Water Wheels Are BETTER Than Steam Engines (Kind Of) - Create Mod SU generator comparison guide

Stress Unit generation is the most important part of Minecraft's Create Mod... but which one is the best for what situations and why are water wheels better than steam engines in most cases? In this guide to Create Mod Generators we'll take a look at each of their strengths and weaknesses in a tier list format in order to crown the King of Stress Unit generation

[qtwembk]

I think you need to gather the supplies to make each one again but do it 5000 times each to account for RNG in world generation, this should only take several years

[dudedude]

A problem with that perspective is:
- you play the first few hours with water wheels and then you have every resource to build a steam engine everywhere you need it.

- a windmill is not for efficiency but for looks. Also you can pluck it directly onto a crop/ wood farm to make it move without lost space.

- at later stages you will have infinite lava in the offer world and in addition you have to calculate lag impact per SU, not per space. This bucket refiller has nearly no impact per SU. You need one of them (and not at 256 rpm) for a large steam engine (100k+ SU). Calculate the lag for 200+ large water wheels.

In addition to that, whatever you do with the 100k SU will likely generate MUCH more lag than this steam engine setup, so that doesn't really matter that much.

These have just different use cases.

It's like saying, "which car is better, a semi truck, a sports car or a small car like a smart/ mini etc.?" - as it is most often, it depends.

Nothing against the video though, just my rant plus engagement for the algorithm.

[ixioxp]

the unit used is actually micro seconds per tick, so i assume "to calculate everything with this block you need x micro seconds per tick" normally minecraft wants to run at 20 ticks per second, this means that as long as your total "lag" isn't above 50 000μs/t you shouldn't experience any lag, of course this avoids how much it takes for minecraft to do its normal stuff

[SergioPSC]

Shoutout to youtubers who make sponsors a different chapter so you can skip them. You guys rock

[vanummli]

I haven't personally done it but the windmill can be made part of the decor. Make the wool colored and look like a globe or other statue then you can "hide" it as part of a decorative park/feature. That said, totally agree with you!

[yeetmcmeat]

If you struggle with getting blaze burners, you can actually just right click a blaze spawner with the empty burner and get one so you can do it in peaceful. It doesn't use the spawner up either.

[binathiessen]

I always use infinite lava sources to power my boilers, and use them for all my stress needs. I got tired of charcoal farms dying when they were out of random tick range. And I had problems with water wheels causing a lot of client side lag because of all the moving geometry.
I use quarries to dig giant shafts down to bedrock and fill the gaps in the walls with cobble, then I use hose pulleys to fill the pit with lava pumped from my previous infinite lava source. Now I have power wherever I need it.

[teasdaye]

Arcane Engineering configuring windmills to work with a single sail was honestly pretty useful for small fan setups. They only need minimal rotation to cook/wash stuff anyway, so an independent 2-block solution (especially in situations where you definitely wouldn't want flowing water around) came in handy many times.

[SuperMegaCoffeeGuru]

I have always loved Water Wheels and Windmills, though windmills are just as much for aesthetics. That said, being able to have wheels buried in an underground pit and running a line to what I need powered is always a good thing.

[fordalels]

If only windmills were good.... Personally, I would absolutely love if they had actual wind mechanics - for instance, upwards facing windmills will get more stress units if above heat sources. Face a fan towards a windmill and it will make the windmill spin faster - without increasing the SU. This would also give a use for fans with high RPM, since currently the only use is range.. which doesn't matter if you get advanced enough tech.

[Rapandreas]

6:35 That windmill design could absolutely be compacted down to half the size or even less by just filling out the 3x3. And since the blocks become entities once the windmill is spinning, you can place new blocks in there, meaning it doesn't take up any space.

[ICountFrom]

You can drop the "min" even lower on the steam (Unless the newest version changed it), you can put it above a campfire, or lava. You can completely skip the blaze at stage 1.

[nickbutnoappropriatelastna]

Bro got sponsored by a collage.
These replies are rather strange, perhaps they should study in a collage.

[PsiQss]

Well, considering many people play with a modpack, I think a mention would be in place that you do not need to power the steam engines with the robotic arm. Unless you're playing the "vanilla" Create. There are addons in place that allow you to power the blaze burners with piped in liquid fuel, which I believe has much less impact on tps.

I know this video aims to compare the power sources in a context of the Create mod, just thought this would be worth mentioning given how people are likely playing modpacks rather than a single mod :)

[justincoombs]

Small water wheels are very power dense. In a 15x15x3 area, with small waterwheels, 14, 080 SU, near zero us/t. 6x6x3 x4 unused spaces within that area. 1 water source block, 56 small water wheels, 56 gearboxes, 104 filler blocks (glass?). Looks like a giant plus symbol laying on the ground. can be repeated vertically with direct contact power is coupled automatically. Raw cost: 196 andesite, 22 iron/zinc, 392 logs, 104 sand.

[SpaceBurgerSteve]

The thing about windmills taking up vertical space is that you can fit more in a single chunk, which is good if you have limited simulation distance. Giving them an F feels a little harsh, but to each their own. 🙂

[fenn_fren]

6:00 spat all over my keyboard when I saw the giant rotating SUC

[minmaxmedia]

I agree that windmills are "meh" most of the time, with two exceptions... when I am making spinning tree, kelp, or crop farms OR need a small bit of power for something in the nether (where you can't have water), I do like windmills. As for Tree/Crop/Kelp farms, the nice thing about using a windmill is that, if you use a windmill bearing instead of a mechanical bearing, the arm that you attach all your mechanical saws, harvesters, storage blocks, and portable interfaces to can simply be made of wool and then the arm itself IS the sail. Additionally, the farm then generates the items AND a bit of power to run things like belts, sorting-system, or simple resource processing (such as a wheat farm that auto-processes the wheat into bread or sweet rolls right away). Essentially making a windmill option for a farm be the most space efficient since it literally takes up ZERO additional blocks beyond what the contraption would normally require.

As for building in the nether, you could power the water wheels with lava instead of water, but that can be dangerous if you have firetick enabled and are building out of any flammable materials or are playing in hardcore where you are probably trying to mitigate risk of getting dead.

[elnico]

you can power steam engines with campfires, you can pump water to a single one with a waterwheel and use that one engine to pump other 16 (or 32 i forgor) engines that also use campfires, and you got a ton of free SU

[kilbymorgan]

I like Windmills the most. You can make large moving art pieces that power your stuff without anything extra. You set it up and its done. Only limitation I have found is lag if you put too many too close together.