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, furnace, chests ...)
We want a place near water, and preferably easy to reach, eg. near spawn.

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
• 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
• 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, 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 baking bread)

Go mining. First, we need 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 fuel).
• 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).
Also, we need some flint, so mine some gravel (with a shovel).

A public mine is helpful to get started with mining.

Then build a charcoal-pile (needs dirt, wood, lighter, flint&steel),
and the tower with the meltingpot (needs cobblestone, iron, copper, and a ladder or ivy).

Things to craft with your first few iron:

• 1-2 buckets
• 2-3 locked chests
• ...

• 2-3 hoppers
• gravel-sieve

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

...