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

• wood to make charcoal (and tools, and for building)

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 (cheap ladder).

Make a field near water (using a hoe), or place dirt above water.
Plant cotton to get wool, and wheat:

• 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

You might need to scout for seeds, eg. by digging grass.

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 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).
Cobblestone can be cooked to stone in the furnace. Stone is needed for hoppers.

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 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 - for transporting water
• 2-3 locked chests - to keep your stuff secure
• 1 flint&steel - to ignite the lighter in the charcoal-pile
• ...

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

Build a gravel-sieve, with hoppers for input and output, and a locked chest as final output. Put some gravel into the input-hopper, and watch the output-chest.

If the server uses compost and garden-soil, you could use hopper #3 with a compost-barrel, and 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

TA3

Oil Age

TA4

Present

TA5

Future

...