Hello, i'm hexi! "Hex's Mechworks" is a "little" mod, for my friends/my server, that i've been working on for the last few months.
It just adds a fewmultiblock structures and processes that I thought would liven up the game. I mainly focused breathing some life into the slog of the mid-game iron process, and added a synergistic cycle of structures that work with each other to give you big goals and lots of materials.
This mod really starts to pick up when you obtain refractory bricks - around mid-iron age.
a few of the things included:
Before 0.2.0
The ReverberatoryFurnace: a giant multiblock crucible, capable of smelting Iron into Cast iron, a new brittle iron variant. Uses the Casting Bed system to cast bulk amounts of ingots.
The Finery: the Reverberatory's big brother - the Finery is a massive structure used for mixing feedstocks into molten metals. Two unique processes exist in the Finery, with a small little minigame for stirring :)
The Vat: a large cast-iron tank and the mod's most versatile structure. Performs barrel recipes in bulk - it's 10x the size of a normal barrel. Also used to cleangravels into minerals, and used for specific heated chemistry processes.
The Retort: a dry-chemistry vessel. Combines feed with a reagent in a confined heated space. In the future, it will be the mod's main source of various gasses.
The Boiler and Engine multiblocks: Used to boil water, to generate steam, to spin a flywheel. A powerful rotation source, but the structure requires a good bit of Iron! One boiler at high temp can feed multiple engines simultaneously.
Cast iron kinetics: a cast iron variant of each of the vanilla kinetics set, alongside new additions like the Dog Clutch, the Belt Drive, the vertical large gear, and the Slitting Mill.
A simple Piping system, with many useful variants of pipes, alongside expandable multiblock Fluid Tanks. Pipe vanilla liquids - or molten metals - between destinations, and keep liquids warm using Fireboxes.
Aluminium - a strong mid-grade metal extracted from Bauxite, with a lengthy chemical process - complete with tools and lanterns.
and a handful of small patches to make the kinetic network more reliable, fixing some visual rotation bugs, as well as make the network multi-material.
as of 0.2.0
The Pumpjack, Distillation tower, Cracker, and Reaction Chamber multiblocks - the rest of the Cast iron chemistry suite. Petrochemistry, plastics, chemicals - over 100 different real-world reactions represented.
The Engine's Combustion chamber, a combustive-fuel conversion unit, turning your steam engine into a fuel-burning engine.
The Electrical network: harness power with rotational energy, and use it to power electrical variants of blocks you'll need, like the electric Stove, the Heat/Cold boxes, Belt ports and turntables, and more!
New metals: Titanium and Stainless Steel.
New flagship multiblock:the Arc Furnace. A gigantic electric reverberatory furnace capable of reaching temperatures of up to 1950°. Also does everything the Reverberatory does!
Belt expansion: Belts now transport items, and animals and players and stuff too! Added Diagonal belts (I hated this so much)! Belts are cool now.
Plastics, rubbers, oils, gravel-washing, chemistry, gasses, and so much more.
This is mainly a mod for my private server! but i thought it'd be kind of rude not to share, and maybe other people might want to use it too.
most things are explained via the handbook.
this mod is my first real large mod. it's been tested pretty extensively, but please let me know in the comments if you encounter any errors.
there's also a pretty decent config if there's anything that you'd like to disable (compat patches, various tweaks).
Compat for Boric Alchemy in progress... I'll probably also split this mod into several "modules" so you can pick and choose what you'd like to include. The electricity stuff will likely be decoupled from the full mod's release down the line.
This mod is still under development, a work in progress. Tweaks to gameplay and balance are constantly happening.
Planned features eventually
Acids will have a separate Gold-based fluid-system (they're corrosive and shouldn't be transported with iron pipes or wood buckets...
All machines will eventually have a "lubrication" system - they will have a refillable bar that can be filled with lubricants, and if the bar is empty, the machines' efficiencies will be cut. Makes lubricant more logically useful.
More chemicals. More reactions. I wanna be able to tear everything apart into something!
Uranium power...
Eventually, hopefully, seamless compat for Boric... likely moved into its own mod (it'll change stuff about both mods so that both work seamlessly).
I don't want to lump it in with the main mod because it'll likely be my rendition on seamless compat.
- Casting bed cools faster - Hearth freeze fix (consistent with other hardening) - More Expanded Matter Vat compat stuff - Chests accept cast iron, aluminium nails - Steady Greenhouses patch clash - Fixed belt-fed fuel piles in the Boiler not being lightable - Metal Cookware cast iron pots
Gauges now function as normal pipes when a restriction limit is not set
Gauges now visually appear the correct orientation
Gauge needles will now correctly animate when fluid passes through them
Added compatibility with Food Shelves Tuns and Barrel Racks
Added config options for the Boiler and its temperature bands:
"BoilerHighBoilEfficiency" (existed already but I haven't explained it) - a multiplier on the Gas Yield that the high temperature band produces. Reduce to a decimal for the high temperature band to be "less efficient" at boiling higher steam rates, burning more water.
"BoilerTempBandMax" - determines the "max" temperature of the Boiler, which determines at what temperature the max conversion rate occurs.
"BoilerMaxInputHot" - determines the maximum gas input rate when the Boiler is at max temperature.
"BoilerLowEfficiencyTemp" - determines the ceiling for the "Low" temperature band.
"BoilerLowEfficiencyBandRatio" - determines the fraction of "BoilerMaxInputHot" that the Low temperature band reaches at its max temperature.
"SteamEngineMaxInput" - determines the required amount of L/s that Engines require for their maximum output.
Fixed a small bug where the Engine's 4L/s cap was only being checked per-source. Now it uses a budget-based system so that more boilers+engines can be chained together more efficiently.
Fixed something that wasn't active that was intended to be - Pumps now borrow from one another's ranges, so you can chain pumps.
Pumps also now fulfill partial requests and push the rest to the next deposit, so the first Boiler won't drink everything up on a singe-pump line.
- Boric Alchemy compatibility Adds 3 config settings: "EnableBoricAlchemyCompat", "YieldSodiumToBoricAlchemy", "YieldSulfatesToBoricAlchemy", all default on. This unregisters overlap items and yields to Boric Alchemy's progression while it's installed. Let me know if there's anything wrong or unbalanced - it simply yields to Boric Alchemy's materials, and uses them in HM recipes.
- Added a config option to tweak the amount of Cast iron you recieve from raw Irons - Displayed more about sucking up water in the Pipe section of the handbook. - Fixed some cosmetic log lines about riveted metal blocks that didn't exist - Tweaked gas lighting in pipes a little to dim the yellow during dusk/dawn - Fixed cast iron axles/gears and other mechanical parts with large texture atlasas rendering with messy textures - Fixed some Flywheel network reconnect and Engine access display mismatches
on v0.2.15, i'm getting an error where the game can't seem to find the expanded foods patches for saltwater portions?
15.9.2026 11:36:06 [Error] Patch 0 in hexsmech:patches/expandedfoods-compat.json: File game:recipes/barrel/saltwaterportion.json not found 15.9.2026 11:36:06 [Error] Patch 1 in hexsmech:patches/expandedfoods-compat.json: File game:recipes/barrel/saltwaterportion.json not found
Soda Ash, and Sodium Metal - along with a few other items i cant chase down right now - dont show up in the handbook or the creative menu, but do appear to still be functioning as items and will show up as mentions in other recipes - soda ash showing up as side products in the sodium bicarb & co2 handbook pages where it's a part of that recipe's outputs
this is mainly* an issue as far as i can tell because both the input and the output of the soda ash -> sodium metal isnt able to be seen ingame, and the handbook appears to be minorly wrong, asking for charcoal powder rather than coke (as it appears to be in the files?)
what's the point of the "flame temperature" stat on most of the burnable fluids? it doesnt seem to affect anything about its engine performance, since everything also has the "engine speed" stat. could there be an eventual fluid burner, similar to the firebox, to provide heat to machines? could be useful, and relatively seamless on distilleries and vats, and might be an easy add (visually) since its just a pipe input to the bottom edge.
liquid fuels can be pumped into fireboxes to fuel them! they heat fluid tanks above them (so like, if you want to keep molten metal buffers warm, and future chemistry will likely use it more), and i'll probably extend that functionality to heating more blocks in the future.
the burn temperature is the cooking temperature: for now, you can run your Vats and Reaction Chambers (and stoves) on liquid fuels. the temperature is the range you can cook at, some recipes require higher or lower temperatures, so liquid fuels have a locked range of recipes.
OH YOU HAVE TO PUMP IT i was trying to put a bucket directly to the firebox :sob: that would explain my issue. and the L/s measurement of burn rate is the same between engine and firebox im guessing?
Hey, I could probably look into doing this myself but xskills is not compatible in terms of the cooking with your wood stove. I think that'd be awesome if we could get something like compatibility with that. I'm loving the features so much so far. It's a very cool mod.
Game instantly grashes upon trying to mix gears from More Vanilla Variants and this mod, as well as when trying to use electricity from Elecrical Progressives and this mod
Holy smokes I haven't checked back in a while but that is a giant scope increase on v0.2 haha. I'll have to give it a try. Does it play nicely on new worlds or did you add a lot of worldgen stuff?
All materials are either obtained by vanilla methods, use vanilla materials, or have sustained renewable processes within the mod. So, still no non-vanilla worldgen!
Is it possible to make this not overwrite the patches that Steady Greenhouses implements? I installed this briefly for testing and it inadvertently killed my turnips
simply using both - i hadn't yet built anything from mechworks, and its patch collided during world loading, but i had naiively hoped it might be a harmless error. since i'm playing in singleplayer, is it possible for me to just gut a JSON to hack together a personal use patch in the interim? i really want to use your reverberatory furnace and all the other cool tech you've made
it appears the most recent patch works, it just doesn't visually show it the way Stable Greenhouses does (+20°C instead of +X°C); i'd put a note on the mod page that it's functioning, just not visually
Haven't had the time to look into the mod yet, but what I read and see it really is a banger. I like the idea of the "muck" ore from the Interesting Mining and Excavation mod. I don't like the devices and the processing of the IME mod so much, though. Also that it's creating muck for stones (I know there is a patch, so... but maybe I will implement my own idea with muck, we will see). I will develop a muck cable car system soon, that looks something like the "Forsby–Köping limestone cableway". Then I imagine mining in my game something like this: Mining muck in a huge ore deposit, throwing that muck into the buckets of the cable way, which transports all of that to the factory made out of your devices, to process it further. 😎
If you ever get tired of it you could just go open source and let forks take care of the rest. Copyleft licenses require that derivative works make their changes available so you can pull the ones you like back into your version. That being said, you've done an awesome job thus far.
Hello. I've put together a Reverbratory and Finery and connected them with pipes, but I cannot seem to get molten cast iron to flow between the two machines... Also the product of smelting crushed magnetite seems to be straight iron and not cast iron
yes Improved metallurgy is the issue. Diving into the file it looks like the issue is the loading order followed by the different melting temps between the two mods, hex loads in and sets cast iron melting temp to 1172. IM gets loaded next with a cast iron melting point of 1540, while the reverbratory maxes out at 1495. I can write a small add on to address this on my end if you are still feeling burnt out.
Hi, immediately after launch (while the handbook/defs are still loading) I get this error:
8.9.2026 16:42:47 [Warning] Failed resolving a blocks itemdrop or smeltedstack with code game:oilportion-flax in juiceable properties liquidstack
Followed immediately by a System.NullReferenceException crash.
My mod list is huge, but I crash every time with Hexsmech active and never with it disabled. This is also the only mod I have installed that adds a flax oil.
I run Toolsmith and it integrates with a different mod's flax oil for handle treatment. Is there possibly some incompat happening there?
Relevant crash log text below
Crash Report
9/8/2026 4:42:47 PM: Critical error occurred Loaded Mods: chiseltools@1.17.5, diversediets@1.0.4, bovinae@0.3.6, caninae@1.1.8, capreolinae@2.0.16, casuariidae@1.1.11, cervinae@0.1.14, dinornithidae@1.0.23, elephantidae@1.0.18, felinae@0.2.14, machairodontinae@1.1.11, pantherinae@1.2.17, rhinocerotidae@1.0.24, sirenia@1.0.30, fowlmod@1.0.1, jsonpatcheslib@1.5.5, leaflitter@1.2.6, millwright@1.3.4, overhaulliblegacycompat@1.2.4, overhaullib@2.0.10, cbetterfertilizer@1.4.0, primitivesurvival@5.0.6, somedisassemblyrequired@1.10.2, sticksfromfirewoodmallow@2.0.1, translocatorengineeringredux@1.6.6, game@1.22.7, vsimgui@1.2.7, animationslib@0.0.2, attributerenderinglibrary@3.1.5, betterruins@0.6.3, butchering@1.13.5, canjewelry@0.7.5, carryonlib@1.0.0-pre.8, configlib@1.12.0, crossbowsfork@1.10.1, ecosystemflora@4.12.5, tackandequipment@1.2.0, farseer@1.4.0, fromgoldencombs@2.0.8, genelib@3.1.2, glidierglider@0.0.8, herbarium@1.4.4, hexsmech@0.2.9, hieronymusreptiles@1.2.2, jaunt@3.1.0, kevinsfurniture@1.9.0, kscartographytable@2.0.4, madcrowglider@1227.0.1, metalpots@1.8.0, moreanimals@1.7.0, notenoughinvertebrate@1.0.5, petai@5.1.1, physicslib@1.3.0, placeonslabs@1.2.0, playercorpseforkedazu@1.14.0, rivers@5.0.2, ropetiable121@1.4.1, shipwright@1.4.1, smithingplus@1.9.0-rc.1, tentbagreworked@3.2.4, toolsmith@1.2.17, vanillaarmory@2.2.1, vsairshipmod@1.1.4, creative@1.22.7, vsecomachina@0.6.1, vsroofing@1.6.5, survival@1.22.7, carryon@2.0.0-pre.8, combatoverhaulfork@0.18.3, elkjaunt@1.4.0, equusdestrier@1.1.1, equusferus@1.0.4, fotsabutcheringcompat@0.2.0, tamablesfotsa@0.7.2, terrainslabs@1.0.17, wildcraftfruit@1.5.0, wildcrafttree@1.3.4, armoryfork@1.11.0 Involved Harmony IDs: attributerenderinglibrary, OverhaulLib:Transpilers, combatoverhaulfork.toolsmith.compat, canjewelry.Patches_client, OverhaulLib:Handbook System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object. at Vintagestory.GameContent.CollectibleBehaviorHandbookTextAndExtraInfo.GetHeldItemInfo_Patch1(CollectibleBehaviorHandbookTextAndExtraInfo this, ItemSlot inSlot, StringBuilder dsc, IWorldAccessor world, Boolean withDebugInfo) at Vintagestory.API.Common.CollectibleObject.GetHeldItemInfo_Patch4(CollectibleObject this, ItemSlot inSlot, StringBuilder dsc, IWorldAccessor world, Boolean withDebugInfo) at Vintagestory.API.Common.Item.GetHeldItemInfo(ItemSlot inSlot, StringBuilder dsc, IWorldAccessor world, Boolean withDebugInfo) in VintagestoryApi\Common\Collectible\Item\Item.cs:line 82 at Vintagestory.API.Common.ItemStack.GetDescription(IWorldAccessor world, ItemSlot inSlot, Boolean debug) in VintagestoryApi\Common\Collectible\ItemStack.cs:line 402 at Vintagestory.GameContent.GuiHandbookItemStackPage..ctor(ICoreClientAPI capi, ItemStack stack) in VSSurvivalMod\Systems\Handbook\Gui\GuiHandbookItemStackPage.cs:line 42 at Vintagestory.GameContent.ModSystemSurvivalHandbook.onCreatePagesAsync_Patch1(ModSystemSurvivalHandbook this) at Vintagestory.GameContent.GuiDialogHandbook.LoadPages_Async() in VSSurvivalMod\Systems\Handbook\Gui\GuiDialogHandbook.cs:line 434 at Vintagestory.API.Common.TyronThreadPool.<>c__DisplayClass11_0.<QueueTask>b__0(Object _) in VintagestoryApi\Common\TyronThreadPool.cs:line 119 at System.Threading.ThreadPoolWorkQueue.Dispatch() at System.Threading.PortableThreadPool.WorkerThread.WorkerThreadStart() at System.Threading.Thread.StartCallback() Crash written to file at "C:\Users\aivas\AppData\Roaming\VintagestoryData\Logs\client-crash.log"
Crash Report
9/8/2026 4:42:47 PM: Critical error occurred Loaded Mods: chiseltools@1.17.5, diversediets@1.0.4, bovinae@0.3.6, caninae@1.1.8, capreolinae@2.0.16, casuariidae@1.1.11, cervinae@0.1.14, dinornithidae@1.0.23, elephantidae@1.0.18, felinae@0.2.14, machairodontinae@1.1.11, pantherinae@1.2.17, rhinocerotidae@1.0.24, sirenia@1.0.30, fowlmod@1.0.1, jsonpatcheslib@1.5.5, leaflitter@1.2.6, millwright@1.3.4, overhaulliblegacycompat@1.2.4, overhaullib@2.0.10, cbetterfertilizer@1.4.0, primitivesurvival@5.0.6, somedisassemblyrequired@1.10.2, sticksfromfirewoodmallow@2.0.1, translocatorengineeringredux@1.6.6, game@1.22.7, vsimgui@1.2.7, animationslib@0.0.2, attributerenderinglibrary@3.1.5, betterruins@0.6.3, butchering@1.13.5, canjewelry@0.7.5, carryonlib@1.0.0-pre.8, configlib@1.12.0, crossbowsfork@1.10.1, ecosystemflora@4.12.5, tackandequipment@1.2.0, farseer@1.4.0, fromgoldencombs@2.0.8, genelib@3.1.2, glidierglider@0.0.8, herbarium@1.4.4, hexsmech@0.2.9, hieronymusreptiles@1.2.2, jaunt@3.1.0, kevinsfurniture@1.9.0, kscartographytable@2.0.4, madcrowglider@1227.0.1, metalpots@1.8.0, moreanimals@1.7.0, notenoughinvertebrate@1.0.5, petai@5.1.1, physicslib@1.3.0, placeonslabs@1.2.0, playercorpseforkedazu@1.14.0, rivers@5.0.2, ropetiable121@1.4.1, shipwright@1.4.1, smithingplus@1.9.0-rc.1, tentbagreworked@3.2.4, toolsmith@1.2.17, vanillaarmory@2.2.1, vsairshipmod@1.1.4, creative@1.22.7, vsecomachina@0.6.1, vsroofing@1.6.5, survival@1.22.7, carryon@2.0.0-pre.8, combatoverhaulfork@0.18.3, elkjaunt@1.4.0, equusdestrier@1.1.1, equusferus@1.0.4, fotsabutcheringcompat@0.2.0, tamablesfotsa@0.7.2, terrainslabs@1.0.17, wildcraftfruit@1.5.0, wildcrafttree@1.3.4, armoryfork@1.11.0 Involved Harmony IDs: attributerenderinglibrary, OverhaulLib:Transpilers, combatoverhaulfork.toolsmith.compat, canjewelry.Patches_client, OverhaulLib:Handbook System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object. at Vintagestory.GameContent.CollectibleBehaviorHandbookTextAndExtraInfo.GetHeldItemInfo_Patch1(CollectibleBehaviorHandbookTextAndExtraInfo this, ItemSlot inSlot, StringBuilder dsc, IWorldAccessor world, Boolean withDebugInfo) at Vintagestory.API.Common.CollectibleObject.GetHeldItemInfo_Patch4(CollectibleObject this, ItemSlot inSlot, StringBuilder dsc, IWorldAccessor world, Boolean withDebugInfo) at Vintagestory.API.Common.Item.GetHeldItemInfo(ItemSlot inSlot, StringBuilder dsc, IWorldAccessor world, Boolean withDebugInfo) in VintagestoryApi\Common\Collectible\Item\Item.cs:line 82 at Vintagestory.API.Common.ItemStack.GetDescription(IWorldAccessor world, ItemSlot inSlot, Boolean debug) in VintagestoryApi\Common\Collectible\ItemStack.cs:line 402 at Vintagestory.GameContent.GuiHandbookItemStackPage..ctor(ICoreClientAPI capi, ItemStack stack) in VSSurvivalMod\Systems\Handbook\Gui\GuiHandbookItemStackPage.cs:line 42 at Vintagestory.GameContent.ModSystemSurvivalHandbook.onCreatePagesAsync_Patch1(ModSystemSurvivalHandbook this) at Vintagestory.GameContent.GuiDialogHandbook.LoadPages_Async() in VSSurvivalMod\Systems\Handbook\Gui\GuiDialogHandbook.cs:line 434 at Vintagestory.API.Common.TyronThreadPool.<>c__DisplayClass11_0.<QueueTask>b__0(Object _) in VintagestoryApi\Common\TyronThreadPool.cs:line 119 at System.Threading.ThreadPoolWorkQueue.Dispatch() at System.Threading.PortableThreadPool.WorkerThread.WorkerThreadStart() at System.Threading.Thread.StartCallback() Crash written to file at "C:\Users\aivas\AppData\Roaming\VintagestoryData\Logs\client-crash.log"
I can take a peek at it. My mod just re-enables Vanilla's "linseed oil", so it definitely could be something relating to that if another mod does the same thing.
I did some tests and I still crash with Toolsmith disabled. I don't have any other mods active that would touch linseed oil, so something else is clearly going on. I'll keep trying to pin it down.
Looking around some more, I see the author of the Rudiments mod also enables vanilla linseed oil, and had to patch a couple times to fix the same errors I am getting. In their case it was a result of the JuiceableProperties being only partly populated.
Pinned it down. It's a conflict with Wildcraft: Fruits and Nuts; they straight up disable oilportion.json and replace it with a different oils system. I'll go bother them about this, although I think a compatibility patch should be pretty simple? Just needs to add a new definition for linseed oil outside of oilportion.json
Thanks for the compliment! It's been a lot of work. I really hope not to replace the great alternatives like Improved Metallurgy - I am really not trying to have this mod be anything big... haha. I just wanted a little mod so that I can play with my friends longer!
On AI usage - a large majority of this mod has been made by me personally. At previous stages of the mod's development, I have used AI, but have transitioned away from use as I have learned more about the coding language and the VS codebase - I do not enjoy AI's, sort of, toxic dependency. All models and artwork have been made by me, and recent and future code is done by me - but some previous code has been AI-generated, although since re-reviewed by me.
Thank you very much for your reply and your honesty!
I’m asking mainly because a lot of new mods these days are made entirely or partly with AI, but most don’t mention it.
Personally, I avoid downloading AI mods for personal ethical reasons and because they’re generally more buggy and less optimised (given that I put together modpacks containing dozens of mods).
But from what you’ve said, I think I’ll give in to the temptation and have a go at testing the mod. Well done for learning how to do it, in any case! I know it’s complicated; I haven’t yet found the motivation to get started myself.
No worries, tbh I'd like to make a video guide to your amazing mod since id just like to. Besides the guides are quite conprehensive with just only a few things that could be explained abit more better but it's still understandable
Hey Hex do you think you can add an aluminum alloy that would be as strong as iron? I was planning to do it for my own mod, but I don't have time now since that summer ended. Reply if you're interested, and I can go give more details on how it would look like >-<
It works entirely unattended, basically perpetual motion, pumps more crude than it uses, generates more mechanical energy than it uses, and needs no intervention.
So when you, Hex, said 'but you have unlimited steam!' yeah, but i have to refuel it every once in a while. or it stops.
THIS DOES NOT. uses booster pumps btw to make the oil move, automating the process.
It's... interesting that you've got 32v and 3-4 amps for arc furnace...
Which is a bit odd...
30 ticks.
Also, from someone who's actually got a 32 volt battery supply in the very room I'm in powering my light because why not-(as in IRL, it's a Kunpeaved 200ah battery charged by solar, giant, and i can hardly carry it but is worth it) you can touch those bare contacts just fine without being shocked.
This is why I am headcannoning the 30 ticks as actually being the equavelent of real life seconds (also because that's the ingame-real relationship by default without using /time speed command). And that low voltage is 960 volts. Technically, I'd say more like 480 volts, because that's what a lot of industrial machines (like what my grandparents, when I was growing up, had, for their 1050ft depth well pump powering it) with double the amperage, but 960 makes sense because of the wattage total and the fact that it uses glass insulated conductors on everything, as well as cables extruded with rubberized insulation. Assuming about 10-25% energy losses; Electric Engines are about 1/2 horsepower, dynamos take about 1 1/2 horsepower to drive at full effective output, meaning that 3 electric engines produce the same mechanical output as needed to drive one dynamo, but the dynamo only produces 2 of them worth of electrical power generation. Not ideal, not modern effiency, but somewhere inbetween that and early dynamos, an acceptable amount.
Personally, I'm just taking issue with the fact that the Vintage Story engine itself uses kilonewton-meters, when it is more like 1/100th of that in terms of actual numbers, which i find a little... wacky.
Also, at those standard constants in terms of burn time (the listed times, as in 198/sec for anthracite) most coals, lignite being a bit lower, are producing around 30-32 kilowatts of thermal energy when being burned in say, a stove. Or anything else that burns them at the listed 'Burn Duration' rate. Of course, when in stacks, they all burn the same speed (unless you use mods) and when in your Hexsmech machines, they have... machine-dependent burn times. Like Contaminated Coal burning an entire 4 stacks when in the Finery with the bellows working at maximum (or reverberatory hearth). Or how Contaminated Coal seems to last... an entirely insane amount of time inside the Boiler firebox with the door closed. It seems to be relative to IRL time, rather than game time, as time-skipping doesn't speed it up, but having real time lost (due to computer being asleep) causes it to very rapidly burn down until it is up to 'current time'. Which is odd, it's the same with Peat Bricks lasting a really long time and just the same with Biomass bricks too (though they don't make much steam at all).
I will use what you've said for the firewood fuelling the boiler. in that case, using some rough estimates (pine, which is middle of the pack for stacked firewood) has an energy density of 20 gigajoules for a double stack in the boiler, and burns in 38.4 ingame hours. This means that thermally, it is discharging 144 kilowatts of thermal energy as it burns. Not that it'd be very efficient because it needs a lot of air and doesn't exactly have good flue for that, but still, assuming 10% efficiency (which is reasonable for the timeperiod), we'd be getting 14.4 knm (or about 14 dynamo's worth) of power from that, after adding on dynamo losses as well, for about 13.6 kw of electrical power. At the 100% for the (origional settings) steam engines, you get about 4 dynamo's worth each. Which means the full capability of the boiler is about 16 kw when fed through 4 engines.
So I had the question: What if we use an Avgas engine as comparison?
Well, as answer to that: One single engine running Avgas produces 19-20 kw of output. Which is pretty insane. Enough to power 18-20 dynamos, all at once. Outpreforming a boiler with high-efficiency fuel (coal) attached to four or five whole engines in the optimal configuration, arranged just so, such that all have less than a 5 block run and therefore don't need a pressure pump to forward them. Also, a single one running avgas is a lot more compact, and it also can be stocked to last far, far longer. Let alone if you run it on diesel.
One 3x3x3 tank of Avgas or Linseed Oil produces constant power for 5 IRL hours. Diesel, 15 IRL hours. And one running Diesel or Linseed Oil produces 4 dynamos worth of energy. Which means it's comparable to (or slightly above) a steam engine with a boiler attached-which, considering the cheaper cost (in terms of cast iron) is not that much of a cost. But again, I notice how the 'engine speed' multiplier is actually squared when it comes to total power output. It seems to not only double speed, but also torque. And this means total power is quadrupled.
And one more factor to consider, is the fact that Linseed Oil is renewable (flax), but there's also fuel from the ground, which is entirely renewable (for now) and you can get a basically infinite amount. I found that I could make a self-powering system with 2 pumpjacks and a combustion chambered engine. The engine powers the pumpjacks, the pumpjacks pump enough crude to power the engine (and then some) and all that you can get from oil cracking atop that, is just a bonus.
Seriously, I'm going to have to rework like, everything to accomidate an Arc Furnace. And believe it or not... Electricity, even without the changes, was probably one of the least of my concerns.
Maaan, I'm ripping all the Hexsmech electric and other stuff out of the Facility... It's too much and it doesn't fit the vibe i'm going for in there. I'm gonna stuff them in The Tower.
(Also it doesn't fit with the existing megawatt power network)
Uh. There's something you need to address, Hex. The fact that though you 'quartered' the torque of the engines, you ACTUALLY decreased their effective energy output to only 1/16th of what they were. Hah! I finally put my finger on it. That value you applied, is squared in terms of its' effect. No WONDER the engines felt like they were functioning like wet noodles!
Uh... To elaborate: Engine less powerful than large windmill... which... is this intentional? Cuz it feels like it's not supposed to be...
I'll be balancing over the next week or so. I've done a lot of stress testing with the numbers to allow a level of stress on the network that I liked, but I will admit most of it was judged off of petroleum fuels - so I'll look into it.
On my new "test server" that I play on with my friends, we had the curse of not being able to find bauxite till like yesterday. So we are getting there, and you'd better bet I'll tweak the numbers if I don't feel like it's an appropriate amount of power for the player's effort.
Lyra_Yanaris, Sep 4th at 9:41 AM (modified Sep 4th at 9:42 AM)
Yeah. I just encountered the irony that 'oh, this is squared and you probably think it's direct. You set it to 0.25, but it has the EFFECT of being set to 0.0625' And I thought you should know about that lol
I admit, I may have gotten a little heated with all the science. It got me worked up lol So I'm going to config some stuff, and probably see if I can get it to be accurate to real life physics (real efficiency, around 10%, and that relative to fuel burnrates and energy densities) and such.
So, I did some calculations. Assuming that 4 liters is at supercriticality pressure where the steam is so compressed it is at only double the volume of the water it came from, some research into it from the Engineering Toolbox says that it would be OVER 30 bar. Bar being atmospheric pressure.
Far over, in fact, as even at 30 bar, 1 liter of water still equals 67 liters of steam. Where at the output pressure, it equals TWO liters of steam. Compression isn't entirely linear, but still. That'd equal 700 bar (+/- 100) gas pressure. And even just 30 bar of pressure, is a lot.
In other terms-30 bar-that's about 435 pounds of pressure on every square inch inside of your pipes and tanks. Which, we'll assume can withstand this, for the sake of argument. The head of the steam piston itself, which is approximately half a meter of face size, is going to be about 300 kilonewtons per square centimeter. Which kilonewtons is good because it's how torque is measured in the game, everything's consistent. Multiply that by 500 centimeters... and... we're accounting about 1,500,000 kilonewtons of force. That is... EXPONENTIALLY more than ANYTHING we've encountered.
"At what speed!?" I hear skeptics saying. 60 RPM. As that is one cycle of the piston per second and 4 liters of input per second-which is still a very considerable speed. Now, some comparison.
This is at less than a TWENTIETH of the ACTUAL output pressure of the boiler, for one.
This would about equate to the output of six thousand Large-sized windmills at 150% wind, or fifteen thousand small ones. Which is obviously unreasonable.
I could get into joules and such, too, probably... but that's probably not going to help. Just trying to add perspectives for realism.
I dunno, Realism is just a real thing for me. I really appriciate it, and appriciate the power it puts in my hands to simulate and learn about the real world through the aperature of gaming.
Hydromancerx, Sep 3rd at 11:06 PM (modified Sep 3rd at 11:06 PM)
In a more recent update there now seems to be a conflict between this mod and Rusty Shell Fork mod
Note that up to Hexmech 0.1.13.it was working fine but sicne then it hasn't
If you introduced Aluminum and aluminum tools, you should probably introduced Aluminum bronze. Make it roughly equal to iron tier. Even if it's not particularly helpful given you are iron/steel tier.
Lyra_Yanaris, Sep 3rd at 12:55 PM (modified Sep 3rd at 12:56 PM)
I have made a machine that shouldn't exist ;P It cracks water into hydrogen and oxygen And then burns the hydrogen Makes electricity Electricity charges batteries Batteries fuel the reactor reactor cracks water into hydrogen and oxygen
It'll have to be down the road, it's a really big undertaking and it overwhelms me a little... but I really do get that, this is one of those mods that people would probably really appreciate to work seamlessly with Boric. so I will do my best to work on it down the line, but I'm also just a bit daunted by the task after scoping everything I needed to do for full compat. It's a really heavy list.
I wonder if we'd ever get a Stirling engine for early-ish mechanical power. Slow but can run passively if provided with temperature difference, and gets really good if you manage to plop the bottom in boiling water or next to lava.
Steam's torque values were balanced against flammable fuels in this new update - about a 20% speed decrease from last update comparatively. I haven't changed min/max flow rates at all - so it should just be a little more intenseive to supply a boiler - but you should be perfectly able to exceed the boiler's max steam consumption with the small pipe's flow rates.
Most fuels and torque are balanced against the petroleum fuel roster now. To get more out of your Engine, install a Combustion chamber, and pipe in a flammable liquid. A good early fuel is Linseed oil - made from pressed flax.
As of 0.2.0 Steam generation is mainly used for chemistry, cracking, and can be used for low-strength networks, but i wouldn't expect to run your whole base on steam.
Pro tip - oil processing extracts infinitely, so crude oil is just as renewable as water once you get your infrastructure running.
Sorry for any inconveniences! Hopefully the config options allow you to tweak values towards more your liking.
I have powered my entire base off of steam. I've switched to lignite from Contaminated Coal Synthesis (using the mod that I've been working on) which provides enough for 5 engines.
Yes, 5 engines.
It should be 4, but there's... wierd shit.
The steam engines NEVER use 100% of the fuel. I tried out combustion chambers and stuff too... Anyways, regardless.
They never have maxed fuel consumption even with the throttle maxed. They use between 3.2 - 3.9 steam, but never 4.0 steam. And i've tested with Avgas and such, too-and it obviously is much less, but it has a similar reduced capacity relative to the fuel consumption statistic of the fuel itself. I've just never really gotten much of an issue with it... But still.
I diverted stuff from my finery and got things going with the heavy pump and more work with the cast iron... yadda yadda, I have 5 steam engines now. Because at times, out of 16 steam produced (Or technically 15.9 steam (?) from 8 water (again, what? Ratios not ratioing) the 5 are needed to take full advantage of it.
Also, wondering if its' possible to extract any useful liquid components (tar and such) from contaminated/lignite coal.
I'll have to see about the steam, currently the Vat's input tanks don't accept gasses as an input at all (gas chemistry is a reaction chamber/retort thing, didn't figure gasses in an unsealed vat made a whole lot of sense). But cleaning with steam makes sense, so i'll have to see what we can do... maybe I'll do something with the Reaction Chamber instead down the line with cleaning. I've got a few things brewing for the next updates... but I'm going to let this one sit for a little while to immersively play through the currently set balance levers myself, and rebalance as I go along.
I can also totally add a contaminated coal tar processing line. Might have to give me a week or two though, I really need a break from this for a bit - haven't been getting good sleep, crunching a lot. Need a good long break...
Ah, I see. I was just suggesting. Basically, there's a whole thing going on in my mod where one uses Veridisite/uranium silicate and such to unlock the energy therein.
Beryl, a material made, is a beryllium-based thing. Inspired by real processes of having beryllium made artificially from atom smashers. Most pure beryllium on the planet, irl. And using that and some other methods to harvest carbon from the air, which results in contaminated coal and such.
Anyways, my suggestion was just to make coal tar makable from lignite.
Is it possible to make this mod compatible in the future with Improved Metallurgy? I'm considering using it paired with IM to be a lighter (well, more like less space-demanding and not requiring to build an entire factory complex) alternative to Steelmaking Expanded+Pipes and Power for future playthroughs
Partially overlap on some materials (stainless steel, pig iron), partially on mechanics (also has molten metal transport but pretty sure it isn't actually works like liquid)
I believe I fixed your issue in the new update (0.2.1). Downloaded your mod versions of some stuff and realized my Armory patching was a little mucked up with Toolsmith installed as well as not being all the way updated.
Hell, i'm always up for compat. I think I really need to take a small break from development for at least a few days before getting back into it (I've been crunching really hard and not sleeping well the last few days), but i'd love to, especially if you're reaching out!
Just found a small bug: Vanilla anvil that's got it model changed by Wulk's smithing mod will revert back to it original shape when this mod got installed. It's not something game-breaking, but might worth to check out.
TheUSDoctor, Aug 30th at 10:50 PM (modified Aug 30th at 10:51 PM)
I'm not sure how important this is, but it seems like the better ruins patches have an issue
Spoiler
30.8.2026 15:45:12 [Error] Patch 3 (target: betterruins:recipes/grid/schematic-mechanical/mechanical.json) in hexsmech:patches/betterruins-compat.json failed because supplied path /21/ingredients/P/skipVariants/- is invalid: The json path /21/ingredients/P/skipVariants/- was not found. Could traverse until /21/ingredients, but then 'P' does not exist. Full json at this path: { "Y": { "type": "Item", "code": "betterruins:br-schematic-mechanical", "consume": false }, "B": { "type": "Block", "code": "game:supportbeam-tarnishedmetal-steel" } } 30.8.2026 15:45:12 [Error] Patch 4 (target: betterruins:recipes/grid/schematic-mechanical/mechanical.json) in hexsmech:patches/betterruins-compat.json failed because supplied path /21/ingredients/P/skipVariants/- is invalid: The json path /21/ingredients/P/skipVariants/- was not found. Could traverse until /21/ingredients, but then 'P' does not exist. Full json at this path: { "Y": { "type": "Item", "code": "betterruins:br-schematic-mechanical", "consume": false }, "B": { "type": "Block", "code": "game:supportbeam-tarnishedmetal-steel" } } 30.8.2026 15:45:12 [Error] Patch 5 (target: betterruins:recipes/grid/schematic-mechanical/mechanical.json) in hexsmech:patches/betterruins-compat.json failed because supplied path /21/ingredients/P/skipVariants/- is invalid: The json path /21/ingredients/P/skipVariants/- was not found. Could traverse until /21/ingredients, but then 'P' does not exist. Full json at this path: { "Y": { "type": "Item", "code": "betterruins:br-schematic-mechanical", "consume": false }, "B": { "type": "Block", "code": "game:supportbeam-tarnishedmetal-steel" } }
Is Rhodochrosite and Pyrolusite supposed to take 6 ingame hours to Roast into Manganese Dioxide? Every other recipe is generally 6-10 minutes, so it feels like it was mistyped.
The next update is going to have a lot of balance changes for durations and processes, hopefully everything feels more fair and real.
Sorry it's taking so long - there's just a lot of stuff I need to polish before getting it out onto the floor, now that there's people actually playing this mod. Should be out in the next 3 or so days.
Seems there's still some minor incompat between Boric Alchemy and this mod, looking up the recipe for crushed vanadinite crashes the game.
Crash Report
Running on 64 bit Windows 10.0.26200.0 with 16147 MB RAM Game Version: v1.22.6 (Stable) 27/08/2026 02:59:38 p. m.: Critical error occurred Loaded Mods: boricalchemy@2.8.3, game@1.22.6, hexsmech@0.1.13, creative@1.22.6, survival@1.22.6 Involved Harmony IDs: hexsmech System.InvalidOperationException: Missing or errored output result for recipe 'boricalchemy:recipes/grid/compat/compatibilityweirness.json' at Vintagestory.API.Common.RecipeBase.GenerateOutputStack(ItemSlot[] inputSlots, ItemSlot outputSlot) in VintagestoryApi\Common\Crafting\RecipeBase.cs:line 292 at Vintagestory.GameContent.CollectibleBehaviorHandbookTextAndExtraInfo.addIngredientForInfo_Patch3(CollectibleBehaviorHandbookTextAndExtraInfo this, ICoreClientAPI capi, ItemStack[] allStacks, ActionConsumable`1 openDetailPageFor, ItemStack stack, List`1 components, Single marginTop, List`1 containers, List`1 fuels, List`1 molds, Boolean haveText) at Vintagestory.GameContent.CollectibleBehaviorHandbookTextAndExtraInfo.GetHandbookInfo(ItemSlot inSlot, ICoreClientAPI capi, ItemStack[] allStacks, ActionConsumable`1 openDetailPageFor) in VSSurvivalMod\Systems\Handbook\CollectibleBehaviorHandbookTextAndExtraInfo.cs:line 125 at Vintagestory.GameContent.GuiHandbookItemStackPage.GetPageText(ICoreClientAPI capi, ItemStack[] allStacks, ActionConsumable`1 openDetailPageFor) in VSSurvivalMod\Systems\Handbook\Gui\GuiHandbookItemStackPage.cs:line 119 at Vintagestory.GameContent.GuiHandbookItemStackPage.ComposePage(GuiComposer detailViewGui, ElementBounds textBounds, ItemStack[] allstacks, ActionConsumable`1 openDetailPageFor) in VSSurvivalMod\Systems\Handbook\Gui\GuiHandbookItemStackPage.cs:line 113 at Vintagestory.GameContent.ModSystemSurvivalHandbook.onComposePage(GuiHandbookPage page, GuiComposer detailViewGui, ElementBounds textBounds, ActionConsumable`1 openDetailPageFor) in VSSurvivalMod\Systems\Handbook\SurvivalHandbook.cs:line 135 at Vintagestory.GameContent.GuiDialogHandbook.initDetailGui() in VSSurvivalMod\Systems\Handbook\Gui\GuiDialogHandbook.cs:line 260 at Vintagestory.GameContent.GuiDialogHandbook.OpenDetailPageFor(String pageCode) in VSSurvivalMod\Systems\Handbook\Gui\GuiDialogHandbook.cs:line 329 at Vintagestory.GameContent.ModSystemSurvivalHandbook.OnSurvivalHandbookHotkey(KeyCombination key) in VSSurvivalMod\Systems\Handbook\SurvivalHandbook.cs:line 224 at Vintagestory.Client.NoObf.ClientMain.OnKeyDown(KeyEvent args) in VintagestoryLib\Client\ClientMain.cs:line 1876 at Vintagestory.Client.NoObf.ClientPlatformWindows.game_KeyDown(KeyboardKeyEventArgs e) in VintagestoryLib\Client\ClientPlatform\Input.cs:line 253 at OpenTK.Windowing.Desktop.NativeWindow.KeyCallback(Window* window, Keys key, Int32 scancode, InputAction action, KeyModifiers mods) --- End of stack trace from previous location --- at OpenTK.Windowing.Desktop.NativeWindow.RethrowCallbackExceptionsIfNeeded() at OpenTK.Windowing.Desktop.GameWindow.Run() at Vintagestory.Client.ClientProgram.Start(ClientProgramArgs args, String[] rawArgs) in VintagestoryLib\Client\ClientProgram.cs:line 354 at Vintagestory.Client.ClientProgram.<>c__DisplayClass10_0.<.ctor>b__1() in VintagestoryLib\Client\ClientProgram.cs:line 131 at Vintagestory.ClientNative.CrashReporter.Start(ThreadStart start) in VintagestoryLib\Client\ClientPlatform\ClientNative\CrashReporter.cs:line 95
Event Log entries for Vintagestory.exe, the latest 1 ==================================
I've fixed the crash in the next (upcoming) update - and I'll reach out to MrBadWithNames about the leftover stuff in their patches.
With this next update, I'll do my best to keep things compatible with Boric Alchemy. However, yesterday I downloaded a new version of BA, and did a sweep of overlap content. There's seemingly some things that I'm introducing on my end that aren't 100% cohesive, so I'll do my best to keep things working. But in the future, I don't expect our mods to be "fully compatible" in terms of overlap content, as I don't play with BA and I am sculpting this mod's progression in my own modding environment's vaccum. Lots of things that i'm expanding on - the gas system, electricity - Boric has its own variants of representations.
I think I should be able to grow pineapples in the arctic, and dislike the limit on the number of radiators. If I have the gumption and the amount of steam output to keep all those radiators powered, I think I should be able to heat my greenhouses as much as I damn-well like. It's not like we have unlimited steam.
Steam power for stove (or alternate heat exchanger stove+oven range), when? Suggestion: Base the 'fuel temp' on the 'steam inlet temp' (whatever the temp of the steam coming into the stove is). My reccomendation for steam draw is 0.5 to 1 liter per second as we already have radiators that use steam, and don't take a ton of it, this basically serves as a bigger version of that. And, well, powering a boiler is significantly harder than a firepit/stove. You should be able to power a lot with minimal effort. After all... the minimum in terms of materials that can be used for fuel, seem to be firewood. And when using firewood, it seems to go through that firewood in only minutes-and the maximum steam temp with Firewood-not even counting pipe losses-is 341 celsius. This counterbalances the longer lifetime of firewood in the boiler firebox... and the rest, well. A boiler and piping require a LOT of cast iron and other expensive parts. I think it very much should draw that much. Besides, at 900c firebox temp, I can fuel a stove and two steam engines, using all the Contaminated Coal from ruins I've been salvaging.
While "growing pineapples in the arctic" seems like a fun proposition, I don't think I'll make it possible with steam. I'm planning on the radiators themselves to have their own expansion down the road. There's a limit on the max number of radiators because I don't want greenhouses to just be busted "you can grow any crops any time you'd like" button. I think an up-to 10° bonus in temp, on top of the additional 5° from the greenhouse itself, is more than balanced, while being fed with steam.
While the Firebox door is closed, a full Boiler firebox of (2 stacks of 32) firewood cooks for 38.4 hours in-game, or about 1 hour 16 mins in real life time (calculated from in-game calendar time), with just 64 firewood - a total of 16 wood logs. At its base consumption, Firewood's temperature keeps a constantly fed Boiler at about 350 degrees and allows boilers to generate a constant 2 L/s of steam, which is enough to run 8 radiators (the max) at the same time. Realistically, firewood is intended to be the long-burning fuel to be able to run radiators (and other steam devices) for long periods of time rather than being able to run many devices at once. You say we don't have unlimited steam, but it's very near unlimited - you only have to grow trees to run it! Additionally, there will be more fuels for the firebox down the line that are more renewable ;).
This isn't to say NO to hotter radiators forever - eventually I hope to make gas-burning and electric radiators that have different temperature caps! Just likely not for Steam era.
Steam power for stove - we'll ultimately have to see! I like the idea of having more steam consumers, but with this next update I'm releasing soon - steam is used a LOT in petrochemistry cracking and various other applications. The stove is already a more-efficient firepit - it's more fuel efficient, and more compact than a normal firepit, which i see as its own bonus already. I'm not trying to alleviate all of vanilla's stresses with the mod out the gate in Steam age - I still would like the cohesive Vintage Story gameplay loop to shine through most things that I add. I personally feel like, the more things that get introduced that alleviate certain headaches causes a sort of meta-progression that makes other things worthless, and i'm really trying to avoid that.
I'll likely down the line, add gas-fueled stoves that burn flammable gasses and liquid fuels - so this is a small overlap.
Again this is really mainly a mod for my friends' and I's server, and that's a large majority of what effects my balance decisions.
One of the biggest things that's killing me is just making new models for stuff (VS model creator is hell) - and for Steam to be accepted in the stove, I'd likely want to change the stove's model to actually look like it can accept Steam (or just make a new stove). As i'm already planning on making a Gas stove down the line, I was planning to push it off until then. I've been hitting the ground really hard these past couple months (and I can't stop myself lol!) but soon I'll have to take a small break from development because it's a little exhausting to be constantly doing.
This next update has been a really really big and exhausting chapter, but I'm getting really close to releasing 0.2.0 - it will come with a bunch of random small balance changes, more informational block infos, more verbose handbook entries and guides, and lots of new exciting expansions to already existing stuff that will definitely change and feed further progression, quite a lot.
Thanks for the suggestions and thanks for playing!
Hello another person wanting arctic capable radiators as im planning on running a SMP based around Frostpunk it would be nice to at minimum have a config to mux with im even down for it requireing more steam to keep at that higher temp
I see... My reccomendation for the stove still stands, as a later thing. As stated, 341 (or perhaps 350, I was running with 1 stack firewood and 1 stack contaminated coal) will provide enough to cook stuff, but not much more than that.
Technically you could run an interheater design with a firebox, pipe, pump, and fuel-but that's pretty unreasonably complicated lel My point was just a steam powered stove for low-temp cooking, rather than firepit recipies.
And another thing, if you would: Make it possible for the stove to heat ovens above it ;P I wanna bake breaaaaad!
Make it possible to heat the Vat with steam. I mean, the second input tank is right there. I've got a network where the steam can go all the way to it, but it's not being consumed.
You can see me using the radiator to prove that there's steam here. Yes, I disconnected it too. Anyways, there you go.
I think it'd be nice if I didn't have to fuel it... and just fuelled by my boiler.
Just some gravel I wanna clean. The temperature required is 100c, and steam is obviously over 100c. I'd also comment that you could do the same thing for a Retort, because depending on steam superheating, it might be able to do pretty good with that.
After all, at high temperature and good pressure, thermal distribution can make charcoal or the other recipie (can't think it off the top of my head) in the Retort too. So my thought is the fact that if the temp is sufficient, why can't I use steam to power the reactions through heat exchange?
I know that these two recepies I like, are at 300 and 350c. And we have supercritical steam in a lot of these pipes if you're boiling with Peat or better.
Supercritical, as in... It's either water at extreme high pressure which makes it liquid, but it decompresses into steam when permitted, or otherwise significantly above boiling point. The vat just seems to only need to be hot enough to boil, and I think that it'd make sense if steam can serve to get it hot enough. Your steam doesn't even have to be that hot...
banjomonkey420, Aug 24th at 4:09 PM (modified Aug 24th at 4:10 PM)
I think the mod concepts are very cool! I'd love to use the radiators to help bring heat to my greenhouse in the arctic -48c. I know it may not bring the greenhouse up to 0 to grow things, as it is december, but i was hoping this might be a possible solution. However, currently, i can't figure out how to get the fuel into the firebox of the boiler. shift rightclick or ctrl right click doesn't seem to be working. I've tried peat and firewood, no luck. am i missing something?
Are you having problems with the bottom lip of the Firebox door? In the next update (coming soon, I'm just wrapping up a few big things), the bottom lip of the selection box is hidden for easier placement.
Otherwise, it should just be the same as placing ground-storage. You can hug your body up close, right next to the Boiler access, and the bottom blockface in the back should be targetable.
If neither of those are your issue, I can look into it on my end.
I'd be tempted to start smelting all my ore in it but having to constantly make/fire new Casting Beds is probably more work than just the normal way. Surprised no one has automated clay forming, considering how tedious/demanding it can be with mods.
hexigrim , Aug 25th at 1:54 AM (modified Aug 25th at 1:55 AM)
In the next update, there'll be a reusable Casting bed (due to popular demand).
Also I don't know if you've ever seen Simple Pottery Wheel? It's what my server uses.
EKB133, Aug 21st at 5:05 PM (modified Aug 21st at 5:06 PM)
Some change that this mod does breaks boats entirely. Getting too close to boats with this mod active causes a crash with an error pointing to attachment points.
Crash Report
System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object. at Vintagestory.GameContent.AttachableInteractionHelp.<>c__DisplayClass0_0.<GetOrCreateInteractionHelp>b__0() in VSSurvivalMod\Entity\Behavior\BehaviorAttachable.cs:line 646 at Vintagestory.API.Util.ObjectCacheUtil.GetOrCreate[T](ICoreAPI api, String key, CreateCachableObjectDelegate`1 onRequireCreate) in VintagestoryApi\Util\ObjectCacheUtil.cs:line 23 at Vintagestory.GameContent.AttachableInteractionHelp.GetOrCreateInteractionHelp(ICoreAPI api, EntityBehaviorAttachable eba, WearableSlotConfig[] wearableSlots, Int32 slotIndex, ItemSlot slot) in VSSurvivalMod\Entity\Behavior\BehaviorAttachable.cs:line 640 at Vintagestory.GameContent.EntityBehaviorAttachable.GetInteractionHelp(IClientWorldAccessor world, EntitySelection es, IClientPlayer player, EnumHandling& handled) in VSSurvivalMod\Entity\Behavior\BehaviorAttachable.cs:line 595 at Vintagestory.API.Common.Entities.Entity.GetInteractionHelp(IClientWorldAccessor world, EntitySelection es, IClientPlayer player) in VintagestoryApi\Common\Entity\Entity.cs:line 1522 at Vintagestory.GameContent.EntityBoat.GetInteractionHelp(IClientWorldAccessor world, EntitySelection es, IClientPlayer player) in VSSurvivalMod\Systems\Boats\EntityBoat.cs:line 723 at Vintagestory.Client.NoObf.HudElementInteractionHelp.getWorldInteractions() in VintagestoryLib\Client\Systems\Gui\Huds\HudElementInteractionHelp.cs:line 315 at Vintagestory.Client.NoObf.HudElementInteractionHelp.ComposeBlockWorldInteractionHelp() in VintagestoryLib\Client\Systems\Gui\Huds\HudElementInteractionHelp.cs:line 294 at Vintagestory.Client.NoObf.HudElementInteractionHelp.PlayerPosDiv8Changed(TrackedPlayerProperties oldValues, TrackedPlayerProperties newValues) in VintagestoryLib\Client\Systems\Gui\Huds\HudElementInteractionHelp.cs:line 466 at Vintagestory.Client.NoObf.SystemPlayerEnvAwarenessTracker.Trigger(EnumProperty property) in VintagestoryLib\Client\Systems\Player\PlayerEnvAwarenessTracker.cs:line 175 at Vintagestory.Client.NoObf.SystemPlayerEnvAwarenessTracker.OnGameTick(Single dt) in VintagestoryLib\Client\Systems\Player\PlayerEnvAwarenessTracker.cs:line 152 at Vintagestory.Common.GameTickListener.OnTriggered(Int64 ellapsedMilliseconds) in VintagestoryLib\Common\Model\GameTickListener.cs:line 36 at Vintagestory.Common.EventManager.TriggerGameTick(Int64 ellapsedMilliseconds, IWorldAccessor world) in VintagestoryLib\Common\EventManager.cs:line 134 at Vintagestory.Client.NoObf.ClientMain.MainRenderLoop(Single dt) in VintagestoryLib\Client\ClientMain.cs:line 890 at Vintagestory.Client.NoObf.ClientMain.MainGameLoop(Single deltaTime) in VintagestoryLib\Client\ClientMain.cs:line 782 at Vintagestory.Client.GuiScreenRunningGame.RenderToPrimary(Single dt) in VintagestoryLib\Client\MainMenu\Screens\GuiScreenRunningGame.cs:line 173 at Vintagestory.Client.ScreenManager.Render(Single dt) in VintagestoryLib\Client\ScreenManager.cs:line 742 at Vintagestory.Client.ScreenManager.OnNewFrame(Single dt) in VintagestoryLib\Client\ScreenManager.cs:line 686 at Vintagestory.Client.NoObf.ClientPlatformWindows.window_RenderFrame(FrameEventArgs e) in VintagestoryLib\Client\ClientPlatform\GameWindow.cs:line 112 at OpenTK.Windowing.Desktop.GameWindow.Run() at Vintagestory.Client.ClientProgram.Start(ClientProgramArgs args, String[] rawArgs) in VintagestoryLib\Client\ClientProgram.cs:line 354 at Vintagestory.Client.ClientProgram.<>c__DisplayClass10_0.<.ctor>b__1() in VintagestoryLib\Client\ClientProgram.cs:line 131 at Vintagestory.ClientNative.CrashReporter.Start(ThreadStart start) in VintagestoryLib\Client\ClientPlatform\ClientNative\CrashReporter.cs:line 95
Crash Report
hexigrim , Aug 21st at 8:39 PM (modified Aug 21st at 9:01 PM)
Damn! I'm pretty sure I know what's causing this, I fixed a similar bug with other dressable animals and i guess just straight up spaced that boats exist. I'll get an update out soon. Thank you so much.
Edit: My guess was wrong. Can I ask what version you were running during the crash? If before 0.1.5, this crash was present - in the newer updates, it seems to be fixed on my end:
Oh, looks like I am the one at fault, for some reason I didn't notice I was using an older version (0.1.3) which was the version just before the mount bug was fixed, which I assume was the cause of the boat crash as boats probably function similarly. I guess I got confused with the file name cause 0.1.3 was named "0.1.03.zip" while version "0.1.13.zip" is named correctly and I assumed I had the latest version
hexigrim , Aug 21st at 10:02 PM (modified Aug 21st at 10:02 PM)
Cast iron rods should be made from a cast iron ingot on an anvil, like other vanilla metal rods. (Or if later game - once you've already got your hands on a few Cast Iron rods - you can use the Slitting Mill to turn an ingot into a rod).
The vertical large gear requires a solid 3x3 wall behind it.
Nezerith, Aug 20th at 8:33 AM (modified Aug 20th at 8:37 AM)
Super interesting, I don't know why they aren't. I'll look into it - they both show up just fine on mine and my friends' ends, hence me not noticing anything wrong with it.
Steel is not possible to make in the Finery - it's just meant to process Iron easier. Steel will be processed with another structure that I'm still in-progress with, so it'll be a later update.
And people have suggested some kind of reusable or easier Casting bed - I likely will look into some way to make Casting Beds at least easier to make, if not looking into making a more permanent bed.
Thanks for playing!
Lyra_Yanaris, Aug 18th at 6:45 PM (modified Aug 18th at 6:46 PM)
I can't make charcoal in my retort for some reason It says my Residue Slots are full...
I don't see anything!
hexigrim , Aug 18th at 7:09 PM (modified Aug 18th at 11:28 PM)
Hopefully this is fixed in the new update - I made it respect previous batch counts, so you shouldn't lose any materials. It was a small deadlock because it didn't have enough output space to deposit the solid outputs - that's why it was saying the residue slots were full.
The Retort should now only process in max parallel batches of 4 (so, for example, 4 batches of the charcoal would be 128 firewood -> 64 charcoal, so that's how much it'll consume in one craft) and it will meter your output items over the duration of the craft.
I'm imagining you increased the stack size of firewood or something?
That was my first attempt, was 999999 firewood. But not this one. I ripped out the controller and the in/out boxes because that stress-test it obviously failed, and put them back in, empty, and tried it with 64.
But it said the RESIDUE slots were full. I don't see any 'residue' slots! The hell is a 'residue' slot! The tank is empty, the tar output is drained into a reserve tank and empty, and I got ONE charcoal. I don't-hwat
Anyways, it seems to be working now... after reloading my world...
Question... The hell doespooling in the handbook mean!? WHAT IS POOLING!?
Also, tell me. Just tell me. Are there ANY of these which can do what a Bloomery can, in other words-replace the Bloomery firebrick bloomery treadmill? I mean, the Reverbratory Hearth seems to *always* require flux or other stuff. Even with the piped bellows?
hexigrim , Aug 18th at 3:12 AM (modified Aug 18th at 3:15 AM)
In response to your second question first - Yes - that's the whole point of the mod lmao. I didn't love the tedium of tearing down bloomeries constantly for iron production - that was the inspiration for making the Reverberatory able to melt iron in the first place.
It melts into molten Cast Iron - which can be pumped or transferred into the Finery structure, the mod's second structure. The Finery requires feedstock (either slag or Expanded Matter crushed hematite), and lining (made from raw fireclay bricks) in order to be able to perform a Stir, which allows you to puddle your cast iron into Wrought iron (real iron) with a rabble, with an small bonus of extra molten iron depending on how good your stir is.
Wrought iron can be extracted from the Finery Basin with tongs in your offhand, which gives you "Wrought iron balls", which is basically a little baby iron bloom. It has significantly less slag on it than a normal bloom, and up to 4 can fit on the forge at once to heat up (as opposed to an Iron Bloom only fitting 1), and they're significantly easier to hand-work, and much faster to helve. It makes the processing volume a LOT faster, especially with 2 or 3 helve hammers.
I wrote the handbook at the very end, i was very very tired. I will rewrite the handbook section to be a little more clear about the process.
Ahh... because right now, I just have those structures in their own rooms in the facility, all assembled but not able to use them as of yet. I'll try it with the wrought iron balls. Also, the incredible speed of the helve should make it decently quick. that thing strikes more than thrice per second.
Getting an error, which I assume is not very critical, on world gen, using expanded foods and hydrate or diedrate, maybe there's some kind of conflict of some kind but I just thought I'd share it with you :)
17.8.2026 09:26:30 [Error] Patch 0 in hexsmech:patches/expandedfoods-compat.json: File game:recipes/barrel/saltwaterportion.json not found 17.8.2026 09:26:30 [Error] Patch 1 in hexsmech:patches/expandedfoods-compat.json: File game:recipes/barrel/saltwaterportion.json not found 17.8.2026 09:26:30 [Error] Patch 2 in hexsmech:patches/expandedfoods-compat.json: File game:recipes/barrel/saltwaterportion.json not found
Oh interesting lmao... soft admittance - my server hasn't updated to the latest Expanded Foods update. I'll have to take a look at it when we do, but for now, it should just be cosmetic. Thanks for letting me know!
Hello, I don't understand how the initial photo construction works... Apparently, a bellows is needed, but what's the main part? I can't find the element to add. Do you have a video explaining how it works and the structures?
hexigrim , Aug 17th at 6:18 PM (modified Aug 17th at 6:18 PM)
My bad, the initial controller of the Reverberatory multiblock is the Hearth. It should tell you exactly what it requires in the chat during construction. The Bellows Input (the refractory block that recieves bellows air) is connected in the middle of the Left side of the multiblock.
Spoiler!
Right in the center here, so the bellows can blow into the Firebox - any tier Bellows Input works.
I don't have a video explaining anything yet - if that's something that many people end up wanting, I might have to try and remember how to use Shotcut.
I managed to get it working, but it's a shame it's limited to 32 ingots given its complexity.
I tried to get the large one working before realizing it wasn't for smelting iron (and it took me a while to figure out what to put in the container, but apparently it needs to be paired with two furnaces? How do you craft the new black iron? I haven't seen a recipe, and I haven't even found the ingot recipe xD
Cast Iron is made by smelting any variant of Iron in the Reverberatory Furnace, and piping the Molten cast iron into a Casting bed chamber (with a casting bed in it).
The Reverberatory is essentially like a big, bellows-able crucible - the "cost" of being able to melt your iron into liquid is the machine converting the Molten iron into Molten cast iron upon smelt.
Molten cast iron can be piped from the Reverberatory into a Casting bed chamber to give you ingots, like other (non-steel) metals. It can also be piped into the Finery, to perform "puddling", which allows your to refine your molten Cast Iron into real iron by stirring it and mixing in feedstock.
Just to mention, the Finery only needs 1 Reverberatory furnace to run - the second pipe connection is for extracting molten Aluminium (in the second Finery process), and is unused in the Cast Iron process.
The 32 ingot cap on the Reverberatory is for balance - I really didn't want it to feel too busted from vanilla processing. The Reverberatory itself really is 95% refractory bricks, so pretty obtainable. The "Reverberatory -> Finery" ironmaking process is more like, a convenience sidegrade rather than a pure upgrade over Bloomeries - slightly more setup, but a much longer payoff.
Got another bug. Your modifications to the Bellows breaks the usage of the Big Bellows on the forge! But only when your mod's installed when the bellows are specifically placed... for some reason. I'm just going to disengauge your mod for placing my factory's bellows.
It's very strange. Even when your mod's enabled-the already placed bellows does NOT break... unless it's broken and replaced, at which point, it becomes completely useless.
hexigrim , Aug 16th at 10:08 PM (modified Aug 16th at 10:13 PM)
I can't seem to reproduce this. Large Bellows works great on my end - breaking it, relogging, etc all seem to keep it running and heating the forge over here. What exactly are you seeing occur?
Edit - just making sure, my mod adds a requirement to supply a Wooden Linkage to the Large Bellows to connect it to the Wooden Linkage Arm. Is that maybe what you're seeing?
Hold on-is there a seperate forge we're talking about? I'm talking about a single-block forge, not a factory forge, specifically. Which uses a wooden toggle and such. Is there something wrong with my game?
Without ANY mods installed, it keeps flipping the bellows every time too-Is there something odd here? I'm on V 1.22.7. You think it's broken it?
Got an issue. When two different speeds of gears are linked (one with large gear one without) it grinds to a halt. This doesn't make much sense-due to the fact there is a disengauged clutch between them. Dog Clutch or conventional transmission+clutch. That caused my Facility factory to grind to a halt and it took an embarrassingly long time to figure out why. And it does so with any source of mechanical power-whether it be a turbine... an autorotor... or a Stirling Engine. Or, of course... a steam engine.
hexigrim , Aug 16th at 9:39 PM (modified Aug 16th at 9:40 PM)
This is a simple version, using a dog clutch. I can also do others with just the vanilla stuff, using transmissions and clutches of wood.
So, why would anyone want this? Simple reason: It's a two speed transmission. (or more if you use more clutches/transmissions). Yes. one is off, one is on. If two are on, it will automatically grind to a halt.
It also doesn't matter if the two rotate different directions-or the same direction, when disengauged (both sides of the clutch/transmission)
Love the mod so far Hex! But I do have to ask, will you be adding a wooden variant of the vertical large gear? Kinda been one of those things I really want to see in the game. Also, what kind of placements count as "solid"?
I likely won't add a wooden variant of vertical large gear - the metal one is gated behind Steel (it needs a large casting bed) which is what I felt was appropriate balance.
Solid should just mean it has a wall behind each gear piece - 3x3
Lyra_Yanaris, Aug 16th at 5:14 PM (modified Aug 16th at 5:56 PM)
Got a question though. Is it possible to put the steam output cap of a boiler in the config? Basically, so that the config can be adjusted to have a higher (or lower) maximum throughput using say, lignite, anthracite, charcoal, coke, and modded fuels if the server owner likes? Note: I'm not suggesting you change the boiler default output. I'm just suggesting that it be increased to allow for the possibility of using a single boiler to power a MASSIVE network-with the right fuel. Such as Coke, or Binchotan from Better Pyrolysis?
I know we covered this somewhat before, but I want to counterpoint your point of 'it makes brown coal more useful'... with the comment that 'any better fuels are USELESS when you don't have a steam network which REQUIRES that much'. Especially because extra water is lost (and you therefore need a pump that can keep up with, and a big enough water source for) a higher fuel might be counterintuitive by causing engines to sputter, for example, even if they're the only thing supplied, when the boiler cuts in and out due to water overuse.
(And in general especially when you need to pump water in but the tanks on the boiler are sealed, and you're out of water and such because it blew through too much)
Also, maybe a similar config setting for Radiators to allow more radiators to have an effect on the heating coeffient in a room... such that it's possible to set it to allow for more than 8 heaters. My world's a snowball, it'd be nice if TECHNOLOGY could serve as a sort of remedy for such issues ;P
Certainly, i can look into putting some config settings. I'll just say, most of my judgment on balance is within the vacuum of my server/pack, so I'm not too familiar with how my machines work with fuels over vanilla's coke (at 1340°).
I can certainly look into adding some kind of check to allow for higher fuels to produce higher amounts of steam. I'll have to think about how to balance it.
I mean, I can't decompile the script bits easy, but I'd suggest the easiest part being to add a config... Again, I haven't taken a look at how you, y'know, wrote the code. I dunno what you've got.
But I'm ASSUMING (and I guess I should ask)-how you determine the steam, is a mathematical function with a Clamp on it, causing it to calculate any amount of steam-with any amount above 8/16 water/steam consumption/production equalling that cieling.
My suggestion was to add a setting to the Config on what that cieling IS. Default being 8/16, above that being a continuation of the calculation. And letting the users actually choose if they want to alter it... That's all I meant. Then there's nothing else that needs changed without config alteration-and I figured that this should be a relatively simple addition.
Also, I'm loving the radiators. The fact they actually HEAT things that you grow? AMAZING, absolute PEAK. Would not have any other way.
Now all we need is lighting for them. Maybe like I said, some super-expensive endgame lightsource that throws out even more than fully-equipped chandaliers, and connects to the same network.
It might be maybe a few days or so before I dive back into development, I legit just took a twelve hour nap, I've been hitting this really hard lately.
Since this is made for your own server primarily (which is my favorite genre of mod, since I can relate) what mods do you personally run with this, and what mods would you strongly advise against off the top of your head?
Thanks for asking! Personally I'm not too sure of mods I would avoid, maybe mods with overlap content but that's about it - even then, it's good to try them out individually to see which you prefer.
Some of my favorite mods that we run on our server:
We're using all about the same stuff, except none of the food mods since they ballooned our ram usage. We're also using IOG and previously IME, which I loved having the bigger multiblock smelters and stuff, but had to ditch it since it made the game quite a lot too slow and very not-fun haha. I'm wondering how bad the overlap from that Vintage Kinematics mod will feel with this one, since we're also using that. I'm not quite sure what else we'd have that may overlap.
Will this support all 1.22.x versions? I run 1.22.3 still as the age old saying "if it ain't broke, don't fix it", and this looks like the exact mod I need to fill some gaps in progression in my server, but it throws the version mismatch.
Aw shoot, 1.22.6 is actually the floor - VS 1.22.6 added a new permission-check api for block interactions, and I reference it in every machine that has a GUI. On 1.22.3 the api don't exist. So I don't actually think it's compatible with 1.22.3. Sorry :(
Ooh that makes a lot of sense though, thank you for informing me! More of a reason to push my server to the newest version whenever all I need is supported 🙏
Oh, one more thing. It would be lovely if you could have some sort of lights powered by the power that's generated... Steam or otherwise. I dunno how, I know it's only a light comment (heh) but don't think about it too hard. TBF, I'm basically looking for a substitute for Electrical Progressive with lights and such. BECAUSE ELECTRICAL PROGRESSIVE IS NOT A LIGHTWEIGHT MODPACK in any sense of the word.
General ideas: Steam-powered 'bobber' apparatus, a linear pendulum that functions on the principles of Alessandro Volta's (famed from the Voltaic Pile or the first easily chained battery cell) Electrophorus for coldcathode lamp. Probably an endgame thing because of the electrophorus's material/alloy requirements.
Aeopile-based steam dynamo with magnets on the 'wings' that spins at high speed, and works as an inductor for an induction lamp. This I like because it allows for extreme brightness (like 30 light). See Technology Connections here, which explains how a flourescent light without any actual electrodes AT ALL, can glow for a basically unlimited lifespan at extreme brightness. Also, it cuts out the entire... electrical generator, ballast, voltage regulator, and wiring portion, making it much more efficient. Expensive, but like... It could be an endgame thing.
Hmm, cool. I just don't want another Electrical Progressives wambo combo on my poor world XP Also, Electrical Progressives updates were relatively frequently breaking my game.
Especially with how big the facility is, that's just... ugh.
Not good. Not good at all. But yeah, I like that idea. Another one is to use *reverberations* to cause piezeoelectric stimulation for lights.
I've got a whole underground farming situation going on, you see. All that. Currently, I've altered and recompiled the Signals Mod to make its' lightbulbs work for facility lighting. I'd rather use something a little more consistent. And with other uses, as well. Also, your mod is the ONLY MOD I have EVER encountered with steam pipes that don't feel like HELL to assemble over long distances.
The water capacity-specifically WATER CAPACITY of the fluid pump, needs buffed. I've done massive testing, and mind you, I've got an array of autorotors feeding this sucker-such that it is getting over FIVE MEGANEWTONS of force. And that is fed through 3 large gear axel-outside connections (gear step-ups) to increase speed. Not kilonewtons, MEGANEWTONS.
Anyways, all that, the speed which is several times the amount needed to ignite axles...
Is still not enough to fully supply a boiler with a water inlet RIGHT BESIDE IT. Is there something I'm missing? Size of water source, glitch, what? Because I should not be UNABLE TO SUPPLY EIGHT LITERS PER SECOND to it. See, I keep failing to be able to power four steam engines.
I want to, but I can't because the water input is bottlenecking the boiler. The boiler is CAPABLE of producing enough steam for all of them, and a little besides.
But it keeps incessantly running out of water! I can NOT get enough water for it to work! Sure, it might make sense for that much difficulty if you're say, pumping molten steel, but this is just WATER!
An open pipe sucking up water checks underneath it for a 3x3x3 area for water, and suck speed is proportionate to how many of those blocks are water. It should suck more water out of a larger pond, and cap out once it sees 27 water blocks.
If you're still running out of water afterwards, I can definitely do some tweaking.
Hope you enjoy the new update with the Steam radiators!
I also did some tweaking and balancing with pump providing - one pump can feed multiple deposits (steam engines, boilers, etc) now as long as it's drawing enough liquid/gas. Pumps can now also chain each other (i accidentally didn't have this set up correctly but it should work perfectly fine now). I made a new handbook page for all the steam stuff (generation/conversion rates, requirements for the structures, etc).
Thanks for helping me test stuff!
Lyra_Yanaris, Aug 15th at 12:12 PM (modified Aug 15th at 12:18 PM)
Just tested. Can confirm... I am no longer running out of water when powering my 4 steam engines ;P
Do have a suggestion tho. Some sort of steam stove? Not sure, but I know that the steam that's produced is not just above boiling, but many times QUITE A LOT above, especially if you're using Coke. So I'm just thinking that that would be neat.
And I also noticed one more thing... For high temp coals and coke, the steam output of the boiler seems to cap and not utilize them. Is that intentional behaviour?
The max conversion rate from a boiler is 8 L/s water into 16 L/s steam, at around 1102°, so each coal has about the same boiling rate (lignite drags a tiny bit behind). I feel like, the 16L/s cap is for balance purposes (feeds a nice flush 4 engines), and I'm not sure how to go about separating and balancing the different coals without making lignite/black coal worse and not reach the 16 L/s ceiling.
I might tweak the curve a little more, but realistically, I think it almost makes brown coal a little more useful if all are about the same - Coke is already pretty valuable and giving Lignite more of a use feels flavorful.
I was definitely thinking about extending the stove to additionally be able to use steam in the future, but I gotta figure out how to go about balancing that.
Well, my suggestion would be that it bases on STEAM TEMPERATURES. So then your hotter fuels could actually have a benefit, not in direct steam, but in the steam temperature for management purposes. As a side note? I have 2 radiators and 4 engines connected to the same single boiler, which is fuelled by lignite. Which somehow works, all of them at 100% drain, from what I can tell, none of them are lacking.
Seems to work fine, but the axles and gear textures seem to be missing/glitched when starting/entering a world with just this mod, and the logs output the following:
14.8.2026 13:52:59 [Warning] Failed resolving crafting recipe ingredient with code game:metalblock-new-riveted-aluminium in Grid recipe 14.8.2026 13:52:59 [Error] Grid Recipe 'game:recipes/grid/metalblock.json': Output game:metalblock-new-riveted-aluminium cannot be resolved. 14.8.2026 13:52:59 [Warning] Failed resolving crafting recipe ingredient with code game:metalblock-new-riveted-castiron in Grid recipe 14.8.2026 13:52:59 [Error] Grid Recipe 'game:recipes/grid/metalblock.json': Output game:metalblock-new-riveted-castiron cannot be resolved. 14.8.2026 13:52:59 [Warning] Failed resolving crafting recipe ingredient with code game:metalblock-new-riveted-spiegeleisen in Grid recipe 14.8.2026 13:52:59 [Error] Grid Recipe 'game:recipes/grid/metalblock.json': Output game:metalblock-new-riveted-spiegeleisen cannot be resolved.
Besides having lava-colored funky cast iron axles, everything else seems to work as intended. Could probably use with a config to disable or reduce the 2x ore-to-cast iron as it feels a bit OP, and might incentivize those with SMEX to build the blast furnace to get a complete ore-to-iron loop without the reverbaratory being just straight up better at getting more iron out of the ore.
Super strange, i've never seen the axle/gear texture problem. I can try to do some testing to try to figure that out.
I can probably definitely add a config for the Cast iron doubling in the coming days. I felt it balanced mainly because Cast iron itself has very limited uses (it doesn't make tools) which I felt was a fair tradeoff. Additionally, when converting the Cast iron in the Finery, there's a constant Slag tax, so you still don't quite get double iron from the conversion, unless you're really good at the Stir minigame.
I'm aware of the Grid recipe warnings, they're purely cosmetic (those three metal blocks simply just don't have "metalblock-new-riveted" variants). I'll find a way to remove them from the log but they shouldn't be an issue for regular play.
Pushed an update, thanks for the information! Hopefully this fixes the issues you were having.
MineAnPlay, Aug 14th at 6:39 AM (modified Aug 14th at 6:40 AM)
I crash when looking at Pegasi from the Pegasus mod when using your mod with Expanded Materials. The crash is caused by the Block Interaction Help (doesn't crash when I disable it). Here is the crash:
Crash Report
14/08/2026 4:37:59 PM: Critical error occurred Loaded Mods: game@1.22.6, hexsmech@0.1.0, jaunt@3.1.0, creative@1.22.6, survival@1.22.6, em@3.7.0, pegasus@1.1.0-rc.1 System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object. at Vintagestory.GameContent.AttachableInteractionHelp.<>c__DisplayClass0_0.<GetOrCreateInteractionHelp>b__0() in C:\Users\Tyron\Documents\vintagestory\game\VSSurvivalMod\Entity\Behavior\BehaviorAttachable.cs:line 646 at Vintagestory.API.Util.ObjectCacheUtil.GetOrCreate[T](ICoreAPI api, String key, CreateCachableObjectDelegate`1 onRequireCreate) in C:\Users\Tyron\Documents\vintagestory\game\VintagestoryApi\Util\ObjectCacheUtil.cs:line 23 at Vintagestory.GameContent.AttachableInteractionHelp.GetOrCreateInteractionHelp(ICoreAPI api, EntityBehaviorAttachable eba, WearableSlotConfig[] wearableSlots, Int32 slotIndex, ItemSlot slot) in C:\Users\Tyron\Documents\vintagestory\game\VSSurvivalMod\Entity\Behavior\BehaviorAttachable.cs:line 640 at Vintagestory.GameContent.EntityBehaviorAttachable.GetInteractionHelp(IClientWorldAccessor world, EntitySelection es, IClientPlayer player, EnumHandling& handled) in C:\Users\Tyron\Documents\vintagestory\game\VSSurvivalMod\Entity\Behavior\BehaviorAttachable.cs:line 595 at Vintagestory.API.Common.Entities.Entity.GetInteractionHelp(IClientWorldAccessor world, EntitySelection es, IClientPlayer player) in C:\Users\Tyron\Documents\vintagestory\game\VintagestoryApi\Common\Entity\Entity.cs:line 1522 at Vintagestory.Client.NoObf.HudElementInteractionHelp.getWorldInteractions() in C:\Users\Tyron\Documents\vintagestory\game\VintagestoryLib\Client\Systems\Gui\Huds\HudElementInteractionHelp.cs:line 315 at Vintagestory.Client.NoObf.HudElementInteractionHelp.ComposeBlockWorldInteractionHelp() in C:\Users\Tyron\Documents\vintagestory\game\VintagestoryLib\Client\Systems\Gui\Huds\HudElementInteractionHelp.cs:line 294 at Vintagestory.Client.NoObf.HudElementInteractionHelp.EntityInView() in C:\Users\Tyron\Documents\vintagestory\game\VintagestoryLib\Client\Systems\Gui\Huds\HudElementInteractionHelp.cs:line 406 at Vintagestory.Common.GameTickListener.OnTriggered(Int64 ellapsedMilliseconds) in C:\Users\Tyron\Documents\vintagestory\game\VintagestoryLib\Common\Model\GameTickListener.cs:line 36 at Vintagestory.Common.EventManager.TriggerGameTick(Int64 ellapsedMilliseconds, IWorldAccessor world) in C:\Users\Tyron\Documents\vintagestory\game\VintagestoryLib\Common\EventManager.cs:line 134 at Vintagestory.Client.NoObf.ClientMain.MainRenderLoop(Single dt) in C:\Users\Tyron\Documents\vintagestory\game\VintagestoryLib\Client\ClientMain.cs:line 867 at Vintagestory.Client.GuiScreenRunningGame.RenderToPrimary(Single dt) in C:\Users\Tyron\Documents\vintagestory\game\VintagestoryLib\Client\MainMenu\Screens\GuiScreenRunningGame.cs:line 173 at Vintagestory.Client.ScreenManager.Render(Single dt) in C:\Users\Tyron\Documents\vintagestory\game\VintagestoryLib\Client\ScreenManager.cs:line 742 at Vintagestory.Client.ScreenManager.OnNewFrame(Single dt) in C:\Users\Tyron\Documents\vintagestory\game\VintagestoryLib\Client\ScreenManager.cs:line 686 at Vintagestory.Client.NoObf.ClientPlatformWindows.window_RenderFrame(FrameEventArgs e) at OpenTK.Windowing.Desktop.GameWindow.Run() at Vintagestory.Client.ClientProgram.Start(ClientProgramArgs args, String[] rawArgs) at Vintagestory.Client.ClientProgram.<>c__DisplayClass10_0.<.ctor>b__1() in C:\Users\Tyron\Documents\vintagestory\game\VintagestoryLib\Client\ClientProgram.cs:line 131 at Vintagestory.ClientNative.CrashReporter.Start(ThreadStart start) in C:\Users\Tyron\Documents\vintagestory\game\VintagestoryLib\Client\ClientPlatform\ClientNative\CrashReporter.cs:line 95
Got a suggestion. Add a steam radiator. Something to heat the area. I don't want to use the incredibly... process-intensive Electrical Progressive, but it's the only thing that has it. That and Jonas Tech, but that one's BADLY outdated. So maybe steam radiators that are fueled by the boiler? Just sayin', could be really neat.
Hi Lyra! That totally seems like something I could see about doing sometime - would not be very difficult, especially considering I already have another mod that deals with Heat sources - I might add some cross compatibility between the two. Thanks for the suggestion.
The mod really starts to pick up mid/late Iron tier. The two introductory structures are made from any tier Refractory Brick, which means the player can access them around the time they can the Beehive/Cementation furnace. The latter structures and piping system are made from Iron/Cast iron, so a decent investment later.
I personally made this mod for myself, with the intent to extend the endgame, and with the intent that it can be added mid-save. I mainly focused on adding uses for pre-existing things over adding new materials.
The mod itself adds no worldgen, so it's plug-and-play (the new minerals are obtained from Panning or "Vat cleaning" gravel) for existing worlds.
I've been testing it on my forever world for the past few days (plus extensively in my test world, and other survival worlds with my friends), and have had zero issues. I'd say it's very stable!
I hope it helps fill your niche - I feel the same way!
Invataksi338472, Aug 13th at 5:50 PM (modified Aug 13th at 5:52 PM)
(I guess a sort of modding standard for interractions between electricity, pipes, machine input/output, and such should be made, given many other tech mods that exists there, which for the most part aren't compatible with each other. But I'm not a part of the mod creation sphere, so dunno if this is already a thing. And if it is a thing, hopefully it isn't discussed entirely in the VS Discord server, given that not everyone has joined it)
To my knowledge, they both run fine together (we used to use PPEX/SMEX on our server), but unfortunately, our scope overlap is pretty large. I would recommend using one or the other for consistency, but there's technically nothing stopping you from running both.
My piping system/gas doesn't have any pressure mechanics like PPEX's does - that's the biggest thing I can think of that wouldn't be "compatible".
Invataksi338472, Aug 13th at 7:21 PM (modified Aug 14th at 8:44 AM)
"My piping system/gas doesn't have any pressure mechanics like PPEX's does - that's the biggest thing I can think of that wouldn't be "compatible"." - Assuming that this means that the input/output from one mod's machine to another mod's machine isn't possible (outside of mechanical power of course), that is the compatibility issue I was afraid of :P
Actually I can just try it out... Yeah, they are not compatible. From this mod, a tank -> pipe -> fluid pump -> pipe -> tank does connect as it should, but not if one of the pipes comes from PPEX.
But not all is bad! I do have a creative world where the only use for these machines is to look cool, and this fits right in! :D
on v0.2.15, i'm getting an error where the game can't seem to find the expanded foods patches for saltwater portions?
15.9.2026 11:36:06 [Error] Patch 0 in hexsmech:patches/expandedfoods-compat.json: File game:recipes/barrel/saltwaterportion.json not found
15.9.2026 11:36:06 [Error] Patch 1 in hexsmech:patches/expandedfoods-compat.json: File game:recipes/barrel/saltwaterportion.json not found
error listing above
do you think you can add mechanical arms to move stuff from thing to thing ex: forge to anvil
Soda Ash, and Sodium Metal - along with a few other items i cant chase down right now - dont show up in the handbook or the creative menu, but do appear to still be functioning as items and will show up as mentions in other recipes - soda ash showing up as side products in the sodium bicarb & co2 handbook pages where it's a part of that recipe's outputs
this is mainly* an issue as far as i can tell because both the input and the output of the soda ash -> sodium metal isnt able to be seen ingame, and the handbook appears to be minorly wrong, asking for charcoal powder rather than coke (as it appears to be in the files?)
what's the point of the "flame temperature" stat on most of the burnable fluids? it doesnt seem to affect anything about its engine performance, since everything also has the "engine speed" stat. could there be an eventual fluid burner, similar to the firebox, to provide heat to machines? could be useful, and relatively seamless on distilleries and vats, and might be an easy add (visually) since its just a pipe input to the bottom edge.
liquid fuels can be pumped into fireboxes to fuel them! they heat fluid tanks above them (so like, if you want to keep molten metal buffers warm, and future chemistry will likely use it more), and i'll probably extend that functionality to heating more blocks in the future.
the burn temperature is the cooking temperature: for now, you can run your Vats and Reaction Chambers (and stoves) on liquid fuels. the temperature is the range you can cook at, some recipes require higher or lower temperatures, so liquid fuels have a locked range of recipes.
OH YOU HAVE TO PUMP IT i was trying to put a bucket directly to the firebox :sob: that would explain my issue. and the L/s measurement of burn rate is the same between engine and firebox im guessing?
Firebox burns liquid fuel at 5% of the engine rate. So firebox drinks 20x slower
Hey, I could probably look into doing this myself but xskills is not compatible in terms of the cooking with your wood stove.
I think that'd be awesome if we could get something like compatibility with that. I'm loving the features so much so far. It's a very cool mod.
I'll see what i can do! thanks for letting me know
Is it possible to see all the vat recipes?
Yooo love to see the note about eventual compat with Boric Alchemy, this mod looks so cool. I'm so hype to eventually get to play this
Quick edit: love to see the actual human art for the thumbnail, it's what made me click in the first place haha
Game instantly grashes upon trying to mix gears from More Vanilla Variants and this mod, as well as when trying to use electricity from Elecrical Progressives and this mod
Holy smokes I haven't checked back in a while but that is a giant scope increase on v0.2 haha. I'll have to give it a try. Does it play nicely on new worlds or did you add a lot of worldgen stuff?
All materials are either obtained by vanilla methods, use vanilla materials, or have sustained renewable processes within the mod. So, still no non-vanilla worldgen!
Here I am not even made it to steel age in game looking at this mod :)
Is it possible to make this not overwrite the patches that Steady Greenhouses implements? I installed this briefly for testing and it inadvertently killed my turnips
I can look into this - were you using a radiator, or did simply just using both mods together overwrite greenhouse temp?
simply using both - i hadn't yet built anything from mechworks, and its patch collided during world loading, but i had naiively hoped it might be a harmless error. since i'm playing in singleplayer, is it possible for me to just gut a JSON to hack together a personal use patch in the interim? i really want to use your reverberatory furnace and all the other cool tech you've made
I can take care of it, np
it appears the most recent patch works, it just doesn't visually show it the way Stable Greenhouses does (+20°C instead of +X°C); i'd put a note on the mod page that it's functioning, just not visually
Haven't had the time to look into the mod yet, but what I read and see it really is a banger. I like the idea of the "muck" ore from the Interesting Mining and Excavation mod. I don't like the devices and the processing of the IME mod so much, though. Also that it's creating muck for stones (I know there is a patch, so... but maybe I will implement my own idea with muck, we will see). I will develop a muck cable car system soon, that looks something like the "Forsby–Köping limestone cableway". Then I imagine mining in my game something like this: Mining muck in a huge ore deposit, throwing that muck into the buckets of the cable way, which transports all of that to the factory made out of your devices, to process it further. 😎
I think this is by far the most complete tech mod out there
hey, uh, quick question. is it just me or does it feel like this might become a major/important tech mod.
I certainly hope people like it, but I hope not to become anything big lol.
If you ever get tired of it you could just go open source and let forks take care of the rest. Copyleft licenses require that derivative works make their changes available so you can pull the ones you like back into your version. That being said, you've done an awesome job thus far.
Had the same reaction lmao
Hello. I've put together a Reverbratory and Finery and connected them with pipes, but I cannot seem to get molten cast iron to flow between the two machines... Also the product of smelting crushed magnetite seems to be straight iron and not cast iron
Are you also using Improved Metallurgy? I think I helped someone earlier today who was having that exact problem.
yes Improved metallurgy is the issue. Diving into the file it looks like the issue is the loading order followed by the different melting temps between the two mods, hex loads in and sets cast iron melting temp to 1172. IM gets loaded next with a cast iron melting point of 1540, while the reverbratory maxes out at 1495. I can write a small add on to address this on my end if you are still feeling burnt out.
NGL smelting iron ore into normal iron is a good thing to me, when i want cast iron i just smelt iron ingots.
Hi, immediately after launch (while the handbook/defs are still loading) I get this error:
8.9.2026 16:42:47 [Warning] Failed resolving a blocks itemdrop or smeltedstack with code game:oilportion-flax in juiceable properties liquidstack
Followed immediately by a System.NullReferenceException crash.
My mod list is huge, but I crash every time with Hexsmech active and never with it disabled. This is also the only mod I have installed that adds a flax oil.
I run Toolsmith and it integrates with a different mod's flax oil for handle treatment. Is there possibly some incompat happening there?
Relevant crash log text below
I can take a peek at it. My mod just re-enables Vanilla's "linseed oil", so it definitely could be something relating to that if another mod does the same thing.
I did some tests and I still crash with Toolsmith disabled. I don't have any other mods active that would touch linseed oil, so something else is clearly going on. I'll keep trying to pin it down.
Looking around some more, I see the author of the Rudiments mod also enables vanilla linseed oil, and had to patch a couple times to fix the same errors I am getting. In their case it was a result of the JuiceableProperties being only partly populated.
Pinned it down. It's a conflict with Wildcraft: Fruits and Nuts; they straight up disable oilportion.json and replace it with a different oils system. I'll go bother them about this, although I think a compatibility patch should be pretty simple? Just needs to add a new definition for linseed oil outside of oilportion.json
It looks brilliant! Perhaps even better than Improved Metallurgy (and certainly more comprehensive)
Just out of curiosity, was the mod made using AI?
Thanks for the compliment! It's been a lot of work. I really hope not to replace the great alternatives like Improved Metallurgy - I am really not trying to have this mod be anything big... haha. I just wanted a little mod so that I can play with my friends longer!
On AI usage - a large majority of this mod has been made by me personally. At previous stages of the mod's development, I have used AI, but have transitioned away from use as I have learned more about the coding language and the VS codebase - I do not enjoy AI's, sort of, toxic dependency. All models and artwork have been made by me, and recent and future code is done by me - but some previous code has been AI-generated, although since re-reviewed by me.
Thank you very much for your reply and your honesty!
I’m asking mainly because a lot of new mods these days are made entirely or partly with AI, but most don’t mention it.
Personally, I avoid downloading AI mods for personal ethical reasons and because they’re generally more buggy and less optimised (given that I put together modpacks containing dozens of mods).
But from what you’ve said, I think I’ll give in to the temptation and have a go at testing the mod. Well done for learning how to do it, in any case! I know it’s complicated; I haven’t yet found the motivation to get started myself.
Is it compatible with Electrical Progressives?
You know I'm really not sure
i feel so inclined to make a video guide for all of this
I'm sorry that I haven't gotten around to it yet - I will down the line, promise! Things have just been hectic lately.
No worries, tbh I'd like to make a video guide to your amazing mod since id just like to. Besides the guides are quite conprehensive with just only a few things that could be explained abit more better but it's still understandable
Can I use one of the furnace as a way to make Iron ingots or I still need to use bloomeries for that? (Vanilla Iron ingot, not cast iron)
The Finery structure is used to convert molten Cast iron into "wrought iron balls", which helve into normal Iron ingots.
Hey Hex do you think you can add an aluminum alloy that would be as strong as iron? I was planning to do it for my own mod, but I don't have time now since that summer ended. Reply if you're interested, and I can go give more details on how it would look like >-<
I probably won't be adding any more content for the time being - I'm a little burnt out atm.
Thats alright you dont have to do everything that comes to your attention
Anyways, my pollution machine.
It works entirely unattended, basically perpetual motion, pumps more crude than it uses, generates more mechanical energy than it uses, and needs no intervention.
So when you, Hex, said 'but you have unlimited steam!' yeah, but i have to refuel it every once in a while. or it stops.
THIS DOES NOT. uses booster pumps btw to make the oil move, automating the process.
Eventually that tank will overfill.
It's... interesting that you've got 32v and 3-4 amps for arc furnace...
Which is a bit odd...
30 ticks.
Also, from someone who's actually got a 32 volt battery supply in the very room I'm in powering my light because why not-(as in IRL, it's a Kunpeaved 200ah battery charged by solar, giant, and i can hardly carry it but is worth it) you can touch those bare contacts just fine without being shocked.
This is why I am headcannoning the 30 ticks as actually being the equavelent of real life seconds (also because that's the ingame-real relationship by default without using /time speed command).
And that low voltage is 960 volts. Technically, I'd say more like 480 volts, because that's what a lot of industrial machines (like what my grandparents, when I was growing up, had, for their 1050ft depth well pump powering it) with double the amperage, but 960 makes sense because of the wattage total and the fact that it uses glass insulated conductors on everything, as well as cables extruded with rubberized insulation.
Assuming about 10-25% energy losses;
Electric Engines are about 1/2 horsepower, dynamos take about 1 1/2 horsepower to drive at full effective output, meaning that 3 electric engines produce the same mechanical output as needed to drive one dynamo, but the dynamo only produces 2 of them worth of electrical power generation. Not ideal, not modern effiency, but somewhere inbetween that and early dynamos, an acceptable amount.
Personally, I'm just taking issue with the fact that the Vintage Story engine itself uses kilonewton-meters, when it is more like 1/100th of that in terms of actual numbers, which i find a little... wacky.
Also, at those standard constants in terms of burn time (the listed times, as in 198/sec for anthracite) most coals, lignite being a bit lower, are producing around 30-32 kilowatts of thermal energy when being burned in say, a stove. Or anything else that burns them at the listed 'Burn Duration' rate. Of course, when in stacks, they all burn the same speed (unless you use mods) and when in your Hexsmech machines, they have... machine-dependent burn times. Like Contaminated Coal burning an entire 4 stacks when in the Finery with the bellows working at maximum (or reverberatory hearth). Or how Contaminated Coal seems to last... an entirely insane amount of time inside the Boiler firebox with the door closed. It seems to be relative to IRL time, rather than game time, as time-skipping doesn't speed it up, but having real time lost (due to computer being asleep) causes it to very rapidly burn down until it is up to 'current time'. Which is odd, it's the same with Peat Bricks lasting a really long time and just the same with Biomass bricks too (though they don't make much steam at all).
I will use what you've said for the firewood fuelling the boiler. in that case, using some rough estimates (pine, which is middle of the pack for stacked firewood) has an energy density of 20 gigajoules for a double stack in the boiler, and burns in 38.4 ingame hours. This means that thermally, it is discharging 144 kilowatts of thermal energy as it burns. Not that it'd be very efficient because it needs a lot of air and doesn't exactly have good flue for that, but still, assuming 10% efficiency (which is reasonable for the timeperiod), we'd be getting 14.4 knm (or about 14 dynamo's worth) of power from that, after adding on dynamo losses as well, for about 13.6 kw of electrical power. At the 100% for the (origional settings) steam engines, you get about 4 dynamo's worth each. Which means the full capability of the boiler is about 16 kw when fed through 4 engines.
So I had the question: What if we use an Avgas engine as comparison?
Well, as answer to that: One single engine running Avgas produces 19-20 kw of output. Which is pretty insane. Enough to power 18-20 dynamos, all at once. Outpreforming a boiler with high-efficiency fuel (coal) attached to four or five whole engines in the optimal configuration, arranged just so, such that all have less than a 5 block run and therefore don't need a pressure pump to forward them. Also, a single one running avgas is a lot more compact, and it also can be stocked to last far, far longer. Let alone if you run it on diesel.
One 3x3x3 tank of Avgas or Linseed Oil produces constant power for 5 IRL hours. Diesel, 15 IRL hours.
And one running Diesel or Linseed Oil produces 4 dynamos worth of energy. Which means it's comparable to (or slightly above) a steam engine with a boiler attached-which, considering the cheaper cost (in terms of cast iron) is not that much of a cost. But again, I notice how the 'engine speed' multiplier is actually squared when it comes to total power output. It seems to not only double speed, but also torque. And this means total power is quadrupled.
And one more factor to consider, is the fact that Linseed Oil is renewable (flax), but there's also fuel from the ground, which is entirely renewable (for now) and you can get a basically infinite amount. I found that I could make a self-powering system with 2 pumpjacks and a combustion chambered engine. The engine powers the pumpjacks, the pumpjacks pump enough crude to power the engine (and then some) and all that you can get from oil cracking atop that, is just a bonus.
My game crashed when I look up cast iron ingot information in the handbook.
Here is the crash logs:
I have a hunch. I'll take a look at it. Sorry
Seriously, I'm going to have to rework like, everything to accomidate an Arc Furnace. And believe it or not... Electricity, even without the changes, was probably one of the least of my concerns.
Sounds great. Mainly just a mod I made for me and my friends but hope it works out for you too.
Maaan, I'm ripping all the Hexsmech electric and other stuff out of the Facility... It's too much and it doesn't fit the vibe i'm going for in there.
I'm gonna stuff them in The Tower.
(Also it doesn't fit with the existing megawatt power network)
Ngl it's funny to see you expand the mod to include some insane tech while all i use it for is reverbatory furnace and some kinetic parts lol
Keep up the good work althrough I am a bit put off by the amount of steel needed before we can actually make steel in large capacity with the mod.
Maybe puddling furnace of sorts for steel?
Isn't that just the Finery? The thing I have in one of its' own chambers in the Facility because that thing is what, twenty blocks tall?
Uh. There's something you need to address, Hex.
The fact that though you 'quartered' the torque of the engines, you ACTUALLY decreased their effective energy output to only 1/16th of what they were.
Hah! I finally put my finger on it. That value you applied, is squared in terms of its' effect. No WONDER the engines felt like they were functioning like wet noodles!
Uh... To elaborate: Engine less powerful than large windmill... which... is this intentional? Cuz it feels like it's not supposed to be...
I'll be balancing over the next week or so. I've done a lot of stress testing with the numbers to allow a level of stress on the network that I liked, but I will admit most of it was judged off of petroleum fuels - so I'll look into it.
On my new "test server" that I play on with my friends, we had the curse of not being able to find bauxite till like yesterday. So we are getting there, and you'd better bet I'll tweak the numbers if I don't feel like it's an appropriate amount of power for the player's effort.
Yeah. I just encountered the irony that 'oh, this is squared and you probably think it's direct. You set it to 0.25, but it has the EFFECT of being set to 0.0625'
And I thought you should know about that lol
I admit, I may have gotten a little heated with all the science. It got me worked up lol
So I'm going to config some stuff, and probably see if I can get it to be accurate to real life physics (real efficiency, around 10%, and that relative to fuel burnrates and energy densities) and such.
So, I did some calculations.
Assuming that 4 liters is at supercriticality pressure where the steam is so compressed it is at only double the volume of the water it came from, some research into it from the Engineering Toolbox says that it would be OVER 30 bar. Bar being atmospheric pressure.
Far over, in fact, as even at 30 bar, 1 liter of water still equals 67 liters of steam. Where at the output pressure, it equals TWO liters of steam. Compression isn't entirely linear, but still. That'd equal 700 bar (+/- 100) gas pressure.
And even just 30 bar of pressure, is a lot.
In other terms-30 bar-that's about 435 pounds of pressure on every square inch inside of your pipes and tanks. Which, we'll assume can withstand this, for the sake of argument.
The head of the steam piston itself, which is approximately half a meter of face size, is going to be about 300 kilonewtons per square centimeter. Which kilonewtons is good because it's how torque is measured in the game, everything's consistent. Multiply that by 500 centimeters... and... we're accounting about 1,500,000 kilonewtons of force. That is... EXPONENTIALLY more than ANYTHING we've encountered.
"At what speed!?"
I hear skeptics saying. 60 RPM. As that is one cycle of the piston per second and 4 liters of input per second-which is still a very considerable speed.
Now, some comparison.
This is at less than a TWENTIETH of the ACTUAL output pressure of the boiler, for one.
This would about equate to the output of six thousand Large-sized windmills at 150% wind, or fifteen thousand small ones.
Which is obviously unreasonable.
I could get into joules and such, too, probably... but that's probably not going to help. Just trying to add perspectives for realism.
I'll take the numbers into consideration, thanks. I'm certainly less aiming for realism and more just, what's fun for me personally.
Why does it have to be realistic? Have you ever played gregtech?
I dunno, Realism is just a real thing for me. I really appriciate it, and appriciate the power it puts in my hands to simulate and learn about the real world through the aperature of gaming.
In a more recent update there now seems to be a conflict between this mod and Rusty Shell Fork mod
Note that up to Hexmech 0.1.13.it was working fine but sicne then it hasn't
I can see about looking into it, what kind of conflict are you experiencing? Crash or like log errors?
Crash. And it lists Rusty Shells as the cause but it is fine when i don't add in your newer versions.
I don't know if this is useful but rusty shell CO fork seems to work fine with this
I don't use Combat Overhaul though. So I wouldn't be able to use that one.
is there a way to add resources found mostly in the oceans
If you introduced Aluminum and aluminum tools, you should probably introduced Aluminum bronze. Make it roughly equal to iron tier. Even if it's not particularly helpful given you are iron/steel tier.
I have made a machine that shouldn't exist ;P
It cracks water into hydrogen and oxygen
And then burns the hydrogen
Makes electricity
Electricity charges batteries
Batteries fuel the reactor
reactor cracks water into hydrogen and oxygen
this is insane in the best way
Got another question: When the hydroxides and expanded chemical yielding to boric alchemy coming?
It'll have to be down the road, it's a really big undertaking and it overwhelms me a little... but I really do get that, this is one of those mods that people would probably really appreciate to work seamlessly with Boric. so I will do my best to work on it down the line, but I'm also just a bit daunted by the task after scoping everything I needed to do for full compat. It's a really heavy list.
Rest assured, eventually!
Have you considered starting a ticket tracker? They really help reduce cognitive load with this sort of thing.
I wonder if we'd ever get a Stirling engine for early-ish mechanical power. Slow but can run passively if provided with temperature difference, and gets really good if you manage to plop the bottom in boiling water or next to lava.
there's a buncha new mods for that.
Something you did
broke my boiler
The pump isn't pumping enough water, suddenly. Do I have to now use a Large Pump just to pump enough water into the boiler?
Steam's torque values were balanced against flammable fuels in this new update - about a 20% speed decrease from last update comparatively. I haven't changed min/max flow rates at all - so it should just be a little more intenseive to supply a boiler - but you should be perfectly able to exceed the boiler's max steam consumption with the small pipe's flow rates.
Most fuels and torque are balanced against the petroleum fuel roster now. To get more out of your Engine, install a Combustion chamber, and pipe in a flammable liquid. A good early fuel is Linseed oil - made from pressed flax.
As of 0.2.0 Steam generation is mainly used for chemistry, cracking, and can be used for low-strength networks, but i wouldn't expect to run your whole base on steam.
Pro tip - oil processing extracts infinitely, so crude oil is just as renewable as water once you get your infrastructure running.
Sorry for any inconveniences! Hopefully the config options allow you to tweak values towards more your liking.
I see.
I have powered my entire base off of steam. I've switched to lignite from Contaminated Coal Synthesis (using the mod that I've been working on) which provides enough for 5 engines.
Yes, 5 engines.
It should be 4, but there's... wierd shit.
The steam engines NEVER use 100% of the fuel. I tried out combustion chambers and stuff too... Anyways, regardless.
They never have maxed fuel consumption even with the throttle maxed. They use between 3.2 - 3.9 steam, but never 4.0 steam. And i've tested with Avgas and such, too-and it obviously is much less, but it has a similar reduced capacity relative to the fuel consumption statistic of the fuel itself. I've just never really gotten much of an issue with it... But still.
I diverted stuff from my finery and got things going with the heavy pump and more work with the cast iron... yadda yadda, I have 5 steam engines now. Because at times, out of 16 steam produced (Or technically 15.9 steam (?) from 8 water (again, what? Ratios not ratioing) the 5 are needed to take full advantage of it.
Also, wondering if its' possible to extract any useful liquid components (tar and such) from contaminated/lignite coal.
Anyways, farm do be farming.
Oh, and as I was saying: Can we get vat-powered-by-steam please? At least for the gravel washing.
I'll have to see about the steam, currently the Vat's input tanks don't accept gasses as an input at all (gas chemistry is a reaction chamber/retort thing, didn't figure gasses in an unsealed vat made a whole lot of sense). But cleaning with steam makes sense, so i'll have to see what we can do... maybe I'll do something with the Reaction Chamber instead down the line with cleaning. I've got a few things brewing for the next updates... but I'm going to let this one sit for a little while to immersively play through the currently set balance levers myself, and rebalance as I go along.
I can also totally add a contaminated coal tar processing line. Might have to give me a week or two though, I really need a break from this for a bit - haven't been getting good sleep, crunching a lot. Need a good long break...
Ah, I see. I was just suggesting.
Basically, there's a whole thing going on in my mod where one uses Veridisite/uranium silicate and such to unlock the energy therein.
Beryl, a material made, is a beryllium-based thing. Inspired by real processes of having beryllium made artificially from atom smashers. Most pure beryllium on the planet, irl. And using that and some other methods to harvest carbon from the air, which results in contaminated coal and such.
Anyways, my suggestion was just to make coal tar makable from lignite.
Is it possible to make this mod compatible in the future with Improved Metallurgy? I'm considering using it paired with IM to be a lighter (well, more like less space-demanding and not requiring to build an entire factory complex) alternative to Steelmaking Expanded+Pipes and Power for future playthroughs
I can look into it sometime. I've never played with Improved Metallurgy before so I'll have to see what "compatible" entails.
Partially overlap on some materials (stainless steel, pig iron), partially on mechanics (also has molten metal transport but pretty sure it isn't actually works like liquid)
Hmm I cant seem to play it when searching up the recipe in the handbook
when I type "M (for Metal)" it just crash lol
I believe I fixed your issue in the new update (0.2.1). Downloaded your mod versions of some stuff and realized my Armory patching was a little mucked up with Toolsmith installed as well as not being all the way updated.
Hopefully both work fine now.
Ill check on it later, thank you
Oooo I guess I can add this in my singleplayer world, More friendly automation for me :DD
more cast iron, nice, wanna work together to make a compat with me smithin mod?
Hell, i'm always up for compat. I think I really need to take a small break from development for at least a few days before getting back into it (I've been crunching really hard and not sleeping well the last few days), but i'd love to, especially if you're reaching out!
Just found a small bug: Vanilla anvil that's got it model changed by Wulk's smithing mod will revert back to it original shape when this mod got installed. It's not something game-breaking, but might worth to check out.
Fixed in 0.2.4, let me know if you have any more issues. Thanks!
neat!
neat!
goodie, i can do the cast iron thing on my end, so no worries on that part. the anvil thing that phuong said... that will be tricky.
does this mod add any new block/material to the world to be harvested? I really want to use this but I don't want to create a new save.
No it doesn't in fact, I actually made this mod purely with that in mind - I am adding it to my years-long server, and didn't want any worldgen.
You're totally safe to add this mod to an existing world - most of the materials are obtained either from vanilla, or renewable methods.
sweet!
I'm not sure how important this is, but it seems like the better ruins patches have an issue
"Y": {
"type": "Item",
"code": "betterruins:br-schematic-mechanical",
"consume": false
},
"B": {
"type": "Block",
"code": "game:supportbeam-tarnishedmetal-steel"
}
}
30.8.2026 15:45:12 [Error] Patch 4 (target: betterruins:recipes/grid/schematic-mechanical/mechanical.json) in hexsmech:patches/betterruins-compat.json failed because supplied path /21/ingredients/P/skipVariants/- is invalid: The json path /21/ingredients/P/skipVariants/- was not found. Could traverse until /21/ingredients, but then 'P' does not exist. Full json at this path: {
"Y": {
"type": "Item",
"code": "betterruins:br-schematic-mechanical",
"consume": false
},
"B": {
"type": "Block",
"code": "game:supportbeam-tarnishedmetal-steel"
}
}
30.8.2026 15:45:12 [Error] Patch 5 (target: betterruins:recipes/grid/schematic-mechanical/mechanical.json) in hexsmech:patches/betterruins-compat.json failed because supplied path /21/ingredients/P/skipVariants/- is invalid: The json path /21/ingredients/P/skipVariants/- was not found. Could traverse until /21/ingredients, but then 'P' does not exist. Full json at this path: {
"Y": {
"type": "Item",
"code": "betterruins:br-schematic-mechanical",
"consume": false
},
"B": {
"type": "Block",
"code": "game:supportbeam-tarnishedmetal-steel"
}
}
Should be fixed in the new update. I haven't updated BetterRuins on my end yet - whoops
Is Rhodochrosite and Pyrolusite supposed to take 6 ingame hours to Roast into Manganese Dioxide? Every other recipe is generally 6-10 minutes, so it feels like it was mistyped.
The next update is going to have a lot of balance changes for durations and processes, hopefully everything feels more fair and real.
Sorry it's taking so long - there's just a lot of stuff I need to polish before getting it out onto the floor, now that there's people actually playing this mod. Should be out in the next 3 or so days.
How about vat (100c) heating from steam? It EVEN has 2 seperate pipe inputs!
(that's the recepie temp I want)
i feel that aluminium can be used for liners for lanterns
Good idea! Didn't even think about that.
Seems there's still some minor incompat between Boric Alchemy and this mod, looking up the recipe for crushed vanadinite crashes the game.
Running on 64 bit Windows 10.0.26200.0 with 16147 MB RAM
Game Version: v1.22.6 (Stable)
27/08/2026 02:59:38 p. m.: Critical error occurred
Loaded Mods: boricalchemy@2.8.3, game@1.22.6, hexsmech@0.1.13, creative@1.22.6, survival@1.22.6
Involved Harmony IDs: hexsmech
System.InvalidOperationException: Missing or errored output result for recipe 'boricalchemy:recipes/grid/compat/compatibilityweirness.json'
at Vintagestory.API.Common.RecipeBase.GenerateOutputStack(ItemSlot[] inputSlots, ItemSlot outputSlot) in VintagestoryApi\Common\Crafting\RecipeBase.cs:line 292
at Vintagestory.GameContent.CollectibleBehaviorHandbookTextAndExtraInfo.addIngredientForInfo_Patch3(CollectibleBehaviorHandbookTextAndExtraInfo this, ICoreClientAPI capi, ItemStack[] allStacks, ActionConsumable`1 openDetailPageFor, ItemStack stack, List`1 components, Single marginTop, List`1 containers, List`1 fuels, List`1 molds, Boolean haveText)
at Vintagestory.GameContent.CollectibleBehaviorHandbookTextAndExtraInfo.GetHandbookInfo(ItemSlot inSlot, ICoreClientAPI capi, ItemStack[] allStacks, ActionConsumable`1 openDetailPageFor) in VSSurvivalMod\Systems\Handbook\CollectibleBehaviorHandbookTextAndExtraInfo.cs:line 125
at Vintagestory.GameContent.GuiHandbookItemStackPage.GetPageText(ICoreClientAPI capi, ItemStack[] allStacks, ActionConsumable`1 openDetailPageFor) in VSSurvivalMod\Systems\Handbook\Gui\GuiHandbookItemStackPage.cs:line 119
at Vintagestory.GameContent.GuiHandbookItemStackPage.ComposePage(GuiComposer detailViewGui, ElementBounds textBounds, ItemStack[] allstacks, ActionConsumable`1 openDetailPageFor) in VSSurvivalMod\Systems\Handbook\Gui\GuiHandbookItemStackPage.cs:line 113
at Vintagestory.GameContent.ModSystemSurvivalHandbook.onComposePage(GuiHandbookPage page, GuiComposer detailViewGui, ElementBounds textBounds, ActionConsumable`1 openDetailPageFor) in VSSurvivalMod\Systems\Handbook\SurvivalHandbook.cs:line 135
at Vintagestory.GameContent.GuiDialogHandbook.initDetailGui() in VSSurvivalMod\Systems\Handbook\Gui\GuiDialogHandbook.cs:line 260
at Vintagestory.GameContent.GuiDialogHandbook.OpenDetailPageFor(String pageCode) in VSSurvivalMod\Systems\Handbook\Gui\GuiDialogHandbook.cs:line 329
at Vintagestory.GameContent.ModSystemSurvivalHandbook.OnSurvivalHandbookHotkey(KeyCombination key) in VSSurvivalMod\Systems\Handbook\SurvivalHandbook.cs:line 224
at Vintagestory.Client.NoObf.ClientMain.OnKeyDown(KeyEvent args) in VintagestoryLib\Client\ClientMain.cs:line 1876
at Vintagestory.Client.NoObf.ClientPlatformWindows.game_KeyDown(KeyboardKeyEventArgs e) in VintagestoryLib\Client\ClientPlatform\Input.cs:line 253
at OpenTK.Windowing.Desktop.NativeWindow.KeyCallback(Window* window, Keys key, Int32 scancode, InputAction action, KeyModifiers mods)
--- End of stack trace from previous location ---
at OpenTK.Windowing.Desktop.NativeWindow.RethrowCallbackExceptionsIfNeeded()
at OpenTK.Windowing.Desktop.GameWindow.Run()
at Vintagestory.Client.ClientProgram.Start(ClientProgramArgs args, String[] rawArgs) in VintagestoryLib\Client\ClientProgram.cs:line 354
at Vintagestory.Client.ClientProgram.<>c__DisplayClass10_0.<.ctor>b__1() in VintagestoryLib\Client\ClientProgram.cs:line 131
at Vintagestory.ClientNative.CrashReporter.Start(ThreadStart start) in VintagestoryLib\Client\ClientPlatform\ClientNative\CrashReporter.cs:line 95
Event Log entries for Vintagestory.exe, the latest 1
==================================
I've fixed the crash in the next (upcoming) update - and I'll reach out to MrBadWithNames about the leftover stuff in their patches.
With this next update, I'll do my best to keep things compatible with Boric Alchemy. However, yesterday I downloaded a new version of BA, and did a sweep of overlap content. There's seemingly some things that I'm introducing on my end that aren't 100% cohesive, so I'll do my best to keep things working. But in the future, I don't expect our mods to be "fully compatible" in terms of overlap content, as I don't play with BA and I am sculpting this mod's progression in my own modding environment's vaccum. Lots of things that i'm expanding on - the gas system, electricity - Boric has its own variants of representations.
Questions and Comments so far:
I think I should be able to grow pineapples in the arctic, and dislike the limit on the number of radiators. If I have the gumption and the amount of steam output to keep all those radiators powered, I think I should be able to heat my greenhouses as much as I damn-well like. It's not like we have unlimited steam.
Steam power for stove (or alternate heat exchanger stove+oven range), when? Suggestion: Base the 'fuel temp' on the 'steam inlet temp' (whatever the temp of the steam coming into the stove is). My reccomendation for steam draw is 0.5 to 1 liter per second as we already have radiators that use steam, and don't take a ton of it, this basically serves as a bigger version of that. And, well, powering a boiler is significantly harder than a firepit/stove. You should be able to power a lot with minimal effort. After all... the minimum in terms of materials that can be used for fuel, seem to be firewood. And when using firewood, it seems to go through that firewood in only minutes-and the maximum steam temp with Firewood-not even counting pipe losses-is 341 celsius. This counterbalances the longer lifetime of firewood in the boiler firebox... and the rest, well. A boiler and piping require a LOT of cast iron and other expensive parts. I think it very much should draw that much.
Besides, at 900c firebox temp, I can fuel a stove and two steam engines, using all the Contaminated Coal from ruins I've been salvaging.
Addressing your comments:
This next update has been a really really big and exhausting chapter, but I'm getting really close to releasing 0.2.0 - it will come with a bunch of random small balance changes, more informational block infos, more verbose handbook entries and guides, and lots of new exciting expansions to already existing stuff that will definitely change and feed further progression, quite a lot.
Thanks for the suggestions and thanks for playing!
Hello another person wanting arctic capable radiators as im planning on running a SMP based around Frostpunk it would be nice to at minimum have a config to mux with im even down for it requireing more steam to keep at that higher temp
I'll definitely look into config options!
YESSS! They said it so much better.
I was asking more about config options, rather than RAW functionality. Sorry lel.
I see... My reccomendation for the stove still stands, as a later thing. As stated, 341 (or perhaps 350, I was running with 1 stack firewood and 1 stack contaminated coal) will provide enough to cook stuff, but not much more than that.
Technically you could run an interheater design with a firebox, pipe, pump, and fuel-but that's pretty unreasonably complicated lel
My point was just a steam powered stove for low-temp cooking, rather than firepit recipies.
And another thing, if you would: Make it possible for the stove to heat ovens above it ;P
I wanna bake breaaaaad!
Ovens? You got it.
Got one more suggestion.
Make it possible to heat the Vat with steam. I mean, the second input tank is right there.
I've got a network where the steam can go all the way to it, but it's not being consumed.
You can see me using the radiator to prove that there's steam here. Yes, I disconnected it too. Anyways, there you go.
I think it'd be nice if I didn't have to fuel it... and just fuelled by my boiler.
what in the vessel
Just some gravel I wanna clean. The temperature required is 100c, and steam is obviously over 100c. I'd also comment that you could do the same thing for a Retort, because depending on steam superheating, it might be able to do pretty good with that.
After all, at high temperature and good pressure, thermal distribution can make charcoal or the other recipie (can't think it off the top of my head) in the Retort too. So my thought is the fact that if the temp is sufficient, why can't I use steam to power the reactions through heat exchange?
I know that these two recepies I like, are at 300 and 350c. And we have supercritical steam in a lot of these pipes if you're boiling with Peat or better.
Supercritical, as in... It's either water at extreme high pressure which makes it liquid, but it decompresses into steam when permitted, or otherwise significantly above boiling point. The vat just seems to only need to be hot enough to boil, and I think that it'd make sense if steam can serve to get it hot enough. Your steam doesn't even have to be that hot...
I think the mod concepts are very cool! I'd love to use the radiators to help bring heat to my greenhouse in the arctic -48c. I know it may not bring the greenhouse up to 0 to grow things, as it is december, but i was hoping this might be a possible solution. However, currently, i can't figure out how to get the fuel into the firebox of the boiler. shift rightclick or ctrl right click doesn't seem to be working. I've tried peat and firewood, no luck. am i missing something?
Are you having problems with the bottom lip of the Firebox door? In the next update (coming soon, I'm just wrapping up a few big things), the bottom lip of the selection box is hidden for easier placement.
Otherwise, it should just be the same as placing ground-storage. You can hug your body up close, right next to the Boiler access, and the bottom blockface in the back should be targetable.
If neither of those are your issue, I can look into it on my end.
Can any metal be melted/cast in the Reverbatory Furnace or just cast iron?
Any metal can be melted and cast, below a max of 1495° (so not Steel)! Cast iron is just the result of melting Iron within it.
I'd be tempted to start smelting all my ore in it but having to constantly make/fire new Casting Beds is probably more work than just the normal way. Surprised no one has automated clay forming, considering how tedious/demanding it can be with mods.
In the next update, there'll be a reusable Casting bed (due to popular demand).
Also I don't know if you've ever seen Simple Pottery Wheel? It's what my server uses.
Some change that this mod does breaks boats entirely.
Getting too close to boats with this mod active causes a crash with an error pointing to attachment points.
Damn! I'm pretty sure I know what's causing this, I fixed a similar bug with other dressable animals and i guess just straight up spaced that boats exist. I'll get an update out soon. Thank you so much.
Edit: My guess was wrong. Can I ask what version you were running during the crash? If before 0.1.5, this crash was present - in the newer updates, it seems to be fixed on my end:
Oh, looks like I am the one at fault, for some reason I didn't notice I was using an older version (0.1.3) which was the version just before the mount bug was fixed, which I assume was the cause of the boat crash as boats probably function similarly.
I guess I got confused with the file name cause 0.1.3 was named "0.1.03.zip" while version "0.1.13.zip" is named correctly and I assumed I had the latest version
Thank god lmao! I legit couldn't find anything wrong. Thanks for playing!!
How the hell do i make cast iron rods? The recipe book offers no recipe.
Also how do i use the large vertical gear? I cant place it on anything.
Cast iron rods should be made from a cast iron ingot on an anvil, like other vanilla metal rods. (Or if later game - once you've already got your hands on a few Cast Iron rods - you can use the Slitting Mill to turn an ingot into a rod).
The vertical large gear requires a solid 3x3 wall behind it.
Thanks. Still, the cast iron rods and ingots don't show up in the handbook at all.
Also is steel possible to make in the finery forge?
And ngl it'd be cool to have casting beds that are multi use. Maybe cast iron ones that need to be inlaid with flux and fireclay after each use?
Super interesting, I don't know why they aren't. I'll look into it - they both show up just fine on mine and my friends' ends, hence me not noticing anything wrong with it.
Steel is not possible to make in the Finery - it's just meant to process Iron easier. Steel will be processed with another structure that I'm still in-progress with, so it'll be a later update.
And people have suggested some kind of reusable or easier Casting bed - I likely will look into some way to make Casting Beds at least easier to make, if not looking into making a more permanent bed.
Thanks for playing!
I can't make charcoal in my retort for some reason
It says my Residue Slots are full...
I don't see anything!
Hopefully this is fixed in the new update - I made it respect previous batch counts, so you shouldn't lose any materials. It was a small deadlock because it didn't have enough output space to deposit the solid outputs - that's why it was saying the residue slots were full.
The Retort should now only process in max parallel batches of 4 (so, for example, 4 batches of the charcoal would be 128 firewood -> 64 charcoal, so that's how much it'll consume in one craft) and it will meter your output items over the duration of the craft.
I'm imagining you increased the stack size of firewood or something?
That was my first attempt, was 999999 firewood.
But not this one. I ripped out the controller and the in/out boxes because that stress-test it obviously failed, and put them back in, empty, and tried it with 64.
But it said the RESIDUE slots were full. I don't see any 'residue' slots! The hell is a 'residue' slot!
The tank is empty, the tar output is drained into a reserve tank and empty, and I got ONE charcoal. I don't-hwat
Anyways, it seems to be working now... after reloading my world...
Question...
The hell does pooling in the handbook mean!?
WHAT IS POOLING!?
Also, tell me.
Just tell me.
Are there ANY of these which can do what a Bloomery can, in other words-replace the Bloomery firebrick bloomery treadmill?
I mean, the Reverbratory Hearth seems to *always* require flux or other stuff. Even with the piped bellows?
In response to your second question first - Yes - that's the whole point of the mod lmao. I didn't love the tedium of tearing down bloomeries constantly for iron production - that was the inspiration for making the Reverberatory able to melt iron in the first place.
It melts into molten Cast Iron - which can be pumped or transferred into the Finery structure, the mod's second structure. The Finery requires feedstock (either slag or Expanded Matter crushed hematite), and lining (made from raw fireclay bricks) in order to be able to perform a Stir, which allows you to puddle your cast iron into Wrought iron (real iron) with a rabble, with an small bonus of extra molten iron depending on how good your stir is.
Wrought iron can be extracted from the Finery Basin with tongs in your offhand, which gives you "Wrought iron balls", which is basically a little baby iron bloom. It has significantly less slag on it than a normal bloom, and up to 4 can fit on the forge at once to heat up (as opposed to an Iron Bloom only fitting 1), and they're significantly easier to hand-work, and much faster to helve. It makes the processing volume a LOT faster, especially with 2 or 3 helve hammers.
I wrote the handbook at the very end, i was very very tired. I will rewrite the handbook section to be a little more clear about the process.
Ahh... because right now, I just have those structures in their own rooms in the facility, all assembled but not able to use them as of yet.
I'll try it with the wrought iron balls. Also, the incredible speed of the helve should make it decently quick. that thing strikes more than thrice per second.
Getting an error, which I assume is not very critical, on world gen, using expanded foods and hydrate or diedrate, maybe there's some kind of conflict of some kind but I just thought I'd share it with you :)
17.8.2026 09:26:30 [Error] Patch 0 in hexsmech:patches/expandedfoods-compat.json: File game:recipes/barrel/saltwaterportion.json not found
17.8.2026 09:26:30 [Error] Patch 1 in hexsmech:patches/expandedfoods-compat.json: File game:recipes/barrel/saltwaterportion.json not found
17.8.2026 09:26:30 [Error] Patch 2 in hexsmech:patches/expandedfoods-compat.json: File game:recipes/barrel/saltwaterportion.json not found
Oh interesting lmao... soft admittance - my server hasn't updated to the latest Expanded Foods update. I'll have to take a look at it when we do, but for now, it should just be cosmetic. Thanks for letting me know!
Hello, I don't understand how the initial photo construction works... Apparently, a bellows is needed, but what's the main part? I can't find the element to add. Do you have a video explaining how it works and the structures?
My bad, the initial controller of the Reverberatory multiblock is the Hearth. It should tell you exactly what it requires in the chat during construction. The Bellows Input (the refractory block that recieves bellows air) is connected in the middle of the Left side of the multiblock.
Right in the center here, so the bellows can blow into the Firebox - any tier Bellows Input works.
I don't have a video explaining anything yet - if that's something that many people end up wanting, I might have to try and remember how to use Shotcut.
I managed to get it working, but it's a shame it's limited to 32 ingots given its complexity.
I tried to get the large one working before realizing it wasn't for smelting iron (and it took me a while to figure out what to put in the container, but apparently it needs to be paired with two furnaces? How do you craft the new black iron? I haven't seen a recipe, and I haven't even found the ingot recipe xD
because the big steam engine is awesome
Cast Iron is made by smelting any variant of Iron in the Reverberatory Furnace, and piping the Molten cast iron into a Casting bed chamber (with a casting bed in it).
The Reverberatory is essentially like a big, bellows-able crucible - the "cost" of being able to melt your iron into liquid is the machine converting the Molten iron into Molten cast iron upon smelt.
Molten cast iron can be piped from the Reverberatory into a Casting bed chamber to give you ingots, like other (non-steel) metals. It can also be piped into the Finery, to perform "puddling", which allows your to refine your molten Cast Iron into real iron by stirring it and mixing in feedstock.
Just to mention, the Finery only needs 1 Reverberatory furnace to run - the second pipe connection is for extracting molten Aluminium (in the second Finery process), and is unused in the Cast Iron process.
The 32 ingot cap on the Reverberatory is for balance - I really didn't want it to feel too busted from vanilla processing. The Reverberatory itself really is 95% refractory bricks, so pretty obtainable. The "Reverberatory -> Finery" ironmaking process is more like, a convenience sidegrade rather than a pure upgrade over Bloomeries - slightly more setup, but a much longer payoff.
Got another bug.
Your modifications to the Bellows breaks the usage of the Big Bellows on the forge! But only when your mod's installed when the bellows are specifically placed... for some reason.
I'm just going to disengauge your mod for placing my factory's bellows.
It's very strange. Even when your mod's enabled-the already placed bellows does NOT break... unless it's broken and replaced, at which point, it becomes completely useless.
I can't seem to reproduce this. Large Bellows works great on my end - breaking it, relogging, etc all seem to keep it running and heating the forge over here. What exactly are you seeing occur?
Edit - just making sure, my mod adds a requirement to supply a Wooden Linkage to the Large Bellows to connect it to the Wooden Linkage Arm. Is that maybe what you're seeing?
Hold on-is there a seperate forge we're talking about?
I'm talking about a single-block forge, not a factory forge, specifically. Which uses a wooden toggle and such.
Is there something wrong with my game?
Without ANY mods installed, it keeps flipping the bellows every time too-Is there something odd here?
I'm on V 1.22.7. You think it's broken it?
I can try updating to 1.22.7 (I haven't yet). But it seems to work for me. Not sure what needs a "wooden toggle" in the setup.
Large bellows is from a mod, right? IIRC the only mod i saw that added it explicitly says you need the linkage arm.
(I've been there making that mistake.)
Got an issue.
When two different speeds of gears are linked (one with large gear one without) it grinds to a halt. This doesn't make much sense-due to the fact there is a disengauged clutch between them. Dog Clutch or conventional transmission+clutch. That caused my Facility factory to grind to a halt and it took an embarrassingly long time to figure out why. And it does so with any source of mechanical power-whether it be a turbine... an autorotor... or a Stirling Engine. Or, of course... a steam engine.
I'll look into this, could you maybe send a screenshot of your setup?
I ripped it out. Gimme a moment, and I'll create the simplest version of it on a creative world-
This is a simple version, using a dog clutch. I can also do others with just the vanilla stuff, using transmissions and clutches of wood.
So, why would anyone want this?
Simple reason: It's a two speed transmission. (or more if you use more clutches/transmissions).
Yes. one is off, one is on. If two are on, it will automatically grind to a halt.
It also doesn't matter if the two rotate different directions-or the same direction, when disengauged (both sides of the clutch/transmission)
Awesome okay thanks! I fixed this in the next update. I will push an update soon
Love the mod so far Hex! But I do have to ask, will you be adding a wooden variant of the vertical large gear? Kinda been one of those things I really want to see in the game. Also, what kind of placements count as "solid"?
I likely won't add a wooden variant of vertical large gear - the metal one is gated behind Steel (it needs a large casting bed) which is what I felt was appropriate balance.
Solid should just mean it has a wall behind each gear piece - 3x3
Got a question though. Is it possible to put the steam output cap of a boiler in the config?
Basically, so that the config can be adjusted to have a higher (or lower) maximum throughput using say, lignite, anthracite, charcoal, coke, and modded fuels if the server owner likes?
Note: I'm not suggesting you change the boiler default output. I'm just suggesting that it be increased to allow for the possibility of using a single boiler to power a MASSIVE network-with the right fuel. Such as Coke, or Binchotan from Better Pyrolysis?
I know we covered this somewhat before, but I want to counterpoint your point of 'it makes brown coal more useful'... with the comment that 'any better fuels are USELESS when you don't have a steam network which REQUIRES that much'. Especially because extra water is lost (and you therefore need a pump that can keep up with, and a big enough water source for) a higher fuel might be counterintuitive by causing engines to sputter, for example, even if they're the only thing supplied, when the boiler cuts in and out due to water overuse.
(And in general especially when you need to pump water in but the tanks on the boiler are sealed, and you're out of water and such because it blew through too much)
Also, maybe a similar config setting for Radiators to allow more radiators to have an effect on the heating coeffient in a room... such that it's possible to set it to allow for more than 8 heaters.
My world's a snowball, it'd be nice if TECHNOLOGY could serve as a sort of remedy for such issues ;P
Certainly, i can look into putting some config settings. I'll just say, most of my judgment on balance is within the vacuum of my server/pack, so I'm not too familiar with how my machines work with fuels over vanilla's coke (at 1340°).
I can certainly look into adding some kind of check to allow for higher fuels to produce higher amounts of steam. I'll have to think about how to balance it.
I mean, I can't decompile the script bits easy, but I'd suggest the easiest part being to add a config...
Again, I haven't taken a look at how you, y'know, wrote the code. I dunno what you've got.
But I'm ASSUMING (and I guess I should ask)-how you determine the steam, is a mathematical function with a Clamp on it, causing it to calculate any amount of steam-with any amount above 8/16 water/steam consumption/production equalling that cieling.
My suggestion was to add a setting to the Config on what that cieling IS. Default being 8/16, above that being a continuation of the calculation. And letting the users actually choose if they want to alter it... That's all I meant. Then there's nothing else that needs changed without config alteration-and I figured that this should be a relatively simple addition.
I pushed a few config options in the latest update! Hopefully, this lets you tweak all of the rates to your liking. :)
Eyy! I think you fixed the steam not recognizing multiple engines problem!
I have 5700 degree water... This isn't supposed to happen, I feel.
Also, I'm loving the radiators. The fact they actually HEAT things that you grow? AMAZING, absolute PEAK. Would not have any other way.
Now all we need is lighting for them. Maybe like I said, some super-expensive endgame lightsource that throws out even more than fully-equipped chandaliers, and connects to the same network.
<3 I'm glad you like them!
It might be maybe a few days or so before I dive back into development, I legit just took a twelve hour nap, I've been hitting this really hard lately.
But also it's hard to stop haha. So we'll see!
Since this is made for your own server primarily (which is my favorite genre of mod, since I can relate) what mods do you personally run with this, and what mods would you strongly advise against off the top of your head?
Thanks for asking! Personally I'm not too sure of mods I would avoid, maybe mods with overlap content but that's about it - even then, it's good to try them out individually to see which you prefer.
Some of my favorite mods that we run on our server:
Got any recommendations?
We're using all about the same stuff, except none of the food mods since they ballooned our ram usage. We're also using IOG and previously IME, which I loved having the bigger multiblock smelters and stuff, but had to ditch it since it made the game quite a lot too slow and very not-fun haha. I'm wondering how bad the overlap from that Vintage Kinematics mod will feel with this one, since we're also using that. I'm not quite sure what else we'd have that may overlap.
More Tuning Cylinders and Hear Resonators Farther, were great.
Signals is also a good lightweight mod, though I altered the lightbulbs to change their chroma and brightness.
Definitely want a light that goes on the steam network. Steam for heat, steam for light, farming resulting... Could be great.
Will this support all 1.22.x versions? I run 1.22.3 still as the age old saying "if it ain't broke, don't fix it", and this looks like the exact mod I need to fill some gaps in progression in my server, but it throws the version mismatch.
Aw shoot, 1.22.6 is actually the floor - VS 1.22.6 added a new permission-check api for block interactions, and I reference it in every machine that has a GUI. On 1.22.3 the api don't exist. So I don't actually think it's compatible with 1.22.3. Sorry :(
Ooh that makes a lot of sense though, thank you for informing me! More of a reason to push my server to the newest version whenever all I need is supported 🙏
Oh, one more thing.
It would be lovely if you could have some sort of lights powered by the power that's generated... Steam or otherwise. I dunno how, I know it's only a light comment (heh) but don't think about it too hard.
TBF, I'm basically looking for a substitute for Electrical Progressive with lights and such. BECAUSE ELECTRICAL PROGRESSIVE IS NOT A LIGHTWEIGHT MODPACK in any sense of the word.
General ideas:
Steam-powered 'bobber' apparatus, a linear pendulum that functions on the principles of Alessandro Volta's (famed from the Voltaic Pile or the first easily chained battery cell) Electrophorus for coldcathode lamp. Probably an endgame thing because of the electrophorus's material/alloy requirements.
Aeopile-based steam dynamo with magnets on the 'wings' that spins at high speed, and works as an inductor for an induction lamp. This I like because it allows for extreme brightness (like 30 light).
See Technology Connections here, which explains how a flourescent light without any actual electrodes AT ALL, can glow for a basically unlimited lifespan at extreme brightness. Also, it cuts out the entire... electrical generator, ballast, voltage regulator, and wiring portion, making it much more efficient. Expensive, but like... It could be an endgame thing.
I dunno, just my suggestion.
Hey, thanks! I'll look into some of these suggestions.
I plan on doing quite a bit this next month or two with electricity, lighting, and more steam/fuel consumers ;) stay tuned
Hmm, cool.
I just don't want another Electrical Progressives wambo combo on my poor world XP
Also, Electrical Progressives updates were relatively frequently breaking my game.
Especially with how big the facility is, that's just... ugh.
Not good. Not good at all.
But yeah, I like that idea. Another one is to use *reverberations* to cause piezeoelectric stimulation for lights.
I've got a whole underground farming situation going on, you see. All that. Currently, I've altered and recompiled the Signals Mod to make its' lightbulbs work for facility lighting. I'd rather use something a little more consistent. And with other uses, as well. Also, your mod is the ONLY MOD I have EVER encountered with steam pipes that don't feel like HELL to assemble over long distances.
Thanks again for going through the trouble of making our mods compatible! 💖
Of course! Makes it easier for me to eventually do a Boric Alchemy playthrough! :D
Okay, I've been extensively testing.
The water capacity-specifically WATER CAPACITY of the fluid pump, needs buffed.
I've done massive testing, and mind you, I've got an array of autorotors feeding this sucker-such that it is getting over FIVE MEGANEWTONS of force.
And that is fed through 3 large gear axel-outside connections (gear step-ups) to increase speed. Not kilonewtons, MEGANEWTONS.
Anyways, all that, the speed which is several times the amount needed to ignite axles...
Is still not enough to fully supply a boiler with a water inlet RIGHT BESIDE IT.
Is there something I'm missing? Size of water source, glitch, what?
Because I should not be UNABLE TO SUPPLY EIGHT LITERS PER SECOND to it.
See, I keep failing to be able to power four steam engines.
I want to, but I can't because the water input is bottlenecking the boiler. The boiler is CAPABLE of producing enough steam for all of them, and a little besides.
But it keeps incessantly running out of water! I can NOT get enough water for it to work! Sure, it might make sense for that much difficulty if you're say, pumping molten steel, but this is just WATER!
An open pipe sucking up water checks underneath it for a 3x3x3 area for water, and suck speed is proportionate to how many of those blocks are water. It should suck more water out of a larger pond, and cap out once it sees 27 water blocks.
If you're still running out of water afterwards, I can definitely do some tweaking.
I'll put this in the handbook somewhere.
Know what, that makes a lot of sense, I'ma uh... I'ma gonna alter my setup. Yeah, that probably will help a lot.
Hope you enjoy the new update with the Steam radiators!
I also did some tweaking and balancing with pump providing - one pump can feed multiple deposits (steam engines, boilers, etc) now as long as it's drawing enough liquid/gas. Pumps can now also chain each other (i accidentally didn't have this set up correctly but it should work perfectly fine now). I made a new handbook page for all the steam stuff (generation/conversion rates, requirements for the structures, etc).
Thanks for helping me test stuff!
Just tested. Can confirm... I am no longer running out of water when powering my 4 steam engines ;P
Do have a suggestion tho. Some sort of steam stove? Not sure, but I know that the steam that's produced is not just above boiling, but many times QUITE A LOT above, especially if you're using Coke. So I'm just thinking that that would be neat.
And I also noticed one more thing... For high temp coals and coke, the steam output of the boiler seems to cap and not utilize them. Is that intentional behaviour?
The max conversion rate from a boiler is 8 L/s water into 16 L/s steam, at around 1102°, so each coal has about the same boiling rate (lignite drags a tiny bit behind). I feel like, the 16L/s cap is for balance purposes (feeds a nice flush 4 engines), and I'm not sure how to go about separating and balancing the different coals without making lignite/black coal worse and not reach the 16 L/s ceiling.
I might tweak the curve a little more, but realistically, I think it almost makes brown coal a little more useful if all are about the same - Coke is already pretty valuable and giving Lignite more of a use feels flavorful.
I was definitely thinking about extending the stove to additionally be able to use steam in the future, but I gotta figure out how to go about balancing that.
Ahhh, okay. That makes sense then.
Well, my suggestion would be that it bases on STEAM TEMPERATURES.
So then your hotter fuels could actually have a benefit, not in direct steam, but in the steam temperature for management purposes.
As a side note? I have 2 radiators and 4 engines connected to the same single boiler, which is fuelled by lignite. Which somehow works, all of them at 100% drain, from what I can tell, none of them are lacking.
Seems to work fine, but the axles and gear textures seem to be missing/glitched when starting/entering a world with just this mod, and the logs output the following:
14.8.2026 13:52:59 [Warning] Failed resolving crafting recipe ingredient with code game:metalblock-new-riveted-aluminium in Grid recipe
14.8.2026 13:52:59 [Error] Grid Recipe 'game:recipes/grid/metalblock.json': Output game:metalblock-new-riveted-aluminium cannot be resolved.
14.8.2026 13:52:59 [Warning] Failed resolving crafting recipe ingredient with code game:metalblock-new-riveted-castiron in Grid recipe
14.8.2026 13:52:59 [Error] Grid Recipe 'game:recipes/grid/metalblock.json': Output game:metalblock-new-riveted-castiron cannot be resolved.
14.8.2026 13:52:59 [Warning] Failed resolving crafting recipe ingredient with code game:metalblock-new-riveted-spiegeleisen in Grid recipe
14.8.2026 13:52:59 [Error] Grid Recipe 'game:recipes/grid/metalblock.json': Output game:metalblock-new-riveted-spiegeleisen cannot be resolved.
Besides having lava-colored funky cast iron axles, everything else seems to work as intended. Could probably use with a config to disable or reduce the 2x ore-to-cast iron as it feels a bit OP, and might incentivize those with SMEX to build the blast furnace to get a complete ore-to-iron loop without the reverbaratory being just straight up better at getting more iron out of the ore.
Super strange, i've never seen the axle/gear texture problem. I can try to do some testing to try to figure that out.
I can probably definitely add a config for the Cast iron doubling in the coming days. I felt it balanced mainly because Cast iron itself has very limited uses (it doesn't make tools) which I felt was a fair tradeoff. Additionally, when converting the Cast iron in the Finery, there's a constant Slag tax, so you still don't quite get double iron from the conversion, unless you're really good at the Stir minigame.
I'm aware of the Grid recipe warnings, they're purely cosmetic (those three metal blocks simply just don't have "metalblock-new-riveted" variants). I'll find a way to remove them from the log but they shouldn't be an issue for regular play.
Thanks!
Pushed an update, thanks for the information! Hopefully this fixes the issues you were having.
I crash when looking at Pegasi from the Pegasus mod when using your mod with Expanded Materials. The crash is caused by the Block Interaction Help (doesn't crash when I disable it). Here is the crash:
Thanks, should be fixed
Thanks, it works! Was not expecting a response yet alone a fix that quick lol.
Interesting mod... Will look forward to it in the future
Got a suggestion.
Add a steam radiator. Something to heat the area.
I don't want to use the incredibly... process-intensive Electrical Progressive, but it's the only thing that has it. That and Jonas Tech, but that one's BADLY outdated.
So maybe steam radiators that are fueled by the boiler? Just sayin', could be really neat.
Hi Lyra! That totally seems like something I could see about doing sometime - would not be very difficult, especially considering I already have another mod that deals with Heat sources - I might add some cross compatibility between the two. Thanks for the suggestion.
There's a mod that does its own take on aluminum. Could support for it be added?
https://mods.vintagestory.at/sillyaluminum
Furthermore, a lot of tech mods have come out recently. I could see bridging between those mods and this as well.
I'll have to look into it sometime - seems like there's quite a bit of overlap.
It looks really cool, especially the models.
I may use it on a private server however I have some questions:
Hi thanks a ton!
The mod really starts to pick up mid/late Iron tier. The two introductory structures are made from any tier Refractory Brick, which means the player can access them around the time they can the Beehive/Cementation furnace. The latter structures and piping system are made from Iron/Cast iron, so a decent investment later.
I personally made this mod for myself, with the intent to extend the endgame, and with the intent that it can be added mid-save. I mainly focused on adding uses for pre-existing things over adding new materials.
The mod itself adds no worldgen, so it's plug-and-play (the new minerals are obtained from Panning or "Vat cleaning" gravel) for existing worlds.
I've been testing it on my forever world for the past few days (plus extensively in my test world, and other survival worlds with my friends), and have had zero issues. I'd say it's very stable!
I hope it helps fill your niche - I feel the same way!
Quick question: This probably doesn't work with Pipes and Power Expanded does it?
(I guess a sort of modding standard for interractions between electricity, pipes, machine input/output, and such should be made, given many other tech mods that exists there, which for the most part aren't compatible with each other. But I'm not a part of the mod creation sphere, so dunno if this is already a thing. And if it is a thing, hopefully it isn't discussed entirely in the VS Discord server, given that not everyone has joined it)
There is no standard that I am awere of. However I am in the process of making introducing one. Maybe someone will be using it someday.
Here is the repo:
https://github.com/LubieKakao1212/VS-ApiLookupLib
The readme is outdated, as it only describes the first part of this lib.
I don't know when I will release it though
To my knowledge, they both run fine together (we used to use PPEX/SMEX on our server), but unfortunately, our scope overlap is pretty large. I would recommend using one or the other for consistency, but there's technically nothing stopping you from running both.
My piping system/gas doesn't have any pressure mechanics like PPEX's does - that's the biggest thing I can think of that wouldn't be "compatible".
"My piping system/gas doesn't have any pressure mechanics like PPEX's does - that's the biggest thing I can think of that wouldn't be "compatible"." - Assuming that this means that the input/output from one mod's machine to another mod's machine isn't possible (outside of mechanical power of course), that is the compatibility issue I was afraid of :P
Actually I can just try it out... Yeah, they are not compatible. From this mod, a tank -> pipe -> fluid pump -> pipe -> tank does connect as it should, but not if one of the pipes comes from PPEX.
But not all is bad! I do have a creative world where the only use for these machines is to look cool, and this fits right in! :D
looks promising...