Number crunching

[heavy1metal]

Myself and a couple others did this a few months ago in a post long buried. Since then there's been some balance adjustments and a couple new machines added.

So far, it is looking like the steam boiler just crushes the competition. I'm ignoring startup costs (clearly) in my spreadsheet, since I would plan on running it indefinitely. That and I could just use biofuel during the startup phase and transition to BCFuel once it's fully heated.

I've opened it for edit, because I know my math isn't bullet proof.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Amxoi3J1i4rRdE45N3Bac2N2dGptbWpCQXhPRkNlb2c&usp=sharing

thoughts?

 

[Omicron]

It's a bit of an apples to oranges comparison, in all honesty. Both the Petrogen and the Diesel Generator are much, much cheaper to build than a 36 HP boiler plus the required 3 steam turbines. It's a premium option, requiring a far bigger initial investment and background infrastructure; it's only fair that it should have more output, right?

Also note that the whole field of MJ-EU-conversion is extremely fuzzy, because the two energy systems scale completely differently. Buildcraft MJ is produced and consumed in miniscule amounts (0.05 MJ/t) at first, then ramps up sharply through the midgame and eventually levels off towards the lategame, with the most hungry machines accepting 16 - 48 MJ/t (except for Extra Bees, which completely falls out of the raster). EU production and consumption starts far above MJ (2-10 EU/t), stays at that level for a while and gets outscaled by MJ, then turns right around and absolutely explodes towards the endgame (2048 - 8192 MJ/t), with energy storage measured in tens of millions.

The result is that regardless of what device you choose to create EU out of Buildcraft-compatible fuels, the result will 1.) always be completely overpowered at one point in the game and at the same time completely underpowered at another point in the same game (for example, a steam boiler all of a sudden looks really crummy when you ask it to power a matter fabricator on its own), and 2.) always be completely incomparable to any other such means, unless they were developed by the same mod author.

 

[BeastFeeder]

The steam boiler is really good, but getting all the steel together for an HP takes quite awhile. I like using the industrial steam engines for MJ generation, but they take do a decent amount of steel themselves. Once you get a mass fab running for awhile and get a bunch of iridium though, high end solar panels blow away the steam turbine for EU generation.

I like the HP steam boilers though just because I think they're more fun to have than solar panels.

 

[heavy1metal]

I've got 5 blast furnaces churning out steel at the moment and ~40 stacks of iron laying around. Figured I'd put the iron to good use. But what omicron said is a good point, higher yield comes at a higher cost. You're not making a steam boiler on your first day ;-P.

I'm re-designing everything and just trying to maximize my fuel usage and since that matterfab draws eu 24/7, figured steam was the best choice for continuous use. But a full size steam boiler tops out at 200eu/t with excess steam (though not enough to run another turbine). I may just deck the halls with petrogens, space requirements for 2-3 boilers is just too much.

As Beast mentioned, if I make a steam boiler I may just use a steam boiler for MJ production.

Thanks guys!

 

[Abdiel]

Crunch the numbers on how long you have to run the boiler to make more EU than you would in a generator, if you take in account all the fuel you need to burn through at minuscule efficiency to heat up the boiler. You might be surprised.