Not enough saplings...

[Airship]

Hi!

I recently made myself a SC treefarm (1.4.7 btw) in the hopes of making biomass for biofuel to use in a boiler or two. Problem is, I don't seem to get enough saplings... It worked fine at first (I had assembled a buffer of saplings whilst setting up the fermenter), but after a couple of hours, i noticed that the saplings couldn't keep up with the demands of the fermenter at all.

The farm is the seemingly standard-ish setup of an 16x14 'E' farm detailed in this thread: http://forum.feed-the-beast.com/threads/how-to-make-a-good-tree-farm.10036/, and I use normal oak saplings. I fuel the cart entirely with planks made from the logs, so the cart is not eating any saplings for fuel or anything.The fermenter is powered with a powerline going directly from another boiler, and it uses mulch and water to create the biomass.

Does anyone have a clue of why it's not keeping up? Is the farm too small? Any nerfs I haven't heard about? Is the farm too big (I'm noticing that the cart takes quite a bit of time to go around the track, by the time it's finished a round the fermenter has used up the entire batch of saplings from the last round). Would putting up a roof help to limit the amount of big trees?

Any help here would be very much appreciated!

 

[Saice]

I dont know have any nerfs you might just need more trees or break the farm up to have two carts working at the same time.

Personaly I like mega awesome super wheat farm for my biomass production becuase of the free mulch you can get with it. Sure it takes more wheat but you can stack those guys or just make them huge and use golems.

 

[ShneekeyTheLost]

I dont know have any nerfs you might just need more trees or break the farm up to have two carts working at the same time.

Personaly I like mega awesome super wheat farm for my biomass production becuase of the free mulch you can get with it. Sure it takes more wheat but you can stack those guys or just make them huge and use golems.

What is the maximum size a Golem can cover? Was it something like 16 x 16 square?

 

[Saice]

What is the maximum size a Golem can cover? Was it something like 16 x 16 square?

It is fairly large I have not tested it fully. But it seems to be at lease 16 blocks with specs or preceptive cores. I tend to make 9x9 farms with water in the middle for most things. And then make a huge cluster of them 3x3(9x9s) in this setup I just put four golems one on each corner and it works really well and you can do it without the vision bonus on any golem. I then use 4 wood tie to chests at the corners that I then pipe away with RP tubes in most cases.

This is just for speed but believe you can pull of the 27x27 farm with just 1 straw and 1 wood golem in the middle if you wanted.

 

[Mash]

My suggestion?

Use the MFR Harvester+Planter if you're after saplings. The requirement to keep them running is a bit steeper than it is to operate the SC farms, but if you can spare about 30~ mj/t(Or the EU equivalent - it takes both), you should be able to keep it going indefinitely. In any case, the Biofuel you produce will more than make up for the MJ cost.

Personally, I'd use a Bioreactor if you take this route, though. I assure you that no fermenter will be able to keep up with all of the saplings you get if you use redwood saplings for the trees.

 

[adjl]

My suggestion?

Use the MFR Harvester+Planter if you're after saplings. The requirement to keep them running is a bit steeper than it is to operate the SC farms, but if you can spare about 30~ mj/t(Or the EU equivalent - it takes both), you should be able to keep it going indefinitely. In any case, the Biofuel you produce will more than make up for the MJ cost.

Personally, I'd use a Bioreactor if you take this route, though. I assure you that no fermenter will be able to keep up with all of the saplings you get if you use redwood saplings for the trees.

Just make sure you don't have the redwood next to anything you like. When redwood leaves grow into something, they take the place of whatever block they grew into. This, coupled with the fact that they can easily have a radius of 6 or more, makes trying to keep one walled in a rather bad idea.

 

[lazaruz76]

I would try putting a block above each sapling location one block up from the height of the small trees to limit the growth on them. that should allow you cart to move around the track a little faster as it would have less wood to cutdown.

 

[Sphinx2k]

i made an mistake in my treefarm...i lighted it with wrathlamps. The invisible light blocks of the lamps prevent the trees from growing.

 

[id_missing]

It is fairly large I have not tested it fully. But it seems to be at lease 16 blocks with specs or preceptive cores. I tend to make 9x9 farms with water in the middle for most things. And then make a huge cluster of them 3x3(9x9s) in this setup I just put four golems one on each corner and it works really well and you can do it without the vision bonus on any golem. I then use 4 wood tie to chests at the corners that I then pipe away with RP tubes in most cases.

This is just for speed but believe you can pull of the 27x27 farm with just 1 straw and 1 wood golem in the middle if you wanted.

If you have both perception plus the spectacles a golem can just barely cover a 27x27, in my testing, however because you want the straw golems to replant in most cases I've found you need at least 2 straws with the spectacles to cover the 27x27 area, and 1 wooden with perception and spectacles.

 

[Saice]

If you have both perception plus the spectacles a golem can just barely cover a 27x27, in my testing, however because you want the straw golems to replant in most cases I've found you need at least 2 straws with the spectacles to cover the 27x27 area, and 1 wooden with perception and spectacles.

Sounds reasonable. I prefer on the 27x27 the 4 and 4 at the corners myself so I'll be sticking to that but it is good to know the full limit in case I ever try and build super sized farms.

 

[AlanEsh]

I fire boilers with the logs form my SC tree farm. Prior to firing up the boiler I had about 8000 logs and 5000 saplings. I'm also using an "E" farm, probably 16x16. However I have added two more "loops" to it and the single cart is keeping up just fine.
So, this suggests you can add a more track and increase your supply that way easily enough.
I've also heard people say if you spread out your loops so there is more space between your tracks you'll end up with trees generating more saplings since they have more space to grow leaves.

 

[Whovian]

i made an mistake in my treefarm...i lighted it with wrathlamps. The invisible light blocks of the lamps prevent the trees from growing.

NEPTUNEPINK! *Shakes fist*

 

[lazaruz76]

Lamps under the track... There you go

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 2

 

[Neoxon]

There a "Apple Oak Sappling" in forestry that give you so much apples and sappling if you be able to mutate and get the beast mutation.

 

[Norfgarb]

Yeah breeding forestry trees gives an awesome supply but it can take a while to get mutations you want.