SC2 tree farm - cargo manager interfacing

[draeath]

I'm looking to build an SC2 tree farm and am brainstorming how I'm going to handle input/output from the cargo manager and furnaces.

I know I could do this easily enough with AE, but what other ways would/could you do it? I'm considering giving BC pipe wire/gates a try as I've never used those - nor have I ever used Logistics Pipes. If I don't go with AE, I will likely want to use Deep Storage Units to hold the wood/saplings/coal/apples. I'm looking to minimize waste and that includes minimizing energy required for storage - hence my desire to avoid AE for this (and logistics pipes as well, though I may be OK with that simply based on the fact I've never touched them before)

For the furnaces - assuming that my desired output is charcoal - should I just burn wood with wood? Or should I contrive to loop charcoal back as the fuel and just use wood or whatever to 'prime' the system? Go with iron furnaces, or perhaps one of the other mod furnaces? The charcoal's end destination is intended to be railcraft boilers, and I intend to use turbines for any IC2 that I use - though I don't necessarily want to use electric furnaces for the charcoal production.

 

[MigukNamja]

• DSUs require no energy. Just need a few of these.
• BC pipes work. I was using them long before I switched to AE.
• Self-fired Iron Furnaces are the easiest early-game, though you will eat into your profits slightly vs. other furnaces. I looped back the charcoal and used a BC Diamond Pipe with wood+charcoal going into the iron furnace and everything else (overflow, saplings, apples) passing by
• However, you may also want to use a TE powered furnace, RC steam furnace, IC2 Electric Furnace (powered by solar), etc.,.

As for the cargo manager, trying to do everything in a single manager is difficult due to managing charcoal vs. other. The cargo manager is cheap to build, so I just made 2 of them. 1 is the cargo/chest drop-off and the other one supplies the engine with charcoal.

 

[draeath]

Hmm, I think I'll do that - use two managers. You also jogged my memory as far as the steam furnace (oven?) - I had forgotten about that but saw one in my friend's base. Since I'll be running a boiler anyway, this might be right up my alley...

Already have 4 DSUs (and can make more easily) and a few hundred chest panes laying about, so no worries there

Anything I should know about the steam oven ahead of time?

 

[MigukNamja]

The RC steam oven is big and powerful ! A bit overkill if you dedicate it to just an SC2 cart, but hey, this is Minecraft where we punch trees with bare hands and take a portal to a Homer-esque version of hell...and back !

If you do the RC steam oven, you may be able to convert all/most of your wood to charcoal in it. Just run a steam pipe from your boiler to it, diamond pipe the wood from one of the cargo managers to it, and loop the charcoal past your 2nd cargo manager.

 

[Hoff]

If you're looking to convert all wood into charcoal feed all the wood into a chest/dsu/whatever and have a hopper/transfer node pull from the storage to the furnace. The same should be done for the charcoal(Fed into the 2nd manager from hopper/transfer node from the DSU).

 

[draeath]

I don't want to have a nasty looking stack of machines, though - and it sounds like the hopper would result in that.

So, cargo manager -> log DSU -> steam oven -> charcoal DSU -> boiler(s)

The question is then what is the "->" in this instance. Something that won't spit items out on overflow is very highly preferred. Oh, and of course I realize I'll have to "charge" the boiler to get it moving

EDIT: I don't think I actually need a fuel intake for the cart. It's got a solar engine and a coal engine, and I'm hoping between that and the collected logs it will run on it's own without eating too much produce. Is there any way to actually enforce it to consume only charcoal?

 

[MigukNamja]

You don't have to stack hoppers. You can place a hopper on the side of the steam and one on the side of the cargo manager. Their respective DSUs will still have to go on top, however.

You can use a translocator or pipe setup between the steam oven and the charcoal DSU. This should keep the height at 2 or lower, assuming the steam oven accepts input on the bottom blocks of one of its sides. I'm pretty sure it does. I'm also pretty sure you can pull stuff out the side, but if not, you can wooden pipe/translocate from the bottom.

 

[draeath]

That still leaves me with the concern of pipes spitting intermediates out if something isn't working - for example if my boiler dies somehow, the oven will fill up and then I'll end up losing everything not already crammed into the oven.

It sounds like a small logistics pipe solution would work for this? Suppliers/providers? What kind of power requirements do those run? I realize there is one, but I don't have any concept of how 'hungry' it is.

EDIT: I'll be on Unleashed until a stable 1.6.x pack is released - I don't think I have translocators, whatever those are. I don't have the mental energy to stay on top of betas and fast-moving releases.

 

[Hoff]

For power a solar panel would probably feed it just fine ._.

But you could also do a plain generator(Or MJ equivalent) and have some charcoal pass into it.

 

[MigukNamja]

I had the same concern, too. If you want a truly self-sufficient setup, may I suggest either:

A) charcoal-powered iron furnace fired with looped-back charcoal from the furnace
B) IC2 electric furnace fed by solar panel or charcoal-powered generator

Just be aware that an SC2 cart will plant trees directly next to your managers and the trunks or leaves of the tree will sometimes grow into/over the pipes, effectively breaking the pipes. Keeping your pipes at the same height as your cargo manager prevents this, as does pipes below ground (below the cargo manager).

 

[draeath]

Can I sink the cart one block into the ground on the return leg, and just hook up the manager(s) on that leg? I assume this will prevent it from trying to plant trees on that leg.

 

[MigukNamja]

It will plant trees every other space on both side of the track. It doesn't have a concept of 'legs'. Indeed, it will place saplings directly on either side of the manager if its cadence is such. I block with a block of stone or similar.

 

[draeath]

One last question I think - when the tree grows, can the leaves break pipes/machines? I was under the impression they would grow "around" things.

It sounds like sinking that run of track such that it's got solid dirt on either side would work to prevent unwanted sapling placement

 

[MigukNamja]

They *should* grow around things, but I would sometimes wonder why I wasn't getting anymore saplings/wood and when I checked, a pipe block at the tree or leaf level would be missing. I never witnessed the event, so I don't know if it was a wood block or a leaf block. The problem went away when I moved the pipes to track/sapling level or below track/sapling level. Having the pipes underground also has the benefit of looking cleaner.

 

[draeath]

What kind of trees were you using, out of curiosity? Matter of fact, do you have any recommendations?

 

[MigukNamja]

Boring old vanilla apple oak. I just wanted to get wood automated to focus on other stuff. With a Galgadorian tree cutter and side chests, it keeps 2x 36HP boilers powered with charcoal and have enough wood left over to keep a steady supply of Impregnated Frames going for about 8 alveraries. The track/rail route is long enough that there's always at least some tree/wood to clear out. Hence, the cart is always kept busy.

Also note the different SC2 wood blades have different speeds. A starter blade is pretty good, but I've found a Galgadorian will cut 50% to 100% more (faster) wood, on top of being indestructible.

I'm about finished by my current project and will start working on breeding trees. I'm pretty sure SC2 will support ExtraTrees trees with the "exotic tree" upgrade.

Last but not least, don't be surprised if you get chunk errors and your cart goes missing. That's happened about once a week and only occurs when I see chunk loader errors in the server logs. I don't think it's SC2 cart's fault entirely - it was probably crossing a chunk boundary when the error occurred. When that happens, I go into NEI cheat mode and build a replacement cart with the Creative upgrade to the Assembler. I'll build a few more the next time it happens and just stash the backups in a chest by the track.

 

[Hoff]

Last but not least, don't be surprised if you get chunk errors and your cart goes missing. That's happened about once a week and only occurs when I see chunk loader errors in the server logs. I don't think it's SC2 cart's fault entirely - it was probably crossing a chunk boundary when the error occurred. When that happens, I go into NEI cheat mode and build a replacement cart with the Creative upgrade to the Assembler. I'll build a few more the next time it happens and just stash the backups in a chest by the track.

It's not chunk errors per se. It's an old vanilla bug where entities will load before the world does and because of that they have a tendency to fall through the world.

You could just remove everything under where the track is and then it would probably just land on the bedrock, but hey; that's up to you.

 

[draeath]

Wait, indestructible blades? You mean the reinforced ones that were already such a pain to make are finite-use? Gah! Why does that galga-whatever one require so many rare mob drops!? I'm perfectly fine with things requiring rare resources, but not when those are only provided by mob drops. I might just cheat and give myself the things on this one :/

(i plan on putting it all in one chunk at first, but besides that i stuck a chunkloader onto the cart just in case. I do plan on chunkloading the whole area though)

 

[Larandar]

In fact the charcoal is not necessary for the cart, just get a AWESOME "Advanced Smelter" upgrade ! It smelt what you want to where you want: X charcoal to Engine part for exemple ( Infinite is possible, and make it smelt until full. )
Note that you can put multiple one for smelting more during gathering ressource, and it do it with more efficiency than a furnace. ( 2 or 3 is good no more, or power will become a problem. )

 

[MigukNamja]

The spider eyes aren't that bad, but the ghast tears take some hunting in the Nether.