MultiFarms with Autarchic Gates and Saplings?

[MCKerrnel]

I'm experimenting with multifarms and have used some Iron and Diamond Autarchic AND gates to regulate restocking of the dirt and fertilizer in the farm. Works great.

I am a little confused by how to get the saplings out of the farm, and more importantly, how do I regulate the sapling inventory, or is that not a problem once it gets up to full processing?

1) Is there a way to use an autarchic AND gate to detect sapling levels? Same for seeds, etc.
2) If I used a gate to detect full inventory, which inventory is it detecting, or is it detecting all slots for everything full?
3) Can some enterprising person let me know (or update one of the wikis) which side to pull saplings from? I've heard every cardinal direction, have heard top vs. bottom hatch... Can I get away with 1 hatch in a corner on the bottom?

Much appreciated!

 

[gattsuru]

Not for saplings or seeds (soil and fertilizer /does/ have a Gate condition), but the Multifarm will automatically do a lot of management for you. Item removal systems, such as wooden pipes or AE Import buses, can only pull from the eight box bottom right inventory, while the top twelve boxes will hold the soil and sapling reserves for operation unless you remove them by hand.

Full Inventory will only trigger if every slot has at least one item in it -- this includes the Fertilizer and even Bucket slot. It does not seem dependent on number of items per slot, so a half-full stack of dirt will still count for that slot.

Using a hatch on the bottom automatically ejects items into inventories or pipes directly attached, saving some complexity (although reducing some management options). With RedPower tubes, you have to push seeds from the top, soil from the north, and fertilizer from the west. Other than that, it doesn't matter, whether you're using AE Export/Import/Storage Bus or just transport piping stuff in.

I've found it beneficial to use two hatches or a hatch on a corner side, simply to have the extra interfaces for pipes, but you could use just one.

 

[casilleroatr]

The multifarm regulates its own stock of seeds/sapling. It will bring them into its inventory and fill it and once it reaches a surplus it will start autoejecting them through a hatch into a buildcraft item pipe. But this hatch must be on the bottom. By bottom, I mean lowest row so corners or edges are ok so long as the hatch is on the bottom. You don't need a gate or a redstone engine. I don't know if there is a gate conditional for it but if you want to fix it to eject saplings before you have filled up the multifarms buffer, try putting a junk item like arrows in the slot. I think there are about 6 slots for saplings seeds to go in. So adding an arrow (or any old non plantable thing) to a slot will reduce the inventory by 64 per slot causing the farm to reach surplus sooner, allowing you to start producing saplings much sooner. If it is a monocrop farm, I can't see any reason to have more than one slot available for saplings or seeds.

 

[MCKerrnel]

So in this context there really isn't a point to setup a system to stock the farm with saplings? Just manually put in 6 stacks and collect the surplus? Sounds like I'd do the same for crops as well... I already have all of the product coming out (wood, apples, sand) so that works well, and I've got gates making sure fertilizer and dirt are being supplied (at least for the tree farm), so from what I'm reading I'm already set?

 

[Runo]

there could be cases where you run out of saplings via luck of the draw, but its unlikely. maybe with balsa's wimpy little leaves?

 

[MCKerrnel]

This farm is more for me to play around with biomass so I'll be using oak saplings. There shouldn't be any shortage with those.