Steam Boilers vs IC2 EU generators.

[Mash]

I'm a huge fan of steam boilers. I love the whole concept. So much so, that I actually decided that I'd power my Quarry with one.

About halfway through the process of setting up the boiler, making the tank that would hold the biofuel, the multifarms, and then getting the actual biofuel production semi-automated, I realized that this was wildly impractical compared to EU generators.

Even if I were to exclude solar panels, I could put up a wall of thermal generators connected to a large lava tank buffer with a few pumps in the nether and accomplish the exact same thing, and it's like, 99% automated.

Throw solar panels in the mix, and you have a 100% automated process with much less work on your part.

I can understand the appeal if I were playing a much simpler modpack, but given the size of the Ultimate Modpack, and the content that will require 100% of my attention, I don't think I can really afford to micromanage my steam boilers. And even if I did manage to fully automate the process through some obscure, vastly overcomplicated system, where's the appeal in using that system over an ultimate hybrid solar panel?

 

[mocklaceo444]

It's cool. I use both, mainly for the wow factor of getting something cool built.

 

[Mash]

Yeah, see if it's just more of a personal decision, I get that. I'm just wondering if there's some hidden element to this that I'm not taking into account.

I haven't actually tried fuel yet, so maybe I should try that before I disassemble this entire thing, but making biofuel is so wildly impractical compared to slapping down a few thermal generators that I may as well not even bother. I did it so I can say that I at least tried that route of power.

 

[Neirin]

To be fair, you could use magmatic engines to get an MJ equivalent of thermal generators. The appeal in doing big complicated builds is that you do big complicated builds. It's much more interesting (imo) to use a bunch of mods in conjunction in a huge system than to plop down a single block (regardless of how complicated the recipe is). Properly setup steam boilers are still 100% automated, but there are a lot more moving parts.

EDIT: as far as practicality goes, max size HP boiler puts out 144 MJ/t - that's equivalent to 36 magmatic engines. If you use steam turbines to make that EU (power converters is a slightly better ratio I think) you get 200 EU/t with a bit of extra steam that can give you 16 MJ/t

 

[Mash]

To be fair, you could use magmatic engines to get an MJ equivalent of thermal generators. The appeal in doing big complicated builds is that you do big complicated builds. It's much more interesting (imo) to use a bunch of mods in conjunction in a huge system than to plop down a single block (regardless of how complicated the recipe is). Properly setup steam boilers are still 100% automated, but there are a lot more moving parts.

EDIT: as far as practicality goes, max size HP boiler puts out 144 MJ/t - that's equivalent to 36 magmatic engines. If you use steam turbines to make that EU (power converters is a slightly better ratio I think) you get 200 EU/t with a bit of extra steam that can give you 16 MJ/t

Well, here's my problem. I'm running my boiler with biofuel. Biofuel is most efficiently made with saplings in a fermenter, so I went down that route and made a 5x5x4 managed arboretum multifarm. Now, the farm's water and saplings are easily supplied, but dirt and fertilizer are not. Dirt can't be simply created without macerating plantballs, which seems equally impractical as is silly, and fertilizer requires apatite which my quarry doesn't even dig up most of the time. Sure, I could setup a large dirt barrel that the farm pulls from, but given the nature of tree spawning, I couldn't have it set on an automated timer without getting a bunch of overflow, or not putting in dirt fast enough.

 

[Chocorate]

I used to get bored of FTB because I could power everything with Advanced Solars. Then I realized my goal in FTB wasn't to "finish" Gregtech or run a 100 quarries, but the process itself. I didn't want to make steam or biofuel to power something, I wanted to make steam and biofuel. I didn't want to make a nuke, I wanted to use it to blow up the Blulectric Furnace so it'd stop smiling at me upside-down. I wanted to make the breed the bees, not use them to make stuff.

The point is, it gets frustrating if you focus on what power source is superior, and you gotta appreciate the journey, not the end. Yeah, it's cheesy. I didn't type that.

 

[Neirin]

Steve's Carts, MFR Harvester+Planter, or Turtles with a tree felling program are all self sustaining. For people who want 100% hands free systems, the forestry multifarms are probably the last place you want to go for your tree farm. I don't think Steve's Carts of MFR can handle forestry saplings yet, though, so if you have some uber-saplings you've bred, they might be the system of choice (though I'd still advocate turtles), but from the sound of things you're not in that situation.

 

[Mash]

I was also considering using lava, actually. I heard somewhere that you could, but I also heard that you couldn't.

Guess I need to test it. If it's possible, and it uses it at a reasonable rate while fully heated, then I'll totally use that.

 

[Poppycocks]

My base runs 5 36HP boilers at full auto at the moment. I'm planing on increase this number to around 30. It's perfectly possible.

 

[Bibble]

I have a single, square SC2 tree farm, enclosed in a chunk.

In the middle of this is the processing side of 2 fermenters (one water, one apple juice), a squeezer (for the apple juice, and, more importantly, the mulch), and now 3 stills (upgraded from 1). The remainder is stored in barrels, and the overflow of wood is cooked, and I'm trying to get enough of a buffer to start up my other 27HP boiler (the first one running on biofuel). When my biofuel stocks have replenished themselves, I'm going to try and switch out my geothermal generators for biofuel ones, making all of my power requirements met by a farm in a single chunk.

This started as a standard tree farm for wood, and progressed to a more complex system, to see if I could, more than anything.

 

[Neirin]

I was also considering using lava, actually. I heard somewhere that you could, but I also heard that you couldn't.

Guess I need to test it. If it's possible, and it uses it at a reasonable rate while fully heated, then I'll totally use that.

Lava in a boiler was nerfed pretty hard a while back. You'll get twice as much power by putting the same amount of lava into a bank of magmatic engines.

 

[Mash]

Lava in a boiler was nerfed pretty hard a while back. You'll get twice as much power by putting the same amount of lava into a bank of magmatic engines.

You'd think that gaming organizations would have learned from Blizzard's mistakes in that nerfing is inferior to buffing in almost every single instance. It's just a cheap, easy shortcut.

Oh well. I'll probably just move away from steam boilers. They're fun, and I wish I could keep it up, but I'm probably not going to have the time to make whatever elaborate automated system I'd need to keep them going.

 

[Chocorate]

You'd think that gaming organizations would have learned from Blizzard's mistakes in that nerfing is inferior to buffing in almost every single instance. It's just a cheap, easy shortcut.

That's true, but I think it's more important to pick nerf or buff and go through with it. If they only nerf one thing that's "OP", they usually nerf it and nobody has fun anymore. If they buff one thing, everyone else is frustrated. If they nerfed everything to a balanced level all at once, they wouldn't have everyone constantly complaining. If they buffed everything all at once, everyone would have fun. The problem is, most game will nerf things too much, rather than make them on the same level as everything else. A good example of this that I've seen is Maplestory. Every couple months or so, a new class comes out. It's insanely overpowered at first, then it's nerfed so it's worse than everything else. And rather than bringing it back up to everything else's level, they just focus on the next class that comes out.

Nerf or buff are equally okay (as long as the nerfing doesn't make the game frustrating for the one playing the game or class), but they have to be done completely, not halfway.

 

[KirinDave]

Lava in a boiler was nerfed pretty hard a while back. You'll get twice as much power by putting the same amount of lava into a bank of magmatic engines.

Lava doesn't work in boilers anymore.

Steam boilers can be powered in a huge variety of ways and steam is the most flexible, transportable power in the FTB universe. It's just not very dense per unit, so you need to be able to handle a substantial flow of steam (and don't use it as a battery). But do consider keeping a steam tank. One trick you can do with steam tanks and xycraft that you cannot easily any other way is set up a "excess power capture and storage."

It works like this.

Step 1: Make a big steam tank. Put an input and output value on level 1 of the tank. This is your primary input and output.
Step 2: Make a second steam tank sharing one wall with a shared valve at the very TOP of the tank. (feel free to warm your boiler up at this point)
Step 3: Make a liquid detector on level one of the shared tank. Put a wireless transmitter on this so that it blinks when it's empty.
Step 4: Hook the secondary steam tank output (valve on level 1) up to engines powering magma crucibles turning cobble into lava.
Step 5: Store the lava for use elsewhere that you would want lava: it is very energy dense.
Step 6: Use the wireless redstone signal on the secondary steam tank to track when your capture tank is empty, so you know to kick on lava based backups.

This build is actually not very complex, but I find myself not always using all my power at once and I build my systems to turn off when not in use. I've yet to set this up on advancingcraft, but I have a turtle-based version that is more complex on my DW20 server and its really cool to know I'm not losing that extra power and it is in fact being stored and tapped.

 

[Neirin]

Lava doesn't work in boilers anymore.

Lava buckets can be put into solid fueled boilers for 1000 Heat. This is in the version of Railcraft included in ultimate. 1000 heat is pretty much nothing (for reference 1 charcoal is 1600 heat), but they're still a valid fuel source. You can squeeze 9091 MJ out of a bucket of lava in a fully heated 36HP solid fueled boiler. You can get 18k with less hassle pumping that same lava into a bank of magmatics, though.

 

[snooder]

And even if I did manage to fully automate the process through some obscure, vastly overcomplicated system, where's the appeal in using that system over an ultimate hybrid solar panel?

Resource cost.

See, an ultimate hybrid solar panel costs iridium which needs an already existing power supply to generate, a 36hp boiler only costs just over a stack of iron. If you are in a mod with compact solars instead, you are looking at 64 stacks of iron plus a ton of coal and glass for a HV solar array.

Thermal gens using lava are about the same cost resource-wise, but there's only so much lava you can pump from the nether before you have to move. And the more power you use, the faster you pump and the more often you need to move your setup.

 

[KirinDave]

Lava buckets can be put into solid fueled boilers for 1000 Heat. This is in the version of Railcraft included in ultimate. 1000 heat is pretty much nothing (for reference 1 charcoal is 1600 heat), but they're still a valid fuel source. You can squeeze 9091 MJ out of a bucket of lava in a fully heated 36HP solid fueled boiler. You can get 18k with less hassle pumping that same lava into a bank of magmatics, though.

I didn't know that. Do you lose the bucket?

 

[Neirin]

I didn't know that. Do you lose the bucket?

No, you get the empty bucket back.

 

[Mash]

Using the steam boilers isn't really the issue, overall. It's fueling them that I can't get past. Biofuel is out because I don't have the know-how to automate it. Oil is extremely micro-managey unless you have a massive oil/fuel tank good enough to keep your boilers running for... weeks, at least, and creosote oil is, well... creosote oil.

Lava would be the only reasonable option since that's more renewable than anything else. One Mystcraft age could infinitely supply lava forever. And ever.

Actually, I just had a thought. Doesn't oil spawn most commonly in desert biomes? If so, couldn't I just make a Mystcraft Desert biome age and just collect oil I find there into a large tank?

 

[Neirin]

Using the steam boilers isn't really the issue, overall. It's fueling them that I can't get past. Biofuel is out because I don't have the know-how to automate it. Oil is extremely micro-managey unless you have a massive oil/fuel tank good enough to keep your boilers running for... weeks, at least, and creosote oil is, well... creosote oil.

Lava would be the only reasonable option since that's more renewable than anything else. One Mystcraft age could infinitely supply lava forever. And ever.

Rather than liquid boilers, maybe you should look at solid fueled boilers. A Blaze farm can almost keep up with a boiler once it's reached max temp. The wood/planks/charcoal/etc from a tree farm can easily keep a boiler running. I'm sure you can think of something.

Still, the real issue is automation. Steam boilers were designed to never be turned off. To make them work, you need to automate the process of feeding the boiler some sort of fuel. For me the process of feeding biofuel to my boiler is actually simpler than a nether lava pump because lava pumps have to be moved. Initial setup is a bit longer for biofuel, but once you've got an automatic tree farm, you just send your items through your processing system and send the result to your boiler. Think of it like a sorting system for your quarry except instead of pulverizing ore, you're fermenting saplings and instead of using a furnace to smelt dust into ingots, you're using a still to refine biomass into biofuel.