Cobble gens are good for many reasons: You can make money by making them for people No having to light the area up at night No random dirt No having to get back up Being able to chat with other players No Spiders comin in and ruining your day. No Falling into player mines No Pvp-ers No Lava Pits No Mobs in general No having to run back and get a new pick every 20 minutes. I could go on.
Let's assume there exists the perfect cobblestone generator, which generates cobblestone within the same line of sight and does so instantly, or with minimal delay. The time cost to mine a full inventory of cobblestone using a diamond pickaxe is: 0.4 seconds * 64 blocks/stack * 9 rows * 4 columns = 921.6 seconds (15:22) Next, let's assume that you are able to find an efficient quarry in the wild, which is safe and secure. We will also assume that each trip you leave your tools behind in a chest and only bring back cobblestone. The time cost to mine a full inventory of stone using a diamond pickaxe is: 0.3 seconds * 64 blocks/stack * 9 rows * 4 columns = 691.2 seconds (11:31) So, the total time savings is 230.4 seconds (3:50) per inventory full. This is ample time to reach the quarry site, set up new sites, and deal with occasional mob encounters.
Watching a movie on my second monitor as I hold down the mouse button and get cobble... priceless. There's somethings lazy can't buy. For everything else, there's cobble gens.
Go to 7009 on SMP3! I have an epic cobble generator. It's probably offline since it stops whenever no people are around...
Cobble gen Pro's : 1. Easy and safe 2. No dirt, gravel ect. 3. Convenient 4. infinite 5. can be anywhere 6. when at a certain size can be MORE efficient than a quarry* 7. can easily be moved and removed for space. Cobble gen Con's : 1. No minerals 2. Depending on size and lag, may be slow* Quarry Pro's : 1. Minerals 2. Is smooth stone so slightly faster** Quarry Con's : 1. Dirt, gravel ect. 2. Can be dangerous to fall into 3. Time consuming getting into / out of and getting to it. 4. Monsters and other things pose threats 5. lava and water at parts 6. Very time consuming** 7. NOT infinite*** 8. Can run into Mine-shafts and ravines ect. 9. Take up VAST amounts of space 10. Easily griefable/ vandalizable in the wild * I have designed a cobble gen that makes and puts out cobble faster than you can mine straight with an EFF III diamond pick. Although server lagg can cripple the clock and block breaking ability, the block reappearing will still affect a quarry. ** it takes .3 to mine smooth stone, BUT if you look at all the other factors, such as running into someone's cave, a mineshaft, dirt, gravel, lava, climbing in and out, the quarry is much more time consuming than a cobble gen. ***They are not infinite because the world isn't actually infinite, you can run the end, which takes about several weeks from what I read on the wiki, but still has an end, the only places Cobble and Stone are infinite with lava and water. One could argue that because of the worlds actual size that you might as well classify it as infinite but for this purpose it is not. I think cobble gen's actually out weigh Quarries by alot, with the only detriment being no minerals, which isnt that bad honestly. If you build a fairly easy but nice cobble gen, not just a water source and a lava source to touch, then your way better off with a cobble gen, plus you can pimp out cobble gens to collect the cobble that falls like mine. I just stand in one spot, and mine away, while you have to walk around, fight mobs, dig up gravel and dirt and place torch's. Made a quick video, Had to shrink the size alot so I could upload fast. So the proportions are weird xD 1920x1080 was a bit too big to video for long and keep the size down xD Cobble gen is safer, easier, and faster.
What makes me sad the most - is how fugly peoples generators are The time of aesthetics have long past!
Quarry mining is actually not much worth it. Depending on the spot and size, you have to make them quite big to get anything worth while and, unless you use stone picks, it wastes a lot of iron that you simply dont get back from quarry mining. If you use only stone picks, you make much more back on your investment in the quarry, but it also takes a LOT more time to get all that stone. The nice thing about generators is that you can get roughly 80 cobble per minute with a fast one, but in town it almost always lags a little bit. I enjoy quarry mining, it just takes a good hour or so to get a lot of stone. And I think you are forgetting that, while you would eventually get your money back for selling that cobble, diamonds are quite rare and sell for 40-50 rupees a piece on servers. you would have to sell 4-5 stacks of 64 (I sell my cobble for 10 a stack when I feel inclined to mine it) to make back one diamond pickaxe you used on cobble. Assumign you can even sell it that much because people don't buy it that often (In my experience, I have NEVER bought cobblestone from anybody, because it is simply easier to get it myself). Also with the lack of people being online all at once and the lack of noobies having any rupees to spend, your return on investment of diamonds is quite low, unless you are willing to wait to make all that money back. To be honest, cobblestone other than for yourself really isn't even worth all that effort. Go mine some sand or coal. Much higher rates on investment.
Yea, some peoples, but done judge all gens by a few bad apples, I make mine a peice of art, they are truly magnificent I've sold 14 in one day at 500/peice, I don't sell anymore, and I had designed the machine all by myself
