Still, sensors are picking up some unfamiliar mineral compounds not far away. You find two small patches quickly enough, a dark green ore and another dull red. They yield easily enough to your pickaxe, and further analysis confirms their identity - the dark green is malachite, the dull red, bauxite. Smelting them proves difficult and you find yourself often removing heaps of molten slag and clay from them. An electric furnace ought to be able to process them without so much excess. You begin laying down the infrastructure for boilers, generators, and assembly machines, and take note of more oddities with this world. The water is a thick sludge that oozes against the shore, it still boils well enough to power your generators. The resulting black smoke they belch is repulsive, but your machines crawl to life as electricity begins to flow. Soon electric furnaces blaze and you feed samples of ore into them. As you suspected, the resulting yields are much purer. The bauxite in particular, while still yielding mineral waste, also refines into a malleable, lightweight metal. You'll need careful hands to manufacture it, but you already have ideas for a new plant that will be able to provide such delicate operations.
As you survey your outpost, you cannot help but notice that the air has grown thicker. Your suit's sensors inform you that the pollutants you're introducing into the air are growing in density, and while normally you ignore such warnings, you may not have such an option on this world. On closer inspection, sludge and dust are accumulating on your machines and miners, their gears are grinding slower and their power demands are higher than normal. You'll need to some up with something to keep them clean. Fortunately, the new resource you've begun to mine provides the answer. You draw up plans for an air filtration system and build one. Sure enough, the air begins to clear - relatively speaking - and your machines chug a bit more smoothly. The filters will even be able to compress their intake to produce usable chemicals for you. You're sure you'll be able to find use for them, too.
You need to head back to Nauvis for supplies, and while you lack the necessary components to craft a silo, as you look around your mind races with potential. You've yet to find any supply of oil on the planet, but the air is full of gases with potential for petrochemical applications. The ground is unsuitable to mine for stone, but you have that mineral clay laying around, perhaps it could be made into a type of concrete for the silo's foundation. And though you have a meagre supply of iron thus far, you also suspect that samples could be extracted from that mineral clay. You also have ideas to clean up that disgusting water pumping into your boilers to be rid of the black smog your generators are churning out.
This planet is full of poison and pollution, but all can be repurposed for practical applications. After all, they say one man's trash is another man's treasure. And in that mindset, you've found a world of gold. It just needs to be cleaned up a little.
Planet Nemtar
Planet Nemtar is a sickly planet with a thick atmosphere of hazardous chemicals. For this reason, despite being between Vulcanus and Nauvis, solar power is only 75% effective on the surface. Miners, production machines, and steam turbines have an innate 20% speed penalty when operating in a square that is polluted, and that penalty increases as the pollution gets worse. The water pumped here is Wastewater, which can be used in place of normal Water for many (but not all) production recipes, but causes the machine to output twice as much pollution as normal. You'll have to pay close attention to your pollution levels and keep them down if you want your factory to run smoothly.The native resources of the planet are Malachite and Bauxite. Either can be smelted in a Stone or Steel Furnace and will produce Copper and Iron, respectively, but doing so also produces a by-product, "Mineral Waste". Electric Furnaces can smelt them more effectively, turning Malachite into Copper and Carbon and Bauxite into Aluminum and Mineral Waste. All recipes requiring Aluminum cannot be manufactured by hand or in normal assembly machines, they require a new building.
Structures and Recipes
Once you've smelted Aluminum, you'll unlock the Etching Mill, an assembly plant designed for mass and rapid production utilizing fine materials. The Etching Mill is a 4x4 structure with an innate 25% production bonus and five module slots. To aid in the cutting and shaping of its materials, the Etching Mill requires a supply of water to function, and cannot use Wastewater. It also outputs a small amount of Wastewater, which will have to be carried away. In addition to Aluminum recipes, it can also craft other items; assembly machines, roboports, inserters, steam engines, steam turbines, engine units, electric engines, flying robot frames, and either type of logistic bot.Perhaps the most critical thing it can build is the Air Filtration Stack. a 2x2 structure, the AFS can be placed anywhere and will filter the air in its square, reducing the pollution in it and producing a variable output. You can set four recipes in the AFS, which determine how quickly it filters pollutants and what the resulting product is; Carbon, Sulfur, Petroleum Gas, or Hydrogen Gas (the latter two require a pipe hook-up). While it is most useful on Nemtar to protect your factory from itself, it can also be used on Nauvis to cleanse pollution from the air there too, though the Hydrogen Gas recipe is only available on Nemtar.
Wastewater and Mineral Waste are reprocessed at a Chemical Plant. There, Mineral Waste can be turned into Iron Ore and Silicon, also consuming some clean Water in the process and outputing Wastewater. Wastewater can be cleansed and turned into Water at a Chemical Plant using Silicon and Carbon; or, if you just want to be rid of it, you can pipe Wastewater to a shoreline and use a Pump to dump it back into the water, though once again doing so outputs pollution.
New recipes are also unlocked for other items, since you don't have any supply of oil on Nemtar. You can still produce Solid Fuel from the Petroleum Gas, and "Fuel Enrichment" lets you convert it into Rocket Fuel using Sulfur and Hydrogen Gas. Lubricant is produced utilizing Silicon, Carbon, and Water. Finally, Concrete is manufactured at either an Etching Mill or an Assembly Machine, using the recipe "Waste Concrete", which creates Concrete from Water and Mineral Waste. This gets you a supply of all the raw materials needed to build a rocket silo and return to space.
The Result
The resulting resources of Nemtar for all this trouble are Aluminum, Silicon, and Hydrogen Gas. Together they are used to make Manufacturing Science Packs (Dark red) for research. Among other researches, you'll eventually unlock research to use an Electromagnetic Plant to produce Hydrogen Gas on other planets, by supplying it with Water and Electrolytes. Hydrogen Gas cannot be exported from Nemtar, but this way it could be produced on other planets. You'll also be able to research a method for Air Filtration Stacks to draw in spores on Gleba and output Nutrients. I admit I'm drawing a wee bit of a blank on what new intermediate products Aluminum could be used for, lol, I'm probably overlooking something obvious. One idea I had was a "fast long-handled inserter", using the now-defunct purple color.Otherwise, Aluminum, Silicon, and Hydrogen, are all resources with prominent widespread industrial applications in the real world, so they could be integrated into the existing tech tree simply enough by substituting them for other resources. Aluminum and Silicon could be used in electronics, perhaps one or the other replacing blue circuits in the Quantum Processor. Hydrogen Gas could be used to manufacture new chemical and flammable weaponry maybe. Aluminum is widely used in the aerospace industry, so it could be incorporated into space platforms, perhaps for "tier 2"-type platform equipment like collectors and thrusters. You could use Silicon as an ingredient to manufacture Fibreglass, perhaps it could be used for insulated heating pipes that conduct heat better. Or it could be used to make Optical Fibre, again for electronics or maybe for new devices that improve the signal network or logistics network. Maybe a tier-2 roboport with a larger coverage area? Again, there's a lot of potential uses for them within Factorio's world.
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I began the process of creating this planet from the end back, "what resources could be integrated into Factorio that make sense to have and could be used for new or existing recipes?" I think Aluminum, Silicon, and Hydrogen, are good answers to that question. Then I asked "what unique challenges could a new planet offer?" I came up with a stronger emphasis on waste management, both by making pollution be a debilitating factor on your factory's performance, and by having recipes that output waste product that must either be repurposed or disposed of. You don't need to worry about aggravating biters here, but when your machines noticeably suffer from lower crafting speed because you didn't manage your pollution properly, you'll definitely start to care then. Or you could use Speed Modules and higher Quality machines to offset the penalty and not care. Finally, I watched a new production machine that handled more intermediate products, and that's how the Etching Mill came about. Giving it access to roboports, robot frames, and bots themselves, as recipes made sense, but with a 50% bonus maybe would be too strong, especially if Nemtar is accessible right from Nauvis, so I gave it only 25%.
Anywho, that's all I have. Hope this has been an enjoyable and engaging read for people, and that my ideas have intrigued you
