[Q] Universal Electricity: Crusher, saplings and energy.

[AnttiV]

I've just started to tinker with UE recently, and there's one thing that's bothering me. I figured I'd make a treefarm (or manually chop down in the beginning) to run a bioreactor (not at the computer right now, I'm not sure what it was called. That thing that takes biomass in UE anyways

What I find odd, is that while this is possible, it does not produce one bit of "excess" energy, and thus can't run anything but itself.

What I mean is: the bioreactor consumes EXACTLY the same amount of biomass (200 units, which is 2 biomass items) to produce the energy the Crusher takes to crush one sapling, which produces 2 biomass items...

Is there a more energy-efficient way to crush things, or a way to make crusher use less energy?
Or is it just utterly pointless to try to use saplings (or any items that produce just 2 biomass items) for energy with UE altogether?

I think this is just a bit weird, even making the bioreactor use/crusher to take 199 units to produce the 2 items (and thus 200 units) would be preferable. It would then be possible (if a bit stupid because the energy return would be so low) to use saplings for power in UE.

 

[DaWhiskers]

Have you tried the other items available to make biomass, IIRC wheat produces 4 biomass from one wheat. This would give you a net gain.

 

[Ripley]

Did you put speed upgrades in your crusher?
Speed upgrades will boost the speed which I think don't make it consume more energy and the energy is equal to the operation time(ie it will consume less).

I've personally not tried biogenerators, I've stuck with Advanced solar panels and now I've set up a fusion reactor.

 

[PierceSG]

Fusion reactor is awesome! (The deuterium guzzling contraption that spews out hot plasma, right?)
But within Mekanism itself, try getting the electrolytic separator, dump O and output H that pipes hydrogen into a Hydrogen Generator. Use the Electric Pump to feed water into the Electrolytic Separator, needs power too though.
If you are using TE2/3, you could use an Aqueous Accumulator and liquiducts to pipe water into the Electrolytic Separator instead of the Mekanism Electric pump to save power.

 

[Ripley]

Fusion reactor is awesome! (The deuterium guzzling contraption that spews out hot plasma, right?)
But within Mekanism itself, try getting the electrolytic separator, dump O and output H that pipes hydrogen into a Hydrogen Generator. Use the Electric Pump to feed water into the Electrolytic Separator, needs power too though.
If you are using TE2/3, you could use an Aqueous Accumulator and liquiducts to pipe water into the Electrolytic Separator instead of the Mekanism Electric pump to save power.

Yep that's right, though I don't know how much energy it produces, I could find no info on how much energy those giant turbines produce, how much steam they need, how much steam the fusion reactor produce. For the moment I've set 9 turbines up and they seem to be all working and from the speed at which my Energy Cube charged it seem they produce lots of energy.

As for water, you can also use EnderIO reservoir set to output with a wrench(which is what I'm using to generate water everywhere, still not installed TE here, felt no need for it to so far).

 

[PierceSG]

I have 20 small Reactor Turbines and 1 large Reactor Turbine (3x3 small Reactor Turbines and wrench it) running on one Fusion Reactor. Not sure how it worked, I just copied Bevol's build on his spotlight and it sure is producing a lot of power.

Also, I prefer TE's new tesseracts over Ender IO's version of them since now the tesseract handles energy, fluid AND items!

Igneous Extruder for making cobblestone, stone as well as obsidian.

Glacial Precipitator for making snowballs, snow blocks as well as ice blocks. Mainly ice blocks I guess.

Aqueous Accumulator is uses slight less space compared to a reservoir.

I also like it's portable tanks and the new portable strongboxes.

The itemducts are great too.

I use all of the different mods together based on what I need or want.

Like for some certain redstone builds, I prefer BuildCraft's gates, plus pipe wires over Ender IO's redstone conduits and even MFR rednet cable and PRC (I'm not good at the programmable part).

Guess that is the beauty of mod packs. Lots of choices and best when they work great with each other.

 

[Zarkov]

If you're using RR, take a look at the water pump pipe. It only needs a single block of water below it, and doesn't need any redstone signal or power.

It works great with the hydrogen generators / electrolytic separators setup, You can run 6 (or was it 8?) pairs using one water pump pipe and a few golden waterproof pipes. They output 10 MJ / t each last time I checked.

 

[AnttiV]

1) Yes I'm aware of solar panels and I'm actually currently using them. Solar panels are awesome and my go-to source of energy when I'm playing practically any modpack (IC2 solars usually in Unleashed). However good the panels are, we must agree that they are pretty boring. They just work, you don't have to make any contraptions or build any fun frameworks for them to work. This is why I originally tried the bioreactor. I'd be able to build factory of farms and belts and crushers and whatnot to fuel the reactors and have fun with the build. And yes, it works with stuff that produces 4 biomass items once, but the question is: Why are there recipes for saplings to biomass at all, if we're not supposed to use it?

2) I haven't tried the speed upgrades, I just figured they amount of energy was per operation, not time consumed. I'll have to try that, if it works - perfect. Thanks for pointing that out.

3) I fully look forward to trying my hand at the fusion reactor (and all other Atomic Science goodness), but I'm really not there yet. I'm running with a couple of the (Advanced?) solar panels and a few Heat Generators. It's enough for now, but I was trying to gradually grow the power backbone and not just jump straight to atomic fusion. I might need to, though.

4) I don't have EnderIO installed in this pack, nor TE (or Buildcraft, IC2, or any other "big name" mods for that matter). I tried to build a pack that has something different from my usual Unleashed play. I hadn't tried UE at all, so that was a natural choice. My pack is basically a mash-up of Ampz! and Hexxit (not entirely, but you know. Most of the stuff in those mods are included).