Opinions wanted on "best" initial setup for me

[MrZwij]

What's the hat/helmet in the hazmat suit? Or is there one?

 

[Golrith]

The cart will plant the saplings on both sides of the track and space them 1 space apart. Just give them the saplings in its interface and you can forget them after. It totally beats Forestry in all my tests. Since it does not limit the growth height for the trees you still get the massive oak trees. More bang for the buck plus. It don't do rubber at all but it makes up for the tree production. I like a 24x4 oval track for massive amounts of wood. A nice and simple 12x4 will produce quite well. With the cargo manager the system is fully automated. I set the cargo manager to unload the cart storage than refuel the cart. A wooden pipe and redstone engine to get the goods out slow enough for the cart to refuel but fast enough to get the wood out without causing a backup.

Now I like that idea. It's more creative then using Forestry and I feel gives you a bigger sense of achievement for building it.

 

[DoctorCube]

Now I like that idea. It's more creative then using Forestry and I feel gives you a bigger sense of achievement for building it.

Yeah I can't wait to try this out in my Magic Pack world since it also has Steve's carts I think. Not only is it a bit cooler than running the forestry machines more importantly to me its completely adjustable. if i want a tiny 3x3 tree farm or a gigantic 64x64 tree farm I could make it happen. Hell if I make it too big I could just put down a second logger cart.

No one person would need that much lumber, but I'm looking into doing factories with one purpose that creates enough for all our friends on the server.

 

[Zelfana]

The most complicated part about doing the tree farm with Steve's carts is assembling the cart for it. I don't see a way to revert an assembled cart if you make a mistake so you have to make it right or you might lose your diamonds used making sawblades. What you need to have on it are coal engine, the woodcutter tool and some storage space. Optionally you can equip a fertilizer to speed up growth with bonemeal and also extra storage just to make sure it can fit the items in it. Doesn't hurt to have them, if you don't have bonemeal it doesn't simply use it. You have to use an iron hull, wooden one can't fit any tools. Next, set up a loop track with dirt next to it, you can place it every other block as the cart will plant saplings every other block. Place one advanced detecter rail on the track and next to that a cargo manager that you configure to take out all inventory items and put in fuel (autocrafting table can make some planks from the wood) and bonemeal. And you're almost done, only some piping needed to get the wood, apples and extra saplings where you want them or just visit the cargo manager directly every once in a while.

Diamonds used are basically the same but you don't have to use any humus or supply fuel for it. It is 100% automated with less work.

 

[MrZwij]

Throw a solar engine on the tree-cutter cart with the coal engine to greatly slow down fuel consumption. It really only needs fuel to run while it's removing the leaves above itself (and at night of course ).

 

[Sara Dr In te House]

While you could add the solar engine to the cart, the amount of wood produced with the cart setup is crazy already. I have experimented with a large 24x12 setup and 8 furnaces changing into charcoal could not keep up with the output by a nice margin. Steve's Carts works well with Railcraft's unloaders as well. You could have the cart stop at the unloader, drop it's saplings and apples at the unloader then continue to the cargo manager to load up on fuel and bones/bonemeal if you have the fertilizer module installed if you wish. Tons of flexibility.

 

[Zelfana]

While you could add the solar engine to the cart, the amount of wood produced with the cart setup is crazy already. I have experimented with a large 24x12 setup and 8 furnaces changing into charcoal could not keep up with the output by a nice margin. Steve's Carts works well with Railcraft's unloaders as well. You could have the cart stop at the unloader, drop it's saplings and apples at the unloader then continue to the cargo manager to load up on fuel and bones/bonemeal if you have the fertilizer module installed if you wish. Tons of flexibility.

I made even longer loop and the cart can go around it with less than a stack of planks even with all the trees grown. So having furnaces making charcoal is overkill imo and the solar panels do not save much wood as leaves block sunlight. Didn't know RC unloaders worked, I'm using the cargo manager. Both do the same thing anyway. I had to use two cargo managers because there is no way to get only specific items out of the cargo manager into chests. So the second one is only for the fuel. I don't actually have fertilizer, that's also overkill. The trees grow fast enough without it if you make the loop long enough. I used some gate magic to make the autocrafting table only make planks when necessary. Had to fill the extra space in cargo manager with stone swords so it's not filled completely with planks because the cart can only hold three stacks of fuel anyway.

I did some comparison testing between the arboretum+logger combo (no forester but uses external fuel) and the cart that uses some of the wood as its fuel. The cart system wins by a huge margin, it is about 6 times faster. The chance for large oak trees makes the difference larger but even without those it would be superior. Saplings and apples are also collected better and leaves taken out faster. Also the fuel usage is minimal, full round takes less than 20 planks so the loop could be even longer. This loop produces over 2,5 stacks of wood.

The initial cost is a bit higher due to tracks and they are slower to make, too. But both take 5 diamonds.

 

[Sara Dr In te House]

That is why I mentioned this system. When I compared the output of both for about an equal size space the cart won due to the size of the trees that may be grown. Making a large tree farm is easy and it easily pays for itself. I don't use charcoal for the system and the way it produces logs I don't mind the waste of it burning the logs or saplings for the fuel. I usually produce more saplings than the cart can burn per pass.