Biofuel is INSANE

[SemiPr0]

A picture says 1000 words...so I won't bother TLDRing everyone.

This is insane, theres absolutely no reason to use anything other than biofuel.

4 Biofuel reactors are INSANELY cheap to build compared to 16 Magmatic Engines which require Invar out the wazzoo to build. Whereas Biofuel Reactors costs no invar at all and could only be considered "expensive" if you consider 2 blaze rods expensive but you only need ONE blaze rod and then you're NEVER out of blaze rods unless you're just bullheadedly stupid.

The Biofuel generators are outputting 8 to 10 times the power output of 4 times as many magmatic engines. And they're using LESS resources, and less fuel from an inexhaustible fuel supply.

It is the ONLY power option for large engineering operations because the speed of TE machinery doesn't change which means instead of upgrading to faster machines you need MORE of them to get things done more efficiently in a supply line...only Biofuel can keep up with the demand. Two Magmatic Crucibles will drain the Redstone Energy Cell storing the magmatic's power, the biofuel generators will be able to keep up with the demand and continue filling the cell as well.

Anyways...I realize that there are more power options being investigated but this is so wildly out of balance its literally the only option.

Do not pass go, do not collect 200 dollars..go directly to BioFuel cause you're wasting your time and resources doing anything else. Build a couple steam engines to process what you need to process to make your Biofuel reactors then chuck it all in your trash chute and forget about it after that.

[Kalthas]

But look at how much cooler your magmatics LOOK!! All that glowing magma!! Although for full effect you need to use the TE pipes and tanks and a room walled with some dark material.

....is it bad that I make things harder on myself just so things look cool?

[Dash16]

....is it bad that I make things harder on myself just so things look cool?

Not at all! For a while I was trying to figure out how to thread water pipes and lava pipes around my ME Molecular Assembler Chamber to make it look like it was water cooled, or piping heat away from it purely for effect. You gotta give yourself a project or else things tend to get stale.

[Teraku]

So, how is this self-sustainable? Where do the plants come from for use in the Bio Reactor in this setup?

[SemiPr0]

So, how is this self-sustainable? Where do the plants come from for use in the Bio Reactor in this setup?

This is just an example. But you can use a harvester and planter set up to basically plant 4 5x5 squares using cheap range upgrades on the harvesters and planters, you don't even need to use the most expensive ones. For maximum efficiency with biofuel you need to use multiple types of biomass but in volume simply using trees does work over time its not half as efficient but it still fills up fuel tanks just the same. Wood, leaves and saplings to the bioreactor, 1 in 5 saplings back to the planter. With a small application of steam engines for a short period to generate enough biofuel to run the system itself, it then literally becomes self sustaining and the steam engines can be removed from the equation entirely and the whole system generates far more fuel than it consumes. You can start this with as little as one bio reactor and one biofuel generator, and literally in a very short span of time have enough biofuel to sustain the usage of an inordinate amount of biofuel generators which can then output power on a scale that can sustain a large TE machinery factory with a quarter of the resource investment attempting to do the same thing with any other power gen method would require.

Magmatic Engines would require extraneous support machinery as well, so the harvester and planter set up is no different than the Magmatic array's need for Tesseract's (not cheap), BC Pumps, and power supply from redstone engines and a dimensonal anchor. Actually the harvester/planter set up is cheaper in total block requirements. You can do this with as little as one planter and two harvesters and a bunch of pipes and redstone energy conduits. And you can keep the chunk loaded with one dimensional anchor versus requiring two in the biofuel set up, as compared to the magmatic which would require one at the lava site and one at the engine generator site depending on how far apart they were.

Less resources and more power, and its literally almost a hands off system once you have it set up correctly. Magmatic's will never be hands off, you'll always need to be moving pumps and uncovering new lava lakes at the < 14 level in the Overworld, or you have to go to the Nether and efficiently transfer power out of there to the Overworld using Tesseracts and even then...you can eventually drain the area of the nether you're working of source blocks too...so even that isn't infinite energy.

[Teraku]

Yeah, the whole Biofuel thing could use a nerf, now that I see what happens when you have more than one of these Bio Reactors and Biofuel Generators.

[Aurrin]

Heeeere we go again.

"OP! OP! OP!"

There's always someone satisfied with less, so we just keep on sliding down the slope...

[SemiPr0]

Has nothing to do with being satisfied with less. I'm not screaming NERF BIOFUEL as much as I'm pointing out that the BC alternatives are pointless in comparison to it.

I am really hoping Big Generators or Mekanism make their way into the pack...because we really need options. Biofuel can stay just how it is right now as long as I have other options that can match its capabilities which allow me to approach my engineering path with different paths if I choose to.

There is no logical reason to choose anything but biofuel at the moment, but that doesn't mean nerf it....it means give me something else that can match it cause BC cannot.

[DocTabasco]

i was thinking you could always find more lava by using Mystcraft, or converting cobblestone in a magma crucible or lava fabricator though i don't know if that's energy efficient...

[gfb]

In terms of input to a bio reactor I like pumpkin and melon seeds: you don't have to replant them and you even get 2 types for some diversity. All you need is a harvester with a huge range upgrade.

[Dash16]

In terms of input to a bio reactor I like pumpkin and melon seeds: you don't have to replant them and you even get 2 types for some diversity. All you need is a harvester with a huge range upgrade.

Hrm, gotta give that a try. No need for a planter or fertilizer, but I assume you need to process the pumpkins and melons into seeds first somehow.

[gfb]

Sure. Autocrafting table takes care of that. One each for pumpkin and melon, obviously. Works well with a small AE system.

If you put the reactors near your farm (and thus the AE system) and leave a 1 block tank prior to throwing it into a tesseract to transport to wherever your main storage facility is you can even detect when the main storage is full (because your little tank will fill up). Throw a pipe and a pipe gate on that to detect when the tank is full and you can even get a redstone signal to shut off the AE system and the harvester(s) when your biofuel storage is full.

[TokiWartooth]

Personally I have like 6 planters to one harvester, planting carrots potatoes wheat spruce trees, and one harvester doing the 25x25 for my bio reactor farm, it produces more produce than the reactor and the planters can use, the more varieties you use the more efficiency you get from it.

[Magicthize]

I find if it's worth doing it's worth overdoing. I'm putting the finishing touches to my automated fields all of which are 25x25 with one crop per field. They'll all turn themselves off when they reach a predetermined amount. All the harvested melons and pumpkins are automatically converted seeds again until there is enough of an excess. I've got 2 Bio Reactors and currently 10 generators with about 40 tanks full of fuel. :)

[Altair357]

I'd still go for a Mystcraft lava oceans age. You have to move the pump eventually, sure, but so infrequently that you'll hardly even notice.

Invar is pretty easy to get. You just have to pulverize a lot of iron.

Also, biofarms are loud, large, and annoying to build.

[Viktor_Berg]

Not if you use cacti and wheat, they aren't. Tree farms are just the most extreme and efficient method of running biogens, but not necessarily the most preferred one. My farm is 2/3 fir trees and 1/3 cacti, for the increased fuel efficiency, and also because it means the planter won't interfere with cactus growth, since it grows on sand where it can't plant saplings.