Harvester

[Technomancer]

I created a Harvester (and Planter) that has a 11 radius upgrade. Currently, I have the pair set up to plant and harvest Oak. However, the Harvester sometimes, even with maximum power, and trees to harvest, just stops, and continues later randomly, as if in waves. Is this normal, or is this because I had not pumped out the Sludge?

[Viktor_Berg]

It's normal. For whatever reason, Harvesters with large radius upgrades behave weirdly sometimes. You just have to be patient and let it run for a while and stabilize itself.

Also, if you are making a biofuel plant, I would STRONGLY suggesting using fir trees instead of oaks. I've had much better experience using those - they don't grow in all kinds of funky shapes, and do not clump up like oak trees do (thus creating more leaf blocks for saplings to drop from). You can also dedicate a part of the 25x25 area to growing cactus. They grow relatively quickly, and can boost the fuel output of your biofuel gens to more than double its efficiency if only using saplings. Just don't forget to first smelt cactus into cactus green using an adjacent furnace, raw cactus blocks don't produce fuel in the generator.

[Technomancer]

It's normal. For whatever reason, Harvesters with large radius upgrades behave weirdly sometimes. You just have to be patient and let it run for a while and stabilize itself.

Also, if you are making a biofuel plant, I would STRONGLY suggesting using fir trees instead of oaks. I've had much better experience using those - they don't grow in all kinds of funky shapes, and do not clump up like oak trees do (thus creating more leaf blocks for saplings to drop from). You can also dedicate a part of the 25x25 area to growing cactus. They grow relatively quickly, and can boost the fuel output of your biofuel gens to more than double its efficiency if only using saplings. Just don't forget to first smelt cactus into cactus green using an adjacent furnace, raw cactus blocks don't produce fuel in the generator.

Spruce? The reason I had used Oak was BECAUSE they clumped, so I could have more wood for less room (and less harvesters/planters). And no, I am not using biofuel. I am pretty new to this version of Tekkit, previously I primarily used IC2. Right now I have the harvester hooked up to an array of furnaces which turn the wood into charcoal, which is then hooked up to themselves and about 20 Steam Engines to power my two quarries and the other machines (including the harvester/planter). I usually have too much power than I know what to do with, but that's usually when I get an inventory full of Jungle wood and stick it in my furnace array. I am only now trying to see how good this Harvester does.

What is the approximate size that Harvester doesn't behave oddly? I might want to shrink it and use multiple.

[Viktor_Berg]

Trust me when I say this. Large tree farms produce more wood than you will EVER need, spruce, oak or birch. I have customized my Tekkit pack a bit, and have Factorization, mainly for the barrels. My 25x25 farm filled up 3 normal barrels with wood within a few hours of it starting to work. That's 192 stacks of logs. More than I will ever need. I have to send everything else into a void pipe.

Now, why would I suggest even bothering about leaves and saplings and stuff if you get so much wood no matter what kind of tree you use? The reason is simple - an oak farm is no good at producing anything other than wood. A spruce farm is very good at producing wood, but can ALSO be used to produce biofuel, because the saplings are just that plentiful. Simply put, oak farms are single-purpose, spruce farms are multi-purpose. Also, biofuel is a much better fuel source than steam power, at least in my opinion.

As for the maximum size of the harveseter, I don't really know. You can try and experiment in a Creative world with it. Try different sizes, see which ones work optimally for your purpose.