An overhaul mod featuring:

• Completely reworked tech tree and recipes.
• Unique logistic challenges and assorted devious automation puzzles.
• Six tiers of science and a new endgame goal.
• Multiplayer compatibility.

There is a discord you can join here.

Overview

Sure, it's nice if the factory grows. But in this mod the factory must also be optimized.

The player starts with a single extremely useful cube (additional copies cannot be crafted), required as a catalyst in various large bulk-processing steps. Everything from research to power generation ultimately depends on it.

Because of this, substantial portions of the factory cannot be scaled up with simple copy-paste expansion. Instead, they can be made more efficient only by solving logistical problems, making design improvements, or unlocking new technologies.

At any given level of technological progress, there will exist some theoretical upper bound on the potential output of your factory. Getting close to the limit will be tricky: you'll need to set up automation to intelligently route the cube where it's needed, deal with sporadically-running high-throughput machines, and probably invest in a fair amount of circuit network trickery.

The technology tree has been carefully rebuilt from scratch to fit, and there are a few new tools to play with, too.

You might like this mod if...

• You like the "optimization problem" aspect of Factorio, enjoy solving automation and logistic puzzles, and monitoring and iterating on complex setups which probably won't be perfect first try.
• You like the idea of a dynamic factory, with different sections that turn on at different times, and not every belt tends towards either completely empty or completely backed-up.
• You want an excuse to experiment with Factorio's core mechanics in unusual ways.
• You appreciate Rube Goldberg machines.

You might not like this mod if...

• You're looking for a "vanilla plus" experience.
• You need compatibility with other large or overhaul mods.
• You can't live without the ability to scale up production arbitrarily. (There are still benefits in going big, and ways to do so, but you can't always just stamp down more machines in the usual way.)
• You're not willing to experiment at least a little bit with combinators and circuit conditions.

Comparison to other overhaul mods

In terms of raw volume of content, Ultracube aims for a comparable scope to the base game.

As for difficulty, it's trickier to compare. Ultracube mostly avoids the long, complicated recipe chains with many intermediate products often found in overhaul mods. There are only a handful of raw resources, and many recipes are fairly simple. There's a bit more fluid and byproduct handling, but nothing masochistic.

Instead, additional complexity comes largely from logistics and macro-level interactions. Even when recipes are simple, it'll be difficult to make them all run efficiently together. Other processes might need a bit of careful planning or lateral thinking to get working at all, even if they only have a few steps.

Progression should be relatively clear, without too much hunting around in the tech tree for what's next, while frequently presenting new and interesting challenges.

The overall feel is probably closer to something like Freight Forwarding (but maybe a bit more radical) than other overhauls.

Development status and roadmap

The mod is more or less feature-complete, but should still be considered a beta at this point. Especially the latter half or so will likely be subject to balancing passes after further playtesting (feedback is welcome).

Planned improvements include:

• Compatibility with more optional mods.

Translation

Translation is handled via this CrowdIn project under Factorio Ultracube. You can find more details here.

Compatibility

Ultracube is stricter than many overhauls in terms of compatibility, and relies heavily on runtime scripting to function correctly. If you usually play Factorio with a giant list of mods enabled and load up Ultracube without vetting them, don't expect to have them all function, and don't be surprised if you run into issues (e.g. script errors due to interference from other scripted mods).

It's gently recommended to start with a smaller set of mods and add extras as needed as you go. This makes it much easier to narrow down which is the problematic mod if you do encounter issues.

Mods in the compatibility list are definitely supported and should function as intended without problems.

Details

This is an overhaul mod that removes most standard resources, ingredients, technologies and entities from the game.

As you might expect, compatibility with other large overhaul mods that make their own drastic changes to the technology tree is unlikely.

Quality-of-life mods without new technologies or recipes like Far Reach or Even Distribution, or visual-only mods, should hopefully work just fine.

Mods that add new recipes or technologies must be specifically adapted to work with Ultracube. Technologies need to be changed to fit into the Ultracube tech tree with appropriate prerequisites, and be researched with Ultracube science cards. Recipes need to be changed to have Ultracube ingredients. If compatibility hasn't been added, mod-introduced technologies and recipes simply won't show up at all in the game. Support can be added with either conditional logic in Ultracube code to check for the presence of the other mod and make the necessary adjustments, or the other way around.

Mods that teleport, create, destroy or otherwise mess with items and machines via script also have the potential to cause issues. This could either be by allowing for some way to accidentally destroy an irreplaceable item (something that's otherwise carefully guarded against), or by interfering with the optimized caching logic that Ultracube uses to track the current location of such items (necessary for UX and technical reasons) in a UPS-friendly manner.

Mods that move the player to other surfaces or allow creating additional cubes for testing, like Blueprint Designer or Editor Extensions, are currently not well-supported. This should be fixed at some point.

Regardless of technical obstacles, practical considerations could make some other mods a poor match. Ultracube imposes unusual constraints and is designed and balanced with those in mind. Combining it with mods that provide ways around those constraints could easily result something that doesn't make a whole lot of sense (but you do you).

List of compatible mods

The following mods have been specifically adapted to work with Ultracube:

This list is expected to grow with time. You can submit a pull request, github issue or mod portal comment if you'd like to see compatibility with some other mod in particular.

Compatibility guide for modders

See the dedicated compatibility page here.

Dependencies and credits

This mod depends on Krastorio2Assets for additional graphics and sounds. It doesn't depend on Krastorio 2 code itself, but contains modified versions of some of its prototype definitions. Both mods are licensed under the GNU GPLv3. I am extremely grateful to the Krastorio 2 authors, since this mod wouldn't have happened without their work.