Crucible

Crucible is a high-pressure planet with a crafting chain built around creating metallic hydrogen. It is designed to be as "vanilla-like" a planet as possible and still be different enough to be a fun and interesting challenge.

The Planet

Crucible is a large, dense rocky world with crushing gravity and atmospheric pressure. Its close proximity to the sun results in a scarcity of asteroids in orbit. Combined with its steep gravity well, Crucible can be a difficult planet to escape from—until you've mastered its high-pressure manufacturing.

Crucible is an "inner" planet that is intended to be visited before Aquilo. It can be visited first, and it is possible to bootstrap a Crucible base from nothing. It is moderately more difficult than Vulcanus, Gleba, or Fulgora; although there are no enemies, and no natural hazards, there are still likely to be some explosions...

Resources:

• Skarn: a single ore that is your source of stone, iron, copper, and emery (an essential intermediate mineral).
• Emulsion: a single fluid that is your only source of both water and oil.
• Coal: small deposits can be found here, but they are more difficult to exploit than on Nauvis.

The Industry

The main goals when designing Crucible's crafting chains were to:

• Offer a vanilla-like experience that is unique, interesting and challenging.
• Disrupt some assumptions/standards that most of us take for granted (such as the primacy of productivity modules).
• Explore new ways to utilize Space Age mechanics (such as spoiling and space platform design).

Some ways this mod tries to achieve these goals are:

• Most of Crucible's new smelting recipes take the same ore (skarn), with an additional fluid ingredient affecting what the output is.
• Many recipes have a probabilistic output and are designed to utilize rigor modules.
• Several intermediates in the crafting chain for metallic hydrogen spoil in interesting ways.

One result is that the ideal module setup for crafting the high-pressure science pack is different from the norm. It will also change as your factory grows, differ across different factories, and rarely revolve around productivity. This is a dynamic that I've always wanted in Factorio, and I hope you find it interesting too!

Note: this mod was also designed along with the Rigor Module mod, and the production chains were built with rigor as an important component.

The Rewards

Through the process of mastering Crucible, you will unlock:

• The kiln, a powerful new furnace powered by heat.
• The pressure forge, a powerful new assembling machine with built-in +50% productivity and up to 10 module slots (depending on quality).
• Metallic hydrogen, the holy grail of high-pressure physics.

Once Crucible and the high-pressure science pack are mastered, you can unlock:

• Tier 3 rigor modules (+80% rigor at common quality; +200% rigor at legendary quality).
• New tools to reduce the resource demand of space platforms, if you're willing to hazard using some unstable materials.
• New infinite productivity technologies.
• New personal equipment.
• And more!

Compatibility

Fully compatible with Any Planet Start! Start on Crucible with a tweaked tech tree so that progression is not blocked.

Adding this mod to an existing save should just work, and does not require any extra setup. This mod is designed to play nicely with other planets and other mods. However, compatibility testing is an imprecise science, and still a work-in-progress. Please report any compatibility issues your find!

By default, this mod makes a few changes to some Aquilo recipes and technologies. * This can be configured or disabled in the mod settings. * I generally recommend leaving these changes enabled, unless adding to an existing save that has already reached Aquilo or playing heavily-modded.

Incompatibilities

Crucible is incompatible with mods that remove or drastically change spoiling for modded items, because such changes break the production chain for metallic hydrogen. Currently incompatible mods are:

• Whats a Spoilage
• No Timed Spoilage
• Freezer and Freezer-Forked
• Cold Chain Logistics
• Cryo-container

I recommend these Crucible-compatible mods if you're looking for more control over item spoiling:

• Corrundum: adds the ice box for keeping eggs, bioflux and agricultural science at a minimum of 50% freshness.
• Spoilage solution: adds canning and freezing of vanilla spoilables to slow down the spoiling process.

Planned

Krastorio 2 Spaced Out: full compatibility is in progress; you can follow development here. Crucible is playable with K2SO, but not yet tuned, balanced or tested.

Known Issues/Limitations

• This mod is still in development, so expect some changes until the full release! You can follow plans for 1.0 here.
• This mod has had only limited testing in multiplayer.
• There are a few issues that will be solved with Factorio 2.1 (see here and here).
• Issues related to rigor modules can be found on that mod's page.

Credits

See CREDITS.md for more details.

• Entity graphics: Hurricane
• Icons: Malcolm Riley
• Upscaling: snouz