MFR Farm/Biofuel Lag

[ragdim]

I have a few questions regarding MFR farms/biofuel which I couldn't find much info on.

1. is there a way to reduce the lag created by sewage farms+plantations? I'm thinking of phasing out the need for animals/fertilizer by increasing the range of my planter so throughput stays relatively the same (this doesn't fix the lag created by the harvester, though). If this doesn't work, I might just switch over to large scale magmatics, but I hear that this can also be laggy.

2. are there problems with putting blocks in front of grinders/autospawners? I'd like to protect my machines/pipes from mobs should the worst happen.

3. is there any use for enchanted items gained via mob farms? The enchant system seems wholly pointless when you have tekkit.

4. does squishing a bunch of mobs into a confined area (especially ghasts) cause less mobs to spawn overall, or do the autospawners not care?

Thanks.

[ragdim]

So I've done some testing and have managed to alleviate the lag somewhat but not by much. I'd like to add another question in addition to the ones above: my grinders seem to have trouble killing ghasts, so I'm wondering what's everyone's preferred setup? Thanks again.

[badkruka]

1. As far as I know that is more of a client based lag then server så I have put my farm in its own area and keeps it going with a chunk loader. I dont know of a solutuion better then that so if you can fully automate it then it is the best option.

2. Dig a 5*5*5 hole. Have a picture here that shows you how I build my auto-spawner pits.

http://imgur.com/a/N2g7V

If you whant you can cover the pit with hardened glass so the Ghast and Blaze cant escape it.

3. Only viable enchant are silk touch.

4. Don't know but the auto-spawner doesnt care about the number of spawned mobs but if it the world start to spawn less monster I haven't got a clue. :)

[Timendainum]

We have large farms on our server with no lag.

Maybe pics to help determine why you are lagging?

Low spec system?

[jakalth]

Tree farms cause client lag with MFR. Simple as that. Non-fertilized tree farms less so, but still cause some client lag.

2 ways to really fix this problem.

1: switch to a different crop. Anything really, mellons, pumpkins, wheat for seeds, cactus for cactus green, even milking a squid for ink.(last one is a bit cheaty...) Also, fertilized giant mushroom farms are quite effective.

2: if you want to keep the trees. Steve's Carts tree farms are nearly lag free and have only slightly lower sapling output. They just require a bit more infrastructure to support them. Coal/charcoal to fuel the cart(or just logs), tracks laid down for the cart to run on, the cargo manager(s) to load fuel and saplings for planting, and to unload wood, apples, and saplings. They also only easily work with Oak, though the exotic plants module lets you use other types of trees.

Mfr farms are simpler and cheaper, and unless you go ahead and spend the very high cost of making galgadorian tools for your reinforced hull steve's cart, you'll be spending diamonds, on occasions, repairing the tools.

Yes, you can place blocks directly in front of the harvester. It limits the size of your fields a little though. But it can be used to protect the harvester from damage.

[theMij]

For tree farms, I have a great deal of respect for steve's carts now, gotta say. MFR ones are quicker, but way less interesting to me. One thing to keep in mind is that it will require more space. That's manageable, but plan ahead.

Far as handling lag goes, I've never had harvesters lag for me. Might be the tree thing as Jakalth says. For the ghasts targeting, it could be a height issue. One way to test this would be to set up a column of grinders to see if that fixes it.

[jakalth]

aah completely missed the autospawner bit...

ghasts in an auto spawner need a bit more room to spawn. The height of the room needs to be a bit taller to allow for their size. Grinding them is tricky since the grinder needs to be the height of the top of the ghasts head, so roughly 3 blocks higher then the spawner. It will also have a hard time seeing the ghasts due to their strange hitbox.

enchanted items gained via mob farming... that's a tough one... with the modular power suit and some of the other higher end armor, most will be useless. But some enchants are nice. Like if you get lucky and end up with a fortune enchant or a silk touch enchant. getting those placed onto a book would be useful for tweaking your special use gear.

ok, most mfr machines will ignore a block directly in front of them. so it is safe to have them outside the walls of a spawn room. Just remember the limited range of the grinder when placing it.

I've only noticed any real lag when dealing with tree farms. The other types of farms do not seem to lag noticeably, even psychotically over fertilized wheat farms..

[phazeonphoenix]

Due to the way MFR machines work, a larger area of effect will make the machine slower overall. The machine will check each space within it's range one by one for work to be done. Larger area = more spaces = longer time between cycles.

I had some success setting up a mob farm inside of a pocket dimension. A single chunk loader or dim anchor can keep the whole pocket loaded and you have a fair amount of space, especially vertical space. It can be severely disorientating inside the pocket but you can build it out a bit using a filler.

[weirleader]

my ghast spawner is only one block below my grinder and I haven't had any problems: http://imgur.com/bNB8aOU

[badkruka]

Grinder only covers an area 5*5 so if you have larger room you will have "blind" spots for the grinder. I use 5*5*5 pits to spawn mob in since they can spawn ghasts aswell but still use two grinders since they clear out the pit faster and increases the spawn ratio for the auto-spawner. They only thing bad with a 5*5*5 pit are that it doesnt have the best spawn ratio on ghast's since it's a perfect fit for it and the auto-spawner will have to fail some for every succefull spawning. But can live with that since the need for ghast tear's are so limited.

[Timendainum]

We set up our tree farms such that only one tree spawns at a time in each farm. It may not be as fast as a larger area, but we always have tons of wood in the AE system and we've never had any problems with the farms lagging even low spec clients.

[jakalth]

actually, that is an option that might work.

[ragdim]

Just as an update to this thread, I've tried various farm arrangements with no luck. I've also tried using 200 magmatics just as a test, and it is every bit as laggy as I've heard (at least when they're on). My computer specs aren't horribly dated, either: athlon II x2 (different from the plain old x2) @ 2.8ghz, 10gb ram, 4850 radeon. All of these tests have been offline MC.

We set up our tree farms such that only one tree spawns at a time in each farm. It may not be as fast as a larger area, but we always have tons of wood in the AE system and we've never had any problems with the farms lagging even low spec clients.

I'm interested in trying this out, but I have to wonder why this would work? If you're maintaining the same throughput, then surely the same amount of trees are still being chopped, thus causing the same amount of lag? Things are probably different because you're playing on a server as opposed to offline.

I think aside from timendainum's suggestion, I'll try using pumpkins/melons and seeing how that goes. Overall, it's pretty disappointing that I can't utilize large scale power production (200-1k mj) in the new tekkit without incurring lots of lag. I'd try atomic science, but I have no desire to since I've heard it can also become laggy, and there's no ores in my world currently for it.

[jakalth]

Have you tried building it in a pocket dimension as Phazeonphoenix suggested? it will probably still lag to death inside the pocket dimension, but as long as you keep the whole thing chunk loaded, it should still work while your not there. And, it should also greatly reduce the lag you experience in the overworld.

The more options you have to work with the more likely you'll find one that works for you. That's why it is nice to have different people giving different ideas.

[badkruka]

Its a client lag so just put the farm on chunks some distance from where you normaly play, keept the chunks alive with a cunkloader and you will have no problem at all.

[ragdim]

Its a client lag so just put the farm on chunks some distance from where you normaly play, keept the chunks alive with a cunkloader and you will have no problem at all.

Thanks, I tried this and it fixed the problem.

[Timendainum]

Just as an update to this thread, I've tried various farm arrangements with no luck. I've also tried using 200 magmatics just as a test, and it is every bit as laggy as I've heard (at least when they're on). My computer specs aren't horribly dated, either: athlon II x2 (different from the plain old x2) @ 2.8ghz, 10gb ram, 4850 radeon. All of these tests have been offline MC.

I'm interested in trying this out, but I have to wonder why this would work? If you're maintaining the same throughput, then surely the same amount of trees are still being chopped, thus causing the same amount of lag? Things are probably different because you're playing on a server as opposed to offline.

I think aside from timendainum's suggestion, I'll try using pumpkins/melons and seeing how that goes. Overall, it's pretty disappointing that I can't utilize large scale power production (200-1k mj) in the new tekkit without incurring lots of lag. I'd try atomic science, but I have no desire to since I've heard it can also become laggy, and there's no ores in my world currently for it.

Yes, ours is on a server. So, we keep the system running 24/7. We don't need huge throughput we just let wood build up over time. I think we eventually capped the raw wood at about 300k blocks for each wood type such that it would fit on a 64k storage disk. But, we're now revamping storage so that all raw materials are stored in deep storage so we won't have to worry again until we hit 2 billion.