New to FTB -beta pack-, looking for little advice

[wolvyn]

Ive got some industrial craft stuff set up, a Hydro plant, some macers, powerd furnaces and a pair of extractors. also a couple wind mills. so newby power is good stable enough to run all that. Now im looking to expand things out some.

There is an a couple oil fields near me, fairly large ones as the oil goes up about 5-6 blocks on them.
Ive got a pair of pumps and some redstone/steam generators ready to good. But my problem is i can no longer use cactus guts to make the water proof. Which needs beeswax. I cant find a tutorial for ftb that tells me how to get beeswax. I assume its from the beehives all over the place, but ive punched them, axed them, shoveled them, picked them and that just destroys them. whats the stupid easy way to aquire beeswax? Eventually will make a refinery so can make fuel from the oil.

Ive also crafted a quarry with buildcraft, but havnt placed it as need to know how to make the waterproof pipes to pump water into my generator so i dont have to do it with buckets.

Also im completly lost with the computer craft stuff. specifically mining turtles.

I can get them to make tunnels, defult way. But I would love to be able to get my turtle to retrn to a chest i place at the start of their tunnel and drop off the ores they mine.

I found a link in the forums here that a guy made with a bunch of coding stuff in it, but i dont understand a single bit of it. The only language i speak is english, no programing languages. heres the link ( https://github.com/baturinsky/CCFun ) I actually understand sumarian cuniform more then i understand the stuff in this link.

I set up a computer, put a disk drive under it, have a few floopy disks, but thats as far as ive gotten.


Thanks in advance for help.

 

[lindyhopfan]

Bees are great fun. You need to craft a scoop. It is very easy, 1wool and 6 sticks. Break the beehives with the scoop (left click) to get some bees and possibly a comb of some kind. Bees don't stack, so you'll be grateful when you find your fifth comb because then you'll have enough to craft a apiarist's chest, and optionally convert that to an apiarist's backback, which can store a ton of bees. To get starting breeding the bees you need to build an apiary, which is a bit more complicated because you need a machine called a carpenter and another machine called a squeezer. Both run on buildcraft power. You put seeds into the squeezer to get seed oil, and you load the seed oil into the carpenter with wood logs (not planks) in a chest formation to make the impregnated casings you need to craft apiaries. Once you have an apiary, put a "princess" bee in the top slot and a "drone" in the bottom slot and you'll end up with a queen bee in the top slot, and after a little bit you'll hopefully get some bee products, like combs and a new princess and drone to replace the queen (now dead). Then you can do it again, or work on automating the process. Once you have some combs, you need one more machine to process the combs into more useful forms, a centrifuge.

Now here's the thing. You might put the princess and drone into an apiary and find that nothing else happens. This means that the queen is missing something she needs. Either she would be more comfortable in a different biome, or she might need some "flowers". Actually, all bee types need some kind of "flower", but some actually need flowers planted nearby, while others need cactus, or mushrooms, or something.

Another thing. You can sometimes get more advanced types of bees if you breed one species with another, so experiment with that. To be able to make all your bees happy and productive you'll need bee stations in each of several biomes, which the appropriate "flowers" around for each one.

Look for the forestry wiki for more information, or watch florastar's bee university videos on youtube

 

[Zjarek_S]

Cactus should work as it always did (smelt to cactus green and craft waterproofing from it). You break beehives using scoop, you get princess, often a drone and sometimes a comb. Than you can place princess and drone in an apiary, hardened casing is made in carpenter using seedoil and 8 logs in chest shape, seedoil is from squeezing seeds in a squeezer. For water you can also use aqueus accumulator instead of pumps, they are specially helpful for combustion engine.

 

[wolvyn]

I will look for her youtube videos right now, Thank you.

Far as build craft power, will the carpenter and squeezer run of the red stone generator, or do i need to use the steam gen for it? I was rather confused with the foresty wiki as it talked alot about breeding bees and didnt have an idiots guide/first step guide like the industrial craft one does.

 

[wolvyn]

I do have to say one thing, I love whoever invented the barrels, It changed my storage room from an underground system of chests and alot of chests to a smaller four tied glassed in room on the surface. much closer to my ic facilities.

 

[ShneekeyTheLost]

I will look for her youtube videos right now, Thank you.

Far as build craft power, will the carpenter and squeezer run of the red stone generator, or do i need to use the steam gen for it? I was rather confused with the foresty wiki as it talked alot about breeding bees and didnt have an idiots guide/first step guide like the industrial craft one does.

You're probably going to need at least steam to run them. Since it sounds like you have some IC power generation already set up, you may wish to consider an Electrical Engine as an immediate alternative until you can get one of the more efficient and renewable sources of power up and running.

Bees... aren't easy. If you aren't familiar with Punnet Squares, you can quite easily get lost. Here's some basics that might help, though:

* Bees can be quite picky about their environment. If you collect them in a different biome than you are trying to house them with an apiary in, they may not be comfortable enough to produce anything. For example, the Austere Bees do quite well in hot and dry areas, such as the deserts they are native to, but do poorly in cooler climes like plains and forests, or in humid areas like swamps and jungles. They are the only line of bees whom prefer cacti as their flower of choice.

* Bees tend to not produce a lot of combs by themselves. You'll want some frames to increase their production. That's eight sticks surrounding a piece of string. You can also make Impregnated Frames, which are eight impregnated sticks (which is two logs in a stick shape in your carpenter with seed oil as the liquid of choice) around some string. The Impregnated frames last significantly longer. You can put three such frames in an apiary to *SIGNIFICANTLY* increase its production of combs.

* If all you want is beeswax and honey, for waterproofing and capsules from the wax and honeyed slices from the honey, then you don't really need to get much into breeding. If you want propolis, then you can get it in small quantities by squeezing honey into liquid honey. It takes quite a bit, though, the chance is very low, but it can be used to produce a couple of Apiarist's Pipes for sorting of your bees and proper disposal of excess drones (which can clutter up storage space, as they do not stack).

* Crossbreeding meadows and forest strains might yield interesting results, although the result would probably be pretty common. Once that strain has been refined, breeding it back to either of the parent breeds might further cultivate the line. That strain is quite valuable, and you may wish to spend some time purifying that strain. In the process, however, you might end up with particularly industrious or noble lines. Crossing those lines with the parent line might further refine it, then breed the result of that to its ancestors might prove useful. Performing crossbreeding in the nether would likely require a Nocturnal bee, as it is quite dark there. Something that likes it hot and dry. You'd also need a particularly cultivated strain to crossbreed with it to really have a chance at producing a bee which is comfortable in such hellish environments.

* Jungle bees have a venomous sting, so care must be taken while handling them. They also tend to prefer vines or ferns to pollinate. Silky Propolis can be spun in a centrifuge for a chance at propolis and silk wisps. Silk wisps are a very strong material to make fabric with. It would certainly be impervious to bee stings, and might be able to reinforce backpacks to increase their storage capacity.

* Some bees have special properties. For example, Austere Bees are nocturnal, continuing to work even at night. Cultivated bees are strong workers and can even fly in the rain. You might also encounter bees which prefer caverns far away from the open sky if you are heroic enough to find them. If you are particularly skilled (or lucky) you might even be able to breed these characteristics into other strains. Patience, and a beealyzer, will be necessary to do this, it is certainly not for beginners.

 

[wolvyn]

Im located at the border of a desert, hilly redwood forest, plains (with acacia trees) with winterlands north a tad bit and jungle south a tad bit. havnt gone east past the desert and west of the redwoods is some redstone mountains. there is also a swamp a bit south of the jungle. had to run there to get my rubber trees..

thanks again for the advice, playing round in a sp world to try and figure things out some, as our mp server is being transfered from a guildies pc to an actually server today so i cant log in and do things there.

EDIT: with the redwood trees, even though it takes a full game day to drop one tree, it yeields enough wood to be burned into charcoal to make 3-ish or so stacks. Its a pitty cant actually make anything usefull with the fir wood as most the recipies ive come across require vanilla wood. beside sticks.

 

[lindyhopfan]

extra biomes xl keeps improving the "forge ore dictionary" compatibility of it's stuff, so expect to be able to use fir wood just about anywhere after an update or two.

 

[ICountFrom0]

May I just say, this is the kind of topic that I love?

Thanks everybody who added something positive to this, you make us all look SO good.

 

[Florastar]

I second that. I love when people come to help others

 

[wolvyn]

I too appriceate it, and Florastar your university is awsome I learned far far far far more then i needed to about bee's at least for now.

 

[lindyhopfan]

I love it when new people show up eager to learn!