General player progression roadmap:
Hand Power: Everything is pretty well manual. Includes most PrimalCore items, some BTW items, that sort of thing. No automation.
Horse Power: Uses Horse Power, the very start of automation. Includes a chopper, a grindstone, and a press.
Wind/Water Shaft Power: BWM axles and gearboxes. Able to fully automate certain processes.
Electric Power: Immersive Engineering and going forward.
In addition to that, the general materials required:
Stone Age, with Hand/Horse Power, generally involves things you don't need to actually mine. No ores needed.
Bronze Age: Up to Shaft Power. May use CraftTweaker so that Gearboxes require bronze instead of gold. Bronze is created through Kitsu's Forgecraft at this stage, which is low-quantity per iteration. In theory, iron and even steel can be done, but again, very low quantity production.
Iron/Steel Age: Once Immersive Engineering's alloy forge and blast furnace come online, you get the ability to produce batches of metals and metal alloys at a time.
I'm not sure yet how to gate Forgecraft into the IE's multiblock alloy/blast furnace. That's going to mark the change from 'making things pretty much one ingot at a time, and mostly with a specific purpose already in mind' to 'being able to set up a stack of metal at a time so I can do whatever I need to with it'.
I'm also not quite sure yet how to integrate Astral Sorcery and Thaumcraft into the progression, but those are going to be the two mods. Astral Sorcery will 'unlock' first, but I definitely want Thaumcraft to be later-tier. In effect, Steve advances through the ages, refining what he knows, and refining the process by which he obtains knowledge. So he starts off with stargazing, and learning how to harness the power of the stars, in a sort of 'soft magic', where many of the mechanics are simply mysterious and ill-understood, and an 'it just works because it does' attittude, as well as basic cauldron style bronze casting and iron blooming... to eventually gaining his own Renaissance, in which he develops the scientific methodology and advances into the electrical age, and also starts applying the scientific method to the magic around him to delve into Thaumcraft.
It is a microcosm of human development throughout the ages. He starts off working his arse off on subsistence-level tasks, and ends up an industrial-age engineer and thaumaturge.
Some catches: You can make iron and even steel just as easily as you can make bronze with Kitsu Forgecraft, not sure how I like that. The problem is how the Crucible is capable of doing temperatures from 'melting tin and copper' all the way up to 'making steel' with no extra requirements. I may have to look into this. However, I may be willing to give this a pass, simply because you'll only really be able to do things one ingot at a time, so you aren't going to make enough to get into industrial production until you get the Blast Furnace up and running.
Hand Power: Everything is pretty well manual. Includes most PrimalCore items, some BTW items, that sort of thing. No automation.
Horse Power: Uses Horse Power, the very start of automation. Includes a chopper, a grindstone, and a press.
Wind/Water Shaft Power: BWM axles and gearboxes. Able to fully automate certain processes.
Electric Power: Immersive Engineering and going forward.
In addition to that, the general materials required:
Stone Age, with Hand/Horse Power, generally involves things you don't need to actually mine. No ores needed.
Bronze Age: Up to Shaft Power. May use CraftTweaker so that Gearboxes require bronze instead of gold. Bronze is created through Kitsu's Forgecraft at this stage, which is low-quantity per iteration. In theory, iron and even steel can be done, but again, very low quantity production.
Iron/Steel Age: Once Immersive Engineering's alloy forge and blast furnace come online, you get the ability to produce batches of metals and metal alloys at a time.
I'm not sure yet how to gate Forgecraft into the IE's multiblock alloy/blast furnace. That's going to mark the change from 'making things pretty much one ingot at a time, and mostly with a specific purpose already in mind' to 'being able to set up a stack of metal at a time so I can do whatever I need to with it'.
I'm also not quite sure yet how to integrate Astral Sorcery and Thaumcraft into the progression, but those are going to be the two mods. Astral Sorcery will 'unlock' first, but I definitely want Thaumcraft to be later-tier. In effect, Steve advances through the ages, refining what he knows, and refining the process by which he obtains knowledge. So he starts off with stargazing, and learning how to harness the power of the stars, in a sort of 'soft magic', where many of the mechanics are simply mysterious and ill-understood, and an 'it just works because it does' attittude, as well as basic cauldron style bronze casting and iron blooming... to eventually gaining his own Renaissance, in which he develops the scientific methodology and advances into the electrical age, and also starts applying the scientific method to the magic around him to delve into Thaumcraft.
It is a microcosm of human development throughout the ages. He starts off working his arse off on subsistence-level tasks, and ends up an industrial-age engineer and thaumaturge.
Some catches: You can make iron and even steel just as easily as you can make bronze with Kitsu Forgecraft, not sure how I like that. The problem is how the Crucible is capable of doing temperatures from 'melting tin and copper' all the way up to 'making steel' with no extra requirements. I may have to look into this. However, I may be willing to give this a pass, simply because you'll only really be able to do things one ingot at a time, so you aren't going to make enough to get into industrial production until you get the Blast Furnace up and running.
