I since he's solved his issue, I don't feel bad about derailing. Update your mod version for the win, eh? Glad that worked out for you. For the record, which version were you using with that issue in it? Our server hasn't been updated lately, and I'm curious if one of the small inconsistencies I've seen may be related.
So, a friend and I had a friendly bet. He bet me (after some tangential discussions) that it wasn't possible to create a working power grid based solely off mob drops. When we booted up our Infinity server, I set out to prove him wrong.
It began with a basic dark room with a few MFR Grinders. The mob essence and any gunpowder (from creepers and witches) were sent to TE Reactant Dynamos, which sent RF back to the Grinders. It was functional, but inefficient. Spawn rates were low, and a player had to be in range for it to work, but it was early game, so it was enough to run basic ore doubling machines.
Everything changed when I found a Division Sigil as chest loot. Once Cursed Earth was obtained, things started to get silly. Suddenly, the farm was producing mobs at a good clip (even when nobody was around, thanks to a chunk loader), and the bank of Dynamos was expanded from the original pair to ten. This was a massive upgrade in output, but I hated being so reliant on a mob that could destroy the entire trap if things went sideways.
Enter the JABBA diamond dolly. Once we had a Nether portal, it was a simple task to locate a fortress and pilfer a Blaze Spawner. That bad Larry got dropped right in the center of the farm (directly on top of the Cursed Earth) for all the Blaze Rods we could use (or so I thought). The Blaze Rods were autocrafted into powder and fed into the Dynamos in place of gunpowder, and all was well. Then I started to realize what a backlog of gunpowder (and other useful things) I was accumulating, so I switched gears again. Witch Spawners were brought in, two to be precise, as my new reliable source of gunpowder. With it, redstone, glowstone, potions, and sticks were flowing in as well.
Gunpowder again flowed to my Dynamos. The Blaze Rods were diverted to Furnace Generators. Sticks were fed into Survivalist Generators for low demand areas (mostly outlier bases with little need for constant draw). My abundance of redstone was put into a Magma Crucible then off to a Heated Redstone Generator. Potions were fed to a Potion Generator. Rotten Flesh went to a Culinary Generator.
After the infrastructure was worked out, I built a max sized BR Turbine, and I fed it steam from MFR Steam Boilers running off Blaze Rods. Since it takes five boilers to make the 2000mb/t steam, I had to add a second (and eventually a third when I added another Turbine) Blaze Spawner to keep up with the demand.
The entire farm was redesigned a number of times as this project evolved. I discovered, as mentioned in my post above, that Blizz will spawn in Maple Woods. More frustratingly, I learned that Blaze and Blizz will fight each other on sight, which of course makes a giant mess in your mob farm. As it stands now, the majority of mob activity is governed by ME Level Emitters activating TiCo Drawbridges (adding and removing the Cursed Earth beneath the spawners) in a variant of a prison complex. An MFR Autospawner does specialized work, but after running the farm for as long as I did, my coffers are full of mob loot that will last me well past my needs.
My server mate took all this power and quarried like there was no tomorrow, so earthly resources are trivial now as well. I took to making a gross ME system to handle most of these processes, and have now diverged into developing unnecessarily complex production lines using mostly TD ducts.
It's been a good run, but server performance (and player interest to some extent) has begun to fade. I'm going to build my own collection of mods (hate to call it a pack yet) for us next, and see where that goes.
Thanks to anyone who read this. I'm going to miss this world...
