would just dump the Compact/Advanced Solars until they are "fixed".
I do think Solar is cheap. Gregtech does add some balance to the game, i can't dispute that... You can reach EOL in IC2 too fast without Gregtech's hardmode recipes... But then again, gregtech just turns everything UP TO 11. It's just too insane for me! For real, i can't keep track of every resource added by the Gregtech mod, and then again by the other mods that play along with it. I mean, gregtech makes getting to the end just a PAIN. There is zero balance between how simple and easy it is to get things with just IC2, and then with IC2 together with gregtech.
So, i can't condone that as well. Steve's cart has time as the balancing factor... It works on servers that don't allow chunkloading, but basically means nothing if they allow it, because you can just go to sleep and when you play again, boom, it's done.
Personally? I don't think it's really that bad that you can reach a massive production of energy in a comparably short period of time. It's when you have a lot of resources that you really begin to be able to do the really crazy fun cool stuff, like building a giant castle out of Iron Blocks with a throne room full of Gold Blocks and a throne made out of Diamond Blocks/microblocks. You can only do that stuff on creative, or after you reached the point where there is nowhere else you can spend your resources... Except on having fun. It's almost like creative mode, get it?
But you have to work, before you can get your "creative" mode going on. It's also cool. In the server i play in, i set up such a cool base in a Volcano, eventually even the mods ended up living with me, and now we are setting some pretty batshit insane contraptions and stuff. We now have 5 people living together, and everytime i log in, the base is a little bit different, a little bit better. I really do think that's part of the fun, too.
So, i can't condone that as well. Steve's cart has time as the balancing factor... It works on servers that don't allow chunkloading, but basically means nothing if they allow it, because you can just go to sleep and when you play again, boom, it's done.
Personally? I don't think it's really that bad that you can reach a massive production of energy in a comparably short period of time. It's when you have a lot of resources that you really begin to be able to do the really crazy fun cool stuff, like building a giant castle out of Iron Blocks with a throne room full of Gold Blocks and a throne made out of Diamond Blocks/microblocks. You can only do that stuff on creative, or after you reached the point where there is nowhere else you can spend your resources... Except on having fun. It's almost like creative mode, get it?
But you have to work, before you can get your "creative" mode going on. It's also cool. In the server i play in, i set up such a cool base in a Volcano, eventually even the mods ended up living with me, and now we are setting some pretty batshit insane contraptions and stuff. We now have 5 people living together, and everytime i log in, the base is a little bit different, a little bit better. I really do think that's part of the fun, too.
Disclaimer: I'm on a DW20 server.
In my opinion there are three options: MJ conversion, solar, and renewable. Solid fuels are not really worth the effort at all (peat is too slow, magic coal is environmentally unfriendly, charcoal doesn't give enough energy, uranium requires a huge upfront cost to even use and is not renewable, IC2 biofuel burns nonrenewable tin and produces less energy than Forestry biofuel). Big caveat with the solid fuels though, I'll explain later.
Ultimately it comes down to whether or not you want to build a tree farm. If so, all you need is a simple Steve's Cart (standard+solar+coal+woodcutter+fertilizer+side chests), about 160 tracks, an advanced detector track, a cargo manager, and a cargo distributor (make sure you put it under the manager, not on top, the trees will destroy your pipes when they grow). You pull out the output and put it to work (wood back to the manager to fuel the cart and a stirling engine to pull items out of the manager, saplings to three fermenters or so, apples to a squeezer for mulch), turn the biomass into biofuel with a couple biogas engines, feed the fuel into three max-size high pressure boilers, and in turn run six steam turbines off of those. 600 EU/t for the cost of a tree farm, the fuel processing (and probably a tank to hold the biofuel) and 1662 iron for the turbines and boilers (1638 of which, about 26 stacks, needs to be turned into steel with 6552 charcoal, or about 103 stacks). The downside to this setup is just a bit of lag: you have to run a fairly big treefarm and fuel generating complex to power this monster. Also I guess it burns steel, but not as much as you'd think and not exactly a pain to replace (EE3 can turn wood into iron, and I'd hope you were using that EU to make UUM).
Think that's expensive? If you'd like less moving parts for your EU generation you can build a HV solar panel. 512 EU/t for an absolute nightmare of resources, the most comparable of which is its iron cost: 5194. In other words, a tree farm will always beat solar on cost. In fact you could build three of these bioelectric power generation stations (1800 EU/t!) for the same cost of one HV solar.
"Always?" coughs a gentleman in the back. Not necessarily. You see, there is a way around the ridiculous cost of IC2 solar. One word: Blulectricity. A blulectric engine can produce a maximum of 32 MJ/t, which is roughly equivalent to the power output of 160 solar panels before you factor in transmission losses. For a small upfront cost in diamonds (you need 9 for a diamond drawplate and another two for a diamond saw) you can start cranking out solar panels. You'll need sand, of which you can make infinite amounts of by sticking a stack of cobblestone into a pulverizer, sticking the resulting sand into a compressor, and sticking the resulting sandstone back into said pulverizer -- as an added bonus you get niter, one half of gunpowder. Also you need coal. Now, the balancing factor in this equation is nikolite. Yes, the blue mineral everyone loves to hate! It takes four and a half stacks of nikolite dust to make eight solar panels. But don't despair, nikolite is relatively plentiful down there. For 90 stacks of nikolite and 160 silver bars, you have your very own solar-powered blulectric engine. Pump that MJ into a crucible to make lava, and you've got a solar power source that doesn't break the bank.
Now the real kicker: None of these are as cheap as just burning something in a generator. 10 EU/t might be small but x 60 and you're making 600 EU/t without breaking a sweat. The challenge here is logistics. You need to bring a massive amount of charcoal to these generators. I still haven't quite worked out the timing for this yet. I'm thinking two or three tree farms feeding into a set of fully-heated induction furnaces powered by the generators will do the trick, but I haven't had a chance to test that theory out yet.
In my opinion there are three options: MJ conversion, solar, and renewable. Solid fuels are not really worth the effort at all (peat is too slow, magic coal is environmentally unfriendly, charcoal doesn't give enough energy, uranium requires a huge upfront cost to even use and is not renewable, IC2 biofuel burns nonrenewable tin and produces less energy than Forestry biofuel). Big caveat with the solid fuels though, I'll explain later.
Ultimately it comes down to whether or not you want to build a tree farm. If so, all you need is a simple Steve's Cart (standard+solar+coal+woodcutter+fertilizer+side chests), about 160 tracks, an advanced detector track, a cargo manager, and a cargo distributor (make sure you put it under the manager, not on top, the trees will destroy your pipes when they grow). You pull out the output and put it to work (wood back to the manager to fuel the cart and a stirling engine to pull items out of the manager, saplings to three fermenters or so, apples to a squeezer for mulch), turn the biomass into biofuel with a couple biogas engines, feed the fuel into three max-size high pressure boilers, and in turn run six steam turbines off of those. 600 EU/t for the cost of a tree farm, the fuel processing (and probably a tank to hold the biofuel) and 1662 iron for the turbines and boilers (1638 of which, about 26 stacks, needs to be turned into steel with 6552 charcoal, or about 103 stacks). The downside to this setup is just a bit of lag: you have to run a fairly big treefarm and fuel generating complex to power this monster. Also I guess it burns steel, but not as much as you'd think and not exactly a pain to replace (EE3 can turn wood into iron, and I'd hope you were using that EU to make UUM).
Think that's expensive? If you'd like less moving parts for your EU generation you can build a HV solar panel. 512 EU/t for an absolute nightmare of resources, the most comparable of which is its iron cost: 5194. In other words, a tree farm will always beat solar on cost. In fact you could build three of these bioelectric power generation stations (1800 EU/t!) for the same cost of one HV solar.
"Always?" coughs a gentleman in the back. Not necessarily. You see, there is a way around the ridiculous cost of IC2 solar. One word: Blulectricity. A blulectric engine can produce a maximum of 32 MJ/t, which is roughly equivalent to the power output of 160 solar panels before you factor in transmission losses. For a small upfront cost in diamonds (you need 9 for a diamond drawplate and another two for a diamond saw) you can start cranking out solar panels. You'll need sand, of which you can make infinite amounts of by sticking a stack of cobblestone into a pulverizer, sticking the resulting sand into a compressor, and sticking the resulting sandstone back into said pulverizer -- as an added bonus you get niter, one half of gunpowder. Also you need coal. Now, the balancing factor in this equation is nikolite. Yes, the blue mineral everyone loves to hate! It takes four and a half stacks of nikolite dust to make eight solar panels. But don't despair, nikolite is relatively plentiful down there. For 90 stacks of nikolite and 160 silver bars, you have your very own solar-powered blulectric engine. Pump that MJ into a crucible to make lava, and you've got a solar power source that doesn't break the bank.
Now the real kicker: None of these are as cheap as just burning something in a generator. 10 EU/t might be small but x 60 and you're making 600 EU/t without breaking a sweat. The challenge here is logistics. You need to bring a massive amount of charcoal to these generators. I still haven't quite worked out the timing for this yet. I'm thinking two or three tree farms feeding into a set of fully-heated induction furnaces powered by the generators will do the trick, but I haven't had a chance to test that theory out yet.
yes
and with the same explanation you can say, that netherlava is a cheap resource. just set up the standard nether pump + liquid tesseract + geo-generators, and watch the energy flowing.
and at the end, it's just the question what was meant as the most efficient eu production. is it in terms of easy or cheap setup, or is it in terms of compact setup. or a maintainance-free setup. or even lag-lessness?
nuclear uses very little fuel, just a few pieces of uranium, with breeding even more. and GT offers even much more (but thorium cells get nerfed soon).
your setup is very good in points of price. and the cart-setup uses virtually no iron, if you use wooden rails. they are slower, and eat up a ton of creosote oil, but once they're made, they just work... and you could even start with a small setup and use the wood to make it larger.
does a sc-setup need extra bonemeal?
and with the same explanation you can say, that netherlava is a cheap resource. just set up the standard nether pump + liquid tesseract + geo-generators, and watch the energy flowing.
and at the end, it's just the question what was meant as the most efficient eu production. is it in terms of easy or cheap setup, or is it in terms of compact setup. or a maintainance-free setup. or even lag-lessness?
nuclear uses very little fuel, just a few pieces of uranium, with breeding even more. and GT offers even much more (but thorium cells get nerfed soon).
your setup is very good in points of price. and the cart-setup uses virtually no iron, if you use wooden rails. they are slower, and eat up a ton of creosote oil, but once they're made, they just work... and you could even start with a small setup and use the wood to make it larger.
does a sc-setup need extra bonemeal?
If you put torches between each sapling they grow fast enough without bonemeal. The issue with Steve's Carts tree farms is size: the more trees the cart has to cut down, the longer it will take the cart to chop through them and return back with the goods. If you want absurdly fast tree growth you could abuse XyCraft soil or put down one of Xeno's lilypads of fertility. If you want maximum throughput you could probably adjust the setup to have a few more cargo manager stops along the way to ensure you're getting all the stuff as it's harvested.
Not really it's a solid 39% extra fuel output, this includes refining and power lost with Conduits of course using the 36 sized boilers HP is the fastest way to need about 220+ buckets of fuel to "jump start" the positive feedback loop. People don't like these power generations though as it's "cheating" power even though it's does cost more space and resources to get it going and 4.5 buckets of fuel per hour isn't a whole lot from a single huge HP boiler.
The only problem with mass Generators is packet lag\item lag I had 45 odd setup with a sawmill turning wood from a SC2 treefarm into planks, whenever it kicked on due to a powerdrain somewhere in the system I could watch my framerate drop that was even before the items started flowing around when they started moving in large quantities it got worse (RP2 tubes, which aren't especially bad)
I swapped that setup out for a Thermal Gen setup 32 fueled with Netherlava (Geothermals if you don't have Gregtech) and my lag when a powerdrain hit dropped to almost nothing.
Or you could run more than one track+cart, 2 smaller setups I found was far less bursty in the way it delivered the wood etc sure it cost a bit more but it is relatively cheap. The trees grow fast enough without bonemeal\the fertilizer module that there will never be a cart run that doesn't gather several trees even on a track that is fairly short, smallest I've made was about 20 on the long sides of the loop and 5 on the short sides.