Renewable saltpeter?

[malicious_bloke]

Is there a way to do this?

Because :reasons: I want to make a fully automated and self-sustaining gunpowder factory.

I have plans for the sulfur and coal dust production lines but i'm having trouble trying to find a way to make saltpeter.

Anyone?

 

[gold49]

Pulverizing sandstone and I think bees make it

Edit: checked, sandstone makes something else

 

[malicious_bloke]

Any idea which bees?

 

[Harvest88]

I don't know how "relevant" this is anymore but in the older versions of RC the saltpeter spawn blocks (they looks like bedrock I believe) in the desert that will slowly "convert" sand blocks into Saltpeter ores. I heard people had a system of quarries and fillers to automate the harnessing of these system. I am not sure if they exists or even if you have RC to play around with. But it MAY still be option.

 

[GreenZombie]

Saltpeter spawns in desert biomes as long as there is sand at least 2 blocks deep. A combination of a buildcraft filler and an IC2 advanced miner (with saltpeter ore whitelisted) should be able to extract it automatically and replace the sand blocks as they get used up. rednet controller / CC / redstone will be needed to reset the miner and filler to start over.

 

[pizzawolf14]

Before I even looked at this thread I knew what was up and was already planning a fire joke...Mildly disappointed that you explained your reasons for needing saltpeter

 

[asb3pe]

Don't think there's any bee to make saltpeter, i'm not the biggest bee expert but I've done em enough to know pretty well that I'm correct. I'd say you have to go with Harvest88's and Chris Becke's explanation. I hear the respawn rate is pretty low tho, but that seems like a project right up your alley, bloke.

I don't have my game running, but pulverizing sandstone makes TE Niter - however I'd still check to see if they're equivalent, niter and saltpeter. They should be, but I don't think they are, unfortunately.
EDIT: Aha, pulverizing niter to saltpeter was removed from the game over 2 years ago, according to this thread.

 

[gold49]

Well, looks like I also was wrong on bees. Looked into it a bit and all those bees are gone it seems (no idea how long or why I thought they still exist)

 

[darkeshrine]

Pulverizing sandstone and I think bees make it

Edit: checked, sandstone makes something else

Pulverising sandstone makes TE Niter, which should be a substitute for saltpeter.

 

[rhn]

MFR laser drill should have a focus for it.

Also isn't Niter and Saltpeter usually Oredicted? Because I think there are several sources of Niter around.

 

[asb3pe]

Pulverising sandstone makes TE Niter, which should be a substitute for saltpeter.

It turns out they are indeed equivalents in the gunpowder recipe, in Infinity modpack v1.5.1 - I have a feeling Bloke is probably playing his own custom modpack tho, perhaps without Thermal Expansion.

There's even a rather plain boring recipe from Natura mod, 4 Natura sulfurs gives one gunpowder. But the other sulfurs don't work, and no idea how to generate Natura version.

 

[Someone Else 37]

You can get Natura sulfur from some of the clouds in the Nether.

Also, if I remember correctly, Mekanism provides the tools to produce gunpowder from cobblestone, water, and power. I don't remember the chain off the top of my head, but the recipes are in NEI if you have Mekanism installed. One step (I think it's one of the intermediate products (gravel?) to gunpowder, but don't quote me on that) requires oxygen as a reagent, which is obtained by running water through the electrolytic separator.

 

[malicious_bloke]

Hrm, so saltpeter oredicts with niter.

This makes one's life immeasurably easier.

Cheers

 

[Ieldra]

@malicious_bloke:
I was about to say that Mekanism has an eminently sensible recipe to extract saltpeter from gunpowder when I noticed that's what you want to make. In that case, I can only reiterate what others said: pulverizing sandstone gives niter as a byproduct, which is chemically identical to saltpeter and consequently oredicted with it.

Edit:
OK, too late.

 

[GreenZombie]

Hrm, so saltpeter oredicts with niter.

This makes one's life immeasurably easier.

Cheers

But the railcraft stuff is so much more interesting...

 

[malicious_bloke]

But the railcraft stuff is so much more interesting...

Indeed, but since I don't have the dimlets to make my own desert dimension yet (and there's no desert in the overworld inside 500 blocks of me in any direction) I might have to make do.

 

[GreenZombie]

Indeed, but since I don't have the dimlets to make my own desert dimension yet (and there's no desert in the overworld inside 500 blocks of me in any direction) I might have to make do.

500 blocks is nothing. Ive had search areas exceeding 10km² looking for deserts. BoP is pretty but is can really screw with your ability to find specific biomes when you need them :/

 

[asb3pe]

Indeed, but since I don't have the dimlets to make my own desert dimension yet (and there's no desert in the overworld inside 500 blocks of me in any direction) I might have to make do.

Sounds just like the world I play in. BOP really needs to find a way to address the issue of immense distances between important vanilla biomes. In fact, once I did find a desert, I did search the entire thing for saltpeter and I found not a single block. I don't think it's supposed to be buried out of sight, the ore veins... or if they are indeed buried under normal sand, that's just a ridiculous design concept, to expect the player to excavate an entire biome to find a potentially important raw material.

tl;dr: it's prob a very good thing niter and saltpeter are equivalents because I've yet to see any indication there are Saltpeter deposits in Infinity modpack desert biomes.

 

[Bickers]

Sounds just like the world I play in. BOP really needs to find a way to address the issue of immense distances between important vanilla biomes. In fact, once I did find a desert, I did search the entire thing for saltpeter and I found not a single block. I don't think it's supposed to be buried out of sight, the ore veins... or if they are indeed buried under normal sand, that's just a ridiculous design concept, to expect the player to excavate an entire biome to find a potentially important raw material.

tl;dr: it's prob a very good thing niter and saltpeter are equivalents because I've yet to see any indication there are Saltpeter deposits in Infinity modpack desert biomes.

unsure if its on in latest versions but in 1.3.4 its disabled in the railcraft config

generate {
        B:abyssal=true
        B:copper=false
        B:firestone=false
        B:gold=false
        B:iron=false
        B:lead=false
        B:quarried=true
        B:saltpeter=false
        B:sulfur=false
        B:tin=false
        B:workshop=true

 

[GreenZombie]

unsure if its on in latest versions but in 1.3.4 its disabled in the railcraft config

generate {
        B:abyssal=true
        B:copper=false
        B:firestone=false
        B:gold=false
        B:iron=false
        B:lead=false
        B:quarried=true
        B:saltpeter=false
        B:sulfur=false
        B:tin=false
        B:workshop=true

That's in an ftb pack with universal config which uses COFHCore to spawn in most mod ores. If you delete and regenerate that config to its actual defaults it's quite different.