Need more Mj storage.

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nethervvoid

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Jul 29, 2019
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That is the set-up I use. Lava takes 20,000 MJ to make. And 1 bucket gives 18,000 MJ in a Magmatic Engine. So 90% conversion efficiency. Not really any worse than 2 Redstone Energy Cells. But yeah, you don't need to use Netherrack in a Magma Crucible. You can just use cobblestone more easily.

But yeah, a 7x7x6 railcraft tank full of lava stores 90 Million MJ.


With that much, you can pretty much run down the lava tank until it's 50% full, using BC Gates, then turn on your steam boiler to make more.

The nice thing about Lava, is it can run in a variety of engines / generators. And you can always siphon some off into a Portable Tank as a "battery" of sorts, for powering Quarries and the like. Much cheaper to make a Portable Tank than a new Redstone Cell. A tank stores 8 buckets, so that's about 160,000 MJ per tank, which requires 1 Tin, 4 Lead, and 4 Obsidian.

I think this is the new system I'm going to make. Thanks for the post. The only difference will be I'll have a string of 6 or so energy cells for portable energy. They're a pain to make but with quarried resources I don't worry a lot about how much they cost to make.
 

Captain Neckbeard

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That is the set-up I use. Lava takes 20,000 MJ to make. And 1 bucket gives 18,000 MJ in a Magmatic Engine. So 90% conversion efficiency. Not really any worse than 2 Redstone Energy Cells. But yeah, you don't need to use Netherrack in a Magma Crucible. You can just use cobblestone more easily.
Hell, pretty much everyone has had that setup forever, if only for remote power. Tank Carts and Mystcraft portals.
It's not much different now, just replace the carts and portals with Liquid Tesseracts. Power Tesseracts are still only for when your power infrastructure good enough that you think, "Eh, 75% of infinity is still infinity."
 

Guswut

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"Eh, 75% of infinity is still infinity."

If you are using a very basic usage of the term "infinity", and, of course, hyperbolically considering "fifteen buttloads and two craploads" an infinite amount. You will still have to move your lava pump (.....someday, I'm sure).
 

jnads

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Hell, pretty much everyone has had that setup forever, if only for remote power. Tank Carts and Mystcraft portals.
It's not much different now, just replace the carts and portals with Liquid Tesseracts. Power Tesseracts are still only for when your power infrastructure good enough that you think, "Eh, 75% of infinity is still infinity."
Yeah, I've made other systems. But I always go back to that one. Due to incessant nerfing, managing power systems becomes a boring chore.

Sugar biofuel is a nice one too. Managed by golems or a solar powered steve's cart harvester. Blaze Rod steam boilers were a nice one, until it got nerfed.


My next set-up, I might try using Mystcraft and making a Mushroom Island Biome world (spawns Aura Nodes like mad, with 900 Vis everywhere), and using a bunch of GregTech Magic Energy Absorber to generate power. Then use a Tesseract or IDSU to transport it.

I like the idea of exploiting a whole another world for my gains. Mooshrooms, meet Mr. Wisp.
 

Guswut

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Sugar biofuel is a nice one too. Managed by golems or a solar powered steve's cart harvester.

Did you mean sugar cane, or can I somehow use sugar itself to produce biomass for my biofuel system? Currently I've got sugarcane -> plantballs -> compressed plantballs -> biomass -> biofuel, which I thought was the optimal way to do that. Thanks!

Edited by MilConDoin on Thursday, February 21, 2013 (02/21/2013) at 11:24:01 PST.
 

MilConDoin

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Did you mean sugar cane, or can I somehow use sugar itself to produce biomass for my biofuel system? Currently I've got sugarcane -> plantballs -> compressed plantballs -> biomass -> biofuel, which I thought was the optimal way to do that. Thanks!
FTFY
And yes, you need to go the plantball route for this.
 
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Captain Neckbeard

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If you are using a very basic usage of the term "infinity"
Of course. I'm not thinking that I'm going to play all the way to the heat death of the universe without a single server reset. That would be silly. But lava systems last through map lifetimes, and a good biofuel production can theoretically go on forever.
 

jnads

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Jul 29, 2019
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FTFY
And yes, you need to go the plantball route for this.
You can technically just put the raw sugar cane into the Fermenter. But I think making plantballs saves compost and MJ.

You need 8 sugar canes to make 1 plantball. Sugar Canes give an efficiency of 0.2 in the Fermenter. Plantballs give 0.8.
 

Guswut

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Of course. I'm not thinking that I'm going to play all the way to the heat death of the universe without a single server reset. That would be silly. But lava systems last through map lifetimes, and a good biofuel production can theoretically go on forever.

Indeed, you are correct. In most cases, a basic Steve's Cart tree farm should be able to make enough charcoal to power generators to produce EU/power engines for MJ, and it isn't too hard to set up a system like that early in the game. There are enough ways to make more power than you will ever need that I don't think we need to corner ourselves with the lava thermal generator one.
 

MilConDoin

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Sugar canes can be converted directly? Oops, sorry for the misinformation then. Have a look at their fermentation value. Comp. plantballs give 500mB of biomass, so if the canes give more than ~60mB convert them directly. Using the plantballs won't save MJ and compost, because their usage is coupled to the amount of biomass produced.
 

jnads

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Jul 29, 2019
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Sugar canes can be converted directly? Oops, sorry for the misinformation then. Have a look at their fermentation value. Comp. plantballs give 500mB of biomass, so if the canes give more than ~60mB convert them directly. Using the plantballs won't save MJ and compost, because their usage is coupled to the amount of biomass produced.
Huh? The compost / fertilizer in a ferment last a defined amount of work cycles (200).

What I don't know is if Plantballs and Sugar Canes take the same amount of work cycles or not (is there an efficiency gain for using plantballs).

http://ftbwiki.org/Fermenter
http://forestry.sengir.net/wiki.new/doku.php?id=energy:fermenter
 

Captain Neckbeard

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Huh? The compost / fertilizer in a ferment last a defined amount of work cycles (200).

What I don't know is if Plantballs and Sugar Canes take the same amount of work cycles or not (is there an efficiency gain for using plantballs).
It's probably more efficient that way. At the same time there's nothing stopping you from just building a huge Golem-tended Wheat farm to Mulch Wheat so you can Ferment further Wheat and eat the surplus Wheat.
 

MilConDoin

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Scroll down to http://forestry.sengir.net/wiki.new/doku.php?id=energy:fermenter#production_calculation
One compost will produce 12 buckets of biomass (with water), regardless of the plant used. The work cycle just means, that it will only convert (12000mB/250)=48mB per cycle, while fertilizer converts (11200mB/200)=56mB per cycle. A "cycle" is not defined clearly, but if I interpret my observations correctly, it starts after a) a certain delay has passed since the last operation and b) enough energy has been added to the internal storage.
 

Vovk

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Jul 29, 2019
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would like to show some math

The largest steam boiler makes 720 steam per tick and the largest engine uses 40 steam per tick. The rate for steam to MJ is 5 to 1.


The largest iron tank you can make is 9x9x8 is 648 blocks in volume and is 10368 buckets.

10368 buckets is 2073 MJ at 5 to 1 and just a single hobbyist steam engine running at 10 steam a tick will empty it in ~51 seconds.

this is terrible.
 

Vovk

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Jul 29, 2019
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So what you are saying is that we are going to need a LOT of tanks, eh? Excellent!
:D


let's see. 5 buckets is 1 MJ. 16 buckets is 3.2 MJ

a redstone storage cell holds 600,000 MJ.

3.2 MJ per tank * 187500 tanks = 600,000 MJ

187500^1/3 is the cube of smallest sides to hold such a size. that is roughly 58. It would take a 58x58x58 iron tank to hold enough steam to equal 1 redstone energy cell - so 7x7x7 9x9x8 tanks would do it.
 

slay_mithos

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Jul 29, 2019
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would like to show some math

The largest steam boiler makes 720 steam per tick and the largest engine uses 40 steam per tick. The rate for steam to MJ is 5 to 1.


The largest iron tank you can make is 9x9x8 is 648 blocks in volume and is 10368 buckets.

10368 buckets is 2073 MJ at 5 to 1 and just a single hobbyist steam engine running at 10 steam a tick will empty it in ~51 seconds.

this is terrible.

Well, if you want to talk about math, do the math with lava, knowing that he doesn't want to quarry the nether for the netherrack, so using cobblestone instead.
I am not exactly sure that the conversion ratio would be better.


Oh, and I am not that good with numbers, but in your math, there is also something I don't get.
40 steam = 8 EU MJ > 1/5 conversion rate.

Full tank (I will trust you on the number): 10368 buckets.
1000 steam = 1 bucket.

10 368 000 steam in a single tank.
10 368 000/5 = 2 073 600 EU MJ


Then, for the time, with one engine (40 steam/t):
10 368 000/40 = 259 200 t/20 = 12 960s/60 = 216 min = 3h36

So, unless I derped very hard (entirely possible), even using a better engine would last more than 3 and a half hour on a tank.

My guess is that you treated 1 steam = 1 bucket, where all liquids are treated in mili Buckets (mB).

Feel free to correct me if I am wrong, of course.

EDIT: why did I put EU instead of MJ?
 

Vovk

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Jul 29, 2019
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I am wrong. all the steam calculations are done in mB and not in B.

Multiply all storage from my math by 1000 as well as all durations.

1 bucket is 200 MJ, 16 is 3200 MJ

you need 1000x fewer tanks.

This makes it slightly better, but still abysmal.