Forestry "machine" balance

[Evil Hamster]

Started a new world to incorporate thaumcraft into all my other favorite mods- so I'm running a custom 1.4.5 version of ftb.

This time I decided to try the forestry method to get my base up and running.

I built a tree farm, peat farm, and wheat farm. They are running mostly automatic. The tree farm feeds sand to a carpenter to make bog earth. The peat farm supplies dirt to that same carpenter and another one set up for humus. The wheat farm provides the mulch via a moistener.

What I'm finding- there is not enough sand created to keep the system running, while hummus is being WAY over-produced. Same with mulch. I actually disconnected the wheat farm for now. I did set up a fermenter and am using some of the mulch there with my extra saplings making biogas. I'll process that later into biofuel or use it how it is-

I'm sure I need to build another tree farm at a minimum. (maybe rubber for use in IC2)

My question for the experts- what is a good setup (# & type of farms) that I can leave running without having to run around and babysit so carefully?

I ended up moving my manufacturing center under the farms just so I am in the area and don't have to drop what I'm doing to check on the system.

 

[kenlong]

for one of your problems (not enough sand) a TE igneous extruder feeding a pulverizer will net you infinite sand in exchange for MJ

 

[thatsIch]

as Kenlong said
generating sand is easy due to infinite cobblestone > sand > bogearth > peat

 

[Crouchingmoose]

heres what I do.

I have moistners converting some wheat (setup to be feed automatically when they empty) into mulch and mycelum
I take that mulch and use it in a carpenter with 8 dirt to make 9 humus
the 9 Humus becomes 9 sand
Then I use 4 sand, 1 mulch and 4 dirt in a carpenter to get 8 bog earth
Final result is 4 sand becomes dirt and gets recycled with and extra 1 sand left over that gets discarded to a void pipe.

The Wheat and Wheat seeds for the moistener easily come from a wheat farm with no real problems.

 

[Antice]

The farms aren't perfectly balanced. some farms just produce waay faster than the other farms are capable of consuming the resources you make for them. the treefarm is usually the bottleneck in these systems, that is because trees don't generally grow all that fast. unless you want/need hundreds of stacks of wood7charcoal, then i suggest having teh treefarm separate from your energy system.

I have found a seed oil setup to be less complex to set up and keep balanced than a peat bog based setup like the one you are attempting
. the reason is that seedoil can be made directly from the wheat farm without any external inputs once set up. you get waay more seeds than you need from the farm anyway. (one harvester can harvest multiple levels of farmland, so use several stacked farms and a single harvester on the lowest level)
Use the seedoil to run a cactus/reed farm to make fermentable items to turn into biofuel. seedoil is a decent fuel for all your MJ needs within the base, but biofuel is more energy dense, and can be used for both MJ's and EU's in a remote location.

Oh, and don't use the catus/reedfarm machines to set up these farms. set them up manually with an efficient pattern that maximizes production, and only use the harvester standalone for harvesting.¨

This setup is liable to have big overflow in all steps of the system. you can fix that by having the farms shut down when overflowing with stuff by using gates and whatnot if you want. or just use insertion pipes/diamond pipes with overflow going into a void pipe or lava pit.

 

[Peppe]

I think what you are after is what is the ideal ratio --- if there is one. I would say there is not, but you can buffer things with chests and use gates to use/void things when needed.

One peat bog creates double the dirt it needs.

So one carpenter using half the return dirt will maintain the bog at the right rate. Bog earth won't overfill/shoot out.

The other half you send to a carpenter to make humus. This is the main issue as the sand rate from the tree farm is slow. It is also not in the right ratio. You use 8 dirt to get 9 hummus and get 9 sand back (eventually). Left alone the hummus will eventually overflow, and heaven help you if you add sand to the bog farm -- bog will run great tree farm will pour hummus everywhere.

I don't think you can balance the hummus sent back. To treat the overflow its easiest with an assembly table and 1-2 first tier gates. Expensive early in a world, but worth it to fully automate these farms. You can buffer the input to the arboretum with chest and use the pipe gates to control when to turn on an engine -- a redstone engine is plenty to top off the supply. The gate can trigger the engine and add hummus when the farm is under 25% or 10%. Later on you can replace the gates with the the fancy ender pearl ones (Autarchic) that have the engine built in. On a free side of the buffer chest you can check when the chest is full (it checks if all slots have at least 1 item) and turn on another engine to move items to the void/recycler. No more hummus spilling out.

I haven't built the fertilizer thing yet, but the tree farm probably needs the forester (fertilizer addon) to get the sand production fast enough to supply the bog. I don't know if it will be fast enough to keep up with the peat bog. For now I have just been topping it off with sand and dealing with the hummus overload manually.

The mulch cycle off a wheat farm produces a ton of mulch. Squeezer might be an alternative for mulch, but it does not look like you can easily send the juice out of the machine -> void. Moistener should probably be gated like the arboretum so seeds and wheat aren't flying everywhere. Or use a diamond gate to reduce the flow of items to the moistener.

Looks like the best you can do on the carpenters with the gates is to check when it has work and trigger an engine then to send some replacement mulch. That way the machine never fills up with mulch as it uses it much slower than you can produce it.

Send the excess mulch on to a fermenter, which you will need to consume some saplings anyway. Might need multiple fermenters to help dispose of extra wheat and seeds as well.

Assembly table is expensive, but those gates are very useful for automation and eventually Autarchic gates are super convenient to use and more responsive than redstone engines + normal gate.

 

[Omicron]

Which version of Forestry are you using?

SirSengir implemented expanded configuration options a short while ago. Not all parts are functional yet, but you can already adjust a lot of the recipes revolving around the tree farm, wheat farm and peat bog. Also the Fermenter has a big list of fine-tuning options for what ingredients give how much biomass at which cost. I originally requested the feature to make things harder for myself, but technically everything can be adjusted in both directions if you need it to strike your perfect balance.