Maggots, Compost, and Biofuel

  • Do you support the suggested additions? (read topic before voting, please) 13

    1. Yes (6) 46%
    2. No (3) 23%
    3. Maybe (4) 31%

    Poll ends on Jan 19th 2038, 3:14 am

    I recently have been thinking of a way to make the biofuel system better. I eventually came up with an idea - Maggots (Technically, they're actually some kind of compost worm, because maggots are fly larvae, but we'll just call them Maggots).


    First, there would be a new block: the Compost Bin. In this bin, the player puts Maggots, Water, and different organic materials to compost. Maggots are not consumed. The bin works in cycles - first, the player inputs materials to compost, into a 2x2 grid - one item from each slot is taken (only one from each slot, up to 4 items total), and after the cycle is up, composted materials are output in the output slot, the number of them being the same as how many items were taken from the 2x2 grid.


    The composted materials will also have a "quality" value - this is determined by the kinds of items thrown into the 2x2 grid, and the type of Maggots in the compost bin - more on that later. The average quality of all 4 (or less) items taken from the grid is the base quality value, multiplied by the maggots' quality modifier value.


    Another block - the Fermenter - would take Composted Materials and make Biomass out of them. The amount of biomass created depends on the quality of the composted materials input into the fermenter. The biomass can be directly burned in a Semifluid Generator, or processed in another machine - the Distillery.


    The Distillery is the only one of these three new machines that needs a kind of fuel. The basic one is slow and uses burnable fuels, and the electric one is faster, running on electric energy. The distillery takes Biomass, boils it, and creates from it Scrap and Biofuel. Biofuel, of course, can be burned for energy, just like in the current system.


    Now, on to the Maggots. Maggots would be put into a Maggot Bin to breed. They would just be a pile of Maggots, having different traits and all. There are 2 input slots in the maggot bin - both for different maggots to be put in and to breed. If only one slot is filled, after a while, they will produce Offspring, but at a slower rate than breeding two kinds of maggots. The traits of the maggots that breed will combine, like with forestry bees, and have a small chance to combine to form a better, more refined/desirable trait. Those desirable traits would affect the maggot quality, fertility, work rate, etc.


    To obtain maggots, the player can kill Zombies. They would rarely drop a pile of maggots with basic, common traits (biome dependent?). In the nether, zombie pigmen would rarely drop maggots with more desirable traits.


    Some exotic kinds of maggots could even be able to process different kinds of materials to create different stuff - like processing Crushed Ores slowly into more dusts than normal, or processing Redstone/glowstone directly into Energy, more efficiently than just throwing Redstone into an energy storage block.


    An even more endgame type of maggot, would possibly be able to make Super Composted Materials, which are fermented into Super Biomass, which is distilled into Fertilizer and Superfuel. These would be very difficult to get, though, and would require using the maggot breeding process to obtain them, rather than just finding them.


    Just like all other suggestions, I want your feedback. Tell me what you like/dislike about this idea, and how it can be improved. It is much better to propose to the developers a more refined idea, rather than what I just thought up. I also included a Poll, to make it easier to see how many support/don't support this idea. Thank you.

    • Official Post

    Maggots do not aid the decomposition of materials, or make anything at all really, bacteria do that.
    I think a nice fermenter would be good though, shove in a bunch of plant balls, sugar, water and leave it in the dark for a while then whala, a bunch of nice ethanol to burn/drink :D

  • I like this idea, especially since I had a practical test on how to make bio ethanol out of maïzena. But we did have to add some kind of enzymes, so the chain of glucose could be cut into smaller chains. Any chance of including these enzymes?


    The maggots eat the stuff, and process it with their enzymes into Biomass/Composted Materials. We wouldn't have to add them directly to the composting bin.

    • Official Post


    The maggots eat the stuff, and process it with their enzymes into Biomass/Composted Materials. We wouldn't have to add them directly to the composting bin.


    You know that maggots are just baby flies, right? They don't aid in decomposition, they are more of a "by-product" since they digest rotting flesh.


  • You know that maggots are just baby flies, right? They don't aid in decomposition, they are more of a "by-product" since they digest rotting flesh.


    We'll call them maggots, because "Composting Worms" doesn't sound catchy enough.

    copse bacteria source of process, maggots and other "stuff" just take part of energy for themselves without any positive impact on product.


    It's minecraft - we have magic red dust, infinite water, infinite air, infinite stone, magic, and can mold diamonds/metal with out bare hands. Does it really matter that much?

  • Ingame logic? You can carry over a ton of stuff and still run around! What logic! :thumbup:


    Several tons, really. And that's with an inventory full of gold blocks, and gold armour.

  • bag of holding embedded into steave, answer is simple.


    but now, explain maggots.


    Several thousand years ago, an advanced alien race sought to colonize Minecraftia. However, its terrain was barren and wasted, useful for growing nothing. So they engineered a kind of worm, that they deposited on the planet with mechanical Flies. However, the alien race died off, or left for some other reason - and that reason is still unknown. The flies continued making/depositing the worms for much longer after the alien race was gone. They were even designed to find areas that had been terraformed, and scatter Seeds on those places. However, they were never programmed to replicate or repair themselves - and many of them died off in solar flare events, from overheating, and many other causes.
    When the first settlers arrived at Minecraftia, they brought with them animals, as a food source and to help move stuffs. On the piles of dung left by said animals, they noticed the flies, and also noticed worms in the dung piles. Upon further investigation, they discovered that the flies were mechanical, and that said flies had deposited worms in the dung-piles. They called the worms "maggots", because they thought of them to be similar to the worms that flies lay in decaying stuff, back on the colonists' homeworld. The name stuck, and is still used to this day.
    But to be exact, they are Composting Worms, of sorts, that process the waste into materials that are fermented easier, and other stuff that composting worms make.