Mech's FTB Ultimate Biofuel Energy Base

[TheMechEngineer]

I love the look of pipes. So I use AE for storage instead of transportation. Things come in and go out with pipes, instead of AE Cables. One of the reasons I still use Logistics Pipes. And if not that, then mine carts. Love to see them puttering around doing things. Makes the base really feel alive.

Minecarts are cool, I haven't done them though because they take up too much room. Although they'd be an interesting project for going down into a mine delivering some charcoal.

I've updated the world download link in case anyone's interested in what the project actually looks like, I've been playing around with gold conductive pipes and just tidied things up in general.

http://www.mediafire.com/download/84d3l975j84l9no/Mechs_2014_FTB_Engineering_World.zip

 

[HeilMewTwo]

I like the glass floors and ceiling, though wasn't there some sort of hardened glass in ultimate? If there is maybe you should use that for your factory.

 

[TheMechEngineer]

I like the glass floors and ceiling, though wasn't there some sort of hardened glass in ultimate? If there is maybe you should use that for your factory.

Thanks, yeah there is hardened glass, you need pulverised obsidian and lead to make it. As far as I know though you can't turn it into microblocks, so it's kinda limited in uses....otherwise I'd use it.
The irradiant glass panes (which you use to make advanced solar panels) look awesome too, unfortunately they're only used as a crafting item and can't be placed as a block.

 

[KingTriaxx]

I always used Glass Viewers from Xycraft, because I liked the connected textures, also not microblockable, which is too bad.

A Steve's Cart Treefarm is hideous amounts of fun. Watching the mini-map as it chops down the trees in real time is something I spent a few hours doing.

I just built a factory that uses Minecarts to sort ores for processing and two small trains to bring goods I mine to the system. Very cool,but you're right, they take a lot of space.

 

[HeilMewTwo]

Thanks, yeah there is hardened glass, you need pulverised obsidian and lead to make it. As far as I know though you can't turn it into microblocks, so it's kinda limited in uses....otherwise I'd use it.
The irradiant glass panes (which you use to make advanced solar panels) look awesome too, unfortunately they're only used as a crafting item and can't be placed as a block.

But it looks like you are using solid glass blocks there.

 

[TheMechEngineer]

Update on the progress, I've been doing a lot of random stuff like killing the enderdragon, making an advanced jetpack and nanosuit armor.
The underground factory is looking a lot better now and it's just about time to construct the big Railcraft tanks and just get a basic system going which can be expanded later.[DOUBLEPOST=1414299198][/DOUBLEPOST]Biofuel factory construction is now underway, the biomass Railcraft tank is done and I'm getting ready to put in the first fermenter. Just gotta plan out the plumbing and we should be good to go.

I've also done a little design work on the arboretum peat bog setup to make it look a little more interesting.

[DOUBLEPOST=1414375855,1414280305][/DOUBLEPOST]Workin' on the plumbing for the fermenters!
And yes that second screenshot shows an accurate tank reading, there's already 850 buckets of biomass just from running one fermenter And I'm planning to have 12 fermenters in total.

[DOUBLEPOST=1414382539][/DOUBLEPOST]The biofuel Railcraft tank is done.

[DOUBLEPOST=1414384158][/DOUBLEPOST]World download link updated: http://www.mediafire.com/download/i5x9uoql37e2192/Mechs_2014_FTB_Engineering_World.zip

 

[HeilMewTwo]

Cool, are you going to go for diversity with your biofuel setup or will it just be the biomass?

 

[TheMechEngineer]

Cool, are you going to go for diversity with your biofuel setup or will it just be the biomass?

Oh the biofuel will be used in Railcraft steam boilers to make the MJ and EU power, the biomass tank is there as a buffer. Biogas engines will be running all the sugarcane harvesters, fermenters and stills and they'll be using biomass. So it's kinda being used as a fuel source as well but just to run the factory engines. But the biofuel is the liquid gold and there's going to be a lot of it.[DOUBLEPOST=1414473399,1414389054][/DOUBLEPOST]The first 36HP Railcraft boiler is done, I'm not ready to start running it until I do more work on the biofuel factory and get industrial steam engines set up.

On the subject of the biofuel factory, there's been more work on the plumbing and now the first Forestry still is up and running.

 

[HeilMewTwo]

Cool, how are you getting all these resources without quarrying?

 

[TheMechEngineer]

Cool, how are you getting all these resources without quarrying?

Good question, I guess just normal Minecraft caving helps get all the stuff I need right now....although that being said I'm already starting to work on bee breeding so that I can get some resources (like iron, copper, tin etc.) from bee production rather than caving.

Another new development aside from the biofuel factory, I've just been working on automated charcoal-making technology and came up with this.
HeilMewTwo I liked your idea for making some stuff with autocrafting tables, so I decided to throw one in to manufacture planks to fuel the furnaces

[DOUBLEPOST=1414567546,1414496233][/DOUBLEPOST]The first Applied Energistics ME Network is up and running. I've had one of these before but never knew you can run them off Buildcraft MJ power, which is awesome.
I also finished the Applied Energistics assembler chamber thing, but I don't quite understand how they work yet. I gotta spend some time reading wikis to understand how they work.

Do any of you guys know if I can hook up two (separate) wireless access points that connect to the same network? The range is kinda small and I want to put one access point at the factory and another one at the house.

 

[HeilMewTwo]

And it looks good! I'm surprised at how much you must mine!

And yes you can have as many as you want.

 

[TheMechEngineer]

And it looks good! I'm surprised at how much you must mine!

And yes you can have as many as you want.

Awesome thanks for the info, I'll try experimenting with it. I can't do a whole lot until I get sugar cane farms built and the first steam boiler goes online because right now the power situation isn't very flexible.
I guess I do mine a reasonable amount, but once I throw the ores into a macerator and get twice the output I don't really feel like I need any automatic mining stuff

 

[HeilMewTwo]

Awesome thanks for the info, I'll try experimenting with it. I can't do a whole lot until I get sugar cane farms built and the first steam boiler goes online because right now the power situation isn't very flexible.
I guess I do mine a reasonable amount, but once I throw the ores into a macerator and get twice the output I don't really feel like I need any automatic mining stuff

Fair enough. A nice setup that I like is having one wireless access point 32 blocks away from my base in each of the four direction, it extends pretty far and you can always add more as needed.

 

[TheMechEngineer]

Fair enough. A nice setup that I like is having one wireless access point 32 blocks away from my base in each of the four direction, it extends pretty far and you can always add more as needed.

I hooked up another wireless terminal and it works great, it's pretty cool how you can run a reasonable-sized network with just a single biogas engine.
Can't wait to start on the autocrafting stuff later!

 

[HeilMewTwo]

I hooked up another wireless terminal and it works great, it's pretty cool how you can run a reasonable-sized network with just a single biogas engine.
Can't wait to start on the autocrafting stuff later!

I still think the pipes and the tables look cooler, once I finish my semester I am so going to upload my own sort of kitchen sink map build with AE removed.

 

[TheMechEngineer]

I still think the pipes and the tables look cooler, once I finish my semester I am so going to upload my own sort of kitchen sink map build with AE removed.

Yeah do it, that'd be pretty cool.
I don't plan on having everything run on AE technology, I'm not really the kind of person who just goes with the straightforward or easiest method of doing things anyway.
The plan right now is to go with a hybrid system, where part of the factory is dedicated to small-scale autocrafting but the rest of the floorspace will be for Buildcraft contraptions like my charcoal smelter.

Also on a side note, it was a bit of a panic moment when I logged into my FTB world because it started crashing.
Turns out that it's a 30th October problem with IndustrialCraft that produces a 'LivingSpecialSpawnEvent' error, and installing a small patch fixed it.
Pretty weird but I'm just glad it didn't corrupt the world or anything because I haven't done a backup for a few days.

 

[HeilMewTwo]

Yeah do it, that'd be pretty cool.
I don't plan on having everything run on AE technology, I'm not really the kind of person who just goes with the straightforward or easiest method of doing things anyway.
The plan right now is to go with a hybrid system, where part of the factory is dedicated to small-scale autocrafting but the rest of the floorspace will be for Buildcraft contraptions like my charcoal smelter.

Also on a side note, it was a bit of a panic moment when I logged into my FTB world because it started crashing.
Turns out that it's a 30th October problem with IndustrialCraft that produces a 'LivingSpecialSpawnEvent' error, and installing a small patch fixed it.
Pretty weird but I'm just glad it didn't corrupt the world or anything because I haven't done a backup for a few days.

Thank you! And yeah that sounds pretty bad. :3

 

[TheMechEngineer]

Good news, the first sugar cane farm is up. Each harvester will manage two levels (so 2x21x21 means each harvester manages 882 square blocks of sugarcane farmland), but for now I just made one to get things running.
I'm planning to have at least 5 harvesters eventually.

 

[HeilMewTwo]

I like your old avatar better... But the farm is looking great!

 

[TheMechEngineer]

I like your old avatar better... But the farm is looking great!

lol yeah I know what you mean, I'll come up with something [DOUBLEPOST=1414722616,1414657527][/DOUBLEPOST]Alright so the bad news first, I’ve been spending way too much time on FTB projects and I’ll be scaling down my gaming time from 8 hours a day down to 3 hours.

But the good news is that the first biofuel-powered Railcraft boiler is finally all hooked up and online, making steam.
I also made 18 industrial steam engines in two separate arrays producing 8MJ/t each, making a combined 144MJ/t just running off the one boiler. Already I’ve charged up two redstone energy cells in about 5 minutes…

I’m really happy with how the steam engine arrays look, I tried to come up with a design that had a steampunk look and it seems to have worked great:

[DOUBLEPOST=1414739425][/DOUBLEPOST]Updated world download link:

http://www.mediafire.com/download/b5iboq5ae4hth8b/Mechs_2014_FTB_Engineering_World.zip