Forestry is making my brain hurt

[haisho]

So I'm trying to make a completely automated Peat/Tree farm using only Buildcraft, TE and Factorization with the DW20 pack, but from testing, it isn't working out too well.

Biggest problem I had was dividing the dirt evenly. A little math shows that you literally need to split the dirt from peat production in half, with one half being sent to make humus and inevitably converted to sand, and the other reserved for the production of bog earth.

To this end, I tried using Routers to dump items into barrels as they split across accessible inventories evenly. While that is probably amazing for dividing items into even portions, it isn't as great when those portions aren't consumed evenly.
The problem starts as soon as a barrel inevitably empties, allowing any other item from the farms to shoot into the now empty barrel. The end result was random wood or saplings entering barrels that supplied materials to make humus and bog earth, completely screwing the entire process over.

That's pretty much the only glaring problem I have with the build so far, apart from extremely claustrophobic conditions that compacting the build does and the random production of Mulch.

So now I ask the forums: Do I continue trying to make it work with those 3 mods, or do I just give up and use RP2 Sorting Machines? I'm having a fair bit of trouble coming across tin so far, so I'm a bit hesitant to actually make one in my game.

 

[Hydra]

You could use buildcraft pipes to split the stream into two (at an T-junction the items will be divided between the two ways). You could have buildcraft diamond pipes insert them into chests (or barrels) and have a default route lead to a void pipe in case the chest is full.

 

[haisho]

A T-junction won't work as it distributes randomly. The build practically needs the dirt to be completely split across evenly. Roughly dividing isn't going to work. The sorting machine would allow me to split the dirt evenly.

From what I've worked out so far, it should be theoretically possible to have a completely closed system with absolutely no loss or gain of dirt. The only things I that need to supplied are fertilizer and mulch.

 

[Hydra]

Although it's random statistically 50% will end up going into one direction and the other in the other. I've done something like this and I ended up with 3000 cobble in one container and 3000 smoothstone in another

 

[haisho]

Regardless, it just does not work for this build. Any deviation could disrupt the dirt/sand balance needed to craft the bog earth back, which is why I was asking if there was a way to guarantee precision outside of using a sorting machine.

The way things are going, it looks like I'm going to have to spend resources on making it with RP2.

 

[Abdiel]

Iron pipe with a gate on it, with some logic that would switch the pipe every time an item comes through.

 

[Evil Hamster]

Although it's random statistically 50% will end up going into one direction and the other in the other. I've done something like this and I ended up with 3000 cobble in one container and 3000 smoothstone in another

I had a similar system and it would gum up, I'd go check on it and the peat side was overloaded with dirt. I'd manually balance it and come back in a few hours and the tree side would be overloaded. Rinse and repeat. While bc pipes might be "statistically" 50/50 in practice over a short slice of time, it can be severely unbalanced to one side or the other. Enough to halt production.I haven't actually built a lot of forestry yet in my current world (on my to do list!) but I can't wait ti see if rp improves the automation.

 

[haisho]

Got around to fiddling with RP2. The sorting machines made the system run flawlessly, but I had to build a wheat farm to supplement mulch production. As it turns out, Apples are a very unreliable source of mulch!

Shame the final build is going to eat a lot of my existing resources...

 

[Supremeone]

what about dumping it all in one chest and than pumping them out with 2 filters taking out 1 dirt at a time , connected to the same timer ?
filters aren't that expensive as i can remember
*edit
oke if the chest would get empty at one point than it could give a problem if one pulls faster than the other

but you could do Timer > toggle latch > Filter
> Filter

that way it would switch from one filter to the other every time

 

[Evil Hamster]

Then you have the problem the peat farm is way faster than the tree farm. You will end up needing a 2nd tree farm to keep up so you don't overload dirt/run out of sand.

 

[haisho]

Filter solution sounds nice on paper, but it probably wouldn't work. It still runs if the chest is empty, which can upset the balance of dirt output.

But I think I have a solution to that. Only problem is that I'll need to create one of those Buildcraft assemblers to complete it.

 

[graydaze]

Do you use carpenters or automatic crafting tables?

 

[haisho]

Carpenter to create Bog Earth.
Any consideration I had to make one for Humus flew out the window when it I took 3 factors into account:

- Surplus of one dirt. If I had any old distribution pipe, it'd be really easy to handle, but with what's available in the DW20 pack, it'd be too much of a headache. Yes, I could use that one piece of dirt to produce manure, but it's honestly too much of a hassle to set up yet another system, and I need the mulch more than I need manure.

- Fertilizer, or rather, Apatite, is a very abundant resource, even moreso with Mystcraft. Ties in with the first point, as again, setting up a system to produce manure is kind of silly.

- Producing Bog Earth with Mulch is far easier to automate than a system to constantly supply water-filled wax capsules. Like slowpoke, I absolutely loathe bees because it took me a week to get a common. Thus, they have earned my undying hatred. Also, wheat and seeds are handy for more than producing Bog Earth.

But I think I have the entire thing finalized. I considered the Filter route, but that would eat into my extremely-small diamond supply.

 

[graydaze]

- Producing Bog Earth with Mulch is far easier to automate than a system to constantly supply water-filled wax capsules. Like slowpoke, I absolutely loathe bees because it took me a week to get a common. Thus, they have earned my undying hatred. Also, wheat and seeds are handy for more than producing Bog Earth.

But I think I have the entire thing finalized. I considered the Filter route, but that would eat into my extremely-small diamond supply.

Actually my method is quite simple if you wish to use recipes in an auto table that can use water buckets (i.e. coolant cells, bog earth). All you need is a regulator, deployer, and an infinite water source. Since the auto table can use items in the deployer's inventory you can just place them next to each other. Use the regulator to detect an empty bucket inside the deployer. As the table uses the water bucket inside the deployer, it leaves behind an empty bucket, which triggers the regulator to send out a redstone signal that triggers the deployer to grab water from the infinite spring with the empty bucket and the cycle can repeat again. Very simple, cheap, no timers needed, only needs one bucket in the deployer, and is quite compact.

 

[Hydra]

The added benefit is that the autocrafting table can pull from multiple adjacent inventories so you can have seperate chests for sand and dirt (in the case of bog earth).

 

[haisho]

The bucket recipe for Bog Earth will only output 6 Bog Earth. Loss of 2 dirt per cycle. Not ideal for an automated system since it'll inevitably run dry. In other words, already tried that.

 

[SixStringedBass]

Don't BC diamond pipes split output to the ratio given in the GUI? Say you tell it to output dirt in two separate colors with 1 dirt each, won't that split it 50/50?

 

[haisho]

Haven't tried it, but it would probably act as normal pipes do since there'll be two dirt outputs. Again, the system needs perfect splitting of dirt output from the peat farm to make the whole thing work.

Might as well put up a flowchart to show how it works.

Of course, said flowchart is useless without numbers. Assume we use 64 Dirt and and 64 Sand to create 128 Bog Earth.

Peat Bog converts all resources into 128 Dirt.
Dirt buffer is handled by RP2 Sorter (or dual-Filter system) Half of the dirt is sent into Carpenter and reserved for Bog Earth production, the other half is crafted into Humus and sent to Tree Farm.
Humus is converted to Sand and subsequently sent to Carpenter.
Carpenter reproduces 128 Bog Earth and restarts production cycle.

Of course, the only issues left are:
- Mulch production. Not the actual production of mulch, but controlling the wheat output to not overload the carpenter. Regulator will probably work here.
- Fertilizer. Not actually a large issue, since Apatite is plenty despite being a limited resource.
- Large amount of space to automate the process. Trying to compact the design in a test build ended up having a lot of pipes blocking movement.

 

[Larroke]

I solved this in a previous world by having a wood or max size enderchest as a buffer. Have a crafting system always try to keep these chests full of Bog Earth and Humus, and in essence sand / dirt.

I did use a extruder / pulverizer as well as my quarry inputs to top off my sand/cobble/dirt buffers but the system didn't need this at all.

Ran 2 peat farms feeding into a boiler and a single tree farm with -0- interaction from me. And even if something seriously broke my buffer chests of peat, bog earth and Humus would keep the system going for days. (it never did / would reasonably break though).[DOUBLEPOST=1357918846][/DOUBLEPOST]

The bucket recipe for Bog Earth will only output 6 Bog Earth. Loss of 2 dirt per cycle. Not ideal for an automated system since it'll inevitably run dry. In other words, already tried that.

only requires 4 dirt though... So it nets 2 dirt at the cost of sand. Supplement the sand with an extruder / pulverizer running off even a single peat engine will net you more then enough sand.

 

[haisho]

Except the sand comes from the dirt used in making the Humus within a closed system, so it's still a loss of 2 dirt as I'll just be recycling the dirt that was turned into sand...this sentence is probably confusing, so utilizing flowchart explanation.

64 dirt reserved in crafting table, 64 dirt converted to humus, sent to tree farm, converted to sand and sent to same crafting table assembly.
Crafting of Bog Earth using bucket recipe subsequently only produces 96 Bog Earth, resulting in dirt deficit.
Subsequent cycles lose even more dirt, eventually running the system dry.

Key point is that I'm trying to design a system that I can mostly just set and forget to receive ridiculous amounts of wood. It's certainly possible (see flowchart post) but it's proven to be a huge pain in the rear to actually put into practical use so far.