Biofuel, plant of choice question.

[jakalth]

Ok, I know biofuel is one of, if not the, best fuel of choice for Tekkit early too mid/late game. But I have a few questions for those that use it. These are just the posters opinion and Not a rule. So be nice and thank you for your input on this.

1. What specific plant do you find to be the highest yield in terms of biofuel output over a set period of time?

2. What specific plant do you think is the most efficient in terms of resources spent building the auto farm/generator setup?

3. Trees... Which tree type has the greatest yield in your opinion?

4. What plant do you find to be the best overall in terms of material cost to set up AND overall production rate?

5. What combination of plants would you go with if you could only choose 4 different plants to use for your production farm?

I'll star things out here.

1. In my opinion, I find it to be a toss up. Pumpkins seem to be faster in terms of how quickly they produce and how easily the harvester can work the field on a large farm. But, trees are erratic, and they can sometimes go nuts with sapling output, flooding the bioreactor to capacity in a short period of time, while other times they leave the reactors empty.

2. Pumpkins. The setup is fairly cheap to make and they only need one powered machine and a redstone engine to keep the reactor *supplied with seeds.

3. For me, it always seems to be Aspen trees from the tiaga biome. They seem to have the highest number of leaves per tree and usually out produce Oak, even with Oak growing into the large mutant trees at times.

4. Not sure how to answer this one myself yet. I haven't worked enough with the full variety of plants yet to decide with any confidence.

5. Rubber Trees, Pumpkins, Melons(if I can find a villager selling them, otherwise Potatoes), Aspen trees.

[funknapkin]

Not a plant, but... ink sacs are ridiculously OP with the bioreactor. Just capture a squid with a safari ball, bring it to your base and pop a few ranchers next to it. You only really need one rancher because they produce a TON of ink sacs for low power costs, but you can place more and they stack.

[00Ducky]

I have all ways used oak trees. If you want the best results, use 9 different types seeds, plants and saplings.... That will give you 100% results. You would then need 9 MFR farms to work smoothly.

I just go for oak trees cause 2 BioFuel Generators make more MJs then a quarry uses. I forget how many Generators I had running off of one BioReactor.

[Dash16]

1. Wheat seems to produce a ton of seeds, plus the wheat can go to breeding cows for fertilizer, slaughtering for pink slime and liquid meat or grinding for mob essence.

2. Either the pumpkin or the melon. Probably the melon, since it yields more seeds. No need to replant is a huge win, sending all seeds to the reactor.

3. I don't do trees, too laggy. I suspect the spruce ones are best though.

4. Not sure how to answer that, question seems kinda like 2.

5. Pumpkin, Melon, wheat and carrot. I can't seem to produce enough potatoes to keep up with those others.

I do have a biofuel tank from sea level to bedrock completely full, with 30 or so generators filling my power grid.

STILL isn't enough to keep up with my MFR Laser Drill. :)

[TokiWartooth]

1) spruce trees, from 1 stack to filling my farm chests fastest with similar areas to others. Wheat grows slow without water though making less attractive an option.

2) Definitely melons/pumpkins, you don't have to make planters 2 autocrafting tables < 1 planter + wiring.

3) again spruce trees, they have the least likelihood of messing up the growth of the other trees by growing too close.

4) split it between melons and pumpkins cheapest set up no maintenance.

5) Carrots, Wheat, Spruce trees and pumpkins, the first 3 have various uses and the pumpkin just puts out crazy results.

Other things to consider that output well, cactus and cocoa, though can't remember if cocoa works in the reactor.

@ducky no i have 2 25x25farms, and produce 9 different varieties of plants try again.

@Dash each precharger has a capacity of 1000 MJ/t you can't ever get it to max speed with these things without breaking a sever first, once I get my fusion reactors where I want them they are gonna power the drill, at max speed, kinda wanna see how much it can produce.

[Dash16]

@Dash each precharger has a capacity of 1000 MJ/t you can't ever get it to max speed with these things without breaking a sever first, once I get my fusion reactors where I want them they are gonna power the drill, at max speed, kinda wanna see how much it can produce.

Don't need max speed, I've been running 4 prechargers on a single drill for a week and have about 2500 diamonds (after sending diamond ore to a block smasher and nether diamond ore to a pulverizer).

[Magicthize]

Cocoa beans do work in the reactor. They're maybe slightly less space efficient than other crops though as you need to place a jungle wood block for them to be "planted" on, thus taking up a 3x3 space with only 4 planted crops (1 on each vertical face of the wood). They give a good yield though as well as each fully grown pod drops 3 beans so you'll get 12 beans per wood "core". Plus you can arrange the wood cores in a manner to not waste the corners.

Also don't forget Nether Wart. There's pretty much no other use for it that I've found so I definitely recommend setting up a farm for it. Just remember that it needs to be planted on soul sand.

[Viktor_Berg]

Cactus is pretty efficient as well. You have to smelt them into cactus green first, but that takes very little energy in a powered furnace, and you can output directly into a bioreactor. My 25x25 farm had approximately 1/3 of its area taken by cacti, the rest by spruce. It produced enough cactus to supply 2 bioreactors and then some. Even then, the cactus layout wasn't as compact as it could be (I didn't put cacti into the diagonal corners of the farm), so if I made a pure 25x25 cactus farm with the highest possible efficiency, it probably could provide enough cactus green for 3-4 bioreactors on its own, and 6-8 if provided another plant type from a second farm.

[jakalth]

Thanks for your opinions on this so far. A lot more variety in results then I had first though. A lot of good ideas here as well.

[Viktor_Berg]

That's kind of the beauty with the bioreactor. You might think it's just one block, one way of getting fuel. And then you suddenly realize that you have so many options.

[jakalth]

And the oddities of minecraft it's self seems to give different results for each person as well. Part of the fun of the game.

[Viktor_Berg]

I can for a fact say that I had an awful time with biofuel gens when running them on oaks, and that was because the trees were bunching up, growing too close (and destroying leaf blocks), or growing into grotesque shapes that'd mess up the harvesters. And then someone else says that oak worked the best for them, and that's how it goes - it's random.

[KiwiUSA]

Interestingly enough. All of the dye colors work in the bio-reactor.

Red & Yellow from flowers may be sustainable, I guess Orange as a direct option as well

Lapis works

BoneMeal

I'm intrigued by the Ink Sack idea. How to you keep the squid from despawning if you leave the base?

[plowmanplow]

How to you keep the squid from despawning if you leave the base?

Might a Jailer's Safari Net work for that?

[funknapkin]

Interestingly enough. All of the dye colors work in the bio-reactor.

Red & Yellow from flowers may be sustainable, I guess Orange as a direct option as well

Lapis works

BoneMeal

I'm intrigued by the Ink Sack idea. How to you keep the squid from despawning if you leave the base?

I've never had them despawn, but it may be due to how I setup the farm. I originally spawned the squids using the AutoSpawner, so that may help. Also, the area is in a chunkloaded pocket dimension.

I really recommend you try it, you'll be surprised how fast it produces ink sacs.

[00Ducky]

@ducky no i have 2 25x25farms, and produce 9 different varieties of plants try again.

That works too. I just use the small ones, and use fertilizer on them. Less space. Really what ever floats your boat.

[00Ducky]

@ducky no i have 2 25x25farms, and produce 9 different varieties of plants try again.

That works too. I just use the small ones, and use fertilizer on them. Less space. Really what ever floats your boat.

[TokiWartooth]

Magic - you can use more than a single block of jungle tree to plant cocoa on, though I imagine you may be speaking of planters not planting but one block, I do the cocoa on 2 trees my self that are 8 blocks tall thats two 8x4 farms of cocoa pretty easily.

[KiwiUSA]

I've never had them despawn, but it may be due to how I setup the farm. I originally spawned the squids using the AutoSpawner, so that may help. Also, the area is in a chunkloaded pocket dimension.

I really recommend you try it, you'll be surprised how fast it produces ink sacs.

Thanks - works a treat

And to add to this, my new favorite is mushrooms....

My pick of 9 assuming you have enough fertilizer to support it.

Potatoes, Carrots, Cocoa Beans, Spruce, Birch, Oak, Red Mushrooms, Brown Mushrooms, Ink Sacks.

[Magicthize]

Magic - you can use more than a single block of jungle tree to plant cocoa on, though I imagine you may be speaking of planters not planting but one block, I do the cocoa on 2 trees my self that are 8 blocks tall thats two 8x4 farms of cocoa pretty easily.

Yeah I know but since it's Tekkit we're talking about I assumed people would naturally want to automate everything. I use cocoa beans for biofuel so my system needs to be able to take care of itself

[Magicthize]

Dammit, double post