To get an island-heavy world, increase water coverage, and optionally reduce its scale. Play around with map preview to see how it ends up!
Core Inclusions
-
Dredgeworks: The focal mod of the pack. Ore patches now generate into and under the water, special hardware is available to extract and relocate these ores, and refined concrete serves as a new landfill alternative with higher flexibility but increased complexity.
-
AAI Containers and Warehouses: High-capacity storage. Included for its usefulness when buffering materials in isolated sites such as aquatic extraction platforms.
-
AAI Vehicles: Ironclad: Seafaring vehicle useful for pre-jetpack transport, and establishing a beachhead against biters (particularly if playing on an island-heavy world).
-
Cargo Ships: The sea counterpart to trains, providing crucial long-distance water logistics. Dredgepack activates the option to allow oil rigs without chemical science, to facilitate early extraction if your closest oil isn't on land (or near enough to build refined concrete out to).
-
Jetpack: Provides personal mobility over all terrain, including water. Makes offshore construction much more practical.
Extra Add-Ins (and why you might want them)
Bolded entries are Dredgeworks-integrated expansions.
-
[Space Age] On Wayward Seas: Overhauls Gleba into an island-heavy planet with a much more relaxed introductory pacing that gives you time to acclimate to the planet's unique production chains, with highly responsive generation customization options and new plantables and recipes.
-
[Space Age] Dredgeworks: Frozen Reaches: Introduces meteoric remnants to Aquilo, ejected from the shattered planet long ago, which you can mine for asteroid chunks, including traces of promethium which you can now use for special heating structures.
-
[Space Age] Any Planet Start: If starting on boring old regular islands isn't your thing, start on offworld islands instead! Both OWS and DW:FR fully support the Any Planet Start mod, with progression alterations tailored to each start.
-
AAI Programmable Vehicles: Allows mass remote command of your vehicles. Pairs well with the Ironclad for en-masse coastal biter removal.
-
AAI Signal Transmission: Infinite-range interconnection of signals across any number of electrical grids. Can come in useful for highly distant outposts that aren't connected directly by a power line.
-
Alien Biomes: Primarily beneficial for the shallow water coverage, making it easier to get in and out of water vehicles and possible to have an "intersection" between land and sea transit. Also pretty.
-
Combat Mechanics Overhaul: Makes walls substantially more effective against spitters, in turn making "beachhead" bases much more practical to establish.
-
Handcrafted: Adds toolboxes and consumable hand tools which accelerate manual crafting. If you're disorganized or just like cobbling things together by hand, this comes in fairly useful.
-
Squeak Through 2: Allows you to snugly fit in between just about any structures in the game. Very convenient for dense facilities and offshore operations.