I've been doing some Minecraft-related number-crunching with a spreadsheet today concerning travel times using various methods, and the first thing I noticed was that one could travel to the Far Lands in about 2.5 real-time days if one were using a boosted minecart track in the Nether. "Not that bad..." I thought. If only our computers could deal with the lag of visiting the Far Lands, this might mean that the Far Lands could become something practical to visit legitimately.
So then I got to crunching the numbers with regards to how much primary material we'd need in order to construct a high-speed Nether tunnel to the far lands. I settled on a design that, I thought, offered the best mix of economy, security from ghast fireball attacks, and scenery:
[] []
[]
[] []
(Where the stick is the rail track). This gives a 1x2 tunnel with glass at eye level for your Nether-viewing pleasure during the 2.5 real-day-long adventure.
After doing the number crunching, here are the totals in *primary materials* that I came up with for this project:
(Note that I have factored EVERYTHING in, including the stone needed for the stone pickaxes to mine the stone for the furnaces at each stopover). I assumed that all smelting would be done with charcoal (which went into the wood total), and I assumed that, where something could be done without a tool (such as wood or sand harvesting), it would be.
=================
Total cobblestone needed:
7,036,435
Total cobblestone stacks needed:
109,944
Total sand needed:
3,137,705
Stacks of sand needed:
49,027
Total wood trunk blocks needed:
623,274
Stacks of wood trunk blocks needed:
9,739
Total iron ore needed (includes iron needed for 10 buckets & iron needed for flint&steel for lighting Nether portals):
588,366
Total stacks of iron ore needed:
9,193
Stopovers back to the normal world needed to re-supply:
3,649
Total lava source blocks needed for Nether portal molds (easily obtainable in Nether):
36,491
Total water source blocks needed for Nether portal molds (easily renewable):
~36,491
Flint needed for flint&steel for lighting Nether portals:
57
Distance in Nether between stopovers (in meters a.k.a. Blocks):
430
Distance in normal world between stopovers (in meters a.k.a. blocks)
3,439
Soooo, whats different about these "far lands"? perhaps more.... sheep? please do share your reasoning for going to these "far lands" but the overall idea is epic! if you accomplish it for every mile you get :wink.gif:
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
The Trivial Sublime. I like to turn off time and kill my mind.
Well, if I INVedited these materials in, I'd have more than I needed because I've already factored in the stone needed for the stone pickaxes to mine the cobble, etc. Which reminds me...
Here are some fun intermediary calculations:
Total stone pickaxes needed:
53,306
Torches needed in Nether tunnel (placed every 10 blocks):
156,885
Here's an even more intermediary calculation:
Extra stone pickaxes needed at stopovers to mine stone for furnaces and extra stone pickaxes:
226
(Yes, that's 226 stone pickaxes needed just to mine for the stone for furnaces along the way, plus the stone needed for those pickaxes).
Actually, I might have underestimated the number of stopover points needed to re-supply because I didn't think about stuff like buckets taking up inventory space. Plus, if you were doing this in real legit survival mode, you'd need other stuff as well like bows and arrows to deal with the ghasts. So consider these numbers a bare, hypothetical minimum.
Edit: Also, I realized that every 10 blocks, you'd have to re-arrange the configuration slightly to something like this:
[] []
[] []
So that you'd have somewhere to put the torch (because I don't think it can go on the bottom row of cobblestone if there's a track right underneath, am I right?)
This is how NASA got started. But since we dont have Space in minecraft 'yet' we have the magical and mystical Far Lands which seem just as far away to us minecraftians as the moon seems to us in the real world.
Perhaps taking a hint from our real world counter parts, it might be more feasable to build a large very large cannon to launch a character miles and miles and miles. If this done on a server with the towny mod they could, if they land safely as in water, create a town and use it as a spawn point to move the cannon up. and continue on till they reach the Far Lands. Perhaps if the booster block effects stack from 1.5 it could work like a rail gun along a track and much to the same effect by launching a character hundreds of miles through the air?
Minecraft is still stuck in the early ages of civilization it appears without the use of 3rd party mods like airplanes. So one day the Far Lands will no longer be overwhelmingly out of reach to the vast majorty of its inhabitants that dont use cheat mods or OP powers, some day we will reach Far Lands under our own means within the limits of the game.
Soooo, whats different about these "far lands"? perhaps more.... sheep? please do share your reasoning for going to these "far lands" but the overall idea is epic! if you accomplish it for every mile you get :wink.gif:
The "Far Lands" are the borders of where the programing for Minecraft starts to break down. While in theory the terrain generator is infinite, in practice there is a limit based on how Java is storing coordinates. When you get to the Far Lands, the values for the coordinates are large enough that things start to break.
That's interesting. If you have normally trouble with block shifting and clipping in the Far Lands, I wonder what will happen with a minecart.
Also, if you use the new rail boosters, you'll need places to put the redstne torches to power them, you may need to rearrange the shape of the tunnel.
That or place detector rails next to the booster, and factor in the cost of gold.
Have we come to a consensus about how much we can space powered rails on flat ground to maintain ~top speed? Once we settle on that question, I'll revamp this spreadsheet to include powered rails.
Edit: Also, I realized that every 10 blocks, you'd have to re-arrange the configuration slightly to something like this:
[] []
[] []
So that you'd have somewhere to put the torch (because I don't think it can go on the bottom row of cobblestone if there's a track right underneath, am I right?)
Alternately, consider this:
Three segments of:
[] []
[]
[] []
... followed by one segment of:
[]
[] []
... Every third all-stone ring, is replaced with:
[]
[] []
(Where = Lightstone.)
It's a bit less stone, but more glass. Most importantly, I think it'd be more aesthetically pleasing - giving wider views, as well as a good sense of motion/speed. There's a light source every twelve blocks (you could cut that to every eight blocks, by using twice as much lightstone).
Have we come to a consensus about how much we can space powered rails on flat ground to maintain ~top speed? Once we settle on that question, I'll revamp this spreadsheet to include powered rails.
Powered rails give you a momentum of 128 blocks and optimal placement is one every 32 blocks according to the wiki.
Granted I have had the game for 3 days, and I still jump for joy when I find more than 1 block of iron. I cannot begin to comprehend the scale of this idea until I get a tad more game time.
I had to sign up and post just to say this blew my mind and there is obviously a hell of a lot more to MC than I originally thought. I will begin to worry about the status of my social life now.
I'm not so sure about using lightstone, considering that it's rather difficult and slow to mine. I'd rather just use torches.
I'm thinking, though, that I do like the idea of having 3 glass on top. So actually what I'll do is:
[] []
[]
[] []
Except for every 10th one, which will be:
[] []
[] []
And every 16th one will have a powered rail and a redstone torch like so:
[] []
[]
[]
Of course, there will be combinations where the extra cobblestone and torch will be combined with the powered rail and redstone torch, but I don't think that they should interfere, right?
Anyways, I've redone the calculations with the assumption that every 16 spaces there will be a powered rail with a redstone torch (I see that the wiki says optional placement is every 32 blocks, but I want my high-speed rail to be FAST). I've also revamped the assumption of how much of the inventory can reasonably be devoted to cobblestone, such that I am only assuming that one row of inventory will be devoted to cobblestone (which leaves about one row for sand, and the rest for all the other things). This increases the number of stopovers, but simply increasing the glass/cobblestone ratio greatly made up for this, reducing overall materials (mainly thanks to the assumption that we will not be making tools to harvest sand).
Also, if more than one person were working on this, I could divide the number of stops needed by that amount, as the inventory space would be effectively multiplied by that amount.
Distance to the Far Lands via the Nether:
1,568,853
Primary resources needed:
Total cobblestone needed:
5,045,722
Total cobblestone stacks needed:
78,839
Total sand needed:
4,549,672
Stacks of sand needed:
71,089
Total wood trunk blocks needed:
861,593
Stacks of wood trunk blocks needed:
13,462
Total iron ore needed (includes iron needed for 10 buckets):
491,937
Total stacks of iron ore needed:
7,687
*Note: I also assumed that, when mining redstone with iron pickaxes, that redstone blocks would always drop 4 redstone dust. This obviously influenced the number of iron pickaxes needed to mine the redstone, and thus in small part the amount of iron needed.
Total Redstone needed:
114,395
Total Redstone stacks needed:
1,787
Gold ore needed for powered rail tracks:
98,053
Stacks of gold ore needed:
1,532
Stopovers needed to re-supply:
7,784
Distance in Nether between stopovers (in meters a.k.a. Blocks):
202
Distance in normal world between stopovers (in meters a.k.a. blocks)
1,612
Total lava source blocks needed for Nether portal molds (easily obtainable in Nether):
77,837
Total water source blocks needed for Nether portal molds (easily renewable):
~77,837
Flint needed for flint&steel for lighting Nether portals:
122
Trivia:
Total stone pickaxes needed:
38,225
Iron pickaxes needed to mine gold and redstone:
505
Torches needed in Nether tunnel (placed every 10 blocks, plus 1 every 16 blocks for redstone torches):
254,939
Even more in-depth trivia:
Extra stone pickaxes needed at stopovers to mine stone for furnaces and extra stone pickaxes:
482
Sticks needed for iron pickaxes to mine gold ore:
781
I could go on and on with intermediary statistics, but you get the idea....
So, I've been thinking about how long this would take, and I'm thinking that it would be reasonable to expect 1 person to complete one section between stopovers per real-life day. Each section is 202 blocks long. Although that might not sound very long, in reality, each section would take many minecraft days, as you have to mine all of the materials, craft necessary tools, build the tunnel, and dodge creepers in the overworld as you mined and chopped and dodge ghast fireballs in the underworld as you built those 202 meters of tunnel.
There are 7,784 stopovers.
So you're looking at about 7,784 man-days. With a team of 20 on a server, you could finish this project in about 390 days -- a little over a year.
Edit: The point of this would be to shorten the legit journey to the Far Lands from roughly 2 months (real-time) to 2.5 days. Thus, with every use, about 58 man-days would be saved. You would have to have this tunnel used 134 times (either one person using it 134 times, or 134 people using it one time each, or any multiplicative combination in between) for the project to be economical.
So, assuming that such a project would get more than 134 visitors trying it out throughout its lifetime, it is only logical for the human race to build this great project....
i've been to the farlands, and everything was messed up... so many not-burning zombies and skeletons and stuff
AND there was a giant wall of dirt and stone, on top of that, dungeons formed in the air, its weird, but funny
Then it got so laggy my game crashed R.I.P that world lol
So then I got to crunching the numbers with regards to how much primary material we'd need in order to construct a high-speed Nether tunnel to the far lands. I settled on a design that, I thought, offered the best mix of economy, security from ghast fireball attacks, and scenery:
[] []
[]
[] []
(Where the stick is the rail track). This gives a 1x2 tunnel with glass at eye level for your Nether-viewing pleasure during the 2.5 real-day-long adventure.
After doing the number crunching, here are the totals in *primary materials* that I came up with for this project:
(Note that I have factored EVERYTHING in, including the stone needed for the stone pickaxes to mine the stone for the furnaces at each stopover). I assumed that all smelting would be done with charcoal (which went into the wood total), and I assumed that, where something could be done without a tool (such as wood or sand harvesting), it would be.
=================
Total cobblestone needed:
7,036,435
Total cobblestone stacks needed:
109,944
Total sand needed:
3,137,705
Stacks of sand needed:
49,027
Total wood trunk blocks needed:
623,274
Stacks of wood trunk blocks needed:
9,739
Total iron ore needed (includes iron needed for 10 buckets & iron needed for flint&steel for lighting Nether portals):
588,366
Total stacks of iron ore needed:
9,193
Stopovers back to the normal world needed to re-supply:
3,649
Total lava source blocks needed for Nether portal molds (easily obtainable in Nether):
36,491
Total water source blocks needed for Nether portal molds (easily renewable):
~36,491
Flint needed for flint&steel for lighting Nether portals:
57
Distance in Nether between stopovers (in meters a.k.a. Blocks):
430
Distance in normal world between stopovers (in meters a.k.a. blocks)
3,439
==================
So who's ready to get crackin' on this?
You should INVedit all the stuff needed, and make a youtube vid of this
"He with no life, shall accomplish great deeds."
Here are some fun intermediary calculations:
Total stone pickaxes needed:
53,306
Torches needed in Nether tunnel (placed every 10 blocks):
156,885
Here's an even more intermediary calculation:
Extra stone pickaxes needed at stopovers to mine stone for furnaces and extra stone pickaxes:
226
(Yes, that's 226 stone pickaxes needed just to mine for the stone for furnaces along the way, plus the stone needed for those pickaxes).
Edit: Also, I realized that every 10 blocks, you'd have to re-arrange the configuration slightly to something like this:
[] []
[] []
So that you'd have somewhere to put the torch (because I don't think it can go on the bottom row of cobblestone if there's a track right underneath, am I right?)
Perhaps taking a hint from our real world counter parts, it might be more feasable to build a large very large cannon to launch a character miles and miles and miles. If this done on a server with the towny mod they could, if they land safely as in water, create a town and use it as a spawn point to move the cannon up. and continue on till they reach the Far Lands. Perhaps if the booster block effects stack from 1.5 it could work like a rail gun along a track and much to the same effect by launching a character hundreds of miles through the air?
Minecraft is still stuck in the early ages of civilization it appears without the use of 3rd party mods like airplanes. So one day the Far Lands will no longer be overwhelmingly out of reach to the vast majorty of its inhabitants that dont use cheat mods or OP powers, some day we will reach Far Lands under our own means within the limits of the game.
r
The "Far Lands" are the borders of where the programing for Minecraft starts to break down. While in theory the terrain generator is infinite, in practice there is a limit based on how Java is storing coordinates. When you get to the Far Lands, the values for the coordinates are large enough that things start to break.
That or place detector rails next to the booster, and factor in the cost of gold.
Alternately, consider this:
Three segments of:
[] []
[]
[] []
... followed by one segment of:
[]
[] []
... Every third all-stone ring, is replaced with:
[]
[] []
(Where = Lightstone.)
It's a bit less stone, but more glass. Most importantly, I think it'd be more aesthetically pleasing - giving wider views, as well as a good sense of motion/speed. There's a light source every twelve blocks (you could cut that to every eight blocks, by using twice as much lightstone).
Powered rails give you a momentum of 128 blocks and optimal placement is one every 32 blocks according to the wiki.
Granted I have had the game for 3 days, and I still jump for joy when I find more than 1 block of iron. I cannot begin to comprehend the scale of this idea until I get a tad more game time.
I had to sign up and post just to say this blew my mind and there is obviously a hell of a lot more to MC than I originally thought. I will begin to worry about the status of my social life now.
I'm thinking, though, that I do like the idea of having 3 glass on top. So actually what I'll do is:
[] []
[]
[] []
Except for every 10th one, which will be:
[] []
[] []
And every 16th one will have a powered rail and a redstone torch like so:
[] []
[]
[]
Of course, there will be combinations where the extra cobblestone and torch will be combined with the powered rail and redstone torch, but I don't think that they should interfere, right?
Anyways, I've redone the calculations with the assumption that every 16 spaces there will be a powered rail with a redstone torch (I see that the wiki says optional placement is every 32 blocks, but I want my high-speed rail to be FAST). I've also revamped the assumption of how much of the inventory can reasonably be devoted to cobblestone, such that I am only assuming that one row of inventory will be devoted to cobblestone (which leaves about one row for sand, and the rest for all the other things). This increases the number of stopovers, but simply increasing the glass/cobblestone ratio greatly made up for this, reducing overall materials (mainly thanks to the assumption that we will not be making tools to harvest sand).
Also, if more than one person were working on this, I could divide the number of stops needed by that amount, as the inventory space would be effectively multiplied by that amount.
Here, then, are the updated statistics:
===============
*Distance to the Far Lands: 12,550,820.00
http://www.minecraftwiki.net/wiki/Far_Lands
Distance to the Far Lands via the Nether:
1,568,853
Primary resources needed:
Total cobblestone needed:
5,045,722
Total cobblestone stacks needed:
78,839
Total sand needed:
4,549,672
Stacks of sand needed:
71,089
Total wood trunk blocks needed:
861,593
Stacks of wood trunk blocks needed:
13,462
Total iron ore needed (includes iron needed for 10 buckets):
491,937
Total stacks of iron ore needed:
7,687
*Note: I also assumed that, when mining redstone with iron pickaxes, that redstone blocks would always drop 4 redstone dust. This obviously influenced the number of iron pickaxes needed to mine the redstone, and thus in small part the amount of iron needed.
Total Redstone needed:
114,395
Total Redstone stacks needed:
1,787
Gold ore needed for powered rail tracks:
98,053
Stacks of gold ore needed:
1,532
Stopovers needed to re-supply:
7,784
Distance in Nether between stopovers (in meters a.k.a. Blocks):
202
Distance in normal world between stopovers (in meters a.k.a. blocks)
1,612
Total lava source blocks needed for Nether portal molds (easily obtainable in Nether):
77,837
Total water source blocks needed for Nether portal molds (easily renewable):
~77,837
Flint needed for flint&steel for lighting Nether portals:
122
Trivia:
Total stone pickaxes needed:
38,225
Iron pickaxes needed to mine gold and redstone:
505
Torches needed in Nether tunnel (placed every 10 blocks, plus 1 every 16 blocks for redstone torches):
254,939
Even more in-depth trivia:
Extra stone pickaxes needed at stopovers to mine stone for furnaces and extra stone pickaxes:
482
Sticks needed for iron pickaxes to mine gold ore:
781
I could go on and on with intermediary statistics, but you get the idea....
There are 7,784 stopovers.
So you're looking at about 7,784 man-days. With a team of 20 on a server, you could finish this project in about 390 days -- a little over a year.
Edit: The point of this would be to shorten the legit journey to the Far Lands from roughly 2 months (real-time) to 2.5 days. Thus, with every use, about 58 man-days would be saved. You would have to have this tunnel used 134 times (either one person using it 134 times, or 134 people using it one time each, or any multiplicative combination in between) for the project to be economical.
So, assuming that such a project would get more than 134 visitors trying it out throughout its lifetime, it is only logical for the human race to build this great project....
AND there was a giant wall of dirt and stone, on top of that, dungeons formed in the air, its weird, but funny
Then it got so laggy my game crashed R.I.P that world lol