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
plastic
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.
This is one of the bottlenecks/critical parts - unless you can get those from a shop or other player, you cannot advance.

TA3 is mostly about oil and aluminium:

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

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

Sources for electric power:

Steamengine with generator
TA3-oven with generator
Tiny generator using gasoline (to be produced with refinery)
Solar panels with solar-inverter (needs silicon wafers, WLAN-chips, also good temperature)
Windturbine (needs concrete, carbonfiber ...) Can only be built at the ocean.
Electrolyzer & Fuelcell (using hydrogen, with a tank and pumps) Needs carbonfiber

Storing electric energy

Akkus
Thermal energy storage (needs gravel, and lots of concrete)

...

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 electrolyzer&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 - makes flowers grow on gardensoil
autobahn - faster movement
hyperloop - fast transport, like subway/elevator
paraglider - flying/soaring
jetpack - flying, with limited baggage. Uses hydrogen as fuel.
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 to use as lamps.
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 think 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,
as it can make TA1-iron, and process recipes with more then one raw material.
Eg. iron+coal --> steel, or sand+steel --> silicon

The oil-explorer checks a mapblock (area 16x16) for oil, downto depth 380.

When oil is found, it displays where the derrick for drilling needs to be placed.

The drillbox builds the derrick, and uses drillbits to reach the source of oil. This takes some time, and uses electric power.

When drilling is complete, the derrick and drillbox can be removed, and a pumpjack placed there.

The pumpjack pumps oil out, and moves it via pipes into a tank.

The refinery with reboiler and destillationtower is then used to separate the crude oil into bitumen, naptha, fueloil, gasoline, propan.

Further processing can be done with a chemical reactor, eg. making isobutan from gasoline.
The reactor and industrial furnace are also used to make aluminium.

...

The e-fab3 produces WLAN-chip that are needed for TA4-parts.
Aluminium is also needed for many hightech-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

...