Steam Boilers vs IC2 EU generators.

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jumpfight5

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Jul 29, 2019
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I don't see why people don't make 2 fermenters. One for apple juice and one for water. No logic required, as long as you use RP2. Put apple juice in the first fermenter and water in the second. If the apple juice runs out, the fermenter will fill with 64 saplings and the water one will begin to work. Then you can have both working at the same time if you get more apple juice to pump in.
 

Mash

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Jul 29, 2019
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Well both were terrible. I've ripped them out.

Terrible? It makes biofuel probably on the scale of 40~ times faster than the fermenter/still set up.

If that's terrible, then I'd love to know what you consider to be good.
 

Mash

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Jul 29, 2019
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By the way, the Bio Reactor/MFR Planter-Harvester(Both with Iron upgrades) setup is amazing. Even without a fertilizer, I'm making at least 4 times as much biofuel as I was with a fermenter and two stills. And it is 100% automated. Once I get a skeleton spawner, I might even add a fertilizer into the mix.
 

Akamir

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Jul 29, 2019
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I've set up 3 liquid 36HP boilers in my game running off fuel, the boilers are extremely efficient (probably takes a minute to use one bucket) on this and powering a refinery to convert oil into fuel is a very simple process.
It was a very early investment too and not all that expensive, you'll be up to your neck in fuel before you know it.

Pump + power and liquid tesseract makes quick work of a oil spring.
 

Mash

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Jul 29, 2019
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I've set up 3 liquid 36HP boilers in my game running off fuel, the boilers are extremely efficient (probably takes a minute to use one bucket) on this and powering a refinery to convert oil into fuel is a very simple process.
It was a very early investment too and not all that expensive, you'll be up to your neck in fuel before you know it.

Pump + power and liquid tesseract makes quick work of a oil spring.

I'm using a LP boiler currently, but plan on adding HPs from here in out. My LP boiler uses one bucket of biofuel every 3 minutes, 20~ seconds. A HP probably takes about a minute and a half.

From what I understand, fuel takes massively longer, so at full heat it shouldn't be using a bucket more than once every like 5 minutes, at least. I'd need to test it to be sure.
 

Akamir

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Jul 29, 2019
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Most likely. I've yet to stand still and properly look at the fuel usage but I'm quite pleased with it after having a SC2 treefarm provide planks for 3 solid 36HP boilers, which was quite some work to automate.
 

Poppycocks

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Jul 29, 2019
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Good news everyone.

I hear that in case you're using your SC treefarms for both solid and liquid boilers, and if you're using fermenters and stills to process the saplings into biofuel, then you're going to get nerfed pretty hard in the next release of forestry. Biomass from saplings will have an output depending on the sappiness level of said saplings and all non-forestry sapling values will be VERY EFFIN LOW.

Might be the right time to build that enderpearls -> fertilizer setup and breed a few high sappiness apple trees, just to make sure.

Or complain profusely, whatever comes easier to you.

oigBNu0.jpg


Oh and we also have a delivery to the Doom nebula.
 

Mash

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Jul 29, 2019
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Good news everyone.

I hear that in case you're using your SC treefarms for both solid and liquid boilers, and if you're using fermenters and stills to process the saplings into biofuel, then you're going to get nerfed pretty hard in the next release of forestry. Biomass from saplings will have an output depending on the sappiness level of said saplings and all non-forestry sapling values will be VERY EFFIN LOW.

Might be the right time to build that enderpearls -> fertilizer setup and breed a few high sappiness apple trees, just to make sure.

Or complain profusely, whatever comes easier to you.

oigBNu0.jpg


Oh and we also have a delivery to the Doom nebula.

Oh, good. Looks like I escaped that system just in time.

But, hey. If they at least make it so that the sappier types of sapling put out more biomass than the default ones currently do, then I'll at least be able to see the logic in that decision.

However, MFR just outclassed their biofuel production with their most recent release, so Forestry better add something more enticing to Fermenting and Stilling.
 

KirinDave

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Jul 29, 2019
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Terrible? It makes biofuel probably on the scale of 40~ times faster than the fermenter/still set up.

It runs through material fast, but my math suggests it makes about 1/3 the output of what the fermeter->still makes. I couldn't make it energy positive even with a fairly large farm.

If that's terrible, then I'd love to know what you consider to be good.

Something that can sustain itself.
 

Mash

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Jul 29, 2019
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It runs through material fast, but my math suggests it makes about 1/3 the output of what the fermeter->still makes. I couldn't make it energy positive even with a fairly large farm.
Something that can sustain itself.

You realize that the efficiency increases when you have a variety of saplings/seeds in the bioreactor at once, right?

Only using one type gives you absolutely the most minimum efficiency possible. With maximum efficiency, you put out double the biofuel.

In any case, you still need to factor in the fact that it requires 0 MJ/t to operate, as well as the fact that no fertilizer is required.

Besides, time is always far more valuable in a game like this than resources. Even if it doesn't pay for itself quite as efficiently as a fermenter and still (doubtful) it pays for itself far quicker.
 

brujon

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Jul 29, 2019
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Yeah, i heard about the nerfing of vanilla saplings. It makes sense. Currently, only reason you'd even go Treebreeding would be to get seed oil from walnuts/chestnuts, and if you wanted to prettify your base, with different trees, and different planks. This way, Sengir will at least get people going into Tree Breeding. Which requires bees. Which is another incentive for you to do bees. Which is a huge part of the mod. Makes sense, right? Making you use all parts of the mod to be able to get the most out of it.

One thing that should be done, however, is make peat more useful, either giving us an easier way of getting bituminous peat, or a more early game way of automating peat production than multifarms. Biomass currently is the go to method of early-mid game energy generation if you go Forestry, before you can go Biofuel/Boilers or Combustion Engines. Peat is used more as a way of generating low but constant power to run arboretums, but with Multifarms taking increased amounts of MJ to function, where does that leave the peat fired engines? They only output 1 MJ/t. Peat lasts a while, bituminous peat lasts even longer and it gives 2 MJ/t, but the way you produce Bituminous Peat is, first, getting a large surplus of ash, which requires you to run peat fired engines for quite a while, and secondly, by getting a good amount of propolis, which takes even longer.

In fact i have never, ever, ever seen anyone use Bituminous Peat. Not even once. With Multifarms taking so many resources to make, and high amounts of power to run, peat fired engines fall into a limbo where they're not so useful. You can, of course, produce peat manually, but it's a painful and long journey into disappointment. Why would you want to make peat fired engines if to produce good amounts of peat you already have to have an established MJ network? Doesn't make sense. Now with biomass production nerfed, even more effort will be needed to produce renewable energy using forestry. Getting into tree breeding, which requires bees, which requires a lot of infrastructure to really get going, because you'll need alvearies, which mean multiple squeezers making seed oil, requiring big farms, etc...
 

Poppycocks

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Jul 29, 2019
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Yeah, It's not that bad as far as changes go, I'm mostly peeved because that change just might mean that I'll have to more or less completely rebuild my strongly aesthetic base which is based around the quadra SC treefarm up top.

I just don't like the idea of having to start treebreeding just because I don't want my massive battery of boilers to fail horribly. Looks like G has a competitor when it comes to "making people do stuff my way". Then again, I'm tollerating G, so I might as well give Sengir the same treatment - although in G's case it usually means just building another machine, as opposed to this change which has several rather big hooks attached.

Not very happy.

Have I ever told you guys? Forceful incentivisation and strangle-lock balancing is what drove me away from better than wolves.
 
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brujon

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Jul 29, 2019
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Yeah, but you'll still be able to keep your Steve's Carts farms. Saplings will still be the best source of biomass. The only thing that will change, is that the same amount of trees you're growing now, will not be able to feed the same amount of boilers they used to before. Let's say the yield changes from 0,8 to 0,2 mB per sapling, then that would mean that if your production is just big enough for 4 boilers, then you'd need to shut 3 off. I don't think it will be that big of a nerf, though, and most likely than not, your farm already produces surplus saplings that your fermenters can't deal with. If you just replaced your saplings that you're using right now with Forestry's better sappiness saplings, or added more fermenters if you're producing excess saplings, nothing else would need to change. So if you plan on keeping your world, you should start up some tree breeding right now, or building more fermenters.

I don't think what he's doing is wrong, and it's not even that big of a nerf, especially if he maintains the current yield for "Average" or "Normal" sappiness saplings, and better yields for ones with higher values. I think Vanilla will probably give Lower or Lowest sappiness trait, but i'm not in his head so i wouldn't know. Would make sense, though.
 

Mash

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Jul 29, 2019
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Worst case scenario, you may just have to make another off-site farm to saturate all of your boilers. A pain in the ass? Oh yeah. But, at least he didn't rip the whole system out from under you.

Best case scenario, tree breeding may provide you with the means to run even more boilers off of this setup, if you choose to try down that path. Admittedly though, I don't know much about tree breeding.
 

brujon

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Jul 29, 2019
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It's extremely easy. Like, trivially easy to set up. Get a bee. Any bee will do. Plant two trees in the area of pollination for that bee species. Wait. Some leaves will take on a different color, indicating that they have mutated. Guarantee your sapling drop with a Grafter, treealyze the sapling to see if it's a purebred or a hybrid, keep mix and matching different saplings in order to get different trees, write down the combinations it gave you, and through the process of elimination, figure out which mutations were caused and how. Combine different trees with different traits in order to get a chance of having some of these traits passed on to hybrids, breed those hybrids in order to have a chance of getting purebreds with better stats... So on and so forth.

So basically just like you do with bees, but with trees. And it takes longer. Yay... At least it's a nearly complete passive system, you don't have to actually do anything, other than keep track of whether mutations happened or not.

Some tips:
Jungle, Spruce, Oak and Birch will, eventually, give you all the T1 mutations. There's a lot less variation than there is with bees. Start with a 2x2 grid of these 4 basic types of trees, after treealyzing them, and keep grafting and replanting them until you made sure that you got purebreds of all the different kinds of T2 trees. Plant them around the 4 basic types of vanilla trees, and keep grafting until you feel like you've got every mutation you could, then plant those around the ones that are already planted, probably add some more bees around, and check with NEI to see if you got all the trees. If you didn't, try breeding them in a Swamp or Jungle biome, since there are special trees that only grow in those biomes. Probably a good idea to do all your tree breeding in one, if you can. With such a setup, it will take some time, but eventually you will get every possible tree in the mod. Time to start crossbreeding desirable traits. With enough patience, you can get high sappiness, high yield, faster or fastest maturing, all in one sapling. Try to choose the one that has the most leaf blocks. Ta-da, you got yourself the best source of biomass. This might take several RL days to get done by the way. I'm oversimplifying the process a lot.
 

KirinDave

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Jul 29, 2019
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You realize that the efficiency increases when you have a variety of saplings/seeds in the bioreactor at once, right?

Yes, thank you! I would like to reassure you that I too can read the forum post like a literate person.

I tried it with every vanilla crop at once. The problem is that the thing runs so crazy-fast that I never had time to accumulate much, even with a nearly limitless supply of industrial fertilizer on hand.

In any case, you still need to factor in the fact that it requires 0 MJ/t to operate, as well as the fact that no fertilizer is required.

If it isn't energy positive, it isn't energy positive. I ran a 8x8 farm at max output with a pipe system that made sure the harvester was fed then shunted everything react-able to the bio-reactor. I then asked the system to power itself via both a single diesel generator, a single combustion engine, and a single bio-generator. All of them resulted in net-negative biofuel.

AFAICT, I'd rather use the wood output from a treefarm than try and make a liquid solution.
 

Milaha

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Jul 29, 2019
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Yes, thank you! I would like to reassure you that I too can read the forum post like a literate person.

I tried it with every vanilla crop at once. The problem is that the thing runs so crazy-fast that I never had time to accumulate much, even with a nearly limitless supply of industrial fertilizer on hand.



If it isn't energy positive, it isn't energy positive. I ran a 8x8 farm at max output with a pipe system that made sure the harvester was fed then shunted everything react-able to the bio-reactor. I then asked the system to power itself via both a single diesel generator, a single combustion engine, and a single bio-generator. All of them resulted in net-negative biofuel.

AFAICT, I'd rather use the wood output from a treefarm than try and make a liquid solution.

1. Do not feed the biofuel it into a buffer tank, this will drain your seed supplies and shunt you down to low efficiency. It runs fast enough not to need a tank. Just have it produce the fuel you need on demand, and thus it runs at exactly the speed you need.
2. It may not be net-positive on low seed, high produce yield crops, but it is WAY more than net positive for me on redwoods. I am powering 4x 36HP liquid biolers on the redwood saplings alone, and all my farms together with the AE network managing it only draws ~90 MJ/t (I would estimate the redwoods to draw about 1/2 of that though). I also run several solid boilers to get a ton more net positive, but just looking at the liquid ones I am obviously way in the green, and accumulating saplings to spare.
3. It says right in the post that it is meant as a seed dump for excess produce. Efficiency is likely to be intentionally low, my ability to create such a positive feedback loop using only the seeds in a reactor may well be a design oversight. I will enjoy it while I can.
 

PhilHibbs

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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.
Easy isn't the same as Fun. I could use NEI to give me a full Redstone Energy Cell or MFSU any time I needed it, but where's the fun in that? There will always be easy and hard routes in a mod pack as diverse as the FTB packs, if you want to go the easy route then that's fine. Really. No sarcasm. Nothing wrong with that. Spend your time doing what *you* find to be fun, and if that's exploring the Twilight Forest while your easy-build IC2 base runs itself then there's nothing wrong with that. I did the same, my base ran on a ridiculously large stash of Blaze Rods for weeks. But if you think it's fun to set up a tree farm, fermenter, boiler, and industrial steam engines, then do that. It's what I'm going to do next, because I've never done it.
 

Grydian2

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I have a steve carts tree farm feeding a TE sawmill which produces enough planks to heat 4 36LP boilers. That produces an insane amount of power. I used that to make oil with MFR oil fab.. That stores the power as a liquid.. (its 600k MJ per bucket of oil) I then turn that into fuel to power 11 36LP boilers. I make so much EU and MJ that I have 700+ UU matter and so much fuel idk what to do with it all... I did have to rout most of the power back into the oil but based on my math i am getting a 40 percent return on the energy I put in. IE I can power 14 36LP boilers off of 10 powering oil fabricators.[DOUBLEPOST=1364490186][/DOUBLEPOST]Logistic pipes is how I manage the automation btw. Logistic pipes makes it so much easier to mass automate stuff.