Thermal Expansion Energy Production.

[Photoloss]

I know that the x8 en x64 cost a bit more, but I was talking about when we'd start upgrading them. The mere fact that they both can produce more Rf/t in the end.
And you're forgetting to mention the furnace generator. I haven't found the total Rf a stirling engine can produce on a single piece of coal, but the XU furnace generator can produce up to 20k Rf and the recipe is relatively cheap. It's mostly iron, but by the time you're starting to mine redstone you'd normally have a fair bit of iron, so 14 pieces is not that much for easy power access.

Whether you decide to continue with BigReactors or upgrade whatever you have, is a worry for later. Mid game and Late game power production can always become good discussion in terms of what's "best", but this thread is about early game power production.
Though I admit... BigReactors pretty nice

Stirlings produce 16k RF baseline, just over 40k with Double-Layer, and well over 80k with the Octadic upgrade from a single piece of coal. The initial setup cost is vastly lower than even the smallest reactor, and upgrade materials can be synthesised "for free" using an EnderIO/MFR powered spawner, requiring no ugly quarry and no 20k RF/t baseline to get reasonable returns. Once you can actually afford a large quarry/laser drill by all means build a reactor, but with a Witch+Enderman spawner you won't actually need to do that for a very long time.

In the end it's a matter of playstyle, if you want a decent, low-cost RF baseline to start playing with other things go lava or Stirling, if your main goal is INFINITE RF POWAH!! make a TiCon smeltery or 1-4 Survivalist gens, then go mine until you can afford a reactor-powered quarry and build up from there.

 

[Baron_Falcon]

I couldn't remember the actual power output so I built a single fuel rod (single block) reactor. It's pretty cheap. It puts out between 200-260 rf/t depending on how much fuel is in the rod and uses fuel at a rate of .18 mb/t. This is a 3x3x3 reactor. This can be built very, very early. It requires one diamond.

Reactor casing = 37 (you will have to make 40) = 40 coal,40 iron, 10 uranium/yellorium,

Parts below either use above casing +, or just components listed

Controller= 1 diamond, 2 yellorium, 1 redstone
Fuel rod = 6 iron, 2 coal, 1 uranium
Control rod = 3 coal, 1 yellorium, 1 redstone
Reactor access port = 1 chest, 1 piston

That is pretty cheap for a min 200 rf/t. Most expensive part is 1 diamond. By the time you have that, you will have the other items. That is an early game 200 rf/t power source. By the time you can make decent energy cable of some sort you can make this. I have used this for on site remote power for a BC quarry using 3 fuel rods instead of 1. So much easier than a dynamo setup.

My current game I didn't even built that, I went to an 8 fuel rod (4 control rods so 2x4 fuel rods) that puts out over 2krf/t. It still only cost one diamond, but a bit more in iron and yellorium.

I powered my processor with 4 UX gens until the reactor was done (I will be using the IO gen next time). It measures 5x5x4. It is totally passive and uncooled. Input and output feed and extract respectively with vanilla chests and thermal ducts with tier 1 servos. It is currently powering 2 ender quarries, several ore processors and an ME. It uses less than .5 mb/t on full power. I filled the fuel chest a long time ago and haven't looked at it since. I have more fuel than I will ever need to power it. I built this in what I would term my "late early game". It has lasted me through to my "early late game". I am now getting ready to build a power station with a actively cooled reactor and enderium coil turbines.

 

[Baron_Falcon]

Stirlings produce 16k RF baseline, just over 40k with Double-Layer, and well over 80k

What? A Stirling produces 16-80 THOUSAND rf/t? I think you may want to drop the "k"

 

[Photoloss]

16k/>40k/>80k total RF per piece of coal, at a power output of 20/40/80 RF/t.

And 40 iron (+40 redstone and a ton of stone) would give you 40 unupgraded Stirlings for a total of 800 RF/t, assuming you can somehow fuel them all. And if you upgrade all of them that's 3200 RF/t with no additional iron cost (though absurdly expensive in other materials, you want a renewable source of gold before attempting it)

If you build a quarry you'll have more Yellorium than you'll ever need, but going quarry-free is decently competitive if you invest in the right setup.

 

[Inaeo]

I usually build a Survivalist Generator early, then move on to other power systems quickly. Each world, I try to have a new backbone for my RF generation so that power is still a new challenge, even after all this time. That said, the early game efficiency of the Survivalist Generator means I can have it fill the buffers on my processing machines while I'm out gathering more ores without having to babysit a fuel generation system (ie. early game manual tree farm). Once I've outgrown the SurvGen, it lives in my pack in case of emergency, or gets repurposed to an outlying facility.

From that simple 5rf/t, I have moved on to Nether Lava, Treefarm Steam, Rotarycraft Lava (infinite returns in an old broken loop since repaired), Heated Redstone, Solar, Mob Essence, and more. Each has benefits and obstacles, but all of them can be viable. No matter which way you decide to go, you can usually find a home for a steady, fuel efficient power source (even if it is only 5rf/t).

As stated above, it is usually easier and/or cheaper to move fuel and generate power at point of use until later into the world, so I tend to stay away from Big Reactors until a point where either my main base needs that much, or I have a reliable way to transport power wirelessly. If that's what works for you, power to you, but its not my bag. Add in that there is a thousand and one ways to make steam these days, and I find myself skipping the reactor going straight to the turbine. I find depending on just Yellorium too restricting, as it means I either have to keep destroying the world (and deal with the constant influx of excess stuff) or build a dedicated laser drill to fuel it.

 

[D4rkWulf]

Photoless where you got that info from? Cuz when I calculate it
16k Rf at 20Rf/t = 800 ticks
Double layer capacitor = 1.25x fuel efficiency | 2x Rf/t
16k x 1.75 (cuz 16k is at 2x) = 28k Rf

Did I go wrong somewhere? xD

 

[Photoloss]

I don't know how the "fuel efficiency" stat works for EnderIO, I just dumped a piece of coal into a newly placed Stirling and waited for it to run out XD

Your math seems off though, since the base burn time is 1600 ticks and the Stirling reduces it, less so with upgrades. A double-layer Stirling should output 40 RF/t for 1600/"burn rate" ticks. Here the numbers diverge a bit, the wikis list 2/1.25/1 as the burn rates while my FTb Infinity 1.5.1 test world lists 2/1.5/1.5 (haven't messed with the configs myself).
Wiki values should give 16000/51200/128000 RF total, live Infinity 16000/42667/85333 RF. Ingame I get 16000/42680/85360 RF, probably due to the tick count getting upscaled instead of rounded.

 

[Baron_Falcon]

16k/>40k/>80k total RF per piece of coal, at a power output of 20/40/80 RF/t.

And 40 iron (+40 redstone and a ton of stone) would give you 40 unupgraded Stirlings for a total of 800 RF/t, assuming you can somehow fuel them all. And if you upgrade all of them that's 3200 RF/t with no additional iron cost (though absurdly expensive in other materials, you want a renewable source of gold before attempting it)

If you build a quarry you'll have more Yellorium than you'll ever need, but going quarry-free is decently competitive if you invest in the right setup.

Ahhhhh, my misunderstanding, there was a reason there was no rf/t lol.

My days of building giant banks of multiple generators is over lol. That's a lot of crafting, running ducts etc to feed them, and more work maintaining the fuel sources, especially quirky tree farms {steves carts ugh lol) even MFR isnt without its issues. I've had a lot of fun building tree farms to fuel banks of 80 steam dynamos, fuel refineries and giant tanks of oil and fuel to fuel a couple hundred dynamos, sucking the nether dry of lava, etc etc etc,, but I dont want to do that anymore lol.

I'll pay the cost of a few ingots on the front end to have more time for other pursuits. Its only a few more ingots to build a 3 rod (1x3) to get 800rf/t and all i gotta do is feed it a few bars of fuel once in awhile. A few more ingots and I've got 2K rf/t. And the fuel is a byproduct of my mining. Half a chest of fuel has lasted me several days of running full tilt, and I can refill that chest dozens of times if needed.


Probably the best things that ever happened to my game was watching these videos.

 

[Photoloss]

The main reason I dislike reactors as a starting power source is the dependency on a single non-renewable (pre laser drill, anyway) resource. Piling up the yellorium is inefficient too, but a medium-size MFR treefarm can fuel Botania, Thaumcraft, construction and RF demands and solid fuel is way easier to expand and distribute. Basically, if you don't mine a lot or rush a quarry, you can't support building a reactor and actually using it.

Just don't try going mass MFR biofuel or XU gens, they burn through your resources deceptively quickly and end up costing more than reactors or Stirlings.

 

[Type1Ninja]

The main reason I dislike reactors as a starting power source is the dependency on a single non-renewable (pre laser drill, anyway) resource. Piling up the yellorium is inefficient too, but a medium-size MFR treefarm can fuel Botania, Thaumcraft, construction and RF demands and solid fuel is way easier to expand and distribute. Basically, if you don't mine a lot or rush a quarry, you can't support building a reactor and actually using it.

Just don't try going mass MFR biofuel or XU gens, they burn through your resources deceptively quickly and end up costing more than reactors or Stirlings.

I always end up with tons of yellorium even when I don't quarry it, and I don't think I've ever gone through more than a stack in a world...
Fuel for reactors is almost never an issue. I find that reactors are simply the best, to the point of being OP.

 

[Inaeo]

The more I play with them (now late game in my case) the more I think MFR Steam Boilers feeding steam into your choice of Steam->RF converter is possibly the easiest to expand upon (post tree farm, although MFR makes those stupid easy). Also since steam is so versatile (damn near universal), it can feed a ton of different mods and/or power systems with little thought. Maybe this borders into mid game for some, but then I like my worlds to last a while.

 

[Baron_Falcon]

The main reason I dislike reactors as a starting power source is the dependency on a single non-renewable (pre laser drill, anyway) resource. Piling up the yellorium is inefficient too, but a medium-size MFR treefarm can fuel Botania, Thaumcraft, construction and RF demands and solid fuel is way easier to expand and distribute. Basically, if you don't mine a lot or rush a quarry, you can't support building a reactor and actually using it.

Just don't try going mass MFR biofuel or XU gens, they burn through your resources deceptively quickly and end up costing more than reactors or Stirlings.

That is a really interesting concept. I've never thought of trying any other type of gameplay. I don't do magic mods, other than Botania just to get the sash and magnet. I tried Thaumcraft a couple times but running around with the Thaumometer made me crazy lol. Ive always just gone for machines and weapons and armor that center around that, and bigger and more power. Maybe I'll try just Doing Botania sometime and only the machines I need to further that. I tried TFC for awhile but that got old fast

 

[KingTriaxx]

I usually use the starter reactor to charge an energy cell, rather than as a central power source. So the reactor runs a lot less, even if I have to run more. Until I've got the resources to make a bigger reactor, it's easier to upgrade/build more energy cells. An Ender IO capacitor is one I always snag since then I can use it as a charger.

Though I'm partial to a 5x5x3 high reactor, so I can use the redstone ports for automatic control. Then I fill the outer edges with water, because it's cheap.

Then again, I use a lot of railcraft, and plugging a survivalist generator into a tree farm along the train tracks means it can essentially power itself forever. Don't forget that since energy storage's are a thing, having something like a survivalist generator only matters the total it can output, since the 'cell' can output a much higher amount.

 

[Gamefury64]

I always end up with tons of yellorium even when I don't quarry it, and I don't think I've ever gone through more than a stack in a world...
Fuel for reactors is almost never an issue. I find that reactors are simply the best, to the point of being OP.

You've never played TPPI? It has a 10X fuel usage increase, witha decrease in output. I'm pretty sure you will run out of fuel then.

 

[Type1Ninja]

You've never played TPPI? It has a 10X fuel usage increase, witha decrease in output. I'm pretty sure you will run out of fuel then.

No, but Big Reactors in general is OP.
Sorry, was the original topic about TPPI? I can't remember...

 

[Gamefury64]

No, but Big Reactors in general is OP.
Sorry, was the original topic about TPPI? I can't remember...

No, just making a point.

 

[HSIkMy]

Later, you can convert the system to run forever on its own without input (using lava buckets to fuel the boilers).

Well yeah, this is probably the most lag-less end game power generating method besides a nether star farm. Pair it with an ender thermic pump in nether/RFTools lava dimension/RFTools biofuel dimension and EnderIO tanks to fill universal fluid cells(which stack and are a bit cheaper, but buckets also work) with lava.

 

[HSIkMy]

I couldn't remember the actual power output so I built a single fuel rod (single block) reactor. It's pretty cheap. It puts out between 200-260 rf/t depending on how much fuel is in the rod and uses fuel at a rate of .18 mb/t. This is a 3x3x3 reactor. This can be built very, very early. It requires one diamond.

I somehow dug up 16 diamonds from 2 mining branches using my hammer in my first world of my custom modpack, enough to make a quarry + a reactor. And only 1 yellorium ore. :/

 

[Inaeo]

Well yeah, this is probably the most lag-less end game power generating method besides a nether star farm. Pair it with an ender thermic pump in nether/RFTools lava dimension/RFTools biofuel dimension and EnderIO tanks to fill universal fluid cells(which stack and are a bit cheaper, but buckets also work) with lava.

Actually, the method I speak of doesn't involve pumping lava from anywhere. It's actually less lag inducing, seeing as you don't need to chunk load a different dimension.

The setup runs a MFR Lava Fabricator into a TE Fluud Transposer, then ships the filled lava buckets into up to fifteen MFR Boilers as fuel. The empty buckets get recycled back to the Transposer in a closed circuit. Seeing as this setup can supply fifteen boilers, and it only takes five boilers to fuel a max sized turbine, that's three turbines worth of power (mine are just a touch over 28Krf/t each) with no input. All you need if enough power (or steam) to jumpstart a single turbine, and you'll never look back.