My large orchard randomly runs out of water, but most of the time it's fine. Didn't know the rain had anything to do with it. Good to know. Lucky (I guess?) for me it rains all the time on my server. I've got 3 AA supplying it right now - connected with liquiducts. It's probably 90% effective but I don't watch it all that often. At least I'm not short on apples as long as I supply it with fertilizer.
Extra Large Multifarm--Best Use?
- Thread starter gusmahler
- Start date
Possibly too early to tell. But after fixing the pipes, it seems to be working fine now. Been running at 1000 degrees for the last couple of hours. And the amount of planks in the storage chest next to the boiler is actually increasing, not decreasing. I'll check back tonight to see if it's still at 1000 degrees.
From having to start the boiler again this morning, looks like 1 gold chest full of wood logs, combined with the output of the multifarm, is enough to get it to 1000 degrees.
Also, I was just sending sawdust to the void before. Now I send it to an autocrafting table, then to a powered furnace. Pretty steady production of charcoal that I can't believe I didn't add before.
EDIT: It's definitely going to run. It's gone from 18 stacks of planks in the chest to 36 stacks of planks in the chest in about an hour. And it's not even touching the charcoal yet.
Conclusion: Running 3 boilers off of a max-sized multifarm (2 liquid-fueled, 1 solid fueled) definitely works. The remaining question is whether I can get a second solid fueled boiler working off of this setup.
I'm trying to set up a comparison between a 5x5 multifarm and a 16x16 Steve's Cart tree farm. Obviously, with a working multifarm, I have access to a bunch of saplings. But what's super annoying is that, even though I originally planted oak saplings in the multifarm, they are now "apple oak saplings". So I mainly have apple oak saplings. But SC tree farms DO NOT ACCEPT those saplings! WTF? I have stacks of apple oak saplings and I can't use any of them.
EDIT: Wow, that was quick. I come back 20 minutes later and the SC farm is already running at full capacity. I wasn't so sure that a SC tree farm was that much more effective than a multifarm would be, but I'm beginning to think I was wrong. Full test will have to come later, because I don't believe I'll be able to do it tonight. But even if the multifarm has more output, switching to SC will be worth it because I won't have to worry about a dirt supply any longer.
EDIT: Wow, that was quick. I come back 20 minutes later and the SC farm is already running at full capacity. I wasn't so sure that a SC tree farm was that much more effective than a multifarm would be, but I'm beginning to think I was wrong. Full test will have to come later, because I don't believe I'll be able to do it tonight. But even if the multifarm has more output, switching to SC will be worth it because I won't have to worry about a dirt supply any longer.
I finally did the comparison between an SC farm and a multifarm.
In this corner, measuring 17 x 17, is the extra large multifarm:
And in this corner, measuring 16 x 16 is the Steve's Carts tree farm:
The methodology was simple. I started the timer when the cart unloaded its previous cargo. 35 minutes later, after the SC finished unloading it's second lap, I tallied the totals. The results:
The multifarm had a pretty big advantage in apples. This is because, when you plant regular oak trees in a multifarm, they drop "apple oak" saplings, which have a much higher apple production rate. You can't even plant apple oak saplings in the SC farm. But obviously, the SC farm had a sizable advantage in the more important categories of saplings and trees.
For the record, a full-sized HP boiler requires 3802 planks per hour to maintain 1000 degrees. In just 35 minutes, the SC farm made the equivalent of 4608 planks. The multifarm made the equivalent of 3468 planks.
EDIT: I should also point out that the multifarm made 97 blocks of sand and presumably used 97 blocks of dirt in the process.
In this corner, measuring 17 x 17, is the extra large multifarm:
And in this corner, measuring 16 x 16 is the Steve's Carts tree farm:
The methodology was simple. I started the timer when the cart unloaded its previous cargo. 35 minutes later, after the SC finished unloading it's second lap, I tallied the totals. The results:
The multifarm had a pretty big advantage in apples. This is because, when you plant regular oak trees in a multifarm, they drop "apple oak" saplings, which have a much higher apple production rate. You can't even plant apple oak saplings in the SC farm. But obviously, the SC farm had a sizable advantage in the more important categories of saplings and trees.
For the record, a full-sized HP boiler requires 3802 planks per hour to maintain 1000 degrees. In just 35 minutes, the SC farm made the equivalent of 4608 planks. The multifarm made the equivalent of 3468 planks.
EDIT: I should also point out that the multifarm made 97 blocks of sand and presumably used 97 blocks of dirt in the process.
For me this is disadvantage, because all those energy loops feel weird to me. I have one SC tree farm and I run it on coal coke, voiding overflow of logs. Even my forestry farms and fermenters/stills are run on normal fuel and peat, resulting biofuel is burned for EU/other MJ needs in boiler.
Not just fuel. The multifarm also requires a constant input of dirt and fertilizer. It's really annoying to have to run a quarry right when I first play for the day and again before I finish for the day, just because I need make sure it doesn't run out of dirt overnight. No more!
I'm going to switch my multifarm to other production and use my SC farm for my boilers. I already had to change the shape of the multifarm. It was an E shape, but that's just too much wood, so now it's an F shape.
Morality aside, it's an advantage.
But why are we running farms if not for energy loops? Forestry/SC's version of solar is tree growing. There's nothing bad with energy positive processes in minecraft; they're internally consistent. Minecraft's universe does not conserve energy.[DOUBLEPOST=1365183869][/DOUBLEPOST]
We talked briefly with some other farm mod authors in another thread. AFAICT no one has any idea what SirSengir is thinking. Forestry Multiblock farms are either incomplete and future changes will make them better, or they are not worth the time in a mixed-mod game and SirSengir's notion of balance is totally out of whack with what we expect. It really stands out in contrast to the Bee system, which is actually quite good and has excellent progression and yields a lot of positive results.
I wish we could get him to comment; I know he shows up here. Because as it stands; with Thaumcraft, Xeno's Reliquary and a tiny smidgen of Buildcraft I can outproduce a forestry walnut farm on seed oil trivially (forestry hybrid trees being the gold standard of where Forestry farms work better). Melons are huge producers and they're easy to farm in FTB in a variety of ways.
You can run biogas engines on seed oil produced from trees, but not when you produce it from melons (i.e. it isn't beneficial in any way). Also melons are trivial to farm even without any mods. One of the biggest advantage of multifarms is that you can fully customize your trees via breeding, for example sapling tree needs a lot of saplings, should have many leaves, grow fast and be short (to reduce cost of cutting it down), I also add apples to the mix, wood tree also needs to grow fast, but should also be tall and have large base and fruit tree needs many leaves. This alone makes it more interesting then other ways of farming trees.
"Interesting?" Something has to give me a reason to care about tree traits before I'll start to care. I have 0 reason to breed trees right now except to play pokémon with completion.
The real benefit of the MFR setup is the fertilizer. It's like having a turtle farm (instant growth through bonemeal) but with the trade-off of less coding for some power use and more infrastructure design.
Personally, I've moved away from biofuel so I just MFR to make string for my bee frames, but another player on my server uses MFR for his biofuel and I think he was able to supply 2 fermenters off a single Planter/Harvester/Fertilizer setup.
Yeah, fertilizer makes things really fast, but it requires... well, fertilizer. That means a mob grinder and that's probably a soulshard nonsence...
OK, I get it. But it also seems that 36HP SF-boiler is OK with planks from 6 Planter/Harvester setups while running at full heat. But to heat it up you need something else...
OK, I get it. But it also seems that 36HP SF-boiler is OK with planks from 6 Planter/Harvester setups while running at full heat. But to heat it up you need something else...
Technically, you only need to hunt for apitite once per week. They spawn in large vein which is also visible at the surface. Even if you do not silk touch them, you will have plenty of them.
Dirt is a tricky part of the automation. Bog earth is the key to the equation if you want to go for full "forestry" style. 8 bog earth out of 4 dirt and 4 sand plus 1 mulch, which is equivalent to 8 dirt and 8 peat. Sand is supplied from the tree farm and mulch from a squeezer. The plus side of a peat farm is you also get some great solid fuel to fuel your yet another boiler. If you do not want a peat farm, rubber farm is an alternative as it produces resin which can be centrifuged into plantball, in turn yields dirt
SC tree farm to me is more of a set and forget farm. Personally not a big fan of any low-maintainence high output farm. But that is solely a preference. As other has pointed out, SC tree farm, MFR tree farm or CC tree cutter offers a vast variability for your "CUT THE TREE" operation
When I saw the Gregs "improvements" on massfab, I decided to go for a SC-farm and make a LOT of HP boilers and steam turbines when I find blazes... I know about power converters, but I don't want to use them for EU because... I just like the full-Railcraft design. That stuff definitely has style, so, steam-EU powerconverter for me is more like "Cheating" because it ruins CovertJaguar's awesome design.
Maybe I'll build a multifarm as well (I found an apatite vein, so I want to use in eventually.)
Any tips on finding extra apatites?
Maybe I'll build a multifarm as well (I found an apatite vein, so I want to use in eventually.)
Any tips on finding extra apatites?
If you're playing Ultimate you can research the thing that doubles your fertilizer output per apatite (edit: it's called "Concentrated Compound"). I made a batch of it but messed up and managed to release a lot of essentia into the aura, so I've stopped bothering, and am just quarrying for more apatite instead (I wasn't going to keep quarrying until I was low in some of my other materials, but I'm constantly using apatite so need to keep quarrying
).If you have access to any silktouch tool (enchanted pick, rockcutter gonna be so slow though), use them and put the ore into ind grinder (if you have one)/macerator/pulverizer, you will get even more apatites that way.
Jetpacking around on the surface until you find some vein visible.
And if you have access to saltpeter (either from centrifuging cracked sand, or from desert or even bee), you can craft fertilizer with saltpeter, some dirt and sand
If you have some ash (from ind. blast furnace/peat engine), use them yield you double the amount of fertilizer
quarry will probably the easiest option to all these though