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
- Bauxite - for making aluminium
- carbon fiber
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-fab, 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).
...
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 (food, bed, bags, wooden&stone tools, water, area&housing ...)
We want a place near water, and preferably easy to reach, eg. near spawn.
Then build a charcoal-pile, and the tower with the meltingpot.
Plant trees, to get wood, cotton to get wool, and wheat:
- wood to make charcoal (and tools, and for building)
- wool for bed, bags, and some TA-parts like the pusher
- wheat to make straw for the TA1-lighter (and maybe for food)
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)
- red dye (from red flowers, or chili)
- green dye (from green flowers, or cactus)
- yellow dye (from yellow flowers, or onions)
- blue dye (from blue flowers, or ...)
Some parts require bits of junglewood, so scout for a jungle.
Mine iron, and some coal, copper and gold:
- 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 fueil).
- Copper is needed to for 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).
A public mine is helpful to get started with mining.
Things to craft:
- 1-2 buckets
- ...
You could build the TA1-watermill, but it is mostly a sidequest, and eyecandy - not really needed.
TA2
Steam Age
TA3
Oil Age
TA4
Present
TA5
Future
...