[Engines] Which should I use?

[Zerro]

I have harnessed the power of the atom!
I have a never ending supply of peat
I can use my tree farms to produce charcoal (for steam engines)
I have a Direwolf style lava tank.
I plan on setting up oil and biofuel system

I looked at NEI and there are at least 12 engines listed:
Redstone, Stirling, Combustion, Bluetric, Biogas, Peat, Electric, Hobbyist Steam, Commercial Steam, Industrial Steam, Steam Engine (not the stock BC one), and Magmatic Engine

My knowledge of engines isn't that great. I mainly know the basics: Redstone is the slowest but safest, Stirling is better but needs coal and can blow up (could probably be monitored with Gates), and Combustion which are the best in stock BC but requires Lava, Oil, or Refined Oil + Water (easy to get) to prevent explosions.

I want to know more about the other engines so I can setup my factories more efficiently. How do the other engines compare to each other. What requirements do they need to run. Which ones can blow up? Which ones can break down (needs to be hit with a wrench)? And anything else I should know about the engines.

Right now I feel relatively rich in supplies. I have peat engines powering my forestry farms. I need to setup a permanent 'Thermal Expansion' factory but I don't know which engines (or other power supply) I should use to power them.

Thanks for the assistance on educating me on engines and which ones I should use and which ones I should avoid

Zerro0713

 

[thedeester1]

If you have lava go for magmatic....Build a powerstation of magmatic engines then run all your stuff off of that without the need for more engines...peat engines are good for self sustaining farm complexes.....Make peat....feed peat to a powerstation of peat engines that power all your farms....Automate seeds and wheat into a moistner for mulch...etc...then you could expand by using a tree farm fed by the peat powerstaion to produce charcoal....or use the saplings to make biomatter or bio fuel...just keep expanding....Once you have biofuel use that in a liquid fired boiler with a turbine to produce EU energy....just keep expanding.....lol

 

[Saice]

I'm a huge fan of Magmatic. Not even going into pumping the neither dry or doing the turn rack into lava shtick you can just bore down to layer 10 find yourself a nice big lava lake and pump that up.

Outside of that for a more renewable without the neither sort of thing Biomass is my next favorite.

Right now Lava and Biomass/Fuel are the best universal sources of power I can find. You know outside of a solar farm and using the electrical engine with upgrades. I just find solar a bit to free and easy for my personal play style.

 

[Predatorkillol]

bluetric engines are probably the most powerful but probably the most expensive my personal favourite is electric engines as the are cheap to run and can be upgraded with a decent power output

 

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Excellent question, I wrote a Guide which should answer all your questions concerning which engines you might want to use, depending on your circumstances.

In general, practically every engine in the game has a viable niche in which it is going to be the optimal engine to use. Except the Stirling Engine, I have yet to find a situation in which it is the 'best' option. Generally, at that level, either a Hobbyist Steam Engine or a Steam Engine will out-perform it on any metric.

 

[Captain Neckbeard]

Biofuel fed into a large Steam Boiler will put out a lot of power, fed into Railcraft Steam Engines. I'm not on 24/7 doing things that cause huge power drains, but a few Boilers are running my whole operation, with plenty of excess getting fed into Energy Cells for anything I need portable. Be aware that the Steam Engines can explode if they don't have a proper load, though.

If you're into the techie stuff, I see lots of modified Electrical Engines with various kinds of Solar Panels used for remote operations.

 

[Daemonblue]

If you're using Gregtech you can make a rubber tree farm and centrifuge 16 rubber wood to get 4 methane cells, some plant balls (which can be macerated into dirt and put back into the farm), sticky resin, and coal cells which can be used in an electric crafting table to return the cells and make carbon fiber. Each time you run the centrifuge it takes iirc 25,000 eu, and the methane cells can be put through a liquid transposer so you can fuel a liquid boiler and reuse the cells. You could also use the methane in a gas turbine, but you should be able to get more EU by converting the MJ into a lava via igneous extruders and magma crucibles and then pumping the lava into thermal generators.

This system is fairly easily replicated, easy to maintain, and should be self-reliant if set up properly - haven't run it myself, but I tend to get enough rubber saplings from cutting down the trees myself so those shouldn't be a bottleneck and would be the only possible bottleneck in the system if set up right.

Edit: Do note that your first boiler will require at least two centrifuges running, as methane has a burn value of about half that of biofuel, and each cycle to make the methane cells is 250 seconds. This means it should be along the lines of 5 centrifuges per 4 boilers.

 

[Icarus White]

If you're a little forgetful like me, you might also look into Biogas Engines from Forestry. A little tricky to get the Bronze for the infrastructure if you're messing with GregTech, but absolutely failsafe and 5 MJ/t on biomass. Mind, it'll burn lava if you're not careful, but that's what Magma Crucibles are for, right?

On a side note, if you're messing around with engines, you might also want to look into your options for wiring - the two big ones right now are Conductive Pipes (one redstone per, some line loss) and Redstone Conduits (lossless; requires a lot of TE setup, two redstone per, lead, obsidian, and electrum, but those last two can be gotten via Magma Crucibles and an Industrial Centrifuge). Although this isn't obvious at all: Redstone Conduits might not be removable without sneak-right-clicking with a Crescent Hammer (and not with any other sort of wrench).

 

[Unium]

I'm still learning all the basics of Forestry engines... Peat and what not... so far i saw great ideias you guys gave from those sources... but i think a good wind farm from those new kinetic engines... maybe 10 towers, with 2 generators each, one horizontal and one vertical, a transformers and a high voltage cable for big distances... you'll be set of all your MJ needs for life... just keep a good farm of flax producing... and a automated sail thingy crafting setup running.

I simply put redpower stuff ahead of everything... in almost every case will work better.

Now.. its hard to make wind farms without making them look ugly.... just make some nice looking towers... it will look better in the overall.

cumpz

 

[Predatorkillol]

If you're a little forgetful like me, you might also look into Biogas Engines from Forestry. A little tricky to get the Bronze for the infrastructure if you're messing with GregTech, but absolutely failsafe and 5 MJ/t on biomass. Mind, it'll burn lava if you're not careful, but that's what Magma Crucibles are for, right?

On a side note, if you're messing around with engines, you might also want to look into your options for wiring - the two big ones right now are Conductive Pipes (one redstone per, some line loss) and Redstone Conduits (lossless; requires a lot of TE setup, two redstone per, lead, obsidian, and electrum, but those last two can be gotten via Magma Crucibles and an Industrial Centrifuge). Although this isn't obvious at all: Redstone Conduits might not be removable without sneak-right-clicking with a Crescent Hammer (and not with any other sort of wrench).

I'ts supposed to work with the bc wrench but it got bugged in the last update I haven't tested it with the forestry wrench and the omniwrench

 

[Abdiel]

but i think a good wind farm from those new kinetic engines... maybe 10 towers, with 2 generators each, one horizontal and one vertical

You can only attach one turbine to a kinetic generator, horizontal or vertical, depending on its orientation.

 

[Saice]

Sort of off subject but I think I would love some wave power attachment to the Kinetic Generator what has a power output based on how many source blocks are around the attachment. Maybe even have it check the biome to make ocean > river > player placed water.

 

[netmc]

If you haven't played with a railcraft steam boiler, I would recommend that. They take quite a bit of infrastructure to set up though. I have run one off of peat. You can run steam lines to the different RC steam engines, hobbyist, commercial, industrial, and they will output 2, 5 (4?), or 8MJ respectively. You can run the hobbyist engine off of coal and water directly, but it will only produce 1.6MJ.

Fuel and biofuel can both be used in a liquid firebox for the railcraft steam boiler so you might use that instead of peat in a solid fuel firebox.

The boilers require a constant supply of water to the firebox, and is best supplied by an aqueous accumulator under the firebox. They also take a LARGE expenditure of fuel to heat up. When heating up, they can use 8x the amount of fuel they need at max temp. The larger the boiler, the longer it takes to heat, and the more fuel required to get them up to temperature.

If you have easy access to lava, use a magmatic engines, otherwise, use biogas engines or RC steam boiler since you have quite a bit of forestry setup already.

 

[Magicferret]

I usually go with Magmatic engines to start with, running on some lava pumped out of a volcano or other overworld source. Sometimes I even just scoop it up out of surface lava lakes with tin cells. The TE engines and machines scale their power nicely according to need so I reckon they're good to go with earlier on for ore processing if you're not using IC2, especially if you get some conduits going.

Later on it's all about the Forestry, biomass is my usual fuel of choice. Sometimes I go for the full self sustaining peat bog, tree farm and wheat farm job, recently I've been using a Steve's Carts tree farm along with fermenters and coke ovens to pump out biomass, charcoal and creosote at a frankly alarming rate. The charcoal could go into a boiler like netmc described once I've got the balance right.

Having stated my favourites though: Branch out, try them all, end up with a massive interdependent multi-fuel power plant. Mix it up a bit. When it comes down to it I just want a lot of all of it in my house. Ahh mods <3

 

[Celestialphoenix]

Ok, which engine also depends on what your running.

There's a bit of a difference between a rock crusher and a thermionic fabricator.​

Note on fuel wastage; solid fuelled engines will always fully burn a piece of fuel, even if you switch off/no work. A liquid fuelled engine can stop mid burn without wastage.

Slow, long term power source. (ideal for forestry farms, rolling machines ect)
Peat engines with peat or B. peat- 1 or 2 MJ/t
Biogas with Milk + lava- 1MJ/t, long burn time. Lava only used to warm the engine.
Combustion engine on lava. Needs water cooling, but is most efficient use of lava as a fuel. (1MJ/t totalling ~20kMJ)
Hobbyists Steam. Long warm-up time, but very fuel efficient. (needs water)

Mid tier, long term power source (ideal for powered furnace, other TE machines, fermenter/still/refinery ect)
Biogas engines with seed oil or biomass + lava- 3 or 5MJ/t.
Magmatic Engine. 4x the power output of comb. engine, but 10% total energy per fuel unit. (4MJ/t totalling 18kMJ)
Commercial Steam engine. 4 MJ/t, with insane fuel efficiency at the cost of a massive setup with long warmup time.
Combustion engine with fuel/biofuel. Needs water cooling, but will make 5 or 6 MJ/t totalling ~30 and ~90kMJ respectively.

High tier, long term power source (ideal for quarry, rock crusher, magma crucible ect)
Industrial Steam engine- 8 MJ/t. (you'll probably need 2)
or several Mid tier engines.

Short term power source
Stirling engine, cheap- makes 1 MJ/t with standard furnace burn time for all normal fuels.
-very good to jump start a larger, self powered system.

Blulectric and Electrical engines run on Redpower and IC2 energy. They generally have a very poor conversion ratio, but useful for controlled/variable output. If you have some spare energy then they might be useful.

The Blulectric engine self adjusts to demand, and the Electrical engine can be chipped to adjust efficiency/power output.​

Lava efficiency:
Combustion engine, produces about ~20kMJ at 1MJ/t*
Magmatic engine, produces 18kMJ at 4MJ/t
Steam boiler, variable but not recommended as lava was severely nerfed.
Stirling engine- 12kMJ at 1 MJ/t.
Biogas engine on lava+water, produces ~10.5kMJ at 1MJ/t
IC2 Geothermal into electric engine, produces ~6.3kMJ at 2MJ/t

(*A combustion engine running directly into a magma crucible will melt enough cobblestone to power itself. There's a little left over, but there's other more efficient ways of getting free energy.)

Railcraft engines (hobbyist, commercial and industrial) run on steam provided from a boiler. These things are massive and eat a lot of fuel to warm up, but will reach a crazy fuel efficiency at full heat. keep them well watered. The hobbyist engine also has its own boiler, and is about as efficient as a single tank boiler.

The following engines may explode without cooling: Combustion engine, TE steam engine, Hobbyist engine running on fuels, steam boilers.
Engines can be coupled together, and will conduct power through them (known as daisy chaining), but any engine will explode if too much power builds up like this.
Railcraft engines may explode if there's a buildup of excess energy in said engines.
Thermal expansions engines need to be smacked with a wrench/hammer to restart after overheating.

 

[Hydra]

The magmatic engine actually produces 4MJ/t. The 18k MJ total is correct though. They are very nice to start with because two of them are good enough to power your first quarry.

You also can't have a combustion engine burn lava and have leftoevers: it generates 20k MJ for one bucket and it costs 20k MJ to melt one bucket of lava. So you don't benefit at all.

Also: the combustion engine is the only one that will explode without cooling. The TE steam engine will just 'lock up' and needs a whack with a wrench. The hobbyists steam engine will only explode if you let it run dry and then add water while it's still hot.

 

[Ingonian2]

I would say that electrical engines coupled with IC2 splitter cables and a medley of your favourite electron tubes would make for an efficient setup because you could choose how many engines you want activated by cutting the power to certain engines.