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diff --git a/content/pyblock/metals/index.md b/content/pyblock/metals/index.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..97104a8 --- /dev/null +++ b/content/pyblock/metals/index.md @@ -0,0 +1,91 @@ +--- +title: Metals +date: 2026-01-04T22:46:39-05:00 +--- + +"A land where the rocks are iron and you can dig copper out of the hills." + +<!--more--> + +Where last I left off, I had automated Fawogae mushrooms for fuel. Afterwards, I walked away to make dinner, safe in the knowledge that nothing could break down in any way more complicated than running out of fuel or filling up with ash, both of which I was okay with. + +I came back to find that it had stopped because of the new, smaller container inventories created by Py Hard Mode. Fawogae mushrooms had filled up the four slots I allocated to them, and while that made an excellent start on a fuel stockpile, it wasn't enough to fully alleviate my fuel problems, or to start on iron production. + +## Immediate problems + +We're working towards the Pyrrhic Victory technology, but it's still _very_ far away. I have more immediate concerns to deal with first: + +* My finite supply of starting iron (presently with 511 sheets remaining). +* My finite supply of starting copper (presnetly with 422 sheets remaining). +* My finite supply of starting logs (presently with 298 logs). +* My accumulating stockpile of ash, from burning raw coal for fuel. + +The two technologies I unlocked last time provide some solutions: Fawogae mushrooms can be atomized to release iron ore, and ash separation can recover copper ore (along with some byproducts) from ash, solving two problems at once. Wood can largely wait, as long as I'm careful about what I use and aggressive about collecting driftwood as it floats near the platform. + +I'm also dealing with a severe lack of landfill, having blown through my starting stockpile. Making more isn't hard, exactly - it's two sand and one stone each and crafts very quickly - but getting the supplies requires burning coal to make steam, and that makes more ash. There's a limit there eventually, even if it's a ways off, until we get ash separation up and running. + +## Cleanup + +The first order of business is more Fawogae mushrooms. The immediate fix is a larger output box, replacing the four-slot wooden chest I had set up with one of the eight-slot iron chests I have from the game start. That will allow the existing plantation to output up to 400 mushrooms, or about an hour and a half of production, before it jams. That doesn't do anything to improve short-term returns, only long-term ones, but it's a start and it does make it easier to AFK from the game if needed. + +The second order of business is a second Fawogae plantation. Since I already have mushrooms, the initial setup is very quick. This does eat into our dwindling iron reserve, but we've got enough left to get by. I've got a design in mind for an expandable Fawogae farming system, but it will require a substantial number of belts, inserters, and power poles, and I just don't have the resources to build it yet. + + + +The third order of business is to run laps with soil and raw coal, to make more landfill so that I can make room to expand Fawogae production. While I'm doing that, I also replace the outflow behind the muddy water separation washer with a tank, and to set a circuit condition on the water pump to keep the tank no more than half full. That means that the recycled water from muddy water separation is disposed of automatically, by being fed back into soil extraction and washing. I don't need to recycle for efficiency, since water is free and plentiful, but it does mean one fewer thing I need to manually babysit, and that's worth a lot right now. + +## Iron + +One of PyBlock's additions to Pyanodons is an early, burner-powered Mk 00 atomizer, which can be used to convert Fawogae mushrooms into iron ore using the Early Molecular Decohesion technology. This is the intended way to make iron at this stage. However, atomizers are relatively expensive, using a substantial portion of my remaining iron and copper; building more than one would be potentially game-ending. + +Refining iron is cheap, since I already have raw coal automated. At some point I'll need to move the smelting furnace closer to the atomizer to cut down on running around, but for now I can use it where it is. + +## Ash and copper + +I'm already well over one stack of ash, so it's time to do something about it before it starts clogging inventories. While I'm waiting for more Fawogae mushrooms to grow so that I can make iron out of them, I switch to ash processing so that I can make copper out of a waste product. Ash is sorted in solid separators, which, like many Pyanodons buildings, get a Mk 00 variant that runs on steam power, so I'm building yet another iteration of the steam boiler plus production building design that's been serving me well so far. + +The thousand-plus ash I've accumulated quickly sorts down to 78 coal dust (easily burned for fuel), eight iron oxide, and 155 soot. Feeding the soot into another solid separator set to extract copper ore nets me 120 copper ore (enough for fifteen plates), plus a smattering of iron, zinc, aluminum, lead, and nickel, plus six ash to put back into the separator. The steady flow of ash from running steam boilers and fuel-burning buildings will provide me with a continuing trickle of copper. + +I had previously played a bit of Pyanodons, without the Py Hard Mode mod, and I think Py Hard Mode's lower fuel energy values makes early PyBlock a bit easier, rather than harder. Py Hard Mode reduces raw coal's fuel value from 4 MJ per item to 1.5 MJ per item, meaning that raw coal-powered devices consume nearly three times as much fuel, and make nearly three times as much ash. That translates to nearly three times as much copper for the same amount of infrastructure, and seems likely to save me some time. + +Smelting the copper ore from our first ash run produces enough copper plates to unlock the Automation science pack research. However, it creates new byproducts - four metal ores - that I have no use for and, currently, no way to get rid of. For now, I'll store them in per-product output boxes, but the extremely limited sizes of storage chests means that this is a temporary solution at best. + +## Unlocks + + + +This is Pyanodons' answer to vanilla Factorio's automation science. Like the original, it's an early game research. Unlike the original, it takes four raw materials, an entirely new natural resource, and several intermediates that, for now, can only be hand-crafted. Unlocking automation science and actually automating it are two very separate milestones. + +The Automation science pack technology unlocks a several new buildings: + +* Mk 00 wood processors, which run on steam and can automatically cut logs into wood. +* Flora collectors and Flora cultivators. Flora collectors are used in normal maps, while PyBlock relies on Flora cultivators. Both do the same thing: produce native flora, a spoilable item needed to make automation science packs. +* Labs, which are needed for research. +* Electrically-powered Mk 01 soil extractors, which can replace the steam-powered Mk 00 extractors I've been relying on. +* Shunt loaders, which run on steam and allow belts to feed directly into or out of buildings. + +It also provides the recipes for making filled planter boxes and science packs, and for bootstrapping native flora cultivation. This is another variation on the bootstrap problem I talked about for Fawoage mushrooms, but instead of a guaranteed result, the recipe only makes what we need 5% of the time, and I'll need a minimum of five successful products before I can switch over to normal production. + +There are no more trigger technologies immediately available. I have a few directed research options, instead, depending on my goals and needs, but as I haven't fully implemented the technologies I have, none stick out as a clear next step. The cheapest technologies, however, lead in a clear path, through coal processing, to steel refining, to automated assembly, and automated assembly is needed to automate intermediates and science packs, so that's where I'll head next. Making any actual science packs will have to wait until I can start up native flora production. + +The first unlock in that chain, Coal processing 1, requires 12 automation science packs plus a lab to research them in. A lab requires electrical power, and the science packs require native flora. My main concern along the way is running out of logs, as both science packs and power poles require them. + +## Waiting + +There's not much I can do right away. Resources are tight. + +Having to wait is surprising. Pyanodons has a well-deserved reputation of being a trap for people who overbuild (a habit I have been trying to break as well), but the pace of PyBlock is set up so that if you're standing around waiting, there's usually something you could be scaling up, instead. Py Hard Mode makes this more prominent, because of the decreased chest sizes: with smaller buffers, more things fill up and stop entirely if you wait around for too long, and keeping busy is sometimes the only way to make sure key processes, like metal production, keep running. + +In this case, I'm bottlenecked by Fawogae mushroom production. With two plantations making a cumulative 0.14 mushrooms per second, raw coal and iron production are still very slow. Making more plantations needs stone, iron, and copper, all of which are automated now, so, it's time to double that again - using the last of my iron chests, in the process. This new throughput is still well below the rate at which I can process mushrooms into either raw coal or iron ore, but it helps, and even without waiting, there's still a lot of downtime. + +## Final situation + + + +I'm no longer at risk of running out of iron or copper. However, exhausting my stockpile would still be a nuisance, as restocking them is a slow process due to the low productin rates of Fawogae and the limited storage options. + +Logs are still a limited resource. I have 277 left, and there are very few pieces of driftwood within easy reach. Projects to expand the platform will likely recover some additional wood, but I'll have to be careful with my supplies for now. Wood cultivation is locked behind several technologies, and is not on the path I'm researching right now. + +I'm starting to accumulate zinc, nickel, lead, and aluminium ores, slowly. I can't process those ores yet, so I'll eventually have to make more space for them. + +Nearly no matter what I want to do next, I will need a source of electricity that's more substantial, and more reliable, than my solitary wind turbine. |