MFR Farm (Harvester / Planter combo)

[Miranda]

Guys I tried to create a tree farm with a Harvester and a Planter. But after 1 day or so, the farm just stops working.

I tried it on Monster 1.1.1, Monster 1.1.2 and the newest agrarian skies.
Turns out the trees aren't droping enough sapplings ._. and after a while the whole system just stops, because it ran out of saplings.

I have 1 harvester with a +8 range upgrade, 1 planter with a +8 range upgrade. A itemduct taking items from the harvester and dumping in a few chests and in the planter. The duct connected to the planter has a servo with sapplings in the whitelist. The 'duct-path' to the planter is in vacuum mode, and the path to the chests is in dense mode. So the saplings should go to the planter first, right?

Anyway. After 30 or so hours I checked my systems and there were no saplings ._. Not planted, nor in the chests. Only the ones in the planter (because it was set to not consume the last item).

I'm planting Oak Saplings. Any suggestions to how can I farm leafs and wood in a automated way?

 

[malicious_bloke]

A problem with the MFR harvester/fertilizer/planter setups I've used in the past is that saplings, being a product of leaf decay rather than the trunk, tend to fall outside the scan radius of the harvester quite a lot.

When that happens they just sit there as entities until they despawn.

What I tend to do is surround the farm plot with vacuum hoppers from OpenBlocks, that way anything that falls outside the area will get picked up and you can feed them back into the system.

Hope this helps

 

[Golrith]

There has to be an underlying problem, as you will get a gain in saplings.

One common problem with treefarms that are not constantly cutting down the trees is that the gaps between the trees become really dark, and the sapling will pop out, the planter will then replant, just for it to pop out again, before you know it, all your saplings will despawn. Check your light levels.

Put a chest behind the harvester, and then use the itemducts to pull out of the chests. I had a strange issue where some items were not being pulled out of the harvester as the ducts couldn't find a destination. A buffer chest is just a safety net, and allows you to easily see what is being harvested.

ItemDucts are a bit buggy now they have Multipart support, make sure the entire area is chunkloaded, you could be losing the saplings that way too.

 

[malicious_bloke]

I had a strange issue where some items were not being pulled out of the harvester as the ducts couldn't find a destination. A buffer chest is just a safety net, and allows you to easily see what is being harvested

For that, i'd recommend enderIO item conduits. If you don't have a valid destination for them to route to the harvester will stop scanning rather than chewing up and wasting a bunch of your resources.

 

[Racemol]

This issue is mainly caused by leaves overlapping each other. When you have a large farm, chances are that the growth rate of the tree's is too high for one harvester. What that means is that more tree's will grow next to each other while waiting to be harvested. In turn this leads to less saplings harvested. An +8 upgraded MFR farm is quite big. One harvester is never enough to keep up with the 19x19=361 oak tree's. 3 or 4 will do much better.

There are 2 solutions.

1) Increase the amount of harvesters. This will cause the tree's to be harvested as soon as they grow, thereby decreasing the chance for leaf overlapping.
2) Decrease the size of the farm. Really, try a +1 upgrade (or none at all) for a while. A 5x5 oak farm will provide plenty of wood and one harvester is enough to keep up.

Another cause can be the light level of the saplings. When you have the farm in your house or otherwise capped off from sunlight.. chances are that saplings will pop out of the ground (grown tree's can block the light of saplings nearby). The planter neatly replaces them until it runs out. Solution is simple, replace the block above the planter with glowstone or something light emitting

Just a guess, but your problem could be related to both of these scenarios. Large farm keeps tree's grown for a while, blocking light to the un-grown saplings. Less leaf blocks to give saplings and saplings wasted by popping out of the ground.

 

[netmc]

I am running a 7x7 farm (+2 range upgrade) with no fertilizer. It grows just fine on it's own with 1 harvester and 1 planter. I have about 41k oak logs and 4k or so saplings. I seldom have more than 1 tree grown at a time, so I don't tend to lose many saplings. If I am running a tree farm with fertilizer, I will only use 1 block for growing the tree. The other spaces around are set to an invalid area to grow trees. (either by filling the other spaced in the planter with non-tree crops, or making the area around the tree a non-dirt block.)

For a harvester and planter combo, I would use no more than a +3 range upgrade. That would give you a 9x9 area for trees. If you have more than 1 tree grown at a time, the area for the harvester is too large. With multiple trees growing, you end up with overlapping leaf blocks, and lose out on sapling generation.

 

[rhn]

Guys I tried to create a tree farm with a Harvester and a Planter. But after 1 day or so, the farm just stops working.

I tried it on Monster 1.1.1, Monster 1.1.2 and the newest agrarian skies.
Turns out the trees aren't droping enough sapplings ._. and after a while the whole system just stops, because it ran out of saplings.

I have 1 harvester with a +8 range upgrade, 1 planter with a +8 range upgrade. A itemduct taking items from the harvester and dumping in a few chests and in the planter. The duct connected to the planter has a servo with sapplings in the whitelist. The 'duct-path' to the planter is in vacuum mode, and the path to the chests is in dense mode. So the saplings should go to the planter first, right?

Anyway. After 30 or so hours I checked my systems and there were no saplings ._. Not planted, nor in the chests. Only the ones in the planter (because it was set to not consume the last item).

I'm planting Oak Saplings. Any suggestions to how can I farm leafs and wood in a automated way?

As @Racemol said it is most likely an issue born from the size of your farm. Its a common problem that harvesters will simply not "scan" fast enough over such a large area and will therefore not be able to keep up. If not this then as others suggest: check light levels.

 

[Racemol]

I was working on my tree farm in Agrarian Skies today and figured I would show it here, as an example.


You'll see that all my farms are 5x5. Some of them have only 4 dirt blocks, those are speed grown with a fertilizer. If I would use 25 dirt blocks, the harvester will not keep up and waste lots of saplings.
The farms with 25 saplings do not have fertilizer and just grown on their own.
The 3 jungle tree farms in the back are used to make dirt. Two of them are set to shear leaves, to compost. The other one is in normal mode.

All the planters are level emitted which means they turn on/off when needed automatically.

 

[Drawde]

I'm planting Oak Saplings. Any suggestions to how can I farm leafs and wood in a automated way?

If you're harvesting leaves you don't get saplings. You need two separate farms for that, one harvesting normally and providing saplings to both Planters. And one set to harvest leaves.

Leaves need to decay to drop saplings, and a Harvester on normal mode pretends all leaves it harvests decay to see if they drop saplings. If you shear the leaves they don't decay, so no saplings.

 

[Miranda]

If you're harvesting leaves you don't get saplings. You need two separate farms for that, one harvesting normally and providing saplings to both Planters. And one set to harvest leaves.

Leaves need to decay to drop saplings, and a Harvester on normal mode pretends all leaves it harvests decay to see if they drop saplings. If you shear the leaves they don't decay, so no saplings.

I see... So that was the problem... Hum...

 

[Racemol]

I see... So that was the problem... Hum...

Hah how could I have missed that. Yeah, if you harvest the leaves there will be no saplings!

Make 2 farms. Farm 1 in normal mode to collect saplings. Use the excess saplings in the second tree farm, set to shear the leaves.

 

[namiasdf]

Hmmm, are you prioritizing insertion of saplings into the planter? I have minimum height tree farms, which still produce an excess of saplings. These are oak trees which have not been bred to have increased sapling drops (if that's a thing).

You'd have to be extremely unlucky for you to run out of saplings. This is unless of course, that you've limited leaf growth space further, by adding walls (such that leaves don't grow outwards, as well as upwards by having a height limit).

 

[Miranda]

Yeah... Guys I checked everything... Except for the havesting instead of shearing the leaves.
That was the problem.

It's solved now, but sadly I run out of Oak Saplings... Yoink ._.
Also, thanks for all the suggestions guys, you're awesome!

 

[namiasdf]

Well the leaves are where you get the saplings from. The entirety of my post is based on sapling drop rate as a function of leaf spawn space.

Cheers!