The hand axe has been removed from 0.17 according to FFF#266, and there is little hope of ever getting it back even to the point of being able to mod it back in. The devs have not defended the change to the satisfaction of any of their critics, and some of what they've said is quite thoroughly insane (e.g. check out
Bilka's proposal for a direct circular dependency.)
I would rather have the minor problem of throwing a stick into the fuel box of the reservoir and mixing pit than not have hand tools while this mod is installed. I propose delaying support for 0.17 and concentrating on finishing the mod in 0.16. To get back on topic, I have a few suggestions/nitpicks with 0.0.2, no major complaints:
- Sand is hard to see in the desert biome and there isn't enough of it. For my first game, if I built a second fire pit before my kiln, I was screwed (I actually had to pull the MEX string and start over.) You got the shovel to spawn a mixing pit, so I'd recommend having the basket spawn a sand patch if you try to drop it on anything but grass or water (I actually attempted that.) A similar mechanism could be used to spawn clay using the stone axe.
- I like the yield progression with the tools, and I think I think tweaking the iron or steel axe to continue this progression into the early vanilla phase would be a great change.
- I like to play with Mountains (now Cross Mod), so code which turns any stone dropped from an entity break into jagged rock rather than stone, in lieu of not being able to mine large rocks at all, would be welcome if the tool is at a lower level than a stone axe. (I haven't used Cross Mod yet, but Mountains used different entities with the same sprites, and if you haven't anticipated this, I would expect them to break like normal rocks do without a tool. I'm planning to install this mod soon.)
- Please make a Stone Age recipe tab instead of putting everything vanilla intermediate.
- I think the mixing pit should be 2x2 in size; 3x3 seems huge.
A while ago, I thought of how I might do a mod similar to this one, and I had this kind of progression in mind:
- The only hand craftable item is the chopping block, made from raw wood. For the fuel box, I was thinking just now to give fish a fuel value and make that the only valid item for the fuel box; this would emulate food energy expended by the player character(s). (My rescue goldfish Goldie died two hours ago
) This could be a good idea for the reservoir, mixing pit, and anvil.
- After making the chopping block, it could make wood (plank) and sticks, which would be used to make the larger and more capable crafting bench. My idea wasn't to disable vanilla hand mining without tools, which means raw ores and stone would be accessible, although I'd probably disable tool-less mining of iron and copper. Stone and sticks would go into a stone axe which would be able to mine iron and copper. I like the "new" progression a bit better up to this point.
- Pre-vanilla research lab would be made from a generous amount of stone brick (probably 20), raw wood, iron ore, and copper ore; it would be a burner lab using 150kW. Research Pack Zero would consist of a wooden plank and copper cable. Pre-vanilla research projects would be Primitive Tools (copper axe), Primitive Logistics (wooden inserter, which is slower but less fuel energy per transfer than a burner inserter, the vanilla burner inserter, and a wooden conveyor half as fast as the vanilla first tier - there's a mod for that in 0.14.) Primitive Mining would unlock a primitive mining drill, which would be a 3x3 machine mining a 1x1 area in the middle of it and be powered by a built-in wind turbine; it would be made from wood planks and bronze gears - the latter would be made from only copper plate in vanilla, and bronze plate in Bob's. Bob's Alloy Smelting (with the five brick metal mixing furnace whose recipe must be set) would be backed up into the primitive era and use SP0 instead of SP1; this is necessary to make bronze available. Primitive Automation would unlock a burner assembler similar to that in No Hand Crafting and the 0.12-era Mojo Resource Processing, use bronze gears instead of iron, and take any fuel, not just fish. This is enough to get a zero tier automated research setup running except that the player would still need to put wood into a wooden plank machine.
- Vanilla capabilities would begin with Basic Smelting for iron ore, Basic Tools for the iron axe (and a new bronze axe if Bob's; it would be as strong as, but less durable than, the iron axe.) Basic Logistics would unlock first tier conveyor and electric inserter. Basic Electronics would unlock the vanilla green circuit (basic circuit board if Bob's), Steam Power would unlock the boiler, steam engine, offshore pump, small power pole, and, if KS-Power, the burner generator and wind turbine. Basic Drilling would unlock the vanilla burner drill, and Basic Mining (requiring Basic Electronics) would unlock the vanilla electric mining drill. Basic Science would unlock the vanilla lab, SP1 and SP2, and mark the transition to the vanilla early game.
The combination of Bob's alloy furnace being pulled back into the primitive era allows construction of a pre-vanilla fully automated Hard Crafting back end because the alloy furnace sets a recipe, and that sets filters on any inserters leading to it. It would be painfully slow automation, but that might be preferable to fast manual work in a lot of circumstances.
