Oh yeah, forgot about ash. I don't know if the ash-from-fertilizer recipe was always in the game, but I think it also required dirt, so you'd need mushroom and wheat farms anyway.Was that an older version of Forestry? One peat farm, one or two tree farms (used humus), some Xycraft crafters and tanks, item pipes, and RP2 filters or emerald pipes (I think), in 1.4.X, and it was pretty much done. The farms provided the needed dirt and sand. The crafters made the bog earth and humus. Peat engines provided ash, also used for the humus (I think).
I never managed to set it up correctly, but I'd seen several videos with that setup. It's what led me to use FTB. And then when I started playing, I learned that those were old farms that were going to be discontinued I haven't used peat since 1.5. The multifarms take a LOT more resources to get running, and apatite. The old farms required making bog earth and humus, but at least you could get those in unlimited amounts. Sometimes I never even find apatite.
Dirt to sand? Why don't you just make a simple cobble gen and macerate the cobble down into sand? If you can get endless cobble, then you can get endless sand with a minimum of extra work.
Also, bookmarking that little program! Methinks I'd like to get an old-fashioned peat farm going again. Haven't done that since 1.4.7.
Good point, yes. I'll probably do that once I let myself get past the "low power phase". I'm intentionally throttling myself back to lengthen the life of the world.
As for the program, the turtle looks for a drop-off inventory (ex. chest) on its left side and an inventory (ex. chest) with Bog Earth above it. It only takes as much bog earth as it needs based upon the size of the farm. The size of the farm is configurable, though the recommend configurations are a multiple of 5, ex: 5x5, 10x10, 5x20, 15x20, 20x20, etc.,. The maximum recommended size is 20x20 due to the inventory space and 20x20 is what I use. It starts building the farm at the block beneath it, and the dimensions are measured ahead of it (starting at the block it's directly above) and to its right (starting at the block it's directly above).
It will skip the water blocks and you will have to fill those with water the first time. It will also excavate the area itself, so you don't have to clear out the volume the first time.
While it returns to its starting spot and orientation, refuels, and drops everything off, ready for the next iteration, I don't have it setup as an infinite loop, but that would be relatively easy : just wrap the main loop with a 1-hr-ish sleep.
Screw Turtles!Might wanna mention this, you could layer the peat farm and make it into a tower. The turtle can go along checking above and below as it goes. Then each time return to its home base to refuel and drop off.
When I did this with a turtle, I remember I needed to use a silk touch pick on a piece of peat bog (the finish product block). Then I would just do a compare against the finish product to see if I needed to dig it and replace it. The tower farm made it easier to work with a smaller footprint.
Sadly, I deleted my directory in a fit of rage when I decided the game was eating too much of my time.
Then when I came to my senses I realized I had destroyed that peat program. Oh well, might try making it again. Looks like fun.
Oh and since working with 1.6 and no TE, I don't have access to infinite cobble like days of yore. So I guess I need to see what 1.6 has in the way of block breaking (turtle duh, probably just do that and keep with the turtle motif).
The peat farm seems quite bad compared to what it used to be. You get 1 mj from a peat engine running ordinary peat. The farm itself isn't the problem but the process of making the peat far outweigh the usefulness. It used to be better, I don't know, did you get more mj from a peat engine using normal peat or something? Using the old farms I would always set up a peat farm and run a bunch of peat engines but why bother doing that right now. In comparison the tree farm is op compared to the peat farm since it only requires apatite, no more, no less and you get an insane amount of wood. I'm sure some mods have way better tree farms, like that steves cart mod probably.
Makes me wonder if you could make a sludge-based power plant, if you produced and processed enough of it fast enough. I mean, it gives you peat, and it also gives you clay, which you can turn into lithium w/ GregTech and use it to power boilers. There are numerous things for which sludge is useful, I'm sure!I do miss using RP2 to manage my peat farm, with pistons and block breakers. Nice "engineering" challenge as I tried a different layout each time. Much more interesting building a single multiblock system.
The MFR sludgeworks can also produce Forestry Peat. Not a vast amount out of everything it can produce, but a nice bonus.
Don't get me started on those cheat turtles, why not just run with NEI on...
???
Turtles need at least a small amount of power and I assure you it took quite bit more effort writing, debugging, and tweaking the Lua code than clicking on NEI.
I can also assure you it would have been far more efficient, time-wise, to setup a tree farm.