Moving Above Ground

[Kariko83]

After playing through the recent beta packs with nothing but a hole in the ground, I decided that I would move my base above ground now that the server has been moved to the released version Unleashed. I am usually not much of a builder so this is my first real attempt at balancing looks and function and was wondering what other people think of it. At no point did I cheat in anything or use creative for building purposes, only for taking pictures.

This is gonna be a bit of an image dump so you are forewarned.

The whole project originally started with the set of stairs on the upper left of the following picture and was fueled by the over production of wood from my MFR tree farm. I know it is a little hard to see here but it connects to the stairs you will see later on.

My biggest regret is not getting an initial picture of the layout process but basically I started with a 10x10 square piece that was bulked out to 5x4 sections. I then built it up to an even height with the stairs I had made and connected each pillar with cross sections. to from a floating grid.

I had no real plans for what the final product would look like at this point so I just started ad-hoc building and seeing where my muse took me. While building I realized that I had not planned the width correctly and the result of this stage is below.

The basic layout was beginning to form in my mind by this point and the section I laid out up top would be my machine room, the one without the floor. The lower section with the floor would be the entryway while the area above it would have no real function but to look good. I am still a little undecided what I want to do with the room but forced myself onward.

Here are a few shots from inside the machine room.

The stained glass I had chosen for the center image didn't come through very well but that is a creeper face in it.With that in mind I redid the face to provide more contrast.

Now that looks better but I still had no idea how to finish the walls and ceiling of the room.

I have decided to break this up into a few easier to digest chunks so I will post more later if people are interested.

 

[Riuga]

I hope lightning doesn't strike your house :S.

 

[Succubism]

Yeah man, this is one very big fire hazard if fire spread's on.

 

[Kariko83]

Thanks for the replies and yes fire is a possible issue but it isn't as devastating as it once was. I do almost nothing with fire or raw lava these days anyways.

Moving on from where I left off, I forge ahead on the walls to the vaulted ceiling room. I tried to keep the same aesthetic of the walls from my machine room but still maintaining a similar design. After they were up I began planning out my storage/power room and decided that it needed to be lower so that I could fit in all the piping, conduit, and tanks I was planning on putting in the room.

I decided the power/storage room was going brighter than the dark, dank places I usually dedicate to power so I decided to go with a simpler more open design for the room.

Here are is the staircase, sans stairs, that provides access from the entryway to the power room. As you can probably tell it is hidden behind the entryway stairs.

After moving in the first of my boilers, seen above, I decided that I needed additional lighting and also removed some of the cross bar supports to open it up a bit more. The blocked out frames are place holders for my Iron tanks while the pillar things are placeholders for my boilers.

Here is a close up of what is supplying my boiler at the moment. It is simply an extension of the logistic pipe network that I have feeding my other boilers at my old base. If anyone wants a more in depth look at how I feed my boilers let me know and I will put together a good look at it. This picture was taken before I looped power around so it was self powered.

Next post I complete the build, was going to be this one but the forums ate my first version of this post.

 

[VikeStep]

I only have one thing to say:

Spoiler

This is damn awesome, good work

 

[Bellaabzug21]

Other than the tree farm design, it's perfect. Trees need space between eachother to properly grow.

 

[fergcraft]

that is quite the build you have going on their. I'm looking forward to what else you come up with.

 

[Wekmor]

Other than the tree farm design, it's perfect. Trees need space between eachother to properly grow.

That tree farm is a mfr farm, that's just how they work

 

[Succubism]

I'm willing you bet you delve into Thaumcraft stuff, one wrong move and you get lightning and there might not be any rain to clear up the fire for you.

 

[SatanicSanta]

Holy crap thats huge!

Nice work.

 

[Kariko83]

I'm willing you bet you delve into Thaumcraft stuff, one wrong move and you get lightning and there might not be any rain to clear up the fire for you.

I had not really thought about Thaumcraft Lightning mostly because I have not done much in Thaumcraft in a while. My brother on the other hand does a lot in it so I may have to find a way to mitigate the flux he generates.

Speaking of my brother, it was about this point in my build when he logged on and I gave him the tour of the place. I still had no idea on how to make the roof for the vaulted ceiling still so he offered to build one for me.

The only thing he wanted in return for completing the roof was a distinct addition for his Thaumcraft work. The challenge here was building something that kept with the wood theme but would not burn down due to the heat source for the crucible. I chose to go with a high contrast color scheme based off blood and ghost wood with birch barricades as an accent. It has since become known as the Bone Cage.

Once my brother had finished the roof, the build was complete and now we just have to move in.

Bonus image of the view of the tower from the power/storage room.

While this is the end of the main build, I intend to add an annex or two for my bees and mob based endeavors. I am thinking that they may flank the tower but I am in the early planning stages at the moment.

 

[Christian Sinclair]

If you want to protect it from the dangers of lightning, you could make a clear-glass ceiling at the top of the world. It is perfectly clear apart from the edges, and would stop any lighting from hitting your base. The only downside would be making it in bulk, but you seem to have that figured out.

 

[Gabe224]

Yeah, I would love to use clear glass but making it seems to take so long, how did you make so much?

 

[Kariko83]

Yeah, I would love to use clear glass but making it seems to take so long, how did you make so much?

I simply automated my smeltery using rednet cable and a few hoppers. The drain spouts will pour when they get a redstone signal so I setup a pulsing circuit and used rednet cable to get the signal to the spouts. Once I had that working I placed hoppers under the basins which will pull the cooled block out automatically and directed them to a chest at the end. Finally I placed a hopper directed at the smeltery controller to automatically fill it. I will provide pictures of my setup for it after I get home from work today.

 

[Gabe224]

Now I feel like an idiot... anyway thats an amazing build! Only thing I am iffy about is that the whole huge structure is supported by tiny little timber legs.

 

[fergcraft]

I love how the thaumcraft room looks like a cage

 

[netmc]

Good work. The bone cage looks nice. I'm still trying to figure out what I'm going to do for my thaumcraft room.

 

[NashuLee]

Wow...I always love these types of pictures and threads and such, but man, they make my 9x9 feel so insignificance!

 

[Kariko83]

Now that I have moved most of my stuff into the facility, I come baring more pictures as i changed a few things.

First up is the creeper faced room. I was unsure of what it was I was going to place within this room at first so I had my brother build a Library of sorts in it. Unfortunately it looked god awful and obstructed the windows in the room so I tore it down and started anew. Good new was that it game me an idea about what I was going to place in there and the results are below. On the Left I have my mystcraft area, on the Right I have my personal enchanting library, and Up above is the trophy balcony.

Next is my Machine room which I have started moving in the machines for my AE autocrafting as well as my wood processing for my MFR farm. If anyone wants a description of what everything does here I would be more than happy to oblige.

After that we have my Storage and Power room.

On the left is my liquid storage. I only have one tank left to move in but I sadly lost all the contents of my Biofuel tank because I had accidentally placed it under the spawn point and could not pump out of it.

Straight ahead is my AE autocrafting and storage. I use DSUs for all my high capacity storage with 16k AE modules for everything else. Currently my Crafting computer has 180 recipes in it, not counting the ones in the ME interfaces in my machine room. The cyclic assembler and furnace autocraft sawdust into its compressed form and cook it into charcoal. I need to move it to the machine room now that I proved it works.

On the Right are my Boilers with three fed by planks from my sawmills and one fed with charcoal from the sawdust byproduct. At the moment I have 4 boilers attached to 64 industrial steam engines outputting 512MJ into my power network. Mind you I am only using a fraction of that currently but it doesn't hurt to future proof my power a bit. I am still planning to have another 4 more boilers eventually so I can run a few quarries at full power.

Finally I have a few shots of the bone cage as my brother has begun to move into it. Currently the top floor is empty so I did not take any pictures from there.

I plan on taking more pictures as I move more stuff in and build my annex but that is for another day.