Can crops beat out MFR and Forestry tree farms for energy production?

1st Official Post

    It seems very popular to make tree farms, using various parts for biofuel and various for burning in solid heat boxes (railcraft).


    I'm wondering if it's possible to out perform that with crops.


    Supposing we


    1. Breed good crops
    2. Cover them with a crop-matron that's full of fertilizer and has water pumped to it
    3. Additionally have an MFR fertilizer covering them (can use their fertilizer or IC2 actually)
    Other ideas? Let's rule out blood magic for now.


    There's a number of ways we could best put the stuff to use for actual energy production.


    Maybe turn sugar into sugar charcoal (MFR) for running in boilers(Railcraft). Maybe make biomass....that one's tricky, because IC2 biomass is convenient to make, but less convenient to use. Whereas biomass is less convenient to make in Forestry, but can very handily be dumped into Reactant Dynamos (unfortunately IC2 Biomass cannot) , along with powdered sugar (thermal expansion). Generally I think it would be great if IC2 Biomass was usable with other mods' biomass, but maybe there's a good reason this ain't so. Worth mentioning I also couldn't get Railcraft Steam to work in an IC2 Kinetic Steam Generator.


    Or maybe go with a variety of crops, and funnel them all into an MFR Bioreactor.


    I suppose there are also options from Advanced Generators to consider, which I know very little about (including whether it's popular), and options I wouldn't know much about from GregTech.


    Edit: Formatting

    Cool, thanks Spawn. Some how that seems more exciting to me.
    I guess a whole bunch of forestry fermenters may be the way to go.
    Though I am preferring lately to move towards a few really powerful units instead of many smaller ones. That's what had me intersted in Railcraft's boilers, but when I run some trials in this little calculator for it


    http://calculator.towerofaweso…rP=0&cP=0&B1=&B2=16&rP=1#


    Maybe I really don't understand how you're supposed to use boilers, and they CAN put out impressive amounts of power or steam.
    Also increases my interest in this Advanced Generators mod. Still while it looks like it provides great options for USING biofuel/ethanol (or charcoal, but not sugar charcoal) it doesn't provide a great way to PRODUCE ethanol.

    At the end of the day, if you want power from plants, it seems fermentation (in forestry fermenters) is among your better options, largely because of how good a combination biomass and powdered sugar are in a reactant dynamo. Unless you wanna set up a 5x5 nuclear reactor, and a bunch of IC2 fermenters, but a small sugar patch can produce much more biochaff than one of those needs. We're not really using crops to potential there.
    However, if you're willing to make a ton of IC2 Generators, sugar charcoal does burn in them, should be 1000 EU per piece of sugar charcoal. An augmented Reactant Dynamo, can only give 2960RF (740 EU) with that same piece of sugar. A few good IC2 Induction furnaces could pump the sugar charcoal out cheap.
    Won't have to mine apatite for the fermenters either....I think I might just make a zillion IC2 solid fuel generators. I'd settle for the nearly as efficient reactant dynamo, but supplying it's liquid half seems like a hassle. Unless I find a way to use IC2 Biomass for it.
    .........Would having a few hundred IC2 generators with clay piping receiving bunch of sugar charcoal be a lag source? Seems like it could.

    do you watch direwolf's forgecraft series? he did MFR biomass there and it is stupidly powerful if you make it efficiently, I don't know about usage efficiency, but if you use 9 different plant types, it uses like one plant every five minutes to keep ~10 biogenerators going(in Dire's base), which produce 160 RF/t each, automatically turn off when the internal buffer is full, and are cheap to make(a piston and 2 blazerods are the only items that might actually be hard to make, if i recall correctly). if you breed the GGR of the crops(really only the GG part) high enough, you would probably not even need one max-size field.
    And yes, several hundred tile entities are a öag source, no matter what you do with them.

    Native language german, please point out mistakes to me. forget it, my english is better than that of a good deal of people on the forums anyway.


    IC Related Quotes thread. If you ever need some good puns.

    Haven't seen it, but I believe it. With proper diversity each item yields 160mb. That's nuts. Plus those biogenerators get a good bit of energy out of biofuel compared to most options.


    And now that I'm learning a little bit about crop breeding, and that I can breed a crop with super stats and then cross breed the stats into other species with a little luck and patience...it all sounds a bit more tempting.


    Advanced Generators has a multi block that can put out 5000 RF, that's pretty cool, but it uses biofuel about half as efficiently as the MFR Biogenerator.


    By the way can anyone confirm or deny whether the MFR fertilizer machine and the crop-matron work together successfully? I've got two running right now on a small patch of reeds I'm cross breeding. You can see the MFR fertilizer causing it's bonemeal like sparkle on the crops, don't know whether it's stealing the opportunity from the crop-matron

    Once I breed the crops I like what's the best strategy for spreading them out across a large field? In my early thoughts on how to do it, it seems like that could be as time consuming as the breeding was.


    And what's the final word on Weedex? If it's done once, by hand, and only on bare cross crops before the take a plant...still harmful?

    Pretty sure weedex is harmful forever, but the harm is that it caps stats at 10. So if you don't plan on breeding past that point your good.


    There's no way in hell an MFR harvester using non GR crops beats an IC2 harvester.


    Biofuel is more complicated, which is its own problem, but I think it might edge out biogas given the maintenance work to maintain dirt and appetite supply. As a bonus you get a massive amount of charcoal, which is even more energy, and sand, I never have enough sand.

    he didn't ask about the harvester, but about the fertilizer. and you can just macerate cobble for sand.

    Quote from CraftyFellow


    Once I breed the crops I like what's the best strategy for spreading them out across a large field? In my early thoughts on how to do it, it seems like that could be as time consuming as the breeding was.


    And what's the final word on Weedex? If it's done once, by hand, and only on bare cross crops before the take a plant...still harmful?


    Well, with weeds and stuff, it probably tike quite a while.. there is a mod that essentially adds the IC² crop system without weeds, though, if you really don't want to sit next to your plants for hours. If you breed the resistance high enough, weeds shouldn't be that much of a problem though. and if i recall correctly(amd it hasn't been changed), plants with a growth over 23 are immune to weeds, but start spreading them. And there might be a way to automatically remove weeds with Computercraft(or Opencomputers, if you don't want it to be that OP), with mining turtles checking for weed crops, removing them and placing new double cropsticks, you would have to supply cropsticks en masse then, but you could just leave it running over night(i think, and it is definitely possible if you have enough seedbags to populate 2 rows, one horizontal and one vertical).

    Native language german, please point out mistakes to me. forget it, my english is better than that of a good deal of people on the forums anyway.


    IC Related Quotes thread. If you ever need some good puns.

    I think that Crops can take out Forestry Farms and MFR farms. Because the Production can be so imens that those Farms are only able to keep up if you produces a lot of fertilizer and use it constantly to grow stuff faster.
    But in fairness Crops in combination with Forestry Farms can be so extreme that you can not belive it. ^^" You know the Old PluginForForestry that allowed it to use Crops on Forestry Farms. xD

    Seed bags with specific stats would be a REALLY excellent thing to be able to scan and replicate. Though as I understand it the usual system of determining what is scannable would not support that, because they are not naturally occuring and there isn't exactly a recipe for them.

    Quote from blub01

    if i recall correctly(amd it hasn't been changed), plants with a growth over 23 are immune to weeds, but start spreading them

    I read on a tekkit wikia: "At growth level 24-31, the plant will begin behaving like weeds, spreading to nearby Crops, even if the Crop is not empty. A recommended cap for this Stat is 21, to prevent plants with 24 or higher Growth from growing."


    Now that's a few different ideas here. I'm more than happy to breed a super plant that will spread like wild fire through a field I set up for it. If it's immune to weeds better still.


    However if it is some sort of generator of weeds, that's real bad.



    but a weed generator isn't a problem as long as there aren't any unoccupied cropsticks nearby, is it(and i mean any cropsticks not occuppied by plants with growth >= 24)? there would be no weeds spreading because there is no space for weeds, i think.

    Native language german, please point out mistakes to me. forget it, my english is better than that of a good deal of people on the forums anyway.


    IC Related Quotes thread. If you ever need some good puns.

    Growth of 10 is more then enough. But the Drops You can increase also to 31 which is really cool so you have speed crop that grows fast enough and it drops really much. (Sorry i mean gain).

    • Official Post
    Quote from blub01


    but a weed generator isn't a problem as long as there aren't any unoccupied cropsticks nearby, is it(and i mean any cropsticks not occuppied by plants with growth >= 24)? there would be no weeds spreading because there is no space for weeds, i think.

    While you're right, its still a pain to crossbreed it (in other words, making a big field of it).


    Growth 21 / Gain 31 and Resistance 0-10 is optimal.
    You may require special environment conditions (4 blocks deep of dirt {includes farmland} , sunlight , decent height {max bonus at Y 128} and decent biome {best biome is swamp, decent is forest-like}).
    Said conditions are only really required for high tier crops like metal giving ones. Sugar cane should be fine on poor environment as its a low tier crop. It may grow slightly slower though.

    Another important question: I've heard some people say that weedex merely limits a crop from ever evolving to a level above 10. I've heard others talk about it degrading stats over time.



    Which is it? Or both? If it's just the first one:



    Would it be possible to breed a super crop, and then when it comes time to place it and greatly multiply in the field, go ahead and weed ex a huge number of blank double crop sticks, knowing that the only price you would pay is that they couldn't evolve any higher than your original super crop?



    I'm actually intending to breed my plants to have very low resistance. That way it will be very easy to cross breed this sugar into other plants, giving them high stats. I don't think it will be so hard to create a scenario where these low resistance plants are never trampled, and are never next to empty crop sticks which could become weeds. Or at the very least, I'll just upgraded resistance last. So that I always keep around a high stat and eager to crossbreed version of the sugar.

    • Official Post

    Overusage of Weed-ex will damage all the stats of the plant over time and that is it. It is safe to use it if you're cautious.
    Don't use more than once in a very long time (don't reapply until you notice its effectiveness has run out).


    You can breed super crops and multiply them in the field.

    First its best to increase the growth stat, then the gain stat. Resistance is not required for produce, you won't be running in your fields or anything.


    Stats are earned from the parents, regardless of the type, so you can effectively transfer it from a high stat sugar cane to another type of crop. Takes a few crossbreeds though.
    You may have better luck using stickyreeds as it is easier to just mutate to another crop type (retaining the high stats of the parent crops).

    Ah, so this stuff I've heard about weed ex putting a taint in the blood line of plants and their offspring is untrue? It merely if overused degrades a current existing version of a crop? That's great! Should make weed ex a very useful tool while trying to breed super crops.