Forestry's Bio Generators are terrible.

[Froghandler]

You're having the same issue than using steam boilers to get EU. Steam is not efficient with EU and turbines take tons of steel, normal Ic2 generators are better for that task. This is exactly the same.

As discussed by Omicron and me, Steam is viable and well-balanced; netherrack->lava is a bit OP. I myself will be using Steam in my builds because of the extra complexity fun and decent conversion ratio

Not sure what the point of the OP is. You've found a conversion which doesn't work to your liking compared to another conversion. And?

My point is that it is a bad idea to use (an "is") as opposed to a call for balance correction (an "ought.") The difference is so great that Bio Generators just aren't viable. At the same time, I wanted to open a discussion on why and how things are unbalanced between the different interacting mods. This proved very fruitful; Omicron's post is filled with great info and insight.

 

[jim johnstone]

If I was to add my tuppence, I'd say that the forestry engines are underpowered, but are nonetheless perfect for producing small, self sufficient forestry complexes with little to no maintenence. This was what they were designed for in the first place and, as a result, comparing them to high-end energy manufacture is pretty pointless. Yes, there are better ways to make large amounts of EU/MJ, yes there are better conversion ratios, but the forestry engines and fuels make use of otherwise useless by-products from the mod itself. Unless, of course, you actually want to plant thousands of saplings?

 

[Omicron]

Forestry engines, underpowered? Compared to what? They are very, very competitive with other Buildcraft engines. Peat-fired engines burn a free, unlimited fuel for 5000 MJ/unit compared to coal being worth 1600 MJ in Buildcraft's stirling engine, at the same 1 MJ/t. And biogas engines are essentially combustion engines that require no cooling and never explode and burn free, unlimited fuels at almost the same (and it was the same before a recent, much needed combustion engine buff) output rate for which combustion engines need rare, non-renewable input. If anything, they are a tad on the "too good" side.

 

[Bagman817]

Since you've thrown Thermal Expansion into the mix, I would suggest that Magmatic Engines are the way to go, as they can easily be fueled by the Magma Crucible and Liquid Transposers they're powering. This basically makes the discussion about Bio engines moot, in my opinion.

 

[makeshiftwings]

I don't think the problem is that Bio Generators are underpowered; the problem is that Thermal Expansion introduces a cheap new source of infinite lava and that's throwing the balance of all the other mods out of whack because they were built under the assumption that lava is a limited resource that requires pumps, pipes, and and other infrastructure. Almost all the new engine and infinite resource generator ideas I've seen rely on the infinite lava, often with Netherrack conversion, so I'd say that's the culprit. I don't necessarily think it's a bad machine, but it is going to mess with the other mods in unforeseen ways.

 

[noah_wolfe]

I don't think the problem is that Bio Generators are underpowered; the problem is that Thermal Expansion introduces a cheap new source of infinite lava and that's throwing the balance of all the other mods out of whack because they were built under the assumption that lava is a limited resource that requires pumps, pipes, and and other infrastructure. Almost all the new engine and infinite resource generator ideas I've seen rely on the infinite lava, often with Netherrack conversion, so I'd say that's the culprit. I don't necessarily think it's a bad machine, but it is going to mess with the other mods in unforeseen ways.

Infinite lava with netherrack conversion. Infinite lava with a pump, from the same dimension. Choose your poison, but nerfing the crucible's NR recipe without considering the other alternative (which uses almost zero MJ) is a bit odd.

 

[Codex]

Infinite lava with netherrack conversion. Infinite lava with a pump, from the same dimension. Choose your poison, but nerfing the crucible's NR recipe without considering the other alternative (which uses almost zero MJ) is a bit odd.

The other one requires setting up. You would actually have to build a good system to use! The magma crucible does all of that without the work.

 

[makeshiftwings]

Infinite lava with netherrack conversion. Infinite lava with a pump, from the same dimension. Choose your poison, but nerfing the crucible's NR recipe without considering the other alternative (which uses almost zero MJ) is a bit odd.

Like I said: "limited resource that requires pumps, pipes, and other infrastructure". It's the need to set up all the pumping and transport that made it less attractive. The same with the infinite cobble generator, water, and snow; you could already do it before TE, but it was more complicated and took up a lot more room. That's the whole reason people like the new infinite TE machines so much. If it was exactly the same you wouldn't have everyone posting about all the infinite lava engines that use the crucible in every post. I'm not suggesting they nerf it; I personally think they're fine and I like using them. But the crucible is the main reason we're seeing all these new uber lava engines. Well, that, and the fact that GT has nerfed most of the EU builds that didn't use lava. Lava is... ahem... the new hotness. (sorry)[DOUBLEPOST=1355352193][/DOUBLEPOST]Also, I think the glacial precipitator is going to create an influx of new CUSAC nuclear reactors... that seems to be the main point of the infinite ice. Again, you could do a nuke with infinite ice before, but it required a lot of infrastructure and clever thinking like using trapped snowmen and compressors; now there's just a simple machine you plop next to your nuke and you're done.

 

[Antice]

Like I said: "limited resource that requires pumps, pipes, and other infrastructure". It's the need to set up all the pumping and transport that made it less attractive. The same with the infinite cobble generator, water, and snow; you could already do it before TE, but it was more complicated and took up a lot more room. That's the whole reason people like the new infinite TE machines so much. If it was exactly the same you wouldn't have everyone posting about all the infinite lava engines that use the crucible in every post. I'm not suggesting they nerf it; I personally think they're fine and I like using them. But the crucible is the main reason we're seeing all these new uber lava engines. Well, that, and the fact that GT has nerfed most of the EU builds that didn't use lava. Lava is... ahem... the new hotness. (sorry)[DOUBLEPOST=1355352193][/DOUBLEPOST]Also, I think the glacial precipitator is going to create an influx of new CUSAC nuclear reactors... that seems to be the main point of the infinite ice. Again, you could do a nuke with infinite ice before, but it required a lot of infrastructure and clever thinking like using trapped snowmen and compressors; now there's just a simple machine you plop next to your nuke and you're done.

the IC dev has removed the use of ice for cooling reactors in the last nuclear revamp.
It was too easy to exploit for insane EU generation with the help of EE condensers.You can make coolant cells tho. but that costs tin. lots and lots of tin.
Gregtech adds thorium and plutonium to the mix. moar EU/t in the same volume, but cooling it becomes increasingly harder.

 

[ctate]

(Coming in late to this discussion)

The problem isn't with Forestry's power sources in general. The problem is that the Bio Generator specifically is pathologically underpowered.

I posted about this recently on the Forestry forum, but here's the gist. Supposedly there's a nominal 2.5:1 EU:MJ equivalence that lies at the background of mods that interoperate between the different power regimes. The most direct expression of that is the Forestry Electrical Engine that converts EU to MJ at that rate (when you pay the extra for the efficiency mod), and you can see that ratio in some of the other mods' power balancing.

However, the Bio Generator specifically mucks this up. If you burn biomass in a Forestry Biogas Generator, you get 50k MJ per bucket. That's pretty sweet, certainly competitive with Buildcraft power sources etc. Nominally, this should be roughly equivalent to producing 125k EU from that bucket of biomass...

...except that a Forestry Bio Generator, running off that same bucket of biofuel, produces a paltry 8k EU. These are two power sources from the same mod; this isn't just a matter of cross-mod integration. The problem just becomes more obvious when you consider other mods (e.g. you can use a TE Magma Crucible -> IC2 Geothermal Generator to get 1:1 MJ -> EU conversion, which is horrible but still beats the pants off of the Forestry Bio Generator's effective 15:1 MJ -> EU conversion).

As far as I can tell, even if MJ -> EU conversion is supposed to be hellishly inefficient for some reason, the Bio Generator should be producing at least 10x as much power per bucket as it currently does in order to fit in with the rest of the power generation world.

 

[netmc]

I don't think the bio-generator has gotten any love in a long, long time. Maybe once Sengir is done with the 1.5 conversion, bugfixes and the new multi-farms, it will again. From what I remember of my early minecraft modded days, there was buildcraft, industrialcraft, and forestry to bridge the two main power systems. (plus redpower for compact redstone logic). Nothing else existed*. So given the timeframe that the forestry mod existed in there were no other options to bring IC2 and builtcraft together except through forestry. TE wasn't even thought about. Since then, there have been a lot of mods with a lot better efficiency for running off different fuels. Maybe Sengir will add a circuit board slot to the bio-gen for upgrades to bring it in line with what the community expects from a cross-mod power system. Until then we will just use other, more efficient options and bemoan the neglected bio-generator.

*I know there were other mods, these three are just the main ones that stick in my mind and had their own power systems.

 

[ctate]

I hope so! The Bio Generator is such a fantastic device; a bridge between the MJ-driven bio-power toolchain and the IC2 EU-powered world, centered around a power storage medium (biofuel) that serves both power regimes cleanly. Or rather, it would be if the output capacity were balanced properly.