Mods/TechAge-Guide

TechAge-Guide

TechAge is a technical mod, forum github

Players advance thru 5 ages: Iron Age, Steam Age, Oil Age, Present, Future (TA1..TA5).

There is a Quick Start Guide, but it doesn't go into much details.

Overview

There are a few special materials:

• TA1-Iron (in addition to regular steel)
• Charcoal - for making TA1-Iron
• sieved gravel
• usmium - produced from sieved gravel
• baborium
• Oil - to make bitumen, naphta, fueloil, gasoline, propan. Also hydrogen and isobutan.
• Bauxite - for making aluminium
• carbon fiber - for making fuelcells, and windturbines

The first key concept is the gravel-sieve, that produces most kinds of ore from gravel (plus sieved gravel).
Also special hammers (and grinders) to make gravel from stone or cobblestone.

The next key concept is TA1-Iron that is used in most techage-parts.
It is produced in a special melting-pot, that needs charcoal as fuel.
Charcoal is produced in charcoal-piles, from wood.

The next key concepts are the gravel-rinser, e-fab2 and steam-engine:

• gravel-rinser produces usmium from sieved gravel (plus sand and some copper-ore).
• e-fab2 uses usmium to produce vaccuum-tubes
• steam-engine to provide mechanical power for the e-fab2, grinder, gravel-rinser (and other machines)

Almost all TA3-parts need a vaccuum-tube.

TA3 is mostly about oil and aluminium:

• finding oil needs an oil-explorer
• drilling oil needs a drillbox/derrick (plus drillbits, and power)
• getting oil out needs an pumpjack (plus pipes, tanks and power)
• processing oil needs a refinery (plus ...)

Aluminium (and other stuff) is produced with a chemical reactor, and a TA3-industrial-furnace (or TA4-heater).
The industrial-furnace replaces the meltingpot for making TA1-iron.

...

e-fab3 uses silicon-wafers to produce WLAN-chips.
Almost all TA4-parts need a WLAN-chip.

...

e-fab4 produces AI-chips.
Almost all TA5-parts need an AI-chip.

To produce AI-chips, the player must have XP (experience-points).
Those XP are gained/produced by a collider. Each player must build its own.

A collider needs lots of aluminium, isobutan and power.
Isobutan is produced with a chemical reactor, eg. from gasoline.

TA5 finally has some nice toys, such as the fusion-reactor and the flightcontroller.

Power can be produced from coal, oil, solar, or wind. Also hydrolyse/fuelcells.

Some supporting equipment:

• quarry - automated digging
• grinder - grind stone to gravel
• minecarts, hoppers, tubes, pusher, distributor - move materials around
• autocrafter - automated production
• LUA-controller, ICTA-controller, timer, sequencer ... - for automation
• TA-InfoTool
• forceload-blocks - to keep machines working when player is not nearby
• signbot - robot that can dig, harvest, build etc.

There are some optional parts of techage:

• growlamp - lets flowers grow
• autobahn - faster movement
• hyperloop - fast transport
• paraglider - flying/soaring
• jetpack - flying
• PDP13 - computer
• Barduino - computer

TA1 - Iron Age

The player needs to cover the basics first (food, bed, bags, wooden&stone tools, armor, water, area&housing, furnace, chests ...)
We want a place near water, and preferably easy to reach, eg. near spawn.

Later (in TA3), we might want to relocate to a place near oil, and/or better conditions for producing power.

For food, I recommend tomatoes, cucumber and/or carrots (no cooking required).
Honey (from beehive) and blueberry-bushes are also nice.
Also needed:

• Papyrus - for paper, books, labels, beehive, TA-construction-boards, carbon-fibers
• red dye (from red flowers, or chili)
• green dye (from green flowers, or cactus) for pusher
• yellow dye (from yellow flowers, or onions) for pipes, signbot-signs
• blue dye (from blue flowers, or ...) for TA3, TA4

...

Some parts require bits of junglewood, so scout for a jungle.

Plant trees, to get wood

• wood to make charcoal (and torches, chests, tools, for building etc.)

Bushes are also nice, for easy harvesting of leaves (and small bits of wood).
Leaves can be made to oil-extract --> parafin --> plastic.
Also, as low-grade fuel, and to make ivy (useful as cheap ladder).

Make a field near water or place dirt above wate, then use a hoe on the dirt to turn it into soil.
(Instead of soil near water, you could use gardensoil)

I recommand an 8x8 field, with a 2x2 pool of water at the center (this provides infinite water, eg. for the steam-engine),

Plant cotton, wheat and some other food:

• cotton to make wool for bed, bags, and some TA-parts like the pusher
• wheat to make straw for the TA1-lighter (and maybe for baking bread)
• other food, eg. tomatoes
• Also plant some papyrus near water (dirt only, doesn't need soil)

You might need to scout for seeds, eg. by digging grass and junglegrass. Seeds drops with random chance.

Go mining. First, we need stone, iron, and some coal, copper and gold:

• Cobblestone is needed to build the tower with the meltingpot (and stone-tools, a furnace, etc.)
• Iron is needed to make regular steel, as well as TA1-iron.
• Coal is needed to make torches, black dye, and regular steel (and maybe as fuel).
• Copper is needed to make the meltingpot
• Gold is needed to make hoppers (and maybe protection-blocks)

If you find other ores, mine them too (eg. tin, mese, diamonds, baborium, bauxit).
Cobblestone can be cooked to stone in the furnace. Stone is needed for hoppers.
Get some sand too, for making glass.
Also, we need some flint, so mine some gravel (with a shovel). Flint drops with random chance.

A public mine is helpful to get started with mining.

Then build a charcoal-pile (needs 100+ dirt, 27+ wood, lighter, flint&steel),
ignite the lighter, close the pile, and watch if smoke appears above the pile after a few seconds.

While the pile burns (20 minutes), build the tower with the meltingpot (needs 90+ cobblestone, iron, copper, and a ladder or ivy).

...

Things to craft with your first few gold:

• 1-2 protection-blocks (only if the server uses those - not needed eg. with area-mod)
• 2-3 hoppers (each needs 5 stone + 1 gold)

Things to craft with your first few iron & steel:

• 2-3 locked chests - to keep your stuff secure (maybe copper works too)
• 1 flint&steel - to ignite the lighter in the charcoal-pile
• 1-2 buckets - for transporting water, eg. to make a pool of water for your field
• 1 table-saw - for making slabs, and cutting glass to slices
• ...

Other things to craft:

• Chests (we will need lots of them :)
• TA-hammer - for making gravel from stone (and to dig hard ores while we only have stonetools)
• Torches + Glass --> SuperGlowglass --> use saw to make into slices
  Glowglass can be used under water, and 2 torches give you 8 pieces.
• TA-construction-board (needs paper+sticks), and look up the gravel-sieve.
• ..

Build a gravel-sieve, with hoppers for input and output, and a locked chest as final output.
(You can skip the input-chest for now, and put gravel directly into the input-hopper)
Put some gravel into the input-hopper, and watch if stuff appears in the output-chest.

If the server uses compost and garden-soil, you could use hopper #3 as input to a compost-barrel, and use the output-hopper to drain both the barrel and the sieve, to make a combined machine for gravel-sifting and composting.

If you have too much TA1-iron, you could build the TA1-watermill (but it is mostly a sidequest, and eyecandy - not really needed ;)

TA2 - Steam Age

The steamengine provides mechanical ("axle"-) power for machines. The most important:

• grinder - to make gravel from stone
• gravel-rinser - to make usmium from sieved gravel
• e-fab2 - to make vaccuumtubes, to make TA3-parts

Other machines: quarry, autocrafter, generator

TA2-machines cannot be automated.

...

TA3 - Oil Age

The TA3-industrial furnace finally makes the meltingpot obsolete.

...

The e-fab3 produces WLAN-chip that are needed for TA4-parts.

TA4 - Present

...

A collider is needed to get the XP for producing the AI-chips for TA5-parts.

TA5 - Future

With enough XP from the collider, the player can produce AI-chips, and build advanced machines:

• Fusion-reactor
• Flightcontroller
• Hyperloop-chests
• Teleporter-chests

...