So I've somehow managed to play this much FTB without ever figuring out how boilers work. And now it's time that I remedied that, but after a bit of fooling around in creative, a bit of reading old threads, and a very tiny bit of looking at other folks' spreadsheets/graphs, I must admit that though I understand the fundamentals of *how* it works, I'm still a bit in the dark about how most people actually do it.
I'm in 1.5.2 minecraft, using Unleashed 1.1.7 or whatever the final release of that is.
Question #1 - Flipping the switch! I know that once I turn the boiler "on," it's gonna basically eat everything I feed to it really fast. So what's the "usual" fuel people use get over this hump? Thousands and thousands of logs or planks? A cache of high-yield coal coke? Something less prosaic? I've got a Steve's Carts treefarm running and getting me logs, and I've got a stash of coke, coal, and charcoal, but I'm not sure exactly which I should be focusing on to prepare for the "warming up" phase.
Question #2 - Boiler Size! I know that the math bears out several things, such as that the largest boilers are best long term but are the hardest to start up and whatnot. And from reading the forums, it seems that there's definitely a bias among my fellow ftb-ers that the largest boilers are the best. My ultimate goal is to have enough power to power a moderately large AE network as a backup while the main power of my base/network will come from my steadily increasing number of solars. For this purpose, any recommendations on boiler size?
Question #3 - The long-haul. Ultimately, the boiler's efficiency will get to a point where it's more easily sustained without burning through all my stocks of burnables, but once I get it heated up, what's the consensus on what to burn? logs/planks? treefarm charcoal? coke? How do you do it?
I'm in 1.5.2 minecraft, using Unleashed 1.1.7 or whatever the final release of that is.
Question #1 - Flipping the switch! I know that once I turn the boiler "on," it's gonna basically eat everything I feed to it really fast. So what's the "usual" fuel people use get over this hump? Thousands and thousands of logs or planks? A cache of high-yield coal coke? Something less prosaic? I've got a Steve's Carts treefarm running and getting me logs, and I've got a stash of coke, coal, and charcoal, but I'm not sure exactly which I should be focusing on to prepare for the "warming up" phase.
Question #2 - Boiler Size! I know that the math bears out several things, such as that the largest boilers are best long term but are the hardest to start up and whatnot. And from reading the forums, it seems that there's definitely a bias among my fellow ftb-ers that the largest boilers are the best. My ultimate goal is to have enough power to power a moderately large AE network as a backup while the main power of my base/network will come from my steadily increasing number of solars. For this purpose, any recommendations on boiler size?
Question #3 - The long-haul. Ultimately, the boiler's efficiency will get to a point where it's more easily sustained without burning through all my stocks of burnables, but once I get it heated up, what's the consensus on what to burn? logs/planks? treefarm charcoal? coke? How do you do it?
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