Ok, I've made power all kinds of ways, and I'm asking for ideas for lesser-used, off-the-wall, crazy, or Rube Goldberg-esque power systems. I'm sick to death of tree farms, charcoal, planks, peat, oil, lava, all the easy, normal setups. The only requirements a system has for my purposes is it must able to be made completely automated and self-contained, so it'll have to be based on something renewable. How complicated it must be to renew that resource is not a factor. I'm pretty good with golems, AE, pipes and gates, etc., your idea can be as simple as "Netherwart->Methane" (which I've tried btw, doesn't scale well), I can work out the details, I just want your ideas.
Fuel ideas
- Thread starter Moezso
- Start date
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Just came up with a few ideas I consider fairly clever.
Aqueous Accumulators + Industrial Electrolyzers + Fusion Reactor? Saw that on someone's LP once. And don't forget to have 7x7x8 RC Iron Tanks holding all your Deuterium and Tritium.
I feel like something frame-powered.
Wither Skellies with normal Generators?
I was going to suggest a frame mechanism with Windmills, a Chunk Loader, and an IDSU which changes location when the Windmills produce insufficient power, but it seems the power of Windmills doesn't change wrt time pretty much permanently.
Mystcraft age with a Chunk Loader, Dragon Egg Siphon, and IDSU. Never go into that age. Ever.
Be a boss with Bees and set up an Oil farm, and, by extension, Fuel factory. Common, yet difficult, challenge.
Tier V Nuclear Reactor. Vanilla Redstone, not RP2, to control.
Bees to produce Uranium, Nuke/Frame machine to mine out the world for resources.
Scrap.
Aqueous Accumulators + Industrial Electrolyzers + Fusion Reactor? Saw that on someone's LP once. And don't forget to have 7x7x8 RC Iron Tanks holding all your Deuterium and Tritium.
I feel like something frame-powered.
Wither Skellies with normal Generators?
I was going to suggest a frame mechanism with Windmills, a Chunk Loader, and an IDSU which changes location when the Windmills produce insufficient power, but it seems the power of Windmills doesn't change wrt time pretty much permanently.
Mystcraft age with a Chunk Loader, Dragon Egg Siphon, and IDSU. Never go into that age. Ever.
Be a boss with Bees and set up an Oil farm, and, by extension, Fuel factory. Common, yet difficult, challenge.
Tier V Nuclear Reactor. Vanilla Redstone, not RP2, to control.
Bees to produce Uranium, Nuke/Frame machine to mine out the world for resources.
Scrap.
Run a 36HP boiler without long pipe connections other than a couple blocks into loader/unloader bits, then provide fueling via railcraft locomotives.
Get your golems to maintain a fusion reactor.
Run a boiler entirely off of wooden tools or sugarcane.
A fun one someone posted a while ago...t5 zombie shard and make a zombie juicer to provide methane to burn.
Get your golems to maintain a fusion reactor.
Run a boiler entirely off of wooden tools or sugarcane.
A fun one someone posted a while ago...t5 zombie shard and make a zombie juicer to provide methane to burn.
Nice ideas, thanks.
Wooden tools sounds challenging, and a zombie juicer just sounds, awesome. Also, can golems be electrocuted? That might present a unique set of challenges. I do want to do something with a HUGE sugarcane farm, run by golems. Like so big it needs chunk loaders.Run a 36HP boiler without long pipe connections other than a couple blocks into loader/unloader bits, then provide fueling via railcraft locomotives.
Get your golems to maintain a fusion reactor.
Run a boiler entirely off of wooden tools or sugarcane.
A fun one someone posted a while ago...t5 zombie shard and make a zombie juicer to provide methane to burn.
I am currently powering my EU needs with plantballs. I have a half-built sugar cane farm using xycraft soil blocks, and harvesting with the old forestry sugar cane farm. plant balls go into a compressor -> automatic canning machine -> extractor -> diesel generator. 1 canning machine seems to handle 3 compressors just fine. You can run slightly more than one generator per exctractor/compressor combo. It looks like 3 extractors should be able to almost consistently fuel 4 diesel generators. While this does not give huge amounts of power, it gives the best ratio of any of the gregtech fuel chains. It costs about 900eu to generate, and produces 6000. the methane routes cost 25000 to generate and produce 45000. Plant balls are 6.667 efficiency while methane is 1.8. Because I am going for fuel efficiency, I can't use any overclockers in the machines.
Since I don't have enough soil blocks yet, I'm supplementing my supply with a SC wheat farm. It produces both wheat and seeds. Both of which can be converted into plant balls. (it takes 441 soil blocks for a max size sugar cane farm. I have about half that right now.) It looks like a full size sugar cane farm (21x21) should be able to power about 5 diesel generators for 40eu/tick.
5 diesel generators
4 compressors
4 extractors
1-2 automatic canning machines
As far as MJ production goes, I am currently powering my base off of melon seeds. My production is rather modest at the moment, but it is enough to be self-sufficient. Using melon seeds, I am not producing any excess seed oil to fill my tank, but am getting enough to fuel the engines and run the few MJ based machines I have. If I can work towards chestnuts or walnuts, I should be much better off.
Since I don't have enough soil blocks yet, I'm supplementing my supply with a SC wheat farm. It produces both wheat and seeds. Both of which can be converted into plant balls. (it takes 441 soil blocks for a max size sugar cane farm. I have about half that right now.) It looks like a full size sugar cane farm (21x21) should be able to power about 5 diesel generators for 40eu/tick.
5 diesel generators
4 compressors
4 extractors
1-2 automatic canning machines
As far as MJ production goes, I am currently powering my base off of melon seeds. My production is rather modest at the moment, but it is enough to be self-sufficient. Using melon seeds, I am not producing any excess seed oil to fill my tank, but am getting enough to fuel the engines and run the few MJ based machines I have. If I can work towards chestnuts or walnuts, I should be much better off.
One of the other energy methods I've thought about doing, but I don't like turtles, and turtles are the only way to fully automate it, is to use the magic absorber to pull enchantments off tools. Use a golem or melee turtle to kill the mobs (after drop), then enchant gold or thaumium tools with a level 30 enchant, then run the tools through the magic absorber to convert to eu. Once the enchant is done, recycle the tool to enchant again.
hmm. I believe the magic absorbers will also with with ender eyes. Those can be automated without the use of turtles. A blaze farm and ender farm should do it. Just collect the drops, craft, then absorb. This should also scale pretty well as a tier 5 spawner can produce quite a few drops. (this gives me something to try)
hmm. I believe the magic absorbers will also with with ender eyes. Those can be automated without the use of turtles. A blaze farm and ender farm should do it. Just collect the drops, craft, then absorb. This should also scale pretty well as a tier 5 spawner can produce quite a few drops. (this gives me something to try)
Celestialphoenix
Too Much Free Time
There's a self-powered auto enchanter in my place- make a lot of gold byproduct.
T5 pigzomie shard, dropping onto a Minefactory killing and enchanting mechanism.
3 Industrial centrifuges process enough flesh to power itself, with a lot left over.
I don't know if you're also interested in IC2 power, but I toyed with the idea of a super efficient Glass Bottle factory to power IC2 Water Mills.
Basically you have Igneous Extruders producing cobble, that gets turned to Sand by Rotary Macerators (fast and low power is key here), smelted into Glass by Induction furnaces (also the ones from Advanced IC2 Machines) and finally crafted in Glass Bottles by some auto crafter.
Those Glass Bottles get fed into Liquid Transposers who fill them with water and then they are shot through BC pipes into hundreds of IC2 Water Mills (I used Insertion Pipes from Additional Buildcraft Objects).
The power it generates is enough to produce more Glass/Water Bottles and have lots of EUs left over for use and it scales up quite well with more Macerators/Furnaces/Liquid Transposers (which I powered with Electric BC engines btw).
Here are some images of how my setup looked like: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/qe47p826lkjyssy/ZaDxQDAyI5
That was done in creative. Sadly the Rotary Macerator world corruption bug wasn't fixed back then so it got corrupted and then the world turned into dirt and pumpkins by MCEdit xD
Basically you have Igneous Extruders producing cobble, that gets turned to Sand by Rotary Macerators (fast and low power is key here), smelted into Glass by Induction furnaces (also the ones from Advanced IC2 Machines) and finally crafted in Glass Bottles by some auto crafter.
Those Glass Bottles get fed into Liquid Transposers who fill them with water and then they are shot through BC pipes into hundreds of IC2 Water Mills (I used Insertion Pipes from Additional Buildcraft Objects).
The power it generates is enough to produce more Glass/Water Bottles and have lots of EUs left over for use and it scales up quite well with more Macerators/Furnaces/Liquid Transposers (which I powered with Electric BC engines btw).
Here are some images of how my setup looked like: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/qe47p826lkjyssy/ZaDxQDAyI5
That was done in creative. Sadly the Rotary Macerator world corruption bug wasn't fixed back then so it got corrupted and then the world turned into dirt and pumpkins by MCEdit xD
Why make glass bottles when you can just use buckets? It means you won't be using any power to make glass bottles as the buckets don't get used up.
Also, RP tubes would be better as they can automatically route the items to an inventory. Getting the buckets out is also easy, just attach a retriever to collect empty buckets and put them into the deployer.
Also, RP tubes would be better as they can automatically route the items to an inventory. Getting the buckets out is also easy, just attach a retriever to collect empty buckets and put them into the deployer.
Could you use allumentium from TC as fuel? It might be possible, if magic turtles (I think that is what they are called, the ones that have the wand attachment) can use a crucible, then you could create an auto factory for the stuff. Get tallow golems feeding the crucible with water, and have some sort of feeding system for the crucible (Something along the lines of a cobble/gunpowder factory should do it). Then pull the allumentium out of the turtle and burn it. If you add alembics to it, it would also keep your jars supplied with the waste aspects.
I personally like stacking a bunch of termpolies ontop of eachother, putting flowing lava on one side and ice blocks on the other 3. Add in the XY ice block to keep the ice blocks ice blocks and some block breakers hooked up with some redstone to break anny basalt that gets generated. My reason for this is the basalt generated and for me the bonus is the MJ one could generate with it (~1mj per 20 piles iirc). Its not alot, but its a fun challange Especially if you try to make this thing work on snowblocks instead (block breakers + snow golems).
Especially if you try to make this thing work on snowblocks instead (block breakers + snow golems).Well each bucket costs 3 iron, for the amount of Water Mills I have there you'd literally need a ton of iron for the buckets alone. Also Water Bottles produce 2EU/t vs 1EU/t from water buckets (which means every Water Bottle is worth 2000 EU, while every Water Bucket is only worth 1000 EU). I didn't do any math to see if that's enough to compensate for the production costs of a Water Bottle, but with an efficient production line I can't imagine it'll take 1000 EU or more to make 1 water bottle. Every EU less than 1000 to make a Water Bottle is pure profit/advantage for Water Bottles over Water Buckets.
As for RP tubes, I prefer BC pipes and because I'm quite sure Water Bottles are more efficient than Water Buckets it really doesn't matter what type of pipes you use.
If you go with Water Buckets RP tubes are obviously better of course.
Also, this topic is about fun methods that aren't common. Water Buckets in RP2 tubes are quite common, there is even a sticky on the IC2 forums with a design for that (I think), but I've never seen anyone else use Water Bottles on a massive scale like I did.
I know that.
Maybe I need to explain it differently. I tried to avoid maths, but I guess it can't be avoided in this case.
According to the wiki:
1 Water Bucket = 1000 EU
1 Water Bottle = 2000 EU
So if you can make 1 Water Bottle with 1000 EU they are equal to Water Buckets. Because they give 2000 EU and it costs 1000 EU of that 2000 EU to make a new Water Bottle (to keep the cycle and power generation going).
What I am saying however is that I think it costs less than 1000 EU to make a Water Bottle.
If a Water Bottle costs 500 EU to make for example that means you get 1500 EU out of a Water Bottle (2000 EU in total minus 500 EU to make a new Water Bottle = a net gain of 1500 EU). So in that case you will get 500 more EU out of a Water Bottle than out of a Water Bucket.
It doesn't matter how much it costs to make a Water Bottle, as long as it's less than 1000 EU you will get more power out of the system than you would with Water Buckets. Because it will cost so little to make Water Bottles that the energy cost can be neglected.
It's a similar process to turning Logs into Charcoal in a regular furnace. It costs fuel to make Charcoal, but it's worth doing because Charcoal is a much better fuel than Logs.
And a similar process is used in most automatic tree farms (Forestry is a great example of this), it takes energy to harvest trees and turn them into fuel (Charcoal/Planks/Biomass/Biofuel/whatever) but it's worth doing because the amount of energy you get out of a tree is way more than it costs to harvest and process it.
tl;dr: Just because it costs some energy to make more energy doesn't mean it's worse or less effective than not using energy to make energy. In fact, most of the power sources in FTB require a small investment of energy to make more energy. IC2's Solar Panels, Wind Turbines and Water Mills are very unique/weird/lame/whatever exactly because they don't need any energy to produce energy.
Actually those "lazy ways" of making power Does take power. Making the plates, ingots, and refined irons all take energy to make them. So every generation of power take some form of power, be it burning, eu, mj, or bt.
Time is the most valuable resource of all in this game, and I assure you that making a 9x9 array of ultimate panels will consume plenty of that.
Yea who need those when they take 100hrs or so to pays themselves off? When you got nuclear power! I buffered them on my server to 20x to make them actually worth the troubles.
Well, I think they're worth it, but not because they make energy for free. I'd still use them if they require some energy to be put into them, because space-wise, they put out an insane amount of energy. Think about how many thermal generators you'd need to keep up with one Ultimate panel.
If they made a single thermal generator (or even a multi-block version) that could keep up with the Ultimate panel without taking up an entire wall of my base, I'd use it. However, they didn't, so I don't.