Was ethanol nerfed?

[Omicron]

Aaah yeah, that's the guy I meant.

Here's his thread here on the forums: http://forum.feed-the-beast.com/threads/tree-crossbreeding-for-biofuel-and-farms.23179/

I'm not sure that breeding in 3x3 girth is beneficial for biofuel, as it mostly adds wood. What you want is maximize the amount of leaves and the growth speed. Because of the requirement for neighbouring saplings to all mature at the same time, 3x3 trees tend to grow noticably slower than smaller trunk sizes.

 

[b0bst3r]

Nah you don't keep the girth 3x3 reason for breeding in the Elm is for the largest tree with the most leaves, you can change the Mahoe to Elm keeping 1x1.

 

[Omicron]

Sequoia you mean, not elm. The sequoia is bred in for the Largest height trait, but the guide also keeps the 3x3 girth in the end instead of breeding it out/avoiding it.

Also, note that the Common Elm is an Extra Trees addition. It's not in base Forestry.

 

[b0bst3r]

So it does, well ok mine was 1x1 lol, it's a sight to behold tho, the rate of saplings, wood and apples never stops, I even got 4 golems to assist it grew that far away the forestry farm wasn't picking everything up.

 

[Omicron]

Oh, and to briefly return to the original reason for this thread to exist:

Buildcraft 4.1.1 released today. Some of the changelog entries say:

- New: Added config options for fluid fuel values. (CovertJaguar)
- Change: Reduce burn time of fluid fuels. (Player)

As you can see, the change in Forestry was part of a much larger shift in the entire Buildcraft & IC2 ecosytem, which are striving to align themselves much more closely than before. IC2 Experimental is designed to only work properly together with certain other mods now; they also added much more cross-mod fuel use opportunities, and the value of 1 EU changed drastically. Railcraft, Buildcraft and Forestry are bringing down liquid fuel values to match IC2, possibly also redefining the value of 1 MJ in the process. It seems to be a concerted effort between multiple development teams.

Will be interesting to see where it ends up when it's done...

 

[MigukNamja]

"Reduce" + "Player" == nerf

Sure, many seasoned/hard-mode players - including myself - like these kinds of changes. I find 1.5.x MJ power to be too quick and easy and 1.6.4 so far has a more reasonable power curve. While I'm not a big fan tedious, extra-step, GT-like stuff with plates, hammers, and metal snips, I don't mind spending a longer time in early and mid-game increasing power production to increase processing throughput.

However, the mod devs themselves and the seasoned/hard-mode players - of which most posters to these forums and indeed most MC forums belong - represent a tiny slice of the MC modded players community. The mod devs should be careful they don't raise the bar so high for 1st-time players that they turn them off. 1st-time players will use the mods they understand and can reasonably use.

Two examples of raising the bar too high for new players : lava and ethanol.

Maybe I'm wrong and this will be a good thing overall. Maybe it will challenge new players and give them something to look forward to. Here's a sample power progression:

Phase 1 : Manual collection. ex: coal, charcoal, manual peat farm
Phase 2 : Automated low power or semi-automated mid-power. ex: charcoal tree farm, cactus/sugarcane, basic solars, overworld lava, overworld oil, starter nuke reactor
Phase 3 : Automated high power. ex: ethanol, bee lava, bee oil/petrolum, high-powered nuke reactors, Advanced Solars

I'm putting aside (semi-)broken/OP 1.5.2 stuff like DC Force Engines and squid power. Am hoping those are "fixed" in 1.6 .

Yet, the elephants in the room to this whole power balance thing are MFR and SC2. Neither of those are involved in this balance and both are capable of massive charcoal generation. The end result is that CJ, Sengir, and Player will not be able to dictate a tiered powered structure and what will probably happen is:

Phase 1 : Manual collection
Phase 2 : Charcoal
Phase 3 : Charcoal

While I applaud them for their efforts and wholly support what they are trying to do, I believe it will ultimately back-fire.

This will be "interesting" indeed....

 

[Loufmier]

Oh, and to briefly return to the original reason for this thread to exist:

Buildcraft 4.1.1 released today. Some of the changelog entries say:

- New: Added config options for fluid fuel values. (CovertJaguar)
- Change: Reduce burn time of fluid fuels. (Player)

As you can see, the change in Forestry was part of a much larger shift in the entire Buildcraft & IC2 ecosytem, which are striving to align themselves much more closely than before. IC2 Experimental is designed to only work properly together with certain other mods now; they also added much more cross-mod fuel use opportunities, and the value of 1 EU changed drastically. Railcraft, Buildcraft and Forestry are bringing down liquid fuel values to match IC2, possibly also redefining the value of 1 MJ in the process. It seems to be a concerted effort between multiple development teams.

Will be interesting to see where it ends up when it's done...

interesting, however i do have some doubts about redefinition of eu/mj ratio. what concerns me is exponential curve of EU generation and linear of MJ. if curves will be same as now we are likely to run into pretty much same situation as we have now.

 

[MigukNamja]

IMHO, IC2 EU power generation is not exponential. I'm assuming you're referring to GT-based EU, but GT has its own thing/way/method/balance/system/paradigm.

 

[Lathanael]

If there were mods with even more realistic (looking) mechanics than Forestry or SC2, I'd likely go with those and if MFR was the only option for tree farms, I'd of course use them. In other words, it's all relative ;-)

The best you can get is either Thaumcraft 4 Golems (Has been mentioned already) or RotaryCraft WoddCutter (but it has a bit of MFR magical like feel as it's only one block unfortunately)

 

[snooder]

IMHO, IC2 EU power generation is not exponential. I'm assuming you're referring to GT-based EU, but GT has its own thing/way/method/balance/system/paradigm.

I think what he meant to say is that IC2 EU is geometric. Each 'tier' of power is 8 times the previous tier. That's not a gregtech thing, that's just how the power packet system works.

 

[MigukNamja]

Ah....the packet sizes, right. However, the power generation is pretty linear, IMHO.

• Coal/charcoal into Generator is 10 EU/t each
• Lava into Geothermal Generator is 20 EU/t each
• Starter (1-chamber) nuke reactor is between 30 and 80 EU/t each
• 6-chamber reactors with only Uranium fuel costs are around 230 EU/t each

And, of course solar panels are 1 EU/t each and you can use Advanced Solar to 'batch' them in tiers of 8, but the cost is almost exactly linear to the power output and you can mix/match different solar array packet sizes into the same MFSU, so I would consider solars almost perfectly linear. The RTGs are also pretty linear.

I don't like everything in IC2 for sure, but the power generation has a sensible progression curve, IMHO.

 

[snooder]

Ah....the packet sizes, right. However, the power generation is pretty linear, IMHO.

• Coal/charcoal into Generator is 10 EU/t each
• Lava into Geothermal Generator is 20 EU/t each
• Starter (1-chamber) nuke reactor is between 30 and 80 EU/t each
• 6-chamber reactors with only Uranium fuel costs are around 230 EU/t each

And, of course solar panels are 1 EU/t each and you can use Advanced Solar to 'batch' them in tiers of 8, but the cost is almost exactly linear to the power output and you can mix/match different solar array packet sizes into the same MFSU, so I would consider solars almost perfectly linear. The RTGs are also pretty linear.

I don't like everything in IC2 for sure, but the power generation has a sensible progression curve, IMHO.

Quick clarification, I meant x4, not x8.

Anyway, IC2 power gen having linear progression is one of the things that's broken about IC2. See, power storage, transport and consumption is all packet based. To move more power (and get lower transport loss), you have to go up a tier. Moving 16 packets of 32 EU/t 20 blocks on glassfibre cable loses you 16EU. Moving a single packet of 512 EU/t only loses you 1 EU over the same distance. Multiply that by a couple hundred block power pipeline and you see the need to move up in packet sizes, no?

Then we have things like upgrades on machines. Those actually follow an exponential increase in power consumption. To the point where if you have too small packets, the machine won't run because each packet won't even fill up the internal storage enough to start a single operation.

 

[zorn]

Quick clarification, I meant x4, not x8.

Anyway, IC2 power gen having linear progression is one of the things that's broken about IC2. See, power storage, transport and consumption is all packet based. To move more power (and get lower transport loss), you have to go up a tier. Moving 16 packets of 32 EU/t 20 blocks on glassfibre cable loses you 16EU. Moving a single packet of 512 EU/t only loses you 1 EU over the same distance. Multiply that by a couple hundred block power pipeline and you see the need to move up in packet sizes, no?

Then we have things like upgrades on machines. Those actually follow an exponential increase in power consumption. To the point where if you have too small packets, the machine won't run because each packet won't even fill up the internal storage enough to start a single operation.

Doesn't all that make sense though? "If you want to run power long distances or run machines very fast, you're going to have to upgrade to higher tier power."

 

[Omicron]

Exactly.

Use transformers to up the packet size. Use transformer upgrades inside machines to make them accept the larger packet sizes. Use storage upgrades to make them store more energy. These tools have been in IC2 for years, and the mod was designed from the ground up with the intention for the player to use them.

Also, glass fiber does not and has never lost EU after 20 blocks. I don't know who came up with this rumor and why it's so persistent, but even the official IC2 wiki clearly shows that it's 40 blocks.

 

[Poppycocks]

The ultimate Forestry tree - http://imgur.com/a/yPs94

Cheers mate! Much appreciated :3.

 

[Cocofang]

Sorry to latch onto and repurpose your statement here MigukNamja. But it's just too conveniently worded, because -

See, this right there is the typical prevailing attitude about Forestry that causes people to completely misunderstand the mod. The moment you are talking about ethanol treefarms with apple oaks, you're just plain doing it wrong. The biomass output of apple oaks is bad. They're absolutely unsuited for the task. Even vanilla spruce does significantly better, and that's without any tree breeding at all. Oh, and for charcoal there's also a better vanilla tree choice... two, in fact. The one thing apple oaks have going for them is the fact that they produce mulch. But people keep building apple oak treefarms for output anyway, because they act on autopilot and just repeat what they've been doing since Minecraft 1.2 or earlier without stopping to think.

I kinda agree with MigukNamja. tree breeding is a one time invesment and so hillariously powerful in terms of biomass/ethanol that you would need to make things like Apple Oak completely worthless for production (as in if oyu were to burn the biomass gaiend from them, you wouldn't be able to produce the same amount of biomass form it) to not make it hillarious.