Lost in the Tech-tree

[NoviceAdventurer]

At the beginning of my world, I was playing to get to SFS. Once I got there I wanted to make a home, so I tore down most of my temporary things and lost my windmill. Now i have a house and a set up for an automatic hemp farm. But I don't have any block dispensers. Should i get more glue and set up more temporary things just for the time being? I really don't want to but i don't see any other way. I have an anvil, millstones, turntables, saws, bellows, hibachis, pretty much everything in the tech-tree. I just don't know where to start automation.

[Awfulcopter]

That's what I do. Set up an ugly cube with a windmill on the side, and establish a temporary workshop. Then work on nice buildings for each station and move them out of the temporary structure one at a time, until I can tear it down, or turn it into a ruin.

[Mason11987]

At the beginning of my world, I was playing to get to SFS. Once I got there I wanted to make a home, so I tore down most of my temporary things and lost my windmill. Now i have a house and a set up for an automatic hemp farm. But I don't have any block dispensers. Should i get more glue and set up more temporary things just for the time being? I really don't want to but i don't see any other way. I have an anvil, millstones, turntables, saws, bellows, hibachis, pretty much everything in the tech-tree. I just don't know where to start automation.

I would definitely start working on automating creating unfired urns, cooking them, and filling them. Either as one step or three. BDs are immensly useful in almost every automation build. You'll want a lot of them.

[Force21]

I find that if you automate making urns or soul urns, you're good to go.

My plan right now is having separate automation of things, like automating urns, then having a universal auto kiln to put anything into including those urns. And if you're really skilled, you can automate trees and wheat. (those are giving me a hard time...)

Edit: slightly Ninja'd..

[Pentagram]

Surprisingly, I don't automate Soul Urns first..
I hook up an item decay timer to both a dung factory and a cow farm (for scoured leather).
I also get a pig farm, with the same design as cows for the tallow.

After these, I get an automatic wood farm, and automated cobblestone+smoothstone generator

Only then will I begin work on a soul urn factory :P

[SterlingRed]

I agree with pentagram, I start with the consumable resources in automation. Of course I manually work up to sfs in a temporary set up and get about 16 bars in addition to the anvil so that I have a recyclable source of tools. For setting up a main base and full automation, you need a few critical consumable items, dung, leather, glue, hemp, wheat. I set up an auto dung farm first as it's easy, low tech, and can gather dung while I work on everything else. Next comes a hand fed cow pit, permanent water wheel power source, stoked stewing pot, stewing pot, crucible.
All this plus a piston based hemp farm and manual wheat farm gives me access to all the supply of basic resources I need to upgrade to full automation. At this point I'll also have an automated saw (bd powered by turntable timer, often sane as being used for bellows). Depending on luck with diamonds, I can get this far in less than a week of Minecraft days. From here I build more advanced systems paying close attention to my cow pit and upgrading it into an auto farm as soon as I have leather for harnesses.

I find glue and leather to be the two bottle necks after hemp and thus make obtaining them in mass a priority.

[darahalian]

I find glue and leather to be the two bottle necks after hemp and thus make obtaining them in mass a priority.

Well, once you get a good sized mobtrap going, glue is never a problem again. So much glue....
Sheep also work as a pre mobtrap source of glue because of all the wool you can get from them.

[FlowerChild]

Well, once you get a good sized mobtrap going, glue is never a problem again. So much glue....

Yeah, I think I'm going to have to do something further with regards to balancing it. I'm not fully satisfied with the results either. Honestly, I'm thinking of restricting glue to leather-based items only, and coming up with different uses entirely for rotten flesh and bones (...if that inspires you to suggest one...DON'T).

Although, at least now my glue stockpiles have been slowly diminishing due to me spending a lot of time in the nether working on my pigman farm, and needing a shit-ton of sticky pistons for it. But still, that's an isolated case, and I'm sure it'll be building up like crazy again once I'm done with that project.

[CycloneSP]

new uses are always welcome.


[on-topic]

I on the other hand find that, despite my best efforts to avoid it, I always make some tight compact ugly conglomeration of mechanisms to get to SFS asap. Very inefficient and mostly manual work too. ATM I am trying to get more glue/leather/dung so I can trash that eye-sore and stockpile enough resources to begin my 'sky tower' out in the middle of the ocean. Sadly I'm a long way off...

EDIT: of course, rotten flesh is always good fodder for dung production.

[Ceunon]

Well, once you get a good sized mobtrap going, glue is never a problem again. So much glue....

Yeah, I think I'm going to have to do something further with regards to balancing it. I'm not fully satisfied with the results either. Honestly, I'm thinking of restricting glue to leather-based items only, and coming up with different uses entirely for rotten flesh and bones (...if that inspires you to suggest one...DON'T).

I think the main issue with glue is that you need lots of it early on the tech tree (mainly for the water wheel and sticky pistons - both of which aren't necessary to progress, but are certainly handy), which ends up encouraging automation, but its use doesn't grow as much as the quantity you get from it.
The best solution would probably give it more uses, so that if the player ended up REALLY wanting lots of glue, he'd have to set up a huge cow breeder or something like that.

[CycloneSP]

Ah, but don't forget about mining charges. They require glue, and you need a half stack of glue for every stack of mining charges.

But yeah, I see your point about the glue bottle neck forcing you to mass produce it to the point of having a large surplus of it.

Oh well; now that I have my skellie grinder up and running I can make a small stash of glue to get past said bottle neck so that I can move further on in the tech tree.(saving my leather for breading harnesses, straps, and belts)

EDIT: *removed the green text* it was too hard on the eyes. Sorry guys.

[tedium]

just quickly first, i never gather glue from any source other than leather, as i always have a massive cow farm running. i find the balance between the leather you need and the glue you need to be pretty good if cows are your only source. initially you have to choose wisely, or end up waiting for cows to grow. once you are up and automated, cows provide more than enough for both imo. but then, i feed my wolves cooked steaks... and i wish i could feed them beer too. it wouldn't be the best quality dung, but there'd be more of it XD

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on-topic
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my first base is always a mess... these days my plan is to build up manual farms for cows, dung, wheat and hemp (occasionally putting them on some kind of basic item decay timer with pistons/saw setup) then manually create enough SFS for the anvil and 1 block dispenser. only then do i switch up my game plan to a more automated setup. the first BD goes into an auto-soul urn filler. after a little bit more manual work i make 6 more BD's and use them to automate pottery and kilns, (except for manually refilling the clay), and an automatic saw (wood starts to become a highly used resource around this point for me). once that's all going, i touch up my farms by adding some automatic wheat farms to feed them, and a simple harvesting mechanism for the animals (i love using wooden platforms to ensure you always have a few cows left in a pen when the saws turn on) and then go looking for a nice place to make my real base.

unfortunately, that's where i always seem to break down in strategy, and i end up making something that looks really nice, but doesn't fit any of my machinery builds... or at least not with any structure so they can feed each other.