Tree math

[Hurkyl]

I was wondering about how to make use of the Wood Processing recipe, which turns 2 Wood into Tree Seeds. The only things to construct out of wood, really, are Small Power Poles and Wooden Chests.

So they're useful if you want to keep using blueprints that have those items, but you're probably not....

Well, what else can you do with Wood? You can burn it. E.g. for power. So what exactly can you get from your tree farm?

A Tree grows in 10 minutes and produces 4 wood. Use 2 (*) of that Wood to produce the Tree Seed for replanting, so you net 2 Wood profit per harvest. It's not hard to make an Agricultural Tower that will maintain 47 Trees.

Wood has a fuel value of 2 MJ.

So combining everything and ignoring the growth time lost while waiting for a tree to be harvested and replanted, a tree farm can produce a little over 313 kW of power in the form of fuel.

You're probably burning it in a Heating Tower, which has 250% efficiency, so that works out to 783.3 kW of electrical power from your tree farm.

It's not amazing; a solar/accumulator mix can provide more power in the same space. However, it's very cheap to build in comparison. And it presumably absorbs pollution when you're not using it for power.


*: You probably want to do better with productivity bonuses....

[puschit]

You good wood, though. You'll appreciate when you get older.

[Zaflis]

Tree farming has only 1 purpose, they absorb pollution. You can try and setup a big line of boilers to keep burning the excess wood, but you'll probably end up using recyclers at the end of the line still.

[Hurkyl]

I guess I thought absorbing pollution went without saying, but yes that's another application. But now that I'm thinking about it, it does require some thought.

If you want to void Wood, then note that the Heating Tower never stops burning fuel. And you can burn tree seeds instead, which have much lower fuel value.

(or you could just leave the excess wood in the tower so it stops harvesting... but you probably don't want to do that forever since you want to replant dead trees)

That said... do trees absorb pollution while growing? If not, then the thing you'd probably want to do is set up a clock to disable the tower and leave the trees alone for some fixed period of time, and then wake the tower up for a little while to clear and replant its area.

The description of how it works on the wiki is not really clear enough to math it out.

[Zaflis]

It at least seems like growing trees absorb the same.