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Terex

Efficient tree farms

45 posts in this topic

I would like to know what is the best way to set up a tree farm now and which type of tree to use.

 

I currently use pine trees. Their leaves have broad base so they can be planted in a staggered grid pattern with 5 spaces in between.

 

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When they all grow, the leaves are touching and one chop will take down the whole field. But of course to get a surplus of saplings, plenty leaves need to be harvested. Several other tree types (e.g. white cedar) do not provide enough saplings to break even due to their low number of leaves blocks. The one chop method doesn't work when no more leaves are touching. 

 

Previously, I used Douglas Fir trees for their height, with high wood yield. I currently do not know the best spacing for these trees for all of them to grow and still have leaves touching. I also used Willow tree farms but now their unpredictable shapes leaves many saplings unable to grow. Also, Willow trees take longer to grow as shown on wiki.

 

Edited by Terex
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After growing my first patch of pine trees, I found out they have all sorts of shapes, some with long trunks and a tiny bush of leaves. Doesn't look like a suitable choice so far.

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Can you still grow them tightly together or does that break tree spawning behavior?  I'll have to try.  I've historically used a setup like this, but on vanilla:
 

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Edited by d00dV4d3r
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If the trunks are close enough they'll still all break after leaves are sheared. Try growing the with 2 spaces between.

XOOXOOXOOXOOXOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOXOOXOOXOOXOOX
I've had success with most trees. The ones that grow branches can be inconsistent. Personally I just do long lines of Douglas Firs with no spaces inbetween. I space the lines with 4 blocks inbetween. Sure I have to chop each tree individually, but firs give lots of wood. The saplings will not grow when their neighbor has grown, but their timer will have progressed. Eventually your trees will grow a new batch within a day of the last chop. Edited by Bunsan
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I found that multi-tree-felling works when there's a gap of 2 or less between trees, which is what you have (diagonally). Scythes are a quick, early tool for getting saplings but at a reduced rate. Iron shears seem to have better drop rates, and are also fast at trimming leaves.

I plant 49 trees in a 7x7 grid, cutting the middle one fells all 49 trees. If I don't have that many saplings I plant strips of 1x7 trees so I have more leaves to trim without having to go and cut every tree down. My system yields more wood than yours, but yours yields more saplings. I can still profit on saplings if I use shears, scythes are a bit of a gamble though.

I find that shears are the best tool for getting saplings, so I shear the trees first and then cut the centre tree:

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Pine and fir are sometimes too bushy for all saplings to grow but other trees are fine. White cedar has no overlapping leaves so there's no wastage there. I might try your system for pine :)

Edited by Commiellama
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I would like to know what is the best way to set up a tree farm now and which type of tree to use.

[...]

 

I assume you need wood for charcoal, so type/color/burn lenght/heat does not matter. I also assume you need large quantities fast. So, firstly we need fast growing trees: Ash, Birch, Douglas Fir, Chestnut, Spruce, Pine, Maple, White Cedar. Maybe Sycamore or Aspen. Secondly, we want as much wood as possible from our trees: Douglas Fir wins, hands down. Maybe Maple, Sycamore, Chestnut or Ash. All other types can grow very tiny trees, not good. And lastly, we need a tree with enough leaves so that we can get enough saplings with a scythe. Punching leaves with shears or hands takes way to long (shears are instant, but only one block at time - meh. And they need iron & anvil). That disqualifies Pine or Spruce. Both can grow with like five or six leave blocks only, that is not enough.

 

In the end, Douglas Fir is imho the only wood for a fast, efficient treefarm. Personally, I'll always look for Douglas Fir, thousands of blocks if necessary before even starting with steel. My farm is oldschool:

 

treefarm1.jpg

 

Here without trees:

 

treefarm2.jpg

 

Sixteen trees, with four spaces between. On the average 17..18 stacks with logs and about 40 saplings. Tons of sticks. Harvesting leaves only every second run required. Downside: You have to cut every tree and need a lot of space. And its kinda ugly, so build it away from your home.

 

Cheers

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Thanks Crowen. I had such a farm in my last world (see below) but I thought it wasn't convenient anymore when the nerf came that stops the growth of a wall of trees. 

 

61b7e9da-8263-46ba-a427-580bb12e5e6e_zps

 

I'm now thinking of setting up an enhanced portals 3 gate to create a wormhole between my base in the north and a huge acacia jungle in the south. Right now, i chop down 3 acacia trees and my inventory is filled with wood. That is pretty insane :D

Edited by Terex
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Scythes are a quick, early tool for getting saplings but at a reduced rate. Iron shears seem to have better drop rates, and are also fast at trimming leaves. A knife is faster than by hand, but seems a waste of knife durability, unless the tree is rare and the saplings important.

 

Just want to point out that the sapling and stick drop rate is completely the same for anything that isn't a scythe. So shears, hand, and knives all have literally the exact same drop rate. There's no justification for using a knife to break leaves because it does not change the drop rate, and it does not break the leaves faster than using your fist.

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I could break leaves faster with a knife than by hand, could it be the smithing skill efficiency that is a factor? Noticeably faster with a steel knife @ 65% skill

 

nothing to see here

Edited by Commiellama
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That would be a bug with smithing skill efficiency, and has nothing to do with knives. Pretty much any tool you use with a high smithing skill is going to break blocks faster than the exact same tool without an efficiency bonus. Since there is a crash that needs to be fixed meaning there will be a 0.79.28 update, this efficiency bug will also be fixed so that it only applies to the speed when the tool is used on proper blocks, and not on all blocks.

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[...]

I'm now thinking of setting up an enhanced portals 3 gate to create a wormhole between my base in the north and a huge acacia jungle in the south. Right now, i chop down 3 acacia trees and my inventory is filled with wood. That is pretty insane :D

 Ha! Dis I like! :D

 

Please chop down a few Acacia/Kapok for me also. For all that awful goddamitwhatthehellf&%$this moments I had in the past with those forests: Getting chased by mobs and killed. Getting chased by lag monster and killed. Not seeing that veeeeery deep ravine because of foliage and getting killed. Spawning on top of a Kapok tree in a fresh map, falling down, getting killed. (That was my shortest TFC game ever, btw.) And the list goes on... Yes I hate jungles! :angry:

 

Cheers

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That would be a bug with smithing skill efficiency, and has nothing to do with knives. Pretty much any tool you use with a high smithing skill is going to break blocks faster than the exact same tool without an efficiency bonus. Since there is a crash that needs to be fixed meaning there will be a 0.79.28 update, this efficiency bug will also be fixed so that it only applies to the speed when the tool is used on proper blocks, and not on all blocks.

You're right, I failed to notice that it applied to other tools. I edited the knife thing out of my post so people don't get misinformed

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Back on subject, the best way to get a LOT of wood is a Douglas Tree farm as mentioned by Crowen, however you do not need a permanent walkway ( I used to have one until I discovered.... ) just ladder up the side of the trunk, climb it, scythe, more ladder, repeat... while on the ladder you can look around a clear other trees as well I think I used to space them in a 5 x 5 grid, overlapping leaves actually make the scything easier. To replace an are of 25 trees you only need to scythe 2 or 3 trees usually, if you do them all it just means you can extend your farm. Last time I went Steel-mad I think my farm was 15 x 10 trees? And I had 2 permanent Charcoal pits of about 8 x 5 x 3, which were pretty much filled and lit as trees grew.

 

If you want a specific tree for it's coloured wood, spacing them every 3 seemed the best for me. Breaking 1 tree used to level half the trees, it seemed to stop after 7 or 8 trees away from source, eventually I made circular farms and used to take the central tree down. Then just run around and collect the wood. Again I used the scythe to harvest leaves, target a few up and you clear a huge area quickly. In these cases depending on the tree I sometimes had a few spare saplings, which I kept for leaner harvests. 

 

In both cases I used to use gravel as paths around where the trees needed to be planted leaving just the single dirt block for the saplings. This makes things much quicker for re planting and also keeps the weeds down :)

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I'm revisiting white cedar at the moment. I noticed these trees have consistent shapes - can be tall and surrounded by 1 block of leaves in radial direction. In the wild i gathered on average 2 saplings from one tree, this could work! At my base i planted a grid of 32 of them spaced 2 blocks apart. There should not be any overlap and the leaves should touch in all directions. Granted they produce less wood but a large enough farm should do the trick!

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Right now only some white cedar saplings spawned trees. For some reason, other saplings in the grid, with line of sight to the sky, wont grow into trees. I don't understand what is holding them back.

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Do you have WAILA installed? If you do, take a look at the saplings and make sure they don't still have time left on their timer.

 

Edit: It's also important to note that sapling growth is overall triggered by random update ticks (like what is used for grass growth), they don't instantly sprout into trees the moment that the timer runs out. The way it really works is that each time the sapling gets one of those random update ticks, it checks the current time against it's timer, and if enough time has passed then it will sprout into a tree assuming it has enough space.

Edited by Kittychanley
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Thanks Kitty, I had WAILA hidden by choice. Those saplings that didnt grow into trees say 5-6 days remaining. Interesting since i planted all saplings at once, including those that are already trees. 

Edited by Terex
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Thanks Kitty, I had WAILA hidden by choice. Those saplings that didnt grow into trees say 5-6 days remaining. Interesting since i planted all saplings at once, including those that are already trees. 

I've noticed that sometimes saplings restart their timer instead of growing, even if they have a free path to the sky.

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I've noticed that sometimes saplings restart their timer instead of growing, even if they have a free path to the sky.

 

The only way that it is ever possible for that to happen is if your game is starting to be corrupted and isn't actually saving information properly when chunks unload.

 

The only time that the timer is ever written is when the sapling is first placed in the world. At that time it does the full calculation of the timestamp in the future when it's ok to grow. It isn't an actual timer that is counting down and resets. It literally says "Ok, today's date is A, I need X days to grow. X days from now is date B. Save date B on the sapling" and after that the sapling just checks if the current date is after date B every time that it gets a random update tick.

 

The WAILA display is exactly the same. Every time you look at the sapling, it gets that "Date B" that is stored on the sapling, and subtracts it from the current date to display how many days are remaining.

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I just played a bit and it's true. I saw the timer go from zero days (day of growth) back to 7 days on some saplings with direct access to sky and no other obstacles within 1 block radius or more. I don't think my world is corrupted but if there is a way to check, let me know.

Edited by Terex
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I just played a bit and it's true. I saw the timer go from zero days (day of growth) back to 7 days on some saplings with direct access to sky and no other obstacles within 1 block radius or more. I don't think my world is corrupted but if there is a way to check, let me know.

 

I thought that is always the case? I usually have WAILA off, but I am absolutely sure some trees needed 2 ingame weeks where others grew up in 7 days (as they should). And this is true for all 0.79 versions I played as far as I remember.

 

Cheers

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I just played a bit and it's true. I saw the timer go from zero days (day of growth) back to 7 days on some saplings with direct access to sky and no other obstacles within 1 block radius or more. I don't think my world is corrupted but if there is a way to check, let me know.

 

I'll link the code if you don't believe me:

 

https://github.com/Deadrik/TFCraft/blob/master/src/Common/com/bioxx/tfc/Blocks/Flora/BlockSapling.java#L119

 

That spot right there is the only place in the entire codebase where we save the growTime value on the sapling. When the sapling gets a random update tick in the method below that, it reads that value and compares it to the current in-game time. There is no writing involved. The only other time that the growTime value is ever updated is on chunk load/unload, where we use NBT data for storage. The value never changes with those methods though. We also save the exact same growTime on both the client and the server, so there's no "desync" that could happen where one overwrites the other.

 

And here's what WAILA does to display the "timer":

 

https://github.com/Deadrik/TFCraft/blob/master/src/Common/com/bioxx/tfc/WAILA/WAILAData.java#L1130

 

As you can see, it also doesn't do anything to update the growTime value. It reads the value, and compares it to the current in-game date to display the "timer" on the HUD.

 

I thought that is always the case? I usually have WAILA off, but I am absolutely sure some trees needed 2 ingame weeks where others grew up in 7 days (as they should). And this is true for all 0.79 versions I played as far as I remember.

 

Cheers

 

It's correct that it varies between 7 and 12 days depending on the type of tree but like I said, that is predetermined on sapling placement. So if you plant a willow sapling, it automatically calculates the current date + 12 days and then just stores that date. There's no "counter" that's ticking down that could reset.

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Kitty, what you say is logical and makes sense. Yet, i feel something is off when placing saplings in a grid that is "too" closely spaced. Even if there is a skyblock above the sapling, it wont necessarily turn into a tree. Maybe more testing is required. I'm trying differently spaced grid patterns.

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Saplings require enough space to grow. If the space where the tree would be is not 100% replaceable blocks, then it won't grow. After digging through the tree generation code, it does look like if it fails because there isn't enough space, it does replace the sapling. Since that is essentially breaking the sapling and placing it back down, that's why it might seem like the "timer" is resetting.

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This happened to me last night. 1 Sapling ticked down to 1 day, then nothing. The one next to it grew, this first one now says 7 days. This is a tiny tree farm at the top of a mountain. Both trees were at the says Y level 3 blocks from each other. The 3rd in the line has also clicked back to 7 days.

 

There are 6 trees in the farm are White Cedar trees, the middle ones of both rows have grown, the first rows other 2 have both "reset" and the final 2 are on 0 days. I am expecting these 2 to reset also.

 

I see your code, I believe what you say, but I also believe what I see.

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