favorite buildcraft starting power source?

[zaekeon]

I know there are a lot of power threads, but I was interested in focusing on MJ energy. I'm looking for any advice or tips on what a starting power source that is relatively maintenance free would be?

If you have any details that would help, as I've seen a lot of suggestions like "use biofuel" etc, but the part I'm missing is that to produce biofuel/mass for instance you need fertilizer, which means you need apetite. Is there a way to automate apetite?

So far I feel like everything requires me running to it to throw some coal/charcoal in all the time...

 

[Dravarden]

Hobbyst steam engines, a stack of charcoal coming from an steve carts farm or a simple tree farm, a aqueous accumulator and you got power forever (or until you get to magmatic engines)

 

[RavynousHunter]

For biomass, I don't believe you actually need apatite, and its creation can be completely automated. Unfortunately, most of the time, a set-it-and-forget-it setup requires at least some existing infrastructure, in both power (+ distribution) and machinery, which usually means, in the beginning, some manual maintenance.

However, if you do want biomass, you do have options that are at least renewable, and later on, capable of full automation. What you need is thus, from my research:

* - All water requirements can be met by Thermal Expansion aqueous accumulators with two water source blocks next to it.

1) Moistener (from Forestry). Must be kept in a dark area, and requires water, wheat seeds, and wheat. This machine will create mulch for you out of said wheat, which you can use later in the fermenter.

2) If you've the items available, a Steve's Carts-based tree farm, even a relatively small one, will provide an excellent source of saplings, for use in your fermenter. If not, you can direct some of the wheat from your wheat farm to your fermenter.

3) Pipe all your saplings (or wheat) and mulch to your fermenter. Underneath your fermenter, place an aqueous accumulator setup for endless water. Provide some seed energy to your fermenter to get things started, and switch to biomass once you've got a supply of it built up.

From there, you can, later in the game, turn the biomass into biofuel, pipe it into a Railcraft boiler, and use the resulting steam to power Railcraft steam engines (hobbyist, commercial, and/or industrial steam engines). It'll require some manual maintenance at the start, however once you get your power network setup going, you can fully automate it by way of Forestry wheat farms and (can't recommend enough) a Steve's Carts tree farm.

For more info on biomass and its creation, the Forestry wiki is your best friend.

 

[KowKrisis]

I like starting with hobbiest steam engines, they are more efficient with coal than stirling engines.

Also you can not automate apetite, but you can make fertilizer from the igneous extruder and some pulverizers and auto crafting tables. The extruder makes cobble which is pulverized to sand, then use autocrafting table to make sandstone that is pulverized again. The second pulverize makes 2 sand and a 10% chance of nitor. Nitor goes back into the pulverizer for 2 saltpeter. 1 saltpeter plus 1 sand gives 2 fertilizer, which can be used for humus for a forestry tree farm and put into your fermenter for biomass which can be refined to biofuel using the still.

 

[Zjarek_S]

Well, my latest start with BC power (and whole building) was like this:
1. Make some cans and collect oil (the more, the better, but a stack will last for quite long time)
2. Craft aqueous accumulator, combustion engine, refinery (3rd-6th diamond after enchanting table), stirling engine and some infrastructure (tanks, conductive pipes, waterproof pipes)
3. Jumpstart refinery using Stirling engine and pump fuel to combustion engine for a while. After combustion engine started pumping you can safely dismantle Stirling engine and never touch it again.
4. Lasers, assembly table, gates, energy cell, energy conduits to make combustion engines running on demand.

Even small oil well will give you a lot of power and using oil from the beginning you are really saving a lot on coal/charcoal, specially if you don't have a treefarm yet.

 

[Lathanael]

I like starting with hobbiest steam engines, they are more efficient with coal than stirling engines.

Also you can not automate apetite, but you can make fertilizer from the igneous extruder and some pulverizers and auto crafting tables. The extruder makes cobble which is pulverized to sand, then use autocrafting table to make sandstone that is pulverized again. The second pulverize makes 2 sand and a 10% chance of nitor. Nitor goes back into the pulverizer for 2 saltpeter. 1 saltpeter plus 1 sand gives 2 fertilizer, which can be used for humus for a forestry tree farm and put into your fermenter for biomass which can be refined to biofuel using the still.

The niter ->Salpeter recipe has been removed in TE 2.2.0. So now we have to use mulch if we want a hands-free setup.

 

[Unium]

Responce to Ravynous

Spoiler

For biomass, I don't believe you actually need apatite, and its creation can be completely automated. Unfortunately, most of the time, a set-it-and-forget-it setup requires at least some existing infrastructure, in both power (+ distribution) and machinery, which usually means, in the beginning, some manual maintenance.

However, if you do want biomass, you do have options that are at least renewable, and later on, capable of full automation. What you need is thus, from my research:

* - All water requirements can be met by Thermal Expansion aqueous accumulators with two water source blocks next to it.

1) Moistener (from Forestry). Must be kept in a dark area, and requires water, wheat seeds, and wheat. This machine will create mulch for you out of said wheat, which you can use later in the fermenter.

2) If you've the items available, a Steve's Carts-based tree farm, even a relatively small one, will provide an excellent source of saplings, for use in your fermenter. If not, you can direct some of the wheat from your wheat farm to your fermenter.

3) Pipe all your saplings (or wheat) and mulch to your fermenter. Underneath your fermenter, place an aqueous accumulator setup for endless water. Provide some seed energy to your fermenter to get things started, and switch to biomass once you've got a supply of it built up.

From there, you can, later in the game, turn the biomass into biofuel, pipe it into a Railcraft boiler, and use the resulting steam to power Railcraft steam engines (hobbyist, commercial, and/or industrial steam engines). It'll require some manual maintenance at the start, however once you get your power network setup going, you can fully automate it by way of Forestry wheat farms and (can't recommend enough) a Steve's Carts tree farm.

For more info on biomass and its creation, the Forestry wiki is your best friend.

All that work with mulch and seeds just to power the fermenters. I would say: people are forgeting RP2 windmills, you can set 4, some iron investment, and you'll power 2 fermenters and 1 Engine and keep the seed oil to your bee stuff and the biomass you can even seperate.... half for biofuel and the other half for early MJ needs. For the mulch part you can allways use fertilizer from apatite.... if we don't use it in fuel.... it will stack up forever.

My personal favorite source of power is biofuel for MJ, and lava for EU.

cumpz

 

[Vovk]

play vanilla a bit until you find a few diamonds - you can use hobbyist steam engines to power ore doubling for you while you collect basic materials.

when I started my latest world, I used hobbyist steam engines to get ore doubling quickly, and then transitioned into red power windmills. It was actually a lot easier than I anticipated. The string cost is expensive and you need a damned compressor for them, but the materials are easy enough to get with almost 0 tech (you will however need to find 11 diamonds, 2 for the saw and 9 to make the block to cut into panels to make a drawplate, you can combine the extra panels back into diamonds if you wish). If you have a few stacks of nikolite, every solar panel you can add to the system adds 0.2 MJ per tick during the day.

After the first windmill started producing power, I found it much easier to progress through the tech tree. If you are using RP2 renewable mj then remember that bluelectric furnaces are 2x as efficient as TE powered furnaces.

another option is to craft peat out of dirt and sand early on and use it for fuel in either peat fired engines or in a hobbyist steam engine. Magmatic engines are also a fairly good start if you have a nether portal and some spare tin for lava cans (3 tin in an ^ shape for 12 cans). put the cans through a liquid transposer for extra win.


for bonus amazing extra win, a refinery costs only 4 diamonds, and if you build your base near oil, you will have enough power through combustion to last until you can get some ender chests for long range fuel pumping. This option is the classiest option imo, followed closely by red power and then by steam and biogas.


EDIT: with the new petrogen update, you can create oil out of traincraft oil sands and crude oil, so fuel is suprisingly abundant if technically not 100% sustainable.

 

[zooqooo]

Stirling engines are faster than HSE but use more coal bad
HSE are very efficient but require water
Magmatic are fast and efficient, but require lava
Biofuel are fast and renewable, but require a fare amount of infrastructure and they're a pain for automation
combustion engines are expensive, explosive, and require huge amounts of infrastructure, but they produce huge amounts of power
Tier 2 and 3 steam engines are the best, but good luck getting the iron

 

[Vovk]

errm zooqoo - stirling engines output 1 MJ/t while HSE outputs 1.6 on its internal and 2 on external steam.

4 combustion engines can be cooled from 1 aqueous accumulator with 2 source blocks next to it.

 

[zooqooo]

Oh, how silly of me. I read somewhere that they buffed it up to 2 MJ/T, but apparently not

 

[Dark0_0firE]

Oh, how silly of me. I read somewhere that they buffed it up to 2 MJ/T, but apparently not

You're probably thinking of TE Steam Engines.. my personal starting choice. I haven't done any math on efficiency but the only reason I've seen to use Hobbyist is that they could be upgraded slightly later on to produce more power for an alternate fuel (piped in steam). But typically 1 ore mabe 2 TE steam engines last me until I get other fuel sources started up (typically magmatic).

spare tin for lava cans (3 tin in an ^ shape for 12 cans)

A decent use for all the freakin aluminum that xycraft dumps into worldgen.. make aluminum cans.

 

[Celestialphoenix]

HSE- fuel efficient, cheap to build. Good early start. 2-4 will run a fair few machines.
Magmatic engines use a fair bit of lava, but very good mid tier power. (normally I make 1 or 2 to boost the HSEs when I have more to run)

Biogas engines, once you have a biomass source and fermenter setup, you get a lot of power from sugarcane/cacti/saplings ect.
(3-5, with an energy line to the same fermenter, and liquiducts pulling the biomass. Relays+tubes can ram a massive stock of plant material/fertiliser into the fermenter)

The Stirling engine is almost useless, but it's cheap, and runs off a single lava bucket for a decent length of time.
(long enough for a logger to strip and area- very easy semi-auto tree farm)

 

[KowKrisis]

The niter ->Salpeter recipe has been removed in TE 2.2.0. So now we have to use mulch if we want a hands-free setup.

Ah. I did not know, but that is some good info for future setups

 

[RavynousHunter]

Responce to Ravynous

All that work with mulch and seeds just to power the fermenters. I would say: people are forgeting RP2 windmills, you can set 4, some iron investment, and you'll power 2 fermenters and 1 Engine and keep the seed oil to your bee stuff and the biomass you can even seperate.... half for biofuel and the other half for early MJ needs. For the mulch part you can allways use fertilizer from apatite.... if we don't use it in fuel.... it will stack up forever.

My personal favorite source of power is biofuel for MJ, and lava for EU.

cumpz

Aye, the RP2 windmills + blulectric engines are an awesome setup for power, but they do require a fair bit, in terms of resources. I was just providing the simplest method I could find to create a completely renewable fuel source.

 

[Vovk]

Aye, the RP2 windmills + blulectric engines are an awesome setup for power, but they do require a fair bit, in terms of resources. I was just providing the simplest method I could find to create a completely renewable fuel source.

that's the rub yeah, all renewables require infrastructure to get going (especially if you use the mindcrack pack). The simplest you could get off the bat is charcoal followed shortly by peat. Any hands-off renewable approach will cost diamonds in some way or another.

 

[RavynousHunter]

that's the rub yeah, all renewables require infrastructure to get going (especially if you use the mindcrack pack). The simplest you could get off the bat is charcoal followed shortly by peat. Any hands-off renewable approach will cost diamonds in some way or another.

Hmm...I dunno, I have a plan formulating in my head involving a system to automate the creation of RP2 wind turbines in their own, dedicated Age. A 4x4 bank of kinetic generators feeding power to a series of battery boxes which act as a high-speed blulectric battery charging station. Free, large store of RP2 power + blulectric engine = free MJ to run all your BC, Forestry, and TE needs!

 

[Vovk]

hehe... I said simplest starting off the bat. of course you could make an 8 headed bluelectric monstrosity once you had a quarry up and a flax farm and scarcity is moot

 

[Blake 852]

If you want a build and forget, simple clean and well non blowing up when over heating system, electrical engines Plus solar panels with a mfsu or mfe to store power as a battery for when you use your machines during the night. basicly using BC and IC together. Electrical engines are from the forestry mod, Hybird solar panels ( or normally). it allows you to create basicly Free Mj's with a bonus of some spare EU.

 

[RavynousHunter]

hehe... I said simplest starting off the bat. of course you could make an 8 headed bluelectric monstrosity once you had a quarry up and a flax farm and scarcity is moot

Alas, auto-farming flax seems to be difficult, if not impossible.