I'm trying to automate my large scale wheat farm on one of my worlds. Unfortunately, it's not working as I had hoped.
As of right now, it consists of seven 8x8 plots of farmland. I have eight pistons on each plot blocking off some water source blocks. I flip a switch and the pistons retract, allowing the water to remove the wheat and push it to a stream of water 64 blocks long. At the end of the stream is a hopper connected to a chest.
If you do the math, I should be getting around 448 pieces of wheat. When I tested it for the first time, I got just over 100 pieces. There are some seeds and wheat getting caught on the walkways I use for planting seeds, but no more than a few pieces, not nearly enough to add up to the 300+ wheat that I lost.
Is it possible the wheat and seeds are despawning before they get to the hopper, or is it something else?
You'll have to stagger your production such that no more than 100 wheat are in transit to the hopper at any one time. There is a limit on the number of floating drops that can be active in a world at one time. Drops in excess of that despawn right away.
Your dealing with 3 issues here as I see it. Despawn time, entity limit, and transfer rate/pickup rate of the hoppers.
So the first one is roughly 5 minutes, as you most likely know. From the second the wheat and seeds are generated, you have roughly 5 minutes to pick it up one way or another. However some people don't know that 'stacking' with a newer entity will use the newer entities timer. For example suppose you harvest 1 wheat and 1 seed using water and use a water stream to carry it 10 blocks, then 1 minute later you harvest another wheat and get 1 wheat and 1 seed. Then you use a water stream again to carry the first wheat/seed to where the new one is, once they meet up on the same block they will 'stack'. but before this happens you actually have 4 entities, 2 wheat, and 2 seeds, each in its own stack, once they meet up, you end up with 2 entities, 1 stack of 2 wheat, and 1 stack of 2 seeds, which will use the 'despawn time' of the item with the highest value. Knowing this, each 'section' of your farm should attempt to stack up all your items, specifically to improve upon your despawn times.
But wait, theres more, entity limits, console version has a very small entity limit (which sucks). These include anything that drops when you harvest it that you will automatically pick up if your within range. Also Item frames, and items within item frames COUNT towards your entity max count. I'm not entirely sure of the max number of entities we are allowed but for some reason the number, but its not very high. This does not mean that you should limit yourself to say 100 wheat, it means that you should attempt to limit yourself to 100 entities, there's a HUGE difference. Lets say in total your farm is producing 1000 wheat per harvest, individually you easily go over the entity limit, but when you stack them together, you end up with only 15 stacks of 64 and one stack of 40, or 16 entities of wheat.
Finally you have to worry about hopper pickup rates of 2.5 items per second. And that the hoppers are capable of picking up those items in time before they start to despawn.
So lets for a moment take your farm. The first issue is your walkways, with entities getting trapped on them. These are using entity limits, try using something else for walkways, or remove the walkways, as long as you don't jump u should not need to worry about walking around the area anyhow. Second, once you harvest and push the items into a collection channel try to push all the items into 1 block before moving on to the next collection channel. In other words group all your entities into one block to allow them to 'stack up'. Once this occurs allow them to move to the next part of the farm and harvest that area, stack up, and repeat.
I have a similar wheat farm, The farm contains 8 sections each has 2 8x10 plots on each side with a collection stream in the center. Its important to note that the collection stream is blocked so that items can't leave the section, this allows the entities to stack up when the farm is in harvest mode. When I push the button to harvest, it begins with the first section and retracts pistons for 30 seconds flooding the 8x10, pushing all items into the collection channel, where they are given and additional 30 seconds to stack up. at which point the piston retracts within the collection stream allowing the items to move to the next section and the process repeats. After this is done 2 more times I send the items to a hopper to get collected. And the other 4 sections begin their harvest in the same way.
I hope this makes since and provides some insight on entities, and how to mass harvest safely.
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I'm trying to automate my large scale wheat farm on one of my worlds. Unfortunately, it's not working as I had hoped.
As of right now, it consists of seven 8x8 plots of farmland. I have eight pistons on each plot blocking off some water source blocks. I flip a switch and the pistons retract, allowing the water to remove the wheat and push it to a stream of water 64 blocks long. At the end of the stream is a hopper connected to a chest.
If you do the math, I should be getting around 448 pieces of wheat. When I tested it for the first time, I got just over 100 pieces. There are some seeds and wheat getting caught on the walkways I use for planting seeds, but no more than a few pieces, not nearly enough to add up to the 300+ wheat that I lost.
Is it possible the wheat and seeds are despawning before they get to the hopper, or is it something else?
You'll have to stagger your production such that no more than 100 wheat are in transit to the hopper at any one time. There is a limit on the number of floating drops that can be active in a world at one time. Drops in excess of that despawn right away.
Thank you. I was not aware of this.
Your dealing with 3 issues here as I see it. Despawn time, entity limit, and transfer rate/pickup rate of the hoppers.
So the first one is roughly 5 minutes, as you most likely know. From the second the wheat and seeds are generated, you have roughly 5 minutes to pick it up one way or another. However some people don't know that 'stacking' with a newer entity will use the newer entities timer. For example suppose you harvest 1 wheat and 1 seed using water and use a water stream to carry it 10 blocks, then 1 minute later you harvest another wheat and get 1 wheat and 1 seed. Then you use a water stream again to carry the first wheat/seed to where the new one is, once they meet up on the same block they will 'stack'. but before this happens you actually have 4 entities, 2 wheat, and 2 seeds, each in its own stack, once they meet up, you end up with 2 entities, 1 stack of 2 wheat, and 1 stack of 2 seeds, which will use the 'despawn time' of the item with the highest value. Knowing this, each 'section' of your farm should attempt to stack up all your items, specifically to improve upon your despawn times.
But wait, theres more, entity limits, console version has a very small entity limit (which sucks). These include anything that drops when you harvest it that you will automatically pick up if your within range. Also Item frames, and items within item frames COUNT towards your entity max count. I'm not entirely sure of the max number of entities we are allowed but for some reason the number, but its not very high. This does not mean that you should limit yourself to say 100 wheat, it means that you should attempt to limit yourself to 100 entities, there's a HUGE difference. Lets say in total your farm is producing 1000 wheat per harvest, individually you easily go over the entity limit, but when you stack them together, you end up with only 15 stacks of 64 and one stack of 40, or 16 entities of wheat.
Finally you have to worry about hopper pickup rates of 2.5 items per second. And that the hoppers are capable of picking up those items in time before they start to despawn.
So lets for a moment take your farm. The first issue is your walkways, with entities getting trapped on them. These are using entity limits, try using something else for walkways, or remove the walkways, as long as you don't jump u should not need to worry about walking around the area anyhow. Second, once you harvest and push the items into a collection channel try to push all the items into 1 block before moving on to the next collection channel. In other words group all your entities into one block to allow them to 'stack up'. Once this occurs allow them to move to the next part of the farm and harvest that area, stack up, and repeat.
I have a similar wheat farm, The farm contains 8 sections each has 2 8x10 plots on each side with a collection stream in the center. Its important to note that the collection stream is blocked so that items can't leave the section, this allows the entities to stack up when the farm is in harvest mode. When I push the button to harvest, it begins with the first section and retracts pistons for 30 seconds flooding the 8x10, pushing all items into the collection channel, where they are given and additional 30 seconds to stack up. at which point the piston retracts within the collection stream allowing the items to move to the next section and the process repeats. After this is done 2 more times I send the items to a hopper to get collected. And the other 4 sections begin their harvest in the same way.
I hope this makes since and provides some insight on entities, and how to mass harvest safely.