I'm trying to run one of Forestry's multifarms, and I've got a pump running off a stirling engine connected to a tank feeding into the farm. The tank never fills up and the farm uses water as fast as the pump is supplying it, but the engine powering the pump never puts out as much energy as it creates and constantly overheats. I've tried running the pump on a redstone engine, but then it doesn't supply enough water and the engine powering the farm begins to overheat, albeit slower than the one powering the pump would. I don't care which engine I use to power the pump, but I can't figure out how to make either work right.
Engines not outputting enough power
- Thread starter Nazrin
- Start date
-
The FTB Forum is now read-only, and is here as an archive. To participate in our community discussions, please join our Discord! https://ftb.team/discord
When using a BC pump I usually put four redstone engines around it. Redstones don't overheat (Easily) and four of them will run a pump at almost max speed.
Or...use an Aquaeous Accumulator, no power requirements and pumps out water pretty fast. I had one supplying 6 max size multifarms with room to spare.
Or...use an Aquaeous Accumulator, no power requirements and pumps out water pretty fast. I had one supplying 6 max size multifarms with room to spare.
A tank? A railcraft water siding? What is pumping water into the tank?
mulitfarms have different hydration requirements depending on the environment, but operating in plains type biomes as I normally do I have never had problems with supplying water via a single redstone powered pump over a pond. Ive seen people simply build a railcraft water siding directly over the core of the multifarm (obviously placing a multifarm water supply block on the top) and be done with it.
Forestry multifarms do have power issues that remain unaddressed. Basically, any engine that outputs >2MJ/t risks overheating if its the kind that builds up heat. And engines that only output 2MJ/t can't run a multifarm on alternate server starts.
Consequently I always run my multifarms with biogas engines, which are easy to fuel with the farms own overflow. Putting out 5MJ/t they can in theory run two farms and a pump or two.
mulitfarms have different hydration requirements depending on the environment, but operating in plains type biomes as I normally do I have never had problems with supplying water via a single redstone powered pump over a pond. Ive seen people simply build a railcraft water siding directly over the core of the multifarm (obviously placing a multifarm water supply block on the top) and be done with it.
Forestry multifarms do have power issues that remain unaddressed. Basically, any engine that outputs >2MJ/t risks overheating if its the kind that builds up heat. And engines that only output 2MJ/t can't run a multifarm on alternate server starts.
Consequently I always run my multifarms with biogas engines, which are easy to fuel with the farms own overflow. Putting out 5MJ/t they can in theory run two farms and a pump or two.
Your engine is overheating because you have it directly attached to the pump. Never directly attach Buildcraft compatible engines to any device if you cannot avoid it. The only exception here are redstone engines, which cannot overheat.
Why shouldn't you attach engines directly? Because Buildcraft compatible engines output power in bursts, whenever their piston stroke is at its highest point. A stirling engine strokes once per 52 ticks and generates 1 MJ/t; therefore, every stroke, it will attempt to output one single burst of 52 MJ. However, Buildcraft machines generally have limits on how much power they can accept per tick (burst input limit), and how much power they can use per tick. A Buildcraft pump has a burst input limit of 10 MJ. That's the amount the engine is able to squeze into it on its stroke. The remaining 42 out of 52 MJ cannot be transferred and thus remain in the engine, causing it to heat up.
The entire point of the heatup behavior is to make the engine stroke faster. If it strokes faster, the time between energy bursts is smaller, and thus the energy bursts themselves are smaller as well. A stirling engine heated up all the way to red will stroke once per 8 ticks, and therefore transfer 8 MJ per stroke. This is below the burst input limit of the pump, and thus the engine can finally transfer all of its power once it hits red.
...Except for the fact that a Buildcraft pump will pump no more than 1 bucket per second, using 10 MJ to do so. That means it has a maximum power usage of 0.5 MJ/t. The stirling engine is generating 1 MJ/t. So regardless of how fast the stirling engine strokes, it will never be able to transfer all of its energy to the pump because the internal buffer of the pump simply drains only half as fast as the engine is trying to fill it. Again, the engine can't transfer its energy, and eventually overheats and explodes.
If you connected the pump via kinesis pipes, the stirling engine would be able to output all its power into the pipes (which have a burst input limit of something like 1500 MJ), and don't worry about how much the pump is actually consuming. Since the pipe will also feed a constant stream to the pump this will actually make the pump go faster than with the directly attached stirling engine, because the initially slow stroke speed of the engine would mean that the pump only pumps something once per 2.5 seconds instead of once per second.
Why shouldn't you attach engines directly? Because Buildcraft compatible engines output power in bursts, whenever their piston stroke is at its highest point. A stirling engine strokes once per 52 ticks and generates 1 MJ/t; therefore, every stroke, it will attempt to output one single burst of 52 MJ. However, Buildcraft machines generally have limits on how much power they can accept per tick (burst input limit), and how much power they can use per tick. A Buildcraft pump has a burst input limit of 10 MJ. That's the amount the engine is able to squeze into it on its stroke. The remaining 42 out of 52 MJ cannot be transferred and thus remain in the engine, causing it to heat up.
The entire point of the heatup behavior is to make the engine stroke faster. If it strokes faster, the time between energy bursts is smaller, and thus the energy bursts themselves are smaller as well. A stirling engine heated up all the way to red will stroke once per 8 ticks, and therefore transfer 8 MJ per stroke. This is below the burst input limit of the pump, and thus the engine can finally transfer all of its power once it hits red.
...Except for the fact that a Buildcraft pump will pump no more than 1 bucket per second, using 10 MJ to do so. That means it has a maximum power usage of 0.5 MJ/t. The stirling engine is generating 1 MJ/t. So regardless of how fast the stirling engine strokes, it will never be able to transfer all of its energy to the pump because the internal buffer of the pump simply drains only half as fast as the engine is trying to fill it. Again, the engine can't transfer its energy, and eventually overheats and explodes.
If you connected the pump via kinesis pipes, the stirling engine would be able to output all its power into the pipes (which have a burst input limit of something like 1500 MJ), and don't worry about how much the pump is actually consuming. Since the pipe will also feed a constant stream to the pump this will actually make the pump go faster than with the directly attached stirling engine, because the initially slow stroke speed of the engine would mean that the pump only pumps something once per 2.5 seconds instead of once per second.
Last edited:
You also could use a gate on your engine feeding the multifarm. I used a railcraft steam engine fed by an endertank. Had the gate set to only turn on when power was requested. It can work with other engines, but it is not efficient with biogas or sterlings since you waste lava and coal. I was surprised how little it ran for a max size tree farm.
As for water, I have never had that issue. I always just use an aqueous accumulator. I have never used a BC pump to supply water because the 1st time I played BC way back, it destroyed the source blocks. Didn't even know you could change it. LOL. Extra utilities liquid transfer nodes can be placed over the center of a 3 x 1 hole and keep the farm supplied too. They can also have upgrades to make them supply more water as you need it.
As for water, I have never had that issue. I always just use an aqueous accumulator. I have never used a BC pump to supply water because the 1st time I played BC way back, it destroyed the source blocks. Didn't even know you could change it. LOL. Extra utilities liquid transfer nodes can be placed over the center of a 3 x 1 hole and keep the farm supplied too. They can also have upgrades to make them supply more water as you need it.
I always ended up with a single pump pushing power through a wooden and golden pipe splitting to the pump and multi-farm. The pump pushed water directly through a valve, so I only ever needed the two pipes.
Very interesting to see it explained how the engines work.
Very interesting to see it explained how the engines work.
Game mechanics fascinate me, because sometimes there's such a wealth of detail hidden underneath something that seems simple at first. For all Buildcraft power gets knocked as being unwieldly, it's one of the most interesting systems left in modded Minecraft nowadays. It's just not very well documented, but rather requires the player to test how things work. Which is sadly something that more modern mods seem intent on deprecating in favor of ease of use. I have never seen a power system as utterly boring and unmotivating as Redstone Flux, for instance. It has absolutely no gameplay value in it.
The reason is that ease of use, in contrast to popular belief, is not a polar opposite of complexity. The best designed systems manage to walk that fine line we call "easy to learn, hard to master". Look at the boardgame Go, for instance. It does not get any simpler than two players alternatingly placing colored stones on a grid - a four year old could pick it up just from watching someone play and maybe asking a question or two. Yet the underlying complexity of the game is so enormous that long after Chess computers effortlessly beat the best human players, Go computers still struggled even on the smaller board sizes.
It's always sad to see the community shift away from complexity. That's why I specifically aim to help people with the more complex mods and obscure knowledge. I want to show people that there's more to modded Minecraft than placing two blocks and a cable down and getting doubled ore yield. There's engineering and science to be done!
It would be sad if individuals were shifting away from complexity, but I don't see it that way. I see "ease of use" as "lowering the bar to entry" and bringing more players into the community that otherwise would not have tried and stuck with modded MC. From there, it's a progression towards more complexity.
I could not imagine, for instance, throwing a bunch modded MC newbies at a modpack like MagicFarm2, and expecting a high retention rate.
As for RF power being boring, it's supposed to be boring because it's as simple as possible and just...works. I've done plenty of worlds with Railcraft power and was frustrated every time by client lag and server lag. I have also done complex RotaryCraft setups and while cool and all, I had to remove the mod due to massive client lag. The holy grail would indeed be engaging complexity with minimal computational requirements, but I don't know how to make that happen.