Title. I don't like raid's Double Furnace mod as you unlock it way too late into progression, and can't find an alternative to it.

I'm not sure how sooner you would want it, when reading raid's mod it seems that the double tech is unlocked by adv material proc 2 (which unlocks electric furnaces) and costs only red and green science so to stay consistent with the fact that it's an electric furnace it shouldn't really be unlocked before the electric furnace.

In my game it needs Production science packs. I'm on 0.17 so maybe that's why?

The Steel furnace from this is perfect though, you get it at the same tier as regular steel - which is what I hoped raid's mod would do (Electric furnaces need red + green + blue, but as I said before the Double Furnace form that mod needs Production packs as well)

Ah I see, you can ask raid to update his .17 version so it doesn't require purple science anymore.
You could do that yourself, it's quite easy.
You go to the mod folder (Users/Name/AppData/Roaming/Factorio/Mods), you open the .zip with winrar or anything, you go into the prototype folder and open 'technology.lua' and you delete the line:

{"production-science-pack", 1}, -- this just makes sense for a furnace

You save and it should be good.

Yeah I'm not comfortable fucking with code, especially when I have no idea how it works. I'll ask raid, but I think I asked before and he didn't respond or said no? I don't remember

Yeah I understand but honnestly you don't risk anything this is not the game code, worst case scenario is the game gives an error on startup prompting you to disable the mod and then you just have to delete the mod and re download it with the ingame mod portal.

I did a quick fix mod where I did exactly what I described so at least you can have quick double smelting waiting for raid's answer :
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/DoubleFurnaceFix17

You should specify to raid that your request is about the 0.17 version because he didn't touch his 0.17 version mod for more than a year.

Thanks, and yeah I'll do that. I keep forgetting people are playing 018.

The original DoubleFurnace has since been updated for newer Factorio versions and also now integrates the Steel DoubleFurnace (which is unlocked way earlier in the game).

Good to hear!