Automation Out of Reach

The tunnels I picked off along the sides of the main tunnel. The tunnel bore is hard at work at the end of the tunnel where it’s darker (too dark to be seen here).

I made the railroad factory and a small workshop for making industrial TNT. A few more tunnels were drilled for ores. I found it effective to also pickaxe several short tunnels off the main tunnel to check for ores as shown in the picture above. From what I see, a typical drilling delivers about 40 to 60 iron ores per trip.

Once I started research on the harvester and planter required to automate my farms, it got very complicated. I attempted a flowchart to help clarify what I needed, but it got so extensive that I decided against it. There was a certain machine, however, that proved—and I just knew—that these automation machines are far, far out of my reach at this current time: The magma crucible. Again, I need the nether bricks to complete it; which I have not found yet.

Besides, from the looks of it, I will need a network of ore processing, crafting, smelting, compressing, transporting—heck, an entire industry of factories to obtain just one automated machine.

Modern conveniences make our lives so easy but I seriously had no idea they are theoretically difficult to get. It makes me appreciate them more in real life.

So anyway, I’m going to focus on enabling myself to develop ore processing and mining machinery. However, I’ll first need a way to power them. The windmill won’t be enough. I already started work on the watermill power plant, but I know that won’t be enough too. Solar panels are impossible to gain obviously. So I have two energy options I’m aware of: Coal and oil.

Thankfully in the world of Minecraft, no skies will get polluted.

At any rate, I’ll need microchips…a lot of them; so that watermill will power mainly the research facility for them. I’ll need a ton of iron too, for making that oil/biodiesel generator and the systems that will go with it.

Windmill

The windmill now under construction!

I haven’t been doing a good job keeping up at these entries. Despite that, I’ve made a lot of progress in the past few days. I expanded the workshop, constructed the metal former, and the windmill is finally built.

The power it produces is very small, but it’s a renewable and constant source of energy. I think it’s sufficient for now.

My settlement is growing, crammed, and disorganized. I believe the need to specialize the industries is becoming an important need.

I envision that railroads will prove to be in wide use in the future, so a rail factory would be nice. I’m already in the process of building a barn to manage a wheat farm, cattle ranch, and someday, a sheep ranch. The research facility for general tech will be expanded to house microchip assembly manufacturing. And finally, I’m going to make a goal to build a watermill power plant to power various machines I will be using.

Besides all this, once I move the railroad machines out of the workshop and into that factory, I plan to use it for the next big thing: Modern machinery.

This is my plan: To get automation for the basic industries so I can focus with ease on the upper tier industries. This means I will first automate the wheat, then timber, then ores.

Immersive engineering has a good low tech ore excavator, but it expensive in terms of iron required to build and the energy needed to run it—I might explore my options a bit before committing to it.

Getting an automated hemp farm is something I’m considering as well.