Geothermal plant MkII

Hi again, I just finished with my small project of base in the Nether, with the primary objective being the development of a self-sufficient energy generation base. In this instance, that means Lava Cells production to feed geothermal generators. By adding the Equivalent Exchange mod (see the sidebar for the forum link) and with the help of the Teleporting Pipes mod (again, sidebar for the link) I was able to make a base that would require only Tin Bars from outside the Nether (since Tin is an IndustrialCraft 2 resource, it cannot be produced by Equivalent Exchange).

The tricky part, you might think, is the cobblestone generator, since it requires a water source. Leaving aside that you can use inventory editors and such (as I mentioned before), Equivalent Exchange has a recipe for crafting an ice block with the philosopher's stone and 8 glass blocks. You can then place the ice block in the nether, and break it to have a water source, solving the problem.

Another trick I used to avoid too much trouble with the limited capacity of Buildcraft 2's crafting tables was to connect the pipes to chests, which gives a greater buffer. For item distribution I used one of the extra pipes included in the Teleport Pipes mod, from where I also picked the pipes that teleport power and the ones that teleport liquids (in this case, the lava). The Wireless Redstone mod allows me to control the lava being send or not to the base (though it is mostly a redundant capacity, since I control the energy I send to the pump).

Essentially, the base is divided on two parts: Part one provides endless energy, while Part two crafts the lava cells proper.
While the base of the Lava Cell generator is the same I showed in the Geothermal Generator video, I made a more compact design, thanks mostly to the Advanced Wooden Pipes (from the Teleport Pipes mod), a version of the wooden pipes that applies a filter to what it gets or not (from the deployer, for example, it will take only lava-filled buckets, while from the chest where those go it will only take empty ones) and to the trick of putting the chests adjacent to the crafting table.
The energy generation "plant", on the other hand, I left it without any automated feeding to the steam engines to avoid... unfortunately explosions, let's say (I'd like to tell you that directly attaching a steam engine to a pump with 14 coal or less won't explode... but by putting a wooden pipe between engine and pump the overheating problems nearly dissapear). Anyway, 5 steam engines are a little overkill for a single pump XD.

Back to topic, the energy production part goes as follows: the cobblestone generator produces 1 cobble every 4 seconds. 5 cobblestone get transformed into 20 dirt, which produces (with 20 saplings) 40 wood. 20 wood go to the furnaces (powered by a Klein Star, an item from Equivalent Exchange that provides infinite burning power to vanilla items. If that item becomes fully usable with steam engines... right now it acts like a single piece of coal) which in turn makes them into 20 charcoal. The other 20 wood blocks go for another alchemical transformation... producing 20 saplings. That means I turn 5 cobble into 20 charcoal, if I'm not mistaken. And when the redstone engines are really hot, the furnaces cannot keep the rythm (I think adding a fourth furnace would relieve most of the problem, though).
The worrying thing, of course, is that with Equivalent Exhange, some cobblestone generators and some base mats, using Buildcraf 2 we can stop farming forever...

Oh, and I made a diamond factory with Equivalent Exchange and the cobble generators, too. But that has been covered enough in the mod's forum thread ^^

Have fun!

Work and head-banging

Weeeeell... Here I am, realizing how spoiled I've become when I notice the few mods I cannot use but I'm too used to have...

The good news are that I'm making a nearly 100% automated farm for wheat (and hemp or any single-block based plant, that is, not for pumpkins nor melons... nor, obviously, sugar cane, wood, cactus...), thanks to Minefactory Reloaded, which solved the usual problem we always found: replanting the stuff.

Here, have some screenshots of the prototype (I have a much bigger farm in process):

The upper view does not differ much from the usual wheat farm's design (aside from using three blocks wide plantations, instead of two). One detail that I didn't applied here is that I'm planning to make each "echelon" only 6 blocks in length, so each echelon will need two seeders.

The underpart is also quite "traditional": a chest to gather the wheat, and the diamond pipe will send the seeds to other storage.

And the last one is the good one: the planting blocks (that cover a 3x3 block surface), fed by the pipes. I'm missing bouncing pipes here... and Eloraam's cabling and clock. In fact, my idea includes the sequencer, not the clock, for the full automation of the farm, but until a new and stable version of RP2 is realeased, I'm a little bound here.

As for what goodies does Minecraft Factory reloaded includes, well, it has the old harvester, seeder, fertilizer and the conveyor blocks. But it added four new rail blocks (cargo pickup, cargo dropoff, passengers pickup and passengers dropoff), a fisher (same as harvester, but for fishing!), and a rancher (same as the harvester, but for animals). the only "problem" of the rancher is that at least the sheeps tend to die after producing 5-6 whool blocks, most likely because I suspect the rancher block "hits" them with the same strenght as an unarmed Steve?. I'm using the cargo pickup and dropoff rails to move goods from the different "farms" to the main base.

My plan is to make a map that inlcudes all the farms and some stuff I usually end making in a map, and my plans are to make:

• Mushroom farm
• Wheat farm (in process)
• Sugar cane farm (done)
• Quarry (I already set up three for autonomous work)
• Monster grinder
• Animal farm (mostly finished, I need to eliminate all other blocks with grass from around)
• Fish farm
• Cactus farm (actually, I'll cheat and use a .schematic file I made two weeks ago from the cacti farm in my last video)
• Cobblestone generator
• Wood farm (done)
• Universal Matter farm (meaning a really big solar array too, and connected to the cacti farm)
• Scrap farm (between the cacti farm and the Universal Matter farm)
• A fully electric house (meaning extractors, compressors, electric-dependant furnaces, recyclers, macerators, a magnetizer's supported access, a canning machine and even a teleporter).

Sadly, all the projects will require some sort of support from RedPower 2, so "done" means "waiting for cables" XD. 

If you want some other farm or detail included, please tell me, and I'll try to include it.

Base 101: Underground base

 So here we are, with the underground base finally. I took my time there because since I started a new world with the Mo's Creatures mod, I've been busy farming a lot (and for once I had a lot of luck finding diamonds, so I was able to make four quarrys now).

Anyway, I just made a small underground base between layers 12 and 22 (aproximately) and decided to show it to you all.

As you can see, it's quite high so the trees can grow. I prefer the white bark ones because they always grow four to six logs, meaning their top height is about 7-8, and don't have extra logs hidden between the leaves.
I put three trees here, separated 3 blocks from all the walls and between each other (2 blocks of separation between the tress would have been enough, but then the leaves blocks tend to merge, and we will get less saplings after cutting the tree).

Finally I made a small recess of three high and one depth, then excavated a 2 high and one depth additional one, added a line of dirt , water, covered the water, added some torches, and used a hoe to plant some wheat, then added two chests, a crafting table and two furnaces (you can't see them in the photos, I'm afraid), plus a bed in case I want to sleep.

So there  we are, a fully functional base underground. It only lacks animals, but the pain of taking dirt with grass all the way to the underground, with all the time it takes for animals to spawn once you are down there makes it for me something not to worth the effort.

Ok, so now with the pros and cons of an underground base:
Pros:
Self-sufficient: it's the only base with ready access to all the material needs you might have in Minecraft, given enough work to make room for the trees. Mi advise would be to chop the trees every time you go back to the base, and replant, no matter your needs of wood.
Mining-oriented: extremely easy access to mining.
Stealthy: it's underground, so it's unlikely other players will find it in SMP (saving glitchs).

Cons:
Effort-intensive: unlike a surface base, you will have to clear room in all directions so the trees will grown up. Also, you need to provide light.
Stealthy: you might have trouble being able to reach your base back unless the path is marked... in which case the base turns into one more easy to find in SMP by other players.
No sun: again, you will need to provide lightning to your plants, and more importantly if you play using Industrialcraft, you won't have access to solar light unless you make a solar generator in the surface with HV cables taking the power down there... which again will make the house easy to spot in SMP.

In case you want to look into more detail this kind of base, Paulosoaresjr has two or three videos showing how to setup underground farms in his "how to survive and thrive" video list.

Have fun!

Base 101: The Floating Base

This one is my personal favourite for SSP, and consists into the making of a floating surface where you will live and have all your stuff, safe from mobs if rightly lighted (since there are no flying mobs outisde the Nether at the moment).

Pros: Easy to spot, you don't usually need to make a beacon to mark where is it; You don't need to level any ground, nor you need to worry about mobs reaching the ceiling; you will get very good views of all around, and when going out of the base you will have it easy to see if there are mobs around.

Cons: no access to any resource whatsoever, you will need to set up a farm if you want to have wood avaiable; you will need to descend a long stair to get to your mining operation. And if you are in a SMP server, your base is easy to spot (so if PvP is fair game, it will be easy to get to you. On the bright side, you will see them coming if you are looking).

Finally, there is a mixed pro & con with this base: because you make it over the ground, it will cast a shadow because it blocks sunlight, so if you make it big enough (60x60 for example) you will be making a spawning spot for the mobs (the passive mobs won't be spawning there, however). So you could make a mob grinder, and then cover the light above. If you have Buildcraft, with a pipe line you can get all to your base automatically. Or it can serve as a protection of sorts in SMP, since during the day the monsters might spawn only there...

Let's see now some images from this:

The shadow making a grinding trap:


Underside photo of my floating base (incidentally, under that base there is a forest I call "the thousand candles forest" because of all the torches I placed there XD):


From the top (using the Fly command of the Single Player Commands mod):


Incidentally, all this photos are "outdated": not only were they taken in 1.6.6, but also before the latest versions of Integrated Redstone and Buildcraft were out. While that map is saved (and more advanced, in the case of the floating base), I'm playing now in another installation of the game with the latest pre-1.7 versions of the mods I use, but I will be out of reach for the whole weekend (but I will play in my laptop... assuming minecraft works with it, of course XD), so the next update will be on Monday.

On an off-topic, Paulosoaresjr published a few more videos: two from a 1.7 test, one from Terraria, and the first video of the second season of Man Vs Minecraft. And he really proves he knows how to set the mood in that last one ^^

Ground level bases: defenses

I made some snapshots and two videos about how to protect your base from hostile mobs.

First, the videos (I use brick blocks because the map is a stone-based flat map, to avoid passive mobs spawning):

Murder holes:


I got this concept from Paulosoaresjr, you can see the link to his channel to the left. To build a murder holes protected base, the inside must be 1 block lower than the outside, and the rest is to leave an uncovered hole. If you were to leave a hole one block up instead (and not making the inside 1 block lower than the outside) you would be vulnerable to skeleton's arrows.

Spider's bane:


This one I found by experience: a spider can't attack to something under itself, and it has a 2x2 blocks base (and 1 up), so this shows what to do before getting out of your house in the morning: check the roof for spiders ^^.

Now, some more defenses against stuff... like a lava pit (with a piston middle jump point), a cacti perimeter and what I call "the house's hat", something that, believe it or not, prevents spiders to get to the top of the house:

Lava Pit:


Cacti perimeter:


"House Hat" (be advised that undeads might find protection from sunlight under its shadow, so it works best with the murder holes):

Base 101: the ground level base

Ok, lets look at the most basic kind of base of all: the ground level one, a simple design with the floor at (more or less) the same level as the ground around it, and the roof 4-5 levels above.

Pros: it's quick and easy to make, you can expand it with ease (just take down a wall, and that's it, or add higher walls in the roof, then another roof) and allows equal access to all blocks in the game. Also, it's not so much of a tragedy if you can't find your way back (unless you use it for storage too...)

Cons: you might need something to mark where is it to be able to find it again, you will need to expand this base quickly if you don't throw away some items, and you can only expand it safely by daytime.

As an example, this is a screenshot of my base in one of the worlds I play at. It's two stories high, plus the "growing tower" with glass ceiling and a lava signal. The lava pit was a late adittion (I hit bedrock and several lava deposits before any diamond, so I decided to get rid of my spider problem), but initially it was about 1/4 smaller (one story high, and half the lenght). Funny thing is, when I ended adding the tower (a process that I made one level at a time), some monsters started spawning in the higher rooms while I was away, so I had to put more torches.



Also as you can see the base walls are 2 blocks thick, because of the creepers (that was before the pit). The access, by the way, is by a piston raising in the middle of the pit.

Later on, I added torches at ground level to be able to see mobs at night, but since the house has an access to my mining operation, I mine during nighttime. As for the solar panels, those are a small arrangement I made while expanding the base, and are part of the Industrialcraft mod.

Speaking of diamonds, I can't believe how much it takes to find them at the beginning! It took me about 6 hours of real time before I found my first diamond in that map, and in the map I'm currently playing it took me about the same... and then when I got inside a deep cavern, and wandered around like mad, I ended with 11 in less than half an hour. Luck... XD