New Forestry 2.0 Farm Blocks aare a PITA

[bwillb]

I appreciate that the new farms may not be everyone's cup of tea, especially if you min/max and/or compare to a SC's tree farm.

Can you add some in-game documentation of stuff like these new farms like how Thaumcraft has its book?

 

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Can you add some in-game documentation of stuff like these new farms like how Thaumcraft has its book?

I'll be putting out a guide to describe it once I get done with some other things that got shoved on my plate unexpectedly. While not in-game documentation, it's at least a start...

 

[zilvarwolf]

I appreciate that the new farms may not be everyone's cup of tea, especially if you min/max and/or compare to a SC's tree farm.

Thank you, sir, for your insights and for verbalizing (so to speak) the reasons behind the farm changes. Your thoughts and considerations are very thought provoking.

I would like your thoughts, though, on what these new farms are going to do to players on the subject of a (basically) no-maintenance power source (biomass, obviously).

Biomass/biofuel are attractive choices for power generation because they are pretty easy to get into and can be setup (or so I hear..I fail at moistener automation) so that a player can have access to a good (but not incredible) fuel source. I prefer it over the incredible fuels because once I get it setup, I don't have to babysit very much. I don't want to have to concern myself with running out of humus, dirt, or whatever, and have my whole infrastructure fall apart because I went on a trip over the weekend and couldn't be available to feed fertilizer into my farms (or whatever).

I've accepted since getting started that the biofuels are less powerful and less efficient, because the alternative is to keep running around the world looking for black gold and hope I don't run out (or run the nether dry, I guess). I feel from your design choices that you think that's not desirable. Is that essentially accurate?

 

[HeffronCM]

Biofuel isn't incredible? One fermenter running full-bore on apple juice or liquid honey with mulch or compost can keep seven stills running full time, outputting enough biofuel to keep seven max-size high-pressure liquid-fueled boilers hot. Possibly eight, I haven't done the full math. I stopped at six boilers to leave buffers and backups so a slight production glitch didn't cost me everything. Granted, automating all of that is a challenge, but no more so than finding just the right nuclear reactor set-up.

As for feeding the farms, golems and barrels are your friends. You'll easily stock up enough apatite to keep your farms going for a week without more mining. That, or build a big enough biofuel reservoir that you can shut the whole thing down when you're out of town and fire it back up when you get back.

This is all assuming you use saplings for your biofuel production. They are far superior to cactus and sugar cane, just a bit more complicated to get enough supply.

 

[zilvarwolf]

Biofuel isn't incredible? One fermenter running full-bore on apple juice or liquid honey with mulch or compost can keep seven stills running full time, outputting enough biofuel to keep seven max-size high-pressure liquid-fueled boilers hot. Possibly eight, I haven't done the full math. I stopped at six boilers to leave buffers and backups so a slight production glitch didn't cost me everything. Granted, automating all of that is a challenge, but no more so than finding just the right nuclear reactor set-up.

Biofuel is 1/3th as efficient as refined fuel in a combustion engine, I think. 5 mj/t for 40000 t is much less than 6 mj/t for 100000 t (I guess that number was nerfed in a recent build..I swear the old forestry wiki listed it at 6 mj/t for 200000 t, making it 6 times better...but anyway)

Biomass is my go-to energy source. I like it more than lava. I like it more than biofuel, honestly, because biogas engines are super easy to work with.

But being 1/3 ( or 1/6 ) as efficient as the next tier makes it 'great', not 'incredible'. At least in my book

(edit) as an aside, biomass is a really good fuel, and probably could be nerfed to bring it in line with less sustainable fuel sources. For me, at least, being in the category of casual-play-time-darn-I-wish-I-could-be-online-more!, that's a better answer than making it harder to get the fuel.

 

[HeffronCM]

I had some bad experiences with combustion engines early on in my modding career and never looked back. I used biogas engines running on biomass until I built up enough of a reserve to get my first boiler lit. It's been all steam all the time since.

 

[Celestialphoenix]

Interestingly- given the amount of apatite needed for the new farms, fresh worlds shouldn't be a problem- but anyone wishing to continue their current world may run into a shortage. (not without a long trek to fresh chunks).

Could phosphor make a small amount (like 2mU) of fertilizer- giving only the most hardened apiarist a shot at renewable production.
(like even a small farm would need 2-3 alvearies to balance it)

 

[ShneekeyTheLost]

I'm also a huge fan of biomass/biofuel as a sustainable energy source.

Fuel is great, don't get me wrong, and combustion engines require a great deal less fiddling in order to not explode these days, thanks to the Aqueous Accumulator, but it's not a sustainable energy source. Eventually, you're going to run out of oil to refine. By then, you'd better have a renewable source ready to go.

 

[Dark0_0firE]

Or we could ask Binnie to make an Apatite Bee.

 

[Peppe]

I can see what you are going for on the circle shape' but really prefer to square it up and have 4 equal sized fields off the multi farm.
Move the dead space in corners to a path running between the fields?

 

[DoctorOr]

a) were incredibly OP, especially if their design flaw, which unintentionally allowed for stacking of several layers, was abused. Endless resources at the cost of cheap energy.

The funny thing is, the new farms can generate more wood than ever before. Old method can stack two farms max per logger, new one you grow sequoia or some other tall tree. Wood for days. The height of the multifarm is also less of an impact for trees, reeds, or cactus. It's really only wheat and peat being reduced in output.

 

[Mero]

The funny thing is, the new farms can generate more wood than ever before. Old method can stack two farms max per logger, new one you grow sequoia or some other tall tree. Wood for days. The height of the multifarm is also less of an impact for trees, reeds, or cactus. It's really only wheat and peat being reduced in output.

I don't think they were made that big for the wood were they? I thought they were that way for the saplings.

 

[HeffronCM]

I can see what you are going for on the circle shape' but really prefer to square it up and have 4 equal sized fields off the multi farm.
Move the dead space in corners to a path running between the fields?

I think I'd like to see this as well. Or an upgrade that would allow such. The spread pattern of the multi-block farm is displeasing to me, and if a block is a meter square then they can inexplicably only reach 4.2 meters diagonally while reaching 6 meters in the cardinal directions.

This is also an incredibly minor aesthetic nitpick that will nonetheless bother me for weeks.

 

[noah_wolfe]

I can see what you are going for on the circle shape' but really prefer to square it up and have 4 equal sized fields off the multi farm.
Move the dead space in corners to a path running between the fields?

They are squares. You just aren't high enough to see.

 

[HeffronCM]

Yes, they are placed down in a square, we'd just like the right angles aligned with the cardinal directions

 

[DoctorOr]

I don't think they were made that big for the wood were they? I thought they were that way for the saplings.

Then for FTB at least, since we have Extra Biomes, they can use Fir. Plenty of saplings and wood, both. This might need to wait until Extra Biomes mod author uses the API listed in Sengir's changelog.[DOUBLEPOST=1359673643][/DOUBLEPOST]

They are squares. You just aren't high enough to see.

It makes it hard to create a chunk-conscious base design.

 

[noah_wolfe]

Yes, they are placed down in a square, we'd just like the right angles aligned with the cardinal directions

Well, I wasn't being entirely serious. Those farms above are sharing a border. I'm OCDsympathizing.

 

[Mero]

Then for FTB at least, since we have Extra Biomes, they can use Fir. Plenty of saplings and wood, both. This might need to wait until Extra Biomes mod author uses the API listed in Sengir's changelog.[DOUBLEPOST=1359673643][/DOUBLEPOST]

It makes it hard to create a chunk-conscious base design.

I'm sure if all saplings get added to the dictionary, someone will figure out which tree (s) get the best sapling return to maximize biomass production.

 

[Saice]

Most people quarry or frame quarry so...not really?

Most people is subjective. I do neither.

A vast majority of my mining is done either by hand caving or with turtles branch mining at what ever level I need stuff from at the time. I dislike quarries with a passion for the large wholes they make and the crazy amount of unwanted side crap they pull up. If I really want to mine unattended I will use the IC2 miner stead of a quarry.

 

[Xakthos]

a) were incredibly OP, especially if their design flaw, which unintentionally allowed for stacking of several layers, was abused. Endless resources at the cost of cheap energy. The only reason you'd ever switch off one of the old farms was because you couldn't be bothered to deal with the deluge of resources they swamped you with. It just wasn't fun playing with them for me. I haven't built one of these things in a long, long time. I went out of my way not to build any in my legit worlds.

Well one person's OP is another person's happy toy I suppose. Since you're writing it I can see the desire to change it. Mean if you won't use what you wrote then why invest the time maintaining it. So from that perspective I understand your point. I'm not so bothered that you changed it, I'm just not really getting the 'feel' of 'yeah now this is what I want to build' from it. Honestly if it hadn't been a hulking monolith that then builds an odd shaped area around it I'd probably not even be in the thread. Something like say the water tanks where you build the outer parameter up to a certain size in say a square with a cross brace in the middle so it all connects. Even if it required X air blocks over it. Same blocks, different pattern.

The fact that you did away with the humus requirement and let the fertilizer handle it really soothes my issue of supplying it. While I can't create the apatite from thin air in a closed system I can get enough of it from quarrying a mystcraft world or 3 to run for mathematically years of real time.

b) were dead, deeply flawed code. It hadn't been touched substantially in something like six months and it showed. Everything was creaking and little things were breaking. Dirty hacks to patch things up all around. And they still cracked at some points (Arboretums going haywire with rubber trees anyone? Fixed height for all trees, making it impossible to harvest larger trees, etc.)

This I can really sympathize with. I end up dealing with a lot of code in my professional work and you can only band-aid stuff for so long before it takes up all the time resources just to keep patching it than to progress. No doubt it definitely needed re-doing. We all tend to learn new stuff over time as well so I imagine it shows considerable improvements given the amount of code work you've done and no doubt learned from.

c) felt flimsy and cheap. I like magic blocks as much as the next guy, but after a year, a single, brightly colored, cartoonish looking block which harvests melons 5 blocks out and 5 blocks above just felt wrong, almost comical. I don't want to knock the old farms too much, I had a lot of fun playing with them for quite a while, but they used up all their novelty to the point where suspension of disbelief just wasn't there anymore. Granted, the new farms can still be said to be a gigant magic block, but I am more inclined to believe, that these large structures house all that heavy machinery necessary to harvest and plant a variety of crops. Imagine a harvesting arm extending outward and circling the central structure while it works and it doesn't even feel magic anymore. (That was actually the plan at some point, but was discarded in favour of making layer placement more flexible.)

Well honestly minecraft is a bunch of magic blocks and magic activity in the name of building stuff. Mean have you ever tried to carry 64 1 meter cubed chunks of rock? I'm not sure I could really manage one honestly. So having a block that auto harvests... well on my suspension of disbelief scale it ranks pretty easy to ignore when paired with everything else. I can see however why you'd feel better about the form you chose and hey it is your mod so code as you wish.

As I think I mentioned I just wish the overall shape had been different with better space utilization. Redesigning buildings and such isn't bad but making them work with everything else just once in while gets to me. Everyone is creating these large multi-block monoliths and the aesthetics of it is falling to the wayside. I've got steam tanks, liquid tanks, turbines, fusion reactors with their coils, nuke plants and many other things that dictate exactly how many blocks x/y/z and tubes of various sorts running all over the place making them all fit properly gets to be a mess unless you just go for the infinite sprawl kind of base.

I almost feel like everyone suddenly watched Space Oddessy or something and got enthralled by the monolith. Once you get too many of them running around it gets painful in the design and planning phase. I suppose it can just be considered a challenge to overcome but forgive me if I express some resignation and lack of enthusiasm for having a system that was functioning just fine, could be hidden and otherwise taken care of easily replaced a bit suddenly from my perspective and in a manner that won't even fit properly in the areas I've built. I'll probably just start my base over, and while I know that is a daily thing for some folks my bases tend to be a tad larger than normal since I take great pains to port them as maps have to be regenerated and versions change.

There is more, but I already wrote way too much anyway. X)

tl;dr: I know some people like the old farms. I will try to keep them around as an option for a while, possibly even longer as a seperate module. I will not guarantee porting them forever and ever. Try the new farms before you knock them. Yes, they take space. Yes, balancing and development is in progress. The old farms were actively developed for almost a year. The new farms have been in development less than a month and under actual public scrutiny for a week. No, I will not try to compete with Steve Cart's tree farms or TC3 golems. (A multifarm doesn't stand a chance against the cuteness of a TC3 golem anyway.)

I do appreciate that you've not hard swapped them immediately. That is tremendously helpful, especially while they are still being fine tuned. In the end nobody can assume that any particular method will be around forever and ever so some change is always needed. I'm definitely going to keep an eye on them as you develop them and I'll probably use them at least some. Each mod brings its own aspects to the table and strengths and weaknesses (TC3 golems are cute, right up until you need 60+ of them in a relatively small area to manage the wheat crops alone). Who knows, in a while I may have a great idea on how to compensate for having another alien monolith in the middle of my fields and write off the odd shaped building as what happens when you outsource to undocumented aliens from space.