Quickstart with technic, pipeworks, digtron

From Minetest

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.

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 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

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