[getting started] need some sort of power system going

[glennox]

Greetings,

I am a derp and kinda new to minecraft.. The Feed beast mod pack is awesome i really love it.. but there is one down side to it. Its really hard to learn and takes allot of time to reach the goal ive setup for myself. Since i totaly dont like the creative mode, i am playing legit survival that means i am not cheating but grinding towards everything.
but i am getting bored lately since i cant get any good start. Ive tried playing with the geothermal but its getting hard to keep the lava flow going on.. Ive tried the watermills but i only can put in buckets of water..

I really need some help to get the electricty going automatic. So i can get my macerators/electric furnance and other machines stay working when i am mining/adventuring..

Please help me get started with feed the beast.

 

[Belone]

I think I read that a wiki is being worked on to help out, but you might want to try checking the individual mod's pages. I know IC2's wiki has a getting started guide, failing that you could search YouTube, for many of the early stuff you can watch Tekkit videos (ignoring Equivalent Exchange and RedPower stuff - for now), this will point you in the right direction. Duncan/Lalna of the Yogscast's Tekkit series is actually pretty informative, certainly early on he was keen to teach rather than entertain.

EDIT: Oh and DireWolf20's videos, he covers most (if not all) the mod's in FTB.

 

[glennox]

I think I read that a wiki is being worked on to help out, but you might want to try checking the individual mod's pages. I know IC2's wiki has a getting started guide, failing that you could search YouTube, for many of the early stuff you can watch Tekkit videos (ignoring Equivalent Exchange and RedPower stuff - for now), this will point you in the right direction. Duncan/Lalna of the Yogscast's Tekkit series is actually pretty informative, certainly early on he was keen to teach rather than entertain.

Ofcourse ive tried watching youtube video's, ive tried experimenting myself to, trying to rebuild the pretty easy looking stuff.. but in feed the beast everything seem so much harder.. like when i try to make a solarpannel it seems really easy on youtube but in ftb it way more harder.

also most of the youtube video's are based the equivalant exchange so its pretty hard to come something up myself.. i know i will get better at it over time, but i just progress some faster into feed the beast

sorry for my bad english btw.

 

[Meldiron]

In general i'd say:
If you want something that "just works without any maintainance" go with solars, getting 8-12 normal solar panels should cover your basic needs, gradualy upgrading them to advanced solar panels also work out great.
If you want something that produces more power and is cheaper then using carts to run lava from the nether to your base would be a good choice.

Also, note that the advanced high speed machines (such as induction furnace, rotary macerator) use a LOT less energy once they reach full speed (use a redstone signal to keep them always enabled).
If you use both slot in the induction furnace it can cook 4 times as many items on the same energy compared to an electric furnance!

 

[Greyed]

Turn off Gregtech. It modifies quite a few of the IC2 and BC3 recipes to be quite harder to obtain. There's a kerfuffle on whether Gregtech is ok or not-ok elsewhere in the forums. And it is possible to force it to not change the recipes via a config change. But, really, between TE, IC2 and BC3 we've got enough tech to last ages.

 

[b0bst3r]

Try not going macerator/furnace, instead go Thermal Expansion - Steam Engine + Induction Smelter. The TE steam engine is the one that's just called Steam Engine, not the Hobbyist, Industrial or Commercial ones. The Induction Smelter is relatively easy to make and provides you early on with a macerator/Furnace combined into one and the steam engine will produce the power needed to make it work.

Once you have that running you can build on it, get powered furnace for melting stuff that's not ores, the Aqueous Accumulator will make water for the steam engine (and doesn't require power to run).

The Induction Smelter also makes slag as a by product of melting ores which you can furnace into rockwool for decoration so you kinda kill 3 birds with 2 stones

You will eventually need a macerator down the line to make coal dust for various things but at least TE will get you started easy enough. Also if you should find a decent lava source TE has it's own lava engine (Magmatic). Then you can adapt that further by MAKING lava in a Magma Crucible (just feed the Crucible with netherrack).

If you're set on going macerator to start with then without RP and it's automated methods of water farms you may struggle, since Gregtech raises the recipes for solar.

Edit - also I should add that neither the Steam or Magmatic engines explode, so you have 0 risk, if however, you leave them running without them doing anything they will overheat and shutdown. Simply make a wrench (the iron one) and bash the engines to get them going again. Unlike the other engines in game you use a redstone signal to stop them, not to start them.

 

[glennox]

Try not going macerator/furnace, instead go Thermal Expansion - Steam Engine + Induction Smelter. The TE steam engine is the one that's just called Steam Engine, not the Hoobyist, Industrial or Commercial ones. The Induction Smelter is relatively easy to make and provides you early on with a macerator/Furnace combined into one and the steam engine will produce the power needed to make it work.

Once you have that running you can build on it, get powered furnace for melting stuff that's not ores, the Aqueous Accumulator will make water for the steam engine (and doesn't require power to run).

The Induction Smelter also makes slag as a by product of melting ores which you can furnace into rockwool for decoration so you kinda kill 3 birds with 2 stones

You will eventually need a macerator down the line to make coal dust for various things but at least TE will get you started easy enough. Also if you should find a decent lava source TE has it's own lava engine (Magmatic). Then you can adapt that further by MAKING lava in a Maga Crucible (just feed the Crucible with netherrack).

If you're set on going macerator to start with then without RP and it's automated methods of water farms you may struggle, since Gregtech raises the recipes for solar.

Wow thank you so much this was something i was looking for i will try this out right now. thank you

 

[StarbugSkan]

like when i try to make a solarpannel it seems really easy on youtube but in ftb it way more harder..

If they use FTB they usually disabled gregtech, wich raises very hard recipe for solar panel.
If you find it to hard, or just not fun at all : go in gregtech config files and disable the expensive recipes for solar panel.

Also TE is a good start, but i prefer the watermill start( just add a water source on top of watermill to get it work).

 

[Omicron]

If you do have GregTech enabled, and want to make solar panels, here's a guide I wrote on how to make and operate the industrial centrifuge: http://forum.feed-the-beast.com/threads/how-to-permanent-pover-a-rubber-tree-farm.2561/#post-26487

 

[zilvarwolf]

Fairly sure everyone has different startup goals. I googled up some 'first steps' documents and the first one I found was industrialcraft at the time, so my first steps are usually based on IC2 machines.

With that in mind, I left gregtech installed, but modified the configs back to reasonable for almost everything, and thus my first steps involve getting charcoal, an iron furnace, and then a batbox/generator combination. It's not self-sustaining, of course, but I can usually have this up and running fast.

This last world, I branched out into a few buildcraft machines and the coke oven (made that pretty fast...two coal coak will nearly fill a batbox), made a dense ores world that wouldn't kill me instantly, and brought home a few diamonds and crystals. (By this time I'd found a few villages for books). From there, it's the Interdimensional Geothermal Generator with electric engines for my buildcraft stuff. I figure I'm set at this point. My nether portal is hovering over the biggest lava ocean I've seen in a long time and the two geothermal generators I have running from it are barely touching the power needs.

 

[glennox]

Fairly sure everyone has different startup goals. I googled up some 'first steps' documents and the first one I found was industrialcraft at the time, so my first steps are usually based on IC2 machines..

I am almost at the same point as you right now..

Ive started with mystcraft to find the a dense ore world wich allready was pretty hard but fun to do. i found books at a village did set up the writing table en such so i didnt had to mine so much.. ive been playing with the bee's and did build myself a nice little home.

Then ive started to play arround with idustrialcraft wich was a bit confusing. i managed to create a generator but this was eating so much coal that i was out in no time.. had 5 stacks of coal and i just used it for keeping my macerator going wich was really stupid ofcouse, since i had the dense ore world..

so i thoughtill make a geothermal generator and ive tried to set up a pump and waterproof pipes to pump in the lava. but in no time my little lava lake runned empty wich was 2 by 2, so 4 buckets of lava..

then i thought ill make this thread on this because i dont feel like derping anymore..

 

[Greyed]

Then ive started to play arround with idustrialcraft wich was a bit confusing. i managed to create a generator but this was eating so much coal that i was out in no time.. had 5 stacks of coal and i just used it for keeping my macerator going wich was really stupid ofcouse, since i had the dense ore world..

You might have made the same mistake Coe and Avidya made with IC2. If you create a generator, hook it up to an energy storage device and then string your machines off that storage device (reasonable setup) you have to not default to the "drop a stack of coal into the furnace" pattern. Why?

Because the generator will burn coal one chunk at a time. Each chunk generates 4000EU. A Batbox can hold 40,000EU (10 chunks of coal). However, when the batbox is full and loses just 1 EU it signals the generator to fire up to fill up the lost EU. If you're not draining the batbox faster than the generator creates energy, which you won't with just 1-2 machines, you're burning coal to create energy that goes absolutely nowhere. Instead of being far more efficient than a basic furnace you're now double or tripling your energy costs, if you're lucky!

To conserve fuel you need to let the batbox drain to about 20k or so and only toss in 5 or so coal. This way you're replacing energy that has been drained instead of overproducing and wasting. The reason why people move to geothermals so quickly is because geothermals do this automatically. They only fire up to produce what is needed and shut right back down.

I actually was able to run my first FTB map on nothing but a single generator and 8 solars. The solars charged up my energy storage and when I was pushing my base heavily I'd toss coal into the generator as needed. Mind you that was a full IC2 setup with the only BC components being pipes + logistics pipes. I had only started getting into geothermal right before I reset the map to reenable Thermal Expansion.

 

[glennox]

I really appreciate everyone help so much, thank everyone of you. This is a great comunity

 

[zilvarwolf]

The transdimensional geothermal generator setup is godly, IMO.

You'll need a rolling machine and a coke oven. Well, actually, you need the coke oven regardless. Coal coke is 4 times as efficient as coal and all it costs is the setup (pretty easy, overall...clay and sand) and time. That oven gives you the creosote you need to make rails.

Get a mystcraft world with crystals (I used my dense ore world). You need about a stack.

(actually, if you want to watch someone build this, you can watch DireWolf20's Season 3 Server Play videos. 11 through 13, I think...he does it more in depth, but it really just needs to be simple).

I crafted 5 or 6 normal tanks (8 glass each) and set them up. Took my pump and 3 redstone engines to the nether and built a room overhanging the Lava Ocean of Vast Scary DOOOOOOOM, hooked it up to a liquid loader. Made a tank cart and built my crystal portal setup with book holders. The thing to remember here is where you come out and the path you want to take...I already had the rails built so I used that to mark my path, but DW used torches....he plans better than I do

I wish I was at home right now so I could post screens, because I'm not explaining this well. You've noticed by now that a linking book takes you to the place you created it. When you put a linking book in a crystal portal, it does the same thing and will transport anything that approaches through it. So make your linking books and give yourself 6 or so blocks worth of room to work with. You want to setup the system so that a rail cart starts on a booster track (which is the appearance location of one of the linking books), shoots forward a space or so, stops on a boarding track and fills up/unloads from a liquid loader (above the track) or a liquid unloader (below the track), scoots forward another square or two and ends up at the crystal portal (where it appears on other world and repeats the process). I used gold waterproof pipe for most of it and I haven't noticed any problems. If I recall right, you don't need to do anything to pump the liquid (no redstone engines for gates needed..the pump handled it).

From that point, I just set down geothermals and electric engines in the overworld. I don't have a world anchor there because I don't have a smart quarry system or anything yet, but I'm nowhere near pushing the capacity of that system, and I cannot even remotely imagine running out of lava in the lake I tapped.

the biggest difference between my system and direwolfs is the use of regular tanks instead of the railcraft OMG THATS HUGE tank, and his looks, you know...professional.

 

[Bibble]

I've recently set up a semi-self-sufficient steam boiler, attached to a tree farm, cooking (some of) the logs and funnelling it into the boiler. It allows me to power my machines (pulveriser and powered furnace), aswell as my refinery and other fun things. And charge a redstone energy cell for a quarry.

 

[Antice]

I've recently set up a semi-self-sufficient steam boiler, attached to a tree farm, cooking (some of) the logs and funnelling it into the boiler. It allows me to power my machines (pulveriser and powered furnace), aswell as my refinery and other fun things. And charge a redstone energy cell for a quarry.

Ah yeah. that is a variant on one of the infamous over unity energy machines you can design with the help of forestry.

the simplest one is actually a pumpkin seed farm that makes seed oil for running not only the farm, but any and all BC energy using components. they are not as powerfull as some of the other engines, but they get the job done and are really cheap to make, (and the fuel source is infinite)
The drawback is that it can only power BC stuff.

I've had a redpower based cactus to biofuel conversion facility in my old 1.2.5 world. Redpower makes for awesome cactus farming goodness. especially when all the cactuses are growth boosted by laser mod green lasers. the cost in apatite is easily overcome if you have a quarry or 2 going.

My current plan for my current world is to make steam boilers run on biofuel. probably going to be using sugar cane to make the biofuel to minimize inputs. or maybe grain. since getting food as a byproduct is nice. the realy awesome part with this plan is that it will not only give me plenty of MJ's for buildcraft, but surplus fuel products can be burned in a second boiler for running a generator. lot's of EU's as well as plenty of MJ's.
I just love the railcraft steam engines. the cheapest one (the hobbyist steam engine) is safe to use as long as you don't add water if it has run dry until it has cooled down again. and it's cheaper than the thermal expansion one to build and maintain.

The only drawback with this setup is that one needs good access to apatite and sand, but that is rarely an issue.

I seriously recomend looking at forestry farms in general for making energy glut machines.
fairly early on you can use that useless apatite to make energy with the help of a peat farm. the bonus being thqat surplus peat can indeed be fed to a IC generator as well.

 

[TheQuixote]

Having done few maps where I just zerged the solar panels I've really com to like GregTech for slowing that method down. But I do think there is a hole in the early progression when the generators start to become too cumbersome.

IC Wind could fill that need but I would like to see the height have a much smaller impact on production ( there are wind farms at sea level. ) Increasing the impact and size of the non-blocked area might be good tradeoff with the space and wiring requirements keeping wind a balanced early game power source.

Mystcraft portals and geothermals are the next problem. It takes a little more start up than the old solars, but once you're set up it's a trivial exercise to get to 500EU a tick

 

[Antice]

Having done few maps where I just zerged the solar panels I've really com to like GregTech for slowing that method down. But I do think there is a hole in the early progression when the generators start to become too cumbersome.

IC Wind could fill that need but I would like to see the height have a much smaller impact on production ( there are wind farms at sea level. ) Increasing the impact and size of the non-blocked area might be good tradeoff with the space and wiring requirements keeping wind a balanced early game power source.

Mystcraft portals and geothermals are the next problem. It takes a little more start up than the old solars, but once you're set up it's a trivial exercise to get to 500EU a tick

I actually have grown to hate solar panels. not because of gregtech changes (those changes are actually for the better by making them lot's more expensive), but because they change what can be an interesting game dynamic. (IC power) into a repetitive chore. especially if you use compact solars they quickly become the sole easy to go to solution.
Water mills are kind of the same. pair them up with redpower, and you have unlimited free energy. This basically makes all the other ways of making IC power redundant if all you want is to rush into getting a quantum suit.

You can easily see what i mean by looking at some Direwolf vid's. his first power system is generally a redpower/watermill bucket powerfarm, and it is easily big enough to power the entire first tier of machines. it doesn't even cost much to set up. 20 minutes of mining and then another 10 - 20 of crafting and building, and voila. no need to worry about running dry on energy until you start making UU matter for a Q suit.

 

[Evil Hamster]

I started with solar panels, and upgraded them to advanced. Just built myself a steam boiler for buildcraft energy- that was a pain to start but looks to be running well now. I ran a peat farm with tree and wheat farms auto-feeding each other, was semi-maintenance free, but I disassembled them when I moved my base and haven't set them back up yet.

 

[Greyed]

Having done few maps where I just zerged the solar panels I've really com to like GregTech for slowing that method down. But I do think there is a hole in the early progression when the generators start to become too cumbersome.

Granted, but then it's not like you have to go that route. In fact on my second map I have hardly touched panels. I have a few running a single Eletrical Engine from Forestry. The rest of my power generation is from Thermal Expansion; the whole reason for my second map. If anyone has issues with IC solar panels then they'd shudder to look at TE's Steam Engines. 2MJ engines that don't explode, easy to fuel, and dead simple to keep cool when paired with an Aqueous Accumulator? Yes please. I was able to run off a pair of those for quite a while. I hooked them up to a TE Redstone Energy Cell, threw hoppers on them, setup a project bench next to the hoppers where I made stacks of scaffolding. Toss 5 stacks of scaffolding at those engines, go mine, come back and had enough power stored in the cell to crush, smelt, saw and extract everything with no problems. It was only when I tossed Logistics Pipes with its initial, ungodly, power sucking leech of a battery at my system that I had to add 2 Magmatic Engines fed off a single Magma Crucible. Solar panels and Geothermals? Pah!

Mystcraft portals and geothermals are the next problem. It takes a little more start up than the old solars, but once you're set up it's a trivial exercise to get to 500EU a tick

Heck, after learning about the Netherrack -> Lava -> Magmatic engine route I've not even feel the need to dabble in the infinite lava trick. Don't want to bother with inter-dimensional wonkery when I can mine a stack of Netherrack in under 2 minutes and it lasts for several hours.