How do I make the biomass generator refuel itself so that it has infinite energy?

[v1cent]

Hello everyone, I have a question.
I'm new to the game and I'm still at an early stage, in fact I've just completed stage 1 of the space elevator and I'm now unlocking the coal energy.
However, I have some doubts regarding the management of the machines and the energy supply. I'll leave my doubts below and anyone who can help me will be very grateful:

1º How do I make the biomass generator refuel itself so that it has infinite energy?

2º How do I make the machines produce more quickly, because to make a reinforced plate
I see that there are more steel tubes than screws.

thanks

[Evilsod]

1. You don't. That's what coal is for.

2. You build more things, overclock them, and/or use better, more efficient alternative recipes.

[Alistair MacBain]

1. BIomass gneerators have an input slot. Put a belt there and let that belt feed from a chest or constructor with biofuel/leaves/whatever. As long as chest is filled/constructor is producing you will have energy. But you shouldnt rely on biomass after ypu unlocked coal. Kinda tediuous to constantly refill on leaves/wood. for those.
2. Reinforced Plates are just a bane to produce no matter what. To produce more quickly either put in power shards (harvest slugs and make power shards) or build more assemblers. But as said reinforced plates are always annoying. Thats the reason I usually rush right to steel and t3 belts. They produce much better/easier than reinforced plates for t2 belts.

[Vectorspace]

Messaggio originale di Alistair MacBain:

Thats the reason I usually rush right to steel and t3 belts. They produce much better/easier than reinforced plates for t2 belts.

I did that just this morning - built a steel factory, then upgraded the miners/belts in my reinforced plates factory to mk2/mk3 respectively.

[LaChouette]

1)The burners on your HUB are garbage. If you build biomass burners yourself, those will have an input slot. You can't fully automate it since it will still require you to at the very least collect leaves and wood and stuff even if you use a line to process them into biomass or biofuel. Don't rely on them, as Alistair said, you've got infinite coal. You can keep a few just in case you go above your limit to give you some time to fix things before the fuse blows, but that's it.

2) Gotta either calculate things or accept having something that's not fully efficient. Reinforced iron plates aren't actually bad, you can easily make a 100% efficient setup without over or underclocking. 120 iron ore per minute into 4 smelters will give you 120 iron ingots per minute. 30 of those go into 2 constructors to make 30 iron rods per minute which then go into 3 constructors to make 120 screws per minute. The remaining 90 go into 3 constructors to make 60 iron plates per minute. Put all of that into 2 assemblers and you get 10 reinforced iron plates per minute. Want more than that? Double, triple, quadruple the number of machines. Will take a toll on power though.

[bigsapling]

Remember not to feed unprocessed bio-material in the generator. It's a good idea to make separate circuit with a single biomass generator that powers the chain to make biofuel that feeds all your biomass generators. As you probably don't have smart splitters yet, place two containers, one for leaves and one for wood, that feed into constructors that feed into a combined biofuel constructor. Then you just need to dump your wood and leaves in those containers whenever you pass by and you should never run out of power before getting your first coal plant set up. After that, you can just keep adding coal generators until they're enough to power your whole production and forget about biofuel (except when you want to use the chainsaw).

[ShelLuser]

Messaggio originale di v1cent:

1º How do I make the biomass generator refuel itself so that it has infinite energy?

What generators are we talking about? The ones on the HUB can be nice to start with but they're not very useful. Instead: build new generators, those have an input slot which you can use.

Won't be infinite energy because you still need to supply them with biomass, but this can easily help you to power a decent sized early tier factory. 4 - 6 biomass generators are more than enough to leave an early stage factory running for at least an hour or so.

Seriously: 5 or so minutes of collecting wood and leaves (chainsaw FTW!) should be more than enough to get a good load of biomass. Tip: convert biomass into solid biomass, that'll burn a lot better and last longer.

I used to make biomass myself in the hub (because I always thought it was fun to see my inventory "open up" and get filled with biomass when processing leaves), and then I'd dump that in a storage unit that fed into a constructor which turned all that into solid biomass. I still keep this around for my tractor & truck.

All that would get fed into 6 generators and that kept my iron & copper plant running for at least 1.5 - 2 hours.

Messaggio originale di v1cent:

2º How do I make the machines produce more quickly, because to make a reinforced plate
I see that there are more steel tubes than screws.

Load balancing is the name of the game for me. Make sure that the output of one machine matches the input requirements of the other.

And of course you can also make adjustments later. If you have an excess in rods.. you could consider to split off the belt and feed part of those rods into a new constructor to make more screws. Just be careful because you're going to need those rods later for other items such as the modular frame.

Once you have coal set up and thus better power provision you could also look into overclocking.

And at the risk of overwhelming: also conider to go out and explore a bit. You may come across other crashed pods which contain harddrives which you can research in the MAM: this may give you access to other recipes. For example... I have an alt recipe which allows me to make screws directly from iron ingots vs. having to use rods.

Hope this can help!

[v1cent]

and where can I get coal? I've already built the coal generator and the water pum!!

[LaChouette]

Messaggio originale di v1cent:

and where can I get coal? I've already built the coal generator and the water pum!!

You can scan for it just like you scanned for iron, copper or limestone. It's usually better to build your coal generators close to the coal deposits and have a power line to your base than to bring the coal back to your base. Less messy and doesn't take time to start.

[cywizz]

Messaggio originale di LaChouette:

Messaggio originale di v1cent:

and where can I get coal? I've already built the coal generator and the water pum!!

You can scan for it just like you scanned for iron, copper or limestone. It's usually better to build your coal generators close to the coal deposits and have a power line to your base than to bring the coal back to your base. Less messy and doesn't take time to start.

...but the most important part is to build the coal generators close to water...even if you have to pull belts to it. It is much easier doing belts to water than doing pipes to coal over a long distance

[LaChouette]

Messaggio originale di cywizz:

Messaggio originale di LaChouette:

You can scan for it just like you scanned for iron, copper or limestone. It's usually better to build your coal generators close to the coal deposits and have a power line to your base than to bring the coal back to your base. Less messy and doesn't take time to start.

...but the most important part is to build the coal generators close to water...even if you have to pull belts to it. It is much easier doing belts to water than doing pipes to coal over a long distance

True, but I believe if they started in one of the beginner-friendly areas, there's water close to the easier to access coal deposits.

[GAMING_Alligator]

Go exploring for alternate recipes. There's a handy one for reinforced plates that uses copper instead of screws, as well as a better one for screws that lets you make more of them.

[Seedling]

Messaggio originale di GAMING_Alligator:

Go exploring for alternate recipes. There's a handy one for reinforced plates that uses copper instead of screws, as well as a better one for screws that lets you make more of them.

That alt recipe with screws is faster in exchange for more screws than you can feed automatically. The alt recipe using copper wire is pretty good though, as you usually have copper production stuff on idle due to not using the wires, cables and copper sheets much at first.

[Evilsod]

Cast Screws is no better than the default in terms of iron efficiency. It just cuts out an entire step.

Stitched Iron Plate on the other hand is excellent, especially if you use Iron Wire to eliminate copper entirely.

[Daerious]

Even having unlocked coal power generators and having close to 1 GW of sustainable power, I still collect dead wood when out exploring and searching for slugs, ore nodules, and crashed drop pods. Then, when I do return to my HUB / starting factory, I deposit the wood into a storage container that is at the start of a production chain from wood to biomass to solid biofuel. There are containers between each production step to store any excess products and act as a larger buffer for an array of biomass burners.

While it is not essential, having a set of around 10 autofed biomass burners, allows me a small power buffer with a 300 MW capacity should I ever exceed the power production capability of my coal power generators and completely drain my backup battery. Since, unlike coal, the fuel for biomass burners is only used when it is required, they can be connected directly to the main power grid without the fear of them depleting their stored fuel.

Eventually, I will probably move the biomass burners and backup batteries to my coal generator facility and install appropriate power switches so that each region of the power grid can be isolated. While not critical now, this could be crucial later should my factories ever blow a fuse and shutdown since I will absolutely want to perform a controlled restart of my factories rather than trying to bring them back online all at once.

- - - - - -

The region of Message2(A-B)b that pioneers can explore is vast and, since most raw materials are essentially infinite, your factories can be processing raw materials and producing components while you are away exploring or establishing other Ficsit facilities. While others have suggested overclocking your reinforced plate assembly to increase its production, be warned that the ratio of the percentage increase in production to the required power is nonlinear -- doubling the output production requires significantly more than double the provided power. At the start of the game when your sustainable power generation facilities have not yet been established, you are probably better off building a second or third assembly line than overclocking any existing ones.

Naturally, whether or not this is feasible may depend on where your drop pod landed since each biome of Message2(A-B)b has a different distribution of raw resources. From a power draw perspective, It could be better to partially overclock your mining machine at a location with normal ore quality than establish more mining machines at locations that are impure. Remember that you can also under clock your machines should you so wish. For example, I have under clocked my coal power generators from 75 MW to 70 MW so that their water consumption decreases from 45 m^3/minute to 42 m^3/minute. For me, this means that 7 coal power generators will use slightly less than 300 m^3/minute which is the flow rate capacity of the mark I pipelines. Furthermore, these coal power generators only require about 47 units of compacted coal per minute which is will within the construction capacity of two assembling machines and the extraction capacity of the mark I miners on normal coal and sulfur deposits. Eventually, I may reconfigure my coal power generation facility to use a more optimum ratio or build another facility at a location with fewer geological obstructions.

But to each their own...

[Bobucles]

The hub can not be automated.
The external biomass generator has a belt input in 1.0. This is good enough for throwing everything into a box and cooking it.
Be very sure to upgrade your fuel! Raw leaves and wood have less than 1/10th the power of processed bio mulch. Your factory can not run on raw products, it'll run out in no time. Fuel pellets have even better efficiency and are worth crafting every time, so throw everything into a couple constructors for a big energy upgrade.