Quickstart with technic, pipeworks, digtron

This guide assumes that the basics are already done, ie. tools, food, a safe place to live and work, and access to a mine.

See also https://wiki.minetest.net/Server/SteamWorks#Tips

A public farm, public mine, public workshop and shops that sell technic-items will make it all much more quick and easy.

As a base, i suggest a place with at least size 16x16, preferable with free space around for expanding.

A location near spawn or otherwise easy to reach might be a bonus (eg. for building a shop).

Autocrafters

For crafting items with many parts, and/or mass-production.
Needs 5 iron, 2 mese, 2 plastic.

For a starter-base, i usually don't bother with tubes and injectors for automating the autocrafters,
as that will need a lot of space, and requires more resources to build.

Digtron

For digging/mining, and building

Parts needed:

• Crate (optionally locked)
• Combined-Inventory
• Auto-Controller
• Digger-Head
• Builder-Head
• Rotation-Axle (optional)

All those parts need a digtron-core, made of 4 iron + 1 mese-fragment.
The crate and controller need mese, and the diggerheads need diamonds.

Small, simple designs:

• Tunnel-digger, eg. with 2x3 digger-heads, plus 1 builder for placing lights
• Shaft-digger, eg. 2x2 digger-heads, with builders for support-column, ladder, lights
• Paver, eg. 2 digger-heads, 2 builders - for paving the floor

Advanded designs:

• Stair-digger ...

A bit more complicated to set up. Stairs need at least 3 vertical spaces, and 1 step to go up or down.

The controller has a marker that shows that 'alternate' direction. ...

Machines

For planting/harvesting etc.

Common parts:

• Mesecon-wire - needs mese
• Piston - needs Mesecon, wood, cobble, iron
• Iron gear - needs iron, chainlinks (also from iron)
• mese-torch - needs Mesecon, stick
• silicon wafer - needs sand, coal-dust
• LUA-controller - needs Mesecon, silicon-lump (from sand, iron)

Parts needed:

• Nodebreaker - Mesecon, gears, wood, stone
• Deployer - Mesecon, piston, stone, wood, chest
• BlnkyPlant - Mesecon, sapling
• Tubes - plastic (from leaves->parafin->plastic)
  • Vac.Tube - Tube, sand
  • SortingTubes - tube, mese-fragments
• Delayer - Mesecon, mese-torch, cobble
• Injector - iron, plastic, stick, mese / mese-block
• Self-contained injector - chest, tube, control-logic-unit
  • CLU - gold-wire, copper, chromium, silicn wafer
• Nodedetector - Mesecon, iron, LUA-controller

Examples:

• Cactus/Papyrus-Harvester

Nodebreaker digs 2nd node of plant, moves them via tube to chest, blinkyplant triggers nodebreaker

• Mithril-Scythe-Harvester

Mithril-Scythe in the nodebreaker harvests+replants

• Rubbertree-Harvester - rubbertree-block with leaves+light

Tap in the nodebreaker to suck rubber from rubbertree

• Stone-Generator - Lava above water

Pickaxe in the nodebreaker to dig the generated stones

• Sapling-Mill

Deployer puts leave, nodebreaker digs it (with chance to get a sapling),

sortingtube to move leaves to deployer, saplings into chest

• Regular Harvester

with nodedetector looking for ripe fruit/crops to trigger nodebreaker + deployer.

Use a chainsaw in the nodebreaker for harvesting trees (needs recharging)

Surround this with vac.tubes to catch more leaves

Powered Machines

Common parts for LV-machines:

• Cables - needs paper, copper
• Machine-Casing - needs cast iron, brass (from copper, zinc)
• RE-Battery - needs wood, copper, tin
• Spool of copper wire - needs copper, and plastic for the spools

In short, lots of iron and copper, some paper and bits of other materials.

For ore-processing:

• Grinder - needs machine-casing & cable, diamond, desert-stone, granite
• Furnace - needs machine-casing & cable, cobble
• AlloyFurnace - (eg. for brass) - needs brickblocks (from clay-bricks)

LV-machines works, but have no upgrade-slots and no connectors for pipeworks-tubes,
so no automation is possible.

So, wie want MV as soon as possible.
MV also has the toolworkshop, for repairing tools.
MV-machines in general need the corresponding LV-machine as one of the components.

• Generator (there are Hydro- , Solar-, Geothermal-Generator)
  • Hydro-Generator - needs machine-casing & cable, wood, marble, diamond
• SwitchingStation - needs machine-casing & cable, copper, LV-transformer
  • LV-transformer - needs iron, fiber (from glue, from saplings), copper-coils (from iron, copper wire)
• BatteryBox - needs machine-casing & cable, wood, 4x RE-Batterys

Tools

• Chainsaw - for harvesting whole trees, including leaves.

Leaves are the raw material to make oil->parafin->plastic, twigs->sticks->wood, and more saplings.

The chainsaw needs to be charged in a batterybox.

...

Other

• Transport

Tubes, Injectors, SortingTubes, LUA-tubes - to move stuff between machines

• Storage-System

as above, to move stuff to processing machines and/or a system of chests.

See also technic-chests, techage-chests, drawers.

Setup

Some essential production-lines:

• leaves -> twigs -> sticks -> wooden planks

wooden items: ladders, signs, chests, fences ...

• leaves -> oil-extract -> parafin -> plastic

pipeworks-tubes

also: oil-extract as fuel

• papyrus -> paper

books, LV-cables -> MV-cables

• ore -> grinder -> furnace

to get more ingots

• cobble -> stone -> stonebrick

• sand -> sandstone -> sandstonebrick

• wheat -> flour -> bread

• cotton -> wool, string

small, medium, large bags

...

See also https://wiki.minetest.net/Server/SteamWorks#Tips