Advanced Iron Farm Design

Discussion in 'Share Your EMC Creations' started by JesusPower2, Aug 8, 2017.

  1. So I'm nearing completion on a build that OriginalScuf and I first thought of approximately a year ago. Our goal then was to build a massive iron farm with 48 nodes activated by a single player -- just to prove it could be done. We crunched some numbers, the math looked good, so we started building.

    Pretty quickly we found that the farm didn't quite work. Production rates were far lower than expected. After trying for a couple of months on alternate designs we took a break and moved onto other projects.

    The build has nagged at me because I don't like failing, and I don't like to leave mysteries unsolved.

    Recently I decided to revisit the build and question the fundamental things I'd learned about iron farm design. I questioned everything.
    • How far apart do nodes need to be?
    • Why do iron farms have walls?
    • How close do I have to be to produce golems?
    • Is it better to have villagers in water or to keep them dry?
    • Why do nodes sometimes stop producing?
    In answering these, I discovered that much of what I'd read was wrong, and in many cases more harmful than helpful!

    For example, should you put your villagers in water? Only if your farm is small! If your farm is larger than about 12 nodes it will kill production rates.

    Is there interest in iron farm design or are those just a niche topic? If you want to discuss them, post here so I know if it's worth writing more.
  2. I have a 36 cell (node) iron farm built in a secret location on EMC that is fully operational for a single player. By my calculations, it is the largest possible due to a combination of entity limiter and the number of chunks loaded.
    I had previously built an iron farm (with a friend) that was designed to be 56 cells. Unfortunately, I messed up a few calculations and it is completely useless. See below for live map screenshot.



    Maybe I will share a screenshot of the cells I used for my 36 cell farm. It is a fairly efficient design imo. Much better design than that screenshot above shows. Additionally, it should be noted that the server does slow down iron farms after a certain number are going. Sounds like JesusPower2 did the research on what some of what those exact numbers are. I didn't hold onto any of my calculations which I used to create mine.
  3. Wow, that's a huge effort! Thanks for the pic.

    I'm terrified I'll discover another problem before the farm is finished. However, I have enough functioning nodes that I feel comfortable talking about what I've learned.

    Also want to call out that I'm going out on a limb here by sharing these 'secrets'. But hopefully if people stop putting villagers in water it will improve overall server efficiency :)

    On the topic of entc limits...I was able to 'solve' this with villager positioning. Entity limits are enforced in a 64-block radius around the player. View distance is an 11x11 grid centered on the player, or ~72-blocks around the player.

    In the image I'm hovering directly over the diamond armor stand. The villagers (leather armor stand) are just across the entc line but remain visible within that last chunk.

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  4. Yes. I found the water to be completely unnecessary for my villagers.
    It should be noted. That alright /entc appears to be based on the players location. It more accurately runs off of the chunk you are standing in.
  5. I will upload a screen of my private farm running with entcount tomorrow.
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  6. Here is a very meaty topic. It's very complex so I don't think I can cover the nuances in one post. I will probably split it.

    Why do villages merge?
    Let me start by explaining what I mean by merge. Merging is when two nodes (villages) combine into a single, larger, village. This is disastrous for floating iron farms because golems spawn around the center of the village. When two nodes merge the new center is likely off in space somewhere unexpected.

    This happens often when nodes are first loaded. It can happen occasionally as time passes. It happens more frequently with large farms, on busy severs, and it happens more frequently when villagers are bouncing in water.

    What is the event that triggers this?
    The very short answer -- it happens when new doors are detected, as the new doors are added to the nearest village.

    How can this be correct? Didn't I just write that this happens as time passes? How can an iron farm that has been functioning fine for hours suddenly collapse into a few large villages? Does this mean that the doors are being re-added as if they're new? Yes!

    a) If you walk away or logout, and the chunk unloads, the door expires. (as of 1.8?)
    b) If there are too many villager locations in the world, doors can randomly expire.

    How can merging be prevented?
    Trick question. It can't, really. Reducing villager locations will make expiration less frequent so it's worth doing. But in the end all it takes is one other player passing through an iron farm in another part of the world. Suddenly there are too many villager locations and doors start to expire.

    My solution was to just deal with it. If nodes are spaced far enough then no new door is ever within 64-blocks of another village center. Doors can expire and return without lasting impact! Reducing villager locations is still good for farm efficiency but it's not the key.

    The key? Ensure that no door is ever within 64-blocks of another node center.

    Before you move on, this last gem might shock you...

    Remember that 19x19 node design? It's two villages with two centers that quickly merge together. Think about what happens when half the node expires and the center moves. Still have enough space between the nodes to prevent merging?

    (edit: More accurately, it's one village with a center to the side of the node, and the center drags over as new doors are added. It isn't actually two entries in the list of villages. But it's helpful to think of this way since either set can be an independent village if the other side expires.)
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  7. This is my Private Iron Farm Ent Count, hehe.
    JesusPower2 likes this.
  8. Why though.... There is no advantage to that mess. Foods things I plan on fixing the entity limiter so we can re enable auto kill...
  9. Keep in mind this was built in 2013, and dont have much free time to build any new ones, and works well enough for me...

    DC of Iron blocks a Day.. :)
  10. Interesting topic. Before I built mine (is only 12 units, above ground) I tinkered with it in SP trying to get the design down to bare bones as far as materials. The villager cells are only 1 block x 2 blocks high and made of glass and no water. Just a single glowstone to stand on (even that might be unnecessary). Each unit is 21x21 (if I recall correctly) with a 3x3 hole in the middle to prevent bunching. Also I have yet to have a golem spawn anywhere unintended. The only solid blocks used are the spawning floors and the area for doors, everything else is glass. Looks great and works great.


    6 doors per side, 4 villagers per unit; 12 units total. Get a DC of blocks in a few days usually.






    My only issue is I could never find a easy & safe way of manual kill. I can soften them up just fine with lava but in the kill chamber they can always strike back.
    khixan likes this.
  11. Just please don't kill all our sheep again by accident :) We have them spaced in cells that are 100 blocks apart with 200 in each cell. I believe that is under the entity limit in the wild?

    Back to iron farms -
    A few years ago, I tried twice to get the iron titan design by Tango Tek to work on EMC. Failed miserably both times (I have one on a single player world that works nicely). Reached the conclusion that it's just not gonna work on EMC. I'm not terribly good at explaining why the villages are determined to merge on EMC. Any of you want to give your 2 cents so we can spare anyone else the aggravation of that build? Or maybe you disagree and think it could work?
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  12. Go look at Fe(II). Rhy and I solved that with stairs, iron trapdoors, and fences. Rhy's iron trapdoors were the key to getting that to work. Cheers :)
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  13. It's a crazy idea :) They are geniuses for discovering it without source code analysis.

    He takes advantage of moving centers in order to attach doors to the villages that he wants.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STs4wDJewNw
    @27m he shows the trick. He slowly marches the center over a block at a time while adding doors. As long as the doors are never re-evaluated the farm keeps running.

    Unfortunately, because of the door expiration woes I mentioned above, there is no real way to keep the build from eventually collapsing. If it collapses the doors have to be taken down and replaced in the same painstaking manner.

    Also, the build only works if he's able to keep the chunk from unloading, since unloading causes the doors to reset. So he has to build it on the world spawn chunk and shoves items through a nether portal on a timer (which we also can't do on EMC).
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  14. That is a beautiful design! Are your nodes more than 68ish blocks apart? That is probably far enough to keep you safe if a node ever half-expires.
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  15. Each one is exactly 65 blocks apart. I believe the minimum is 64? That's what DocM77 said in his video. I'm curious if with my setup am I able to add more nodes while still having it run using 1 person?
    JesusPower2 likes this.
  16. how
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  17. This is my Ent count




    My cell design. Not pretty, but designed with minimal materials in mind. And Yes. I 'cheated' by choosing the end so I wouldn't have to slab/dig. Much more deadly way to build though.



    Ensuring villagers would never breed is why I have them separated. To keep the entity counts predictable.
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  18. Minimal materials yet efficient.. love it. I've built many iron farm, all in the overworld, and I know how challenging those can be lol To see all that built with no safety net... much respect :D

    The above is an old design? I imagine it was since now they can only breed when 'in the mood' from farming, trading, etc.

    I wish I could link the end to my base so I could build an iron farm in the end instead. Not so much because of the digging (I love to do that) more so for the animal spawns that seem to bunch up around the area. It's not as bad now that I built over an ocean but close to land it becomes an issue and in the past villagers would be auto killed because of /entc.
    JesusPower2 likes this.
  19. It depends on how you measure. 64 is the precise and accurate number when measuring from door-to-other-center.
    ...and fractions are considered, so 64.01 is totally safe
    ...and it measures from the bottom of the door and ignores the top

    I would guess most players measure from door-to-door, which is safe because the door-to-center distance will always be larger. Although it's safe it uses more distance than is strictly necessary. ('How much' depends on the node design.)

    Nice. I remember those breeding problems with my first iron farm.:) I'd have to prune the pens once in a while.

    #

    I'll need some pics to really explain how distance works, which I can't do right this second. I think it's also about time for me to reveal the farm and node design.

    Here's a teaser...it's possible to create stable nodes where the 'walls' are only 50 blocks apart.
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  20. 2nd teaser. Think spherically.
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