looking for a lot of free power

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MigukNamja

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Jul 29, 2019
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The problem with solars has never been their output. What people dislike about them is that they don't require any complexity or originality. Just plop down a single generic block and be done with it.

Agreed. Very anti-climactic for the 'ultimate' power. It's hard to argue against an HV Solar for compactness and server friendliness and resources required to build one are justified for its 512 EU/t output. However, the dullness is also hard to argue.
 

zorn

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Jul 29, 2019
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The problem with solars has never been their output. What people dislike about them is that they don't require any complexity or originality. Just plop down a single generic block and be done with it.

With a tree farm you still have to build all the infrastructure to feed the planter, power the harvester and fertilizer, feed the fertilizer, take output from the harvester, store the logs saplings and apples, convert the logs to charcoal, convert the saplings to biofuel, feed the logs and biofuel into boilers, then pipe the power from boilers back into the farm. And each of those can be done in very different ways, like golems to move the materials around or using combustion engines instead of boilers. With all these choices to make, unless they are deliberately copying each other, no two persons' tree farm power setup will be exactly the same.

There's nothing wrong with using Solar, don't get me wrong, it's just doesn't feel very creative to a lot of people.


Good point. Still... much more powerful than any other power generation, kind of kills any feeling of progression.
 

snooder

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Jul 29, 2019
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1 squid alone with 8 ranchers is apparently capable of 4K MJ/t. I'd hate to think this is "working as designed".

It's no different from abusing cows to get milk for biogas engines. The only difference here is that since the rancher's range is 5x5, you can stack more of them around the squid. Also, you are conveniently forgetting the 32 bioreactors necessary to make ethanol from those 8 ranchers.
 

snooder

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Jul 29, 2019
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Good point. Still... much more powerful than any other power generation, kind of kills any feeling of progression.

Not really. It's not space efficient at all. If you want progression, Gregtech has multiple options for nuclear and fusion power generation that far outstrip the basic tree farm setup. And even without Gregtech, you run into a point where getting more power means building several giant 9x9 railcraft tanks and a multi-level tree farm that takes up a ginormous amount of space. At that point most people progress to getting fuel from bees. Or start playing with alternate power sources like mystcraft lava ages (although without redpower, that may not be viable any more).
 
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casilleroatr

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Jul 29, 2019
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It doesn't matter if people are in the chunk or not. It's still a relatively expensive calculation. If you remove a lava block it recalculates light levels in a 15 radius sphere. THAT is what causes the server strain. Unfortunately many people think it's the moving textures.

I don't know how the light changes are calculated, but what if instead of replacing the lava source block with stone, you replace it with something that emits the same amount of light. I understand that the act of removing the lava block might trigger the whole calculation to be run whether or not the answer is going to be the same or not, but I thought this was a question worth posing anyway.
 

netmc

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Jul 29, 2019
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It's no different from abusing cows to get milk for biogas engines. The only difference here is that since the rancher's range is 5x5, you can stack more of them around the squid. Also, you are conveniently forgetting the 32 bioreactors necessary to make ethanol from those 8 ranchers.


It's to bad the milk got nerfed. I only used the milk where I could get by with low power, as it only generated 1MJ/tick.

I'm running 4 36HP boilers off of one MFR tree farm and almost 50 coke ovens. The creosote oil from the coke ovens is pretty much free power. 2 are running off the charcoal, 1 off creosote and 1 off ethanol. I'm running the MFR tree farm off of an industrial steam engine, although I might have to up that a bit. Since I started the 2nd charcoal boiler, I am ever so slightly running through my massive surplus of logs. (about 1k/day--At this rate I should be through my surplus in about 2 months.) Harvesting the trees a bit faster should end the deficit.

Since I set it up, I've done almost no maintenance on the treefarm and boiler setup, so I guess that counts as "free" energy.
 

MigukNamja

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Jul 29, 2019
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It's to bad the milk got nerfed. I only used the milk where I could get by with low power, as it only generated 1MJ/tick.

I'm running 4 36HP boilers off of one MFR tree farm and almost 50 coke ovens. The creosote oil from the coke ovens is pretty much free power. 2 are running off the charcoal, 1 off creosote and 1 off ethanol. I'm running the MFR tree farm off of an industrial steam engine, although I might have to up that a bit. Since I started the 2nd charcoal boiler, I am ever so slightly running through my massive surplus of logs. (about 1k/day--At this rate I should be through my surplus in about 2 months.) Harvesting the trees a bit faster should end the deficit.

Since I set it up, I've done almost no maintenance on the treefarm and boiler setup, so I guess that counts as "free" energy.


Not really. It's not space efficient at all. If you want progression, Gregtech has multiple options for nuclear and fusion power generation that far outstrip the basic tree farm setup. And even without Gregtech, you run into a point where getting more power means building several giant 9x9 railcraft tanks and a multi-level tree farm that takes up a ginormous amount of space. At that point most people progress to getting fuel from bees. Or start playing with alternate power sources like mystcraft lava ages (although without redpower, that may not be viable any more).


The problem with GregTech for me isn't the Fusion Reactor, but what to do with all that power once it's built. UU-Matter is incredibly anti-climactical. For me, the Fusion Reactor *is* the goal. The insane power it makes is just show.

Personally, I can't find a good use for more than about 1000 MJ/t or 2.5K EU/t. Perhaps I'm not being creative enough.
 

zorn

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Jul 29, 2019
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Side question since i play on a private server: Why would anyone make a 'multi level' MFR farm? In an infinite world, why is space an issue? How much space does a person get on a public server, and if its small... what do you mine for resources? Why dont people just travel far away, til they dont have close neighbors?
 

AlanEsh

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Jul 29, 2019
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Pardon me if my comments appeared to be a little crass. I suppose that I meant that, in my opinion, it takes the fun out of it for me. I know other people do have their own opinions on this subject. Sorry if it seemed like I was completely and utterly condemning someone for deciding to use free energy.
Well, you did say "you would be lazy to use it" in referring to unlimited energy solutions. Like it or not you were pretty much condemning anyone who doesn't hand-feed their Steam Engines and use a hand grinder for their ores.
 

Hoff

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Oct 30, 2012
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Side question since i play on a private server: Why would anyone make a 'multi level' MFR farm? In an infinite world, why is space an issue? How much space does a person get on a public server, and if its small... what do you mine for resources? Why dont people just travel far away, til they dont have close neighbors?

Depending on the server they may be limited to the land they are able to claim to prevent griefing. As well even private servers, like the one I'm on, use a world border to prevent new chunks from being loaded reducing server lag. It may also simply be a personal challenge to have as small of a space footprint as possible.
 
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snooder

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Side question since i play on a private server: Why would anyone make a 'multi level' MFR farm? In an infinite world, why is space an issue? How much space does a person get on a public server, and if its small... what do you mine for resources? Why dont people just travel far away, til they dont have close neighbors?

1) Griefprevention
2) Chunkloaders
3) Aesthetics

Personally, I can't find a good use for more than about 1000 MJ/t or 2.5K EU/t. Perhaps I'm not being creative enough.

Yeah, you aren't being creative enough, no offense. There are several uses for massive amounts of power.

1) Extra parallelization on your current machines. Running the full set of bee machines takes up 300 MJ/t. If you make copies so you can do multiple inoculations at once, then that can get up to 600, 900 or even 1200 if you are doing 4 at the same time. Or running MFR lasers. Sure, one laser is only 400MJ/t. But why stop at one? Why not do 2, or 3, or 20? And hey, while you're at it, why not get enough lasers on your assembly table to make diamond chipsets in a second. And why not make MULTIPLE assembly tables so that you can automate it and have a table for each thing you want to make.

2) If you are doing EU, then you want to make a Mass Fab. And you want that Mass Fab to work fast, and not spend days making each piece of UU-matter. Why? Because with the power of UU-matter, you can shut off your quarries and make what ever item you want on-demand. Push a button and get any item in the game instantly.

3) Powersinks. AE is a prime example here. If you want your MAC to be large enough to contain EVERY pattern in the game and also produce any item in fractions of a second, it's going to draw a ton of power. The same goes for overclocking IC2 machines.

4) Bling. Part of the fun of FTB for me is being able to build crazy structures that would be impossible (or just really tedious) in vanilla. And if, let's say, I want to make the wall of my entire 7x7 chunk base out of lapis, diamond and emerald blocks, I'm going to need a LOT of power for fabrication.

Honestly, for me 2.5k EU/t is chump change. That's just about enough to get a mass fab running, but not enough to do anything really INTERESTING with it.
 

zorn

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Jul 29, 2019
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Depending on the server they may be limited to the land they are able to claim to prevent griefing. As well even private servers, like the one I'm on, use a world border to prevent new chunks from being loaded reducing server lag. It may also simply be a personal challenge to have as small of a space footprint as possible.


how big do you set your world borders at? On ours, we have 4 people, and ive been minimum 5K blocks in all directions, sometimes up to 12K blocks from spawn. Is this a lot?
 

Hydra

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Jul 29, 2019
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Side question since i play on a private server: Why would anyone make a 'multi level' MFR farm? In an infinite world, why is space an issue? How much space does a person get on a public server, and if its small... what do you mine for resources? Why dont people just travel far away, til they dont have close neighbors?

Because I want to fit everything into 3x3 chunks. Saves on server resources because there's less chunks to load.[DOUBLEPOST=1379533301][/DOUBLEPOST]
Or running MFR lasers. Sure, one laser is only 400MJ/t. But why stop at one? Why not do 2, or 3, or 20?

Frankly I find them incredibly boring. In ym current base I'm more or less playing creative mode with all the stuff coming in. I have 20 boilers and 2 lasers connected to them. I also build laser spaceship for our community center with 4 lasers and 16 boilers, but I'm getting a bit bored with that. Only my first boiler in a new base is exiting, the rest is kinda 'meh'.
 

Hoff

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Oct 30, 2012
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how big do you set your world borders at? On ours, we have 4 people, and ive been minimum 5K blocks in all directions, sometimes up to 12K blocks from spawn. Is this a lot?
We have it set in a circle with the radius at about 4.5k blocks IIRC.

Comparatively I was on an anarchy server and traveled out 100k blocks. It's all up to the server really.
 

Dorque

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Jul 29, 2019
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Sure, more efficient systems are completely fine, because it causes the player to think about how each part works together. If you make a simple energy gain loop, however, you don't have to think anymore. An initial investment is used, sure, but you don't get anything out of it if you just leave it without the fear of something happening.

I guess what I am saying is that, sure, you can use infinite power. Just don't expect us to condone such a system.


I use my "infinite power" to power the things I actually want to; for me, playing a tech pack is all about automation and the way that I see it, the whole point of automation is not having to do the work yourself once it's up and running.

I'm quite proud of having extensible solutions to automate production of most of the things that I want.

And as a side consequence to that, I also supply many of the building-focused members on my server. I gather and refine the materials, they make the cool constructions happen; it's a good partnership and I can be every bit as proud of what they accomplish with the resources I bring them as they are.
 
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