Infinite Charcoal power?

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Unit88

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Jul 29, 2019
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I'm trying to make infinte power with MFR Harvesters and Planters, using a redstone furnace 4 survivalist generators and a furnace generator. The first time when I connected the thing together and using a lapis upgrade (so trees would be planted in 5X5) the thing ate up my surplus of wood. After that I decided to increase the radius, so I used quartz upgrades so now I have a 19X19 are of saplings, but now My harvester can't keep up, although I did add another one since then and I don't how that'll affect it.
So after all that explanation my questions are these: Is there a way to speed up the harvesters? (I think when I got into modding I used IC2 power and the harvester were extremely fast, but I haven't tested anything yet) Is it even possible to make infinite power like this or will it run out of something in the end?
 

Master_Builder_800

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Jul 29, 2019
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The problem is your generators are way too slow, also whenever i do this I use stirling dynamos from thermal expansion. They work much better and you'll want two to three for best power. Also no, there is no way to speed up harvesters except, I think(never played around with them), but in therory a torcherino should speed it up
 

Celestialphoenix

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Nov 9, 2012
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Tartarus.. I mean at work. Same thing really.
In short- you need to generate more power to run a farm that size. [within a limit] MFR can run faster if you feed it more, or just up the number of harvesters.
Also boilers are more fuel efficient; giving you a higher return.

Make sure you remove the sludge from the harvesters
Last time I played the sludge buildup didn't affect the harvesting. Sludge is useful though ;)
 

Harvest88

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Jul 29, 2019
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Last time I played the sludge buildup didn't affect the harvesting. Sludge is useful though ;)

Correct however it probably due to people not liking the darn side effects, to migrate this I simply make a dedicated sludge processing room with tesseracts (any item and liquid teleportation will works though).
 

Wekmor

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Jul 29, 2019
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In short- you need to generate more power to run a farm that size. [within a limit] MFR can run faster if you feed it more, or just up the number of harvesters.
Also boilers are more fuel efficient; giving you a higher return.


Last time I played the sludge buildup didn't affect the harvesting. Sludge is useful though ;)
He's right though, in the newer versions the harvester will stop once it filled up with sludge.
 

Inaeo

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Jul 29, 2019
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I typically use a small (5x5) tree farm using the planter/harvester combo. Output goes into a dedicated barrel wall (logs, saplings, apples, maybe leaves depending) then logs get pulled to a redstone furnace and charcoal pulled from there to a single steam dynamo, with excess filling an ender chest.

I don't usually use charcoal for primary power, so this may be a bit smaller scale then you need, but with augments you can get more than enough power out of a single dynamo to power significantly larger farms. A single Aqueous Accumulator can provide all your water needs for this system as well, which makes it self sustaining.

Edit: Yes, sludge slows things down in a harvester. Either void it or use it in a boiler for free clay.
 

Synaxin

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Jul 29, 2019
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I've found that using fertilizer as well makes it more sustainable, unless something was changed, you can use animals on sewers to generate sewage and then use a composter to make fertilizer, and use it in a machine I forget the name of to fertilize the saplings
 

Unit88

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Jul 29, 2019
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I thought about doing something with sludge, guess I'll try it, and I'll look into other ways to generate power from charcoal, the reason I used survivalist generators, is because they should be efficient and I added the furnace generator in case I need a quick boost.
 

Keserian

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Jul 29, 2019
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Personally, I'd go with EnderIO Sterling Generators, they're fairly smart, and the EnderIO Power Monitor allows you some fairly fine tuned control over when the generators kick on so you don't waste power.

Depending on the mod list you are using, my preferred wood -> power chain usually runs like this.

Harvest the wood somehow. I usually use either MFR or a Thaumcraft golem setup depending on how deep into RF I've gotten. The advantage to Thaumcraft is that it keeps working even if the power goes out, but you don't get the added benefit from having sludge to boil into miscellaneous junk (that could either be a plus or minus to using MFR). Also, if I'm playing with Rotarycraft installed, I usually set up a second MFR harvester that only covers a small section of my tree farm and set it to sheer leaves, that way I can also feed an RC ethanol system as well.

Then I pipe the wood into an ungodly number of Railcraft coke ovens. Again, the benefit is that the coke ovens don't require any external power or fuel to run, so even if my base has a completely blackout, the system will still run. The other advantage is that I get the creosote oil out, and that provides a small bonus of power.

I then run the charcoal into an automatic Thaumcraft Alumentum production system. All I need to add is some Perditio (usually from a cobble generator), and it gives a pretty significant boost in power output compared to just burning the charcoal. Also, side tip, if you are running GregTech 5, the tiny piles of ash you get from the blast furnaces are great sources of Perditio, at least to supplement the cobblestone, and it gives you something to do with all that ash you get from the bronze-plated blast furnaces. You get more Perditio from the tiny piles, rather than combining into either small or normal piles (each tiny pile is 1 Perditio, each normal pile is 2).

From there, I usually run a max size Railcraft low-pressure boiler off of the Alumentum, and a smaller LP boiler off of the creosote oil. In my series with Gregtech, I'm running my GT power off of the solid fuel boiler, and my RF power off of the creosote boiler. The downside to the entire system is that it takes a metric crapload of coke ovens to produce a decent amount of creosote, but coke ovens are just clay and sand, and it's basically free power. You could also easily use the same system substituting the coke ovens for any sort of furnace. Personally, I like to not use power as part of my primary power generation system, at least until I'm looking at refining oil.

Mods required for the full setup:
MFR / Thaumcraft
Thaumcraft
Railcraft

If you want to squeeze even more efficiency out of the system, you can also pipe the extra saplings into a forestry ethanol production system, or an IC2 biofuel cell production line. I haven't done that myself (yet), so I can't tell you how many you could easily run.
 

Zelfana

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Jul 29, 2019
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You need at least 50 survivalist generators to run the harvester and planter at full speed. You also need a large enough field of saplings for the harvester to have work to do or it goes into idle mode for a while when it doesn't find anything to cut.
 

Funky Ghost

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Jul 29, 2019
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Why not just make an aqueous, a steam dynamo, a redstone furnace and be done with the entire mess? Fire and forget power and the dynamo's can be upgraded now which makes them a fine way to grow power ( pardon the pun ) to suit your bases needs at least until you are ready to build ludicrous power :) A 5x5 tree farm supports 24 upgraded dynamos with no supply issues (when I use the lilypads of fertility) and in point of fact supplies an endless supply of charcoal for my turtles as well as apples for grub and wood for things :D. In that play through I've got the saplings and leaves going towards a singularity. But it all started with one stock set up.
 

Unit88

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Jul 29, 2019
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I always forget to mention that I'm using the DW20 pack. For now I only want a simple wood->charcoal->power setup, but later I'll look into more efficient ways and stuff.
 

Funky Ghost

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Jul 29, 2019
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The setup I referenced is in my DW20 1.7 game.
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Inaeo

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Jul 29, 2019
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Using the full MFR farming chain has wonderful synergy, although it takes the extra time, resources, and power to set up and operate. I've only ever once used the entire chain, as I decided long ago it was easier to have dedicated Autospawners for each animal I would usually farm. Its faster and quieter than the traditional route, while taking up less footprint.

In my experience, using a tree farm larger than 9x9 with a single harvester leaves the harvester looking for something to cut more often than actually cutting something. I found it more efficient to use smaller farms with dedicated harvesters, although multiple harvesters running simultaneously is a significantly larger power draw.
 

Keserian

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Jul 29, 2019
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You could also take a look at hobbyist steam engines from Railcraft. I haven't used them recently, but they used to be super efficient. I'm a bit biased, because the steam system is one of my favorite cross mod compatability changes ever. You can go from steam to RF, EU, GTEU, and Shaft Power all from one power plant, and Reika has a way to go from Shaft Power to steam (with loss, of course). I used to build the hobyist engine first, but that was in 1.6.

Not a concern for you in DW20, but anyone using GT5 should really look at steam engines for RF power if they're already into the GT steam age, no need to run an entire new fuel system, just plug in the steam engines into an existing boiler system.

I always forget to mention that I'm using the DW20 pack. For now I only want a simple wood->charcoal->power setup, but later I'll look into more efficient ways and stuff.
 

Unit88

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Jul 29, 2019
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Well, I just noticed that the two harvesters drained all the power, so I'm gonna have to do some adjustments.
 
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Keserian

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Jul 29, 2019
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Well, I just noticed that the two harvesters drained all the power, so I'm gonna have to do some adjustments.
That's with survivalist generators? I only generally use those for very early power and maybe powering low demand devices, like BC pumps.