Hey everyone! Some friends of mine and I play the FTB Regrowth 3rd party pack on a private server. We've just updated to the 0.8.0 version of Botania and are (just a little bit) frustrated that passive mana gen flowers die out after a couple of in-game days. Awful lot of work to make a bunch of them just to have them go "poof" after an hour or two of gameplay. Not worth it except as a stop-gap measure. Probably that's why the mod author changed it.
Anyway, we're now looking at thermalilies as our workhorses because those lads crank a stonking lot of mana, and we'd like to make use of this. So to that end, I've hashed out a process I think will work, but I wanted to run a couple steps by the community to see if anyone could make a suggestion that might streamline a bit. So here goes!
1. RF supply to lasers to help us build parts for harvester robots.
2. Make a sizable field of fire essence flowers and set harvester robots about the task of reaping. These should deposit to a single, central chest/inventory
3. Make golems carry the fire essence from central inventory to a buildcraft Auto Workbench. The Auto Workbench is set to build 4 fire essence surrounding a bucket = lava bucket.
4. HERE IS WHERE I'M A LITTLE SKETCHY: Somehow pump the lava buckets from the Auto Workbench to a staging tank, probably just a mariculture tank that will hold ~16 buckets' worth of lava. I recognize I'll probably have to do this in a couple of steps with step one being a wooden transport pipe and engine pumping the buckets out of the workbench. Where I'm not familiar with this modpack is how would I get a machine to right-click the buckets on a tank so that it fills up? In other modpacks I've relied on the Autonomous Activator (e.g. in Agrarian Skies 1 and 2) for this sort of task, but we haven't got access to those in Regrowth. Would a Use-core golem from Thaumcraft be able to handle a task like this? My concern here is that after the mariculture tank is filled, will the golem keep right-clicking buckets anyway, resulting in lava catastrophe? Not sure how smart their AI is, but I suspect not very because golems.
5. Once the staging tank is filled, run a decanting golem from the staging tank to a Railcraft Iron (or Steel) Tank that will hold much greater volume.
6. Run some kind of fluid transport piping from the RC tank to a Flood Gate
7. Pipe will go in top of Flood Gate, surround 4 sides with blocks of some kind, and leave bottom open for lava to be deployed.
8. Surround the open block beneath the Flood Gate with floating thermalilies
9. Expand on this design with multiple Flood Gates and thermalily arrays
10. Infinite, automated mana supply, I think.
I realize I could probably merge steps 4 and 5, but I thought that having a small buffer tank might make it easier to keep a golem filling the larger tank consistently. Maybe that's not necessary.
Another area where I'm uncertain is this: how do I get the buckets back to the buildcraft Auto Workbench once they are right-clicked into the railcraft tank? I suppose if there is some machine that would right-click them for me, the bucket would then go into its inventory and I could just setup a pipe + engine to pump it back to the auto workbench.
My other area of concern is what will happen when the auto workbench gets full of fire essence? In the event that the last bucket gets used, a golem will stuff in more fire essence which leaves no room for a bucket to be returned to that inventory which would short circuit the system. Right now I'm assuming I'll just have to tweak the size of hte fire essence field and the efficiency of the harvester robots to prevent this from happening, but if there is a simpler and more eloquent approach, I am all ears (or eyes, as it were).
Thank you for your feedback and input. I truly appreciate it! : )
Edit:
I had one proposal from the admin of my server. He suggests the following:
1. Serenade of the Nether from LP network to produce lava.
2. BC pump above it to pull lava up
3. Mana fluxfield next to pump
4. basic mechanical pipes from Mekanism from top of pump to top of thermalily tower (however tall you want)
5. Buildcraft Flood Gate at the top of the tower with the sides blocked off and the bottom open
6. surround the central shaft where the lava will be deployed with FLOATING thermalilies
7. Set a mana spreader at the bottom and link only enough of the thermalilies to it to max it out and set it to aim at the fluxfield. The rest should all go to your mana pool(s) which ought to fill in a pleasantly rapid manner
You will need to kick start this system with an engine and a little bit of coal, but once the pump has some lava going through the flood gate, the thermalilies should take it from there and you can remove the engine. Voila: infinite automated mana production.
Here's a photo of the setup but with only 4 floating thermalilies on each layer rather than the 8 that would be optimal.
Anyway, we're now looking at thermalilies as our workhorses because those lads crank a stonking lot of mana, and we'd like to make use of this. So to that end, I've hashed out a process I think will work, but I wanted to run a couple steps by the community to see if anyone could make a suggestion that might streamline a bit. So here goes!
1. RF supply to lasers to help us build parts for harvester robots.
2. Make a sizable field of fire essence flowers and set harvester robots about the task of reaping. These should deposit to a single, central chest/inventory
3. Make golems carry the fire essence from central inventory to a buildcraft Auto Workbench. The Auto Workbench is set to build 4 fire essence surrounding a bucket = lava bucket.
4. HERE IS WHERE I'M A LITTLE SKETCHY: Somehow pump the lava buckets from the Auto Workbench to a staging tank, probably just a mariculture tank that will hold ~16 buckets' worth of lava. I recognize I'll probably have to do this in a couple of steps with step one being a wooden transport pipe and engine pumping the buckets out of the workbench. Where I'm not familiar with this modpack is how would I get a machine to right-click the buckets on a tank so that it fills up? In other modpacks I've relied on the Autonomous Activator (e.g. in Agrarian Skies 1 and 2) for this sort of task, but we haven't got access to those in Regrowth. Would a Use-core golem from Thaumcraft be able to handle a task like this? My concern here is that after the mariculture tank is filled, will the golem keep right-clicking buckets anyway, resulting in lava catastrophe? Not sure how smart their AI is, but I suspect not very because golems.
5. Once the staging tank is filled, run a decanting golem from the staging tank to a Railcraft Iron (or Steel) Tank that will hold much greater volume.
6. Run some kind of fluid transport piping from the RC tank to a Flood Gate
7. Pipe will go in top of Flood Gate, surround 4 sides with blocks of some kind, and leave bottom open for lava to be deployed.
8. Surround the open block beneath the Flood Gate with floating thermalilies
9. Expand on this design with multiple Flood Gates and thermalily arrays
10. Infinite, automated mana supply, I think.
I realize I could probably merge steps 4 and 5, but I thought that having a small buffer tank might make it easier to keep a golem filling the larger tank consistently. Maybe that's not necessary.
Another area where I'm uncertain is this: how do I get the buckets back to the buildcraft Auto Workbench once they are right-clicked into the railcraft tank? I suppose if there is some machine that would right-click them for me, the bucket would then go into its inventory and I could just setup a pipe + engine to pump it back to the auto workbench.
My other area of concern is what will happen when the auto workbench gets full of fire essence? In the event that the last bucket gets used, a golem will stuff in more fire essence which leaves no room for a bucket to be returned to that inventory which would short circuit the system. Right now I'm assuming I'll just have to tweak the size of hte fire essence field and the efficiency of the harvester robots to prevent this from happening, but if there is a simpler and more eloquent approach, I am all ears (or eyes, as it were).
Thank you for your feedback and input. I truly appreciate it! : )
Edit:
I had one proposal from the admin of my server. He suggests the following:
1. Serenade of the Nether from LP network to produce lava.
2. BC pump above it to pull lava up
3. Mana fluxfield next to pump
4. basic mechanical pipes from Mekanism from top of pump to top of thermalily tower (however tall you want)
5. Buildcraft Flood Gate at the top of the tower with the sides blocked off and the bottom open
6. surround the central shaft where the lava will be deployed with FLOATING thermalilies
7. Set a mana spreader at the bottom and link only enough of the thermalilies to it to max it out and set it to aim at the fluxfield. The rest should all go to your mana pool(s) which ought to fill in a pleasantly rapid manner
You will need to kick start this system with an engine and a little bit of coal, but once the pump has some lava going through the flood gate, the thermalilies should take it from there and you can remove the engine. Voila: infinite automated mana production.
Here's a photo of the setup but with only 4 floating thermalilies on each layer rather than the 8 that would be optimal.
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