Planet-Prismaris

"You just have to deal with it." - A little hellion.

Planet Prismaris is a Factorio mod where you visit the ever-cycling world of Prismaris, a world of infinite but constantly-shifting resources. This mod is currently entering the beta-testing phase of its development process. Many graphics are currently placeholders, but most core systems have been fully implemented and the mod is playable to completion... with a few fun endgame features still in development. It is safe to add to existing saves, but future update may (and probably will) break your factories. Comments, questions, or concerns? Leave a comment here on the mod portal or reach out to me (wille179) on the Factorio discord server.

Overview

Prismaris is a planet of ever-shifting resources. Everything is constantly becoming something else all the time through the spoilage mechanic, but nothing is ever lost for good. Almost every recipe has multiple possible outputs and many items spoil after a short duration into another item in a cycle. Recycling is also borked on this planet; the only way to stem the tide is to embrace the sushi and pray nothing clogs or throw it back into the primordial chaos.

Prismaris is intended to be done between the inner planets and aquilo, but strictly speaking it only requires Gleba first. It is also compatible with the mod Any Planet Start, if you want to jump straight into the madness.

Prismaris's terrain is based largely on the generation of Aquilo, with a sea of liquid entropy dotted with islands.

Resources

Prismaris comes with a few specific resources, each with a unique gimmick to processing them:

• Prismatic Shards - Mined by mining drills. Can be split randomly into items with an a fast-shifting RGBW or CMYK cycle. Opposing pairs can be converted into iron ore, copper ore, or stone. White and Black variants are less useful and hog belt space, having the longest spoil times, but can be converted into each other. Prismatic Shard patches are small and far apart, but are inexhaustible and will never dry up.
• Aethric Shards - Can be "shattered" into a set of (seemingly) identical variants, then further "destabilized" into forms that decay into solid petrochemical resources (coal, carbon, solid fuel), organic resources (jelly & yumako mash) and calcite. Aethric shards are grown like plants using an agricultural tower. They have a relatively fast growth time, but relatively low yield per harvest. One of the variants of the shattered aethric shard (which has the longest spoil time and the only unique icon of the set) acts as a seed for the crystals.
• Entropic Sea - A fluid resource from Prismaris's ocean. Can be separated into entropic dust and water. Entropic dust rapidly flickers between a positive and negative form; only the positive form is useful, and every process that uses it produces the negative form as a byproduct. It's also very hard to get rid of entropic dust as you generally consume less than you produce and it can't be recycled away. Positive Entropic Dust also has a small fuel value... and a burn result of negative entropic dust, meaning you can't actually get rid of it by burning it. It can also be converted into entropic nutrients, but those spoil/burn back to negative entropic dust too. Productivity bonuses can quickly cause this to grow out of control. On Prismaris, excess can be tossed back into the lava-like ocean. On other planets, it can be voided by tossing it into lava or launched into space; entropic dust has a very high rocket capacity for this reason.
• Void Essence - A fluid extracted by pumpjacks. Useful in many processes, particularly as a catalyst. Like Fluoroketone, comes in multiple variants that must be cycled between, but tends to be ever-so-slightly "lossy" at first. Sufficient (and easily attainable) levels of productivity can make the process net positive, however.

Environment

Prismaris has a few distinct environmental features:

• Lightning - Like Fulgora, Prismaris has lightning storms, though these go all day and night (stronger during the day). These lightning strikes are far less frequent than on Fulgora and each bolt has less energy, so the power they provide is significantly diminished but they still necessitate protection.
• Thin Air - Like Aquilo, the air in Prismaris is thin, increasing the energy usage of robots significantly, though not as much as Aquilo.
• Low solar and long nights - The solar power on Prismaris is fairly low, while the night time is incredibly long.
• Tainted Water - The only source of water on the planet has a physical byproduct that must be dealt with.
• Broken Recycling - Fulgora's recycler won't accept any item native to Prismaris.

Science Pack:

Prismaris has the "Polyphasic Science Pack," which comes in three forms that cycle on a timer by using the spoilage mechanic, similar to Gleba's agricultural science pack. Basic technologies need one of the three variants (Red / Green / Blue) while more advanced technologies might need two or even three different packs. Any pack that spoils becomes the next pack in the cycle.

Rewards

Prismaris offers several unique rewards.

Exclusive Buildings

• Crystal Separator - Furnace-like building for processing Prismatic and Aethric shards.

Technology Rewards:

• Thermal Flux Furnace - An upgraded version of the crystal separator that can also smelt traditional resources. Has an innate 25% productivity bonus and a hefty 6 module slots, but is powered by heat rather than electricity.
• Electric heater - For when you need heat in a large area and don't want to deal with fuel. While it can get hot enough to boil water in a heat exchanger (and can do so even in space), it always consumes more energy than it can produce.
• Chronocycler - A unique "Multi-phase building," which comes in four variants. They use Void Essence as a liquid fuel. All work similar to Fulgora's recycler, but each one comes with a unique twist:
  • Unconfigured Chronocycler - The base item. It cannot be placed as a building and instead serves as an intermediate part for all other chronocyclers. All other chronocyclers eventually spoil back into this form after one hour if not placed down; craft them on site or transport them quickly.
  • Reversal Chronocycler - Works like a normal recycler, but has an innate quality and productivity bonus at the cost of being slightly slower. It is also capable of recycling Prismaris's unique items, which cannot be recycled otherwise.
  • Stasis Chronocycler - Intended for the preservation of perishable items. Depending on your mod settings, this either resets the spoil percentage of a perishable item or it transforms that item into a version with a much longer spoil time that must be transformed back again to be used.
  • Acceleration Chronocycler - Takes in an item with a spoil time and immediately produces its spoil result.
• Lunar Panels - Inverted, more efficient solar panels that only work at night rather than during the day. They cannot be built on space platforms (where it's always day).
• Cogitor - A mysterious building capable of amplifying your science production to legendary levels... but how it works will be revealed in a future update.
• Prismatic Laser Turrets - Laser turrets that do damage types other than "laser." Uses the same "Unconfigured" / 1-hour spoil-reversion mechanic of the chronocycler, though it takes a specific prismatic shard to configure and that shard is lost if it reverts. Beam matches the color of the prismatic shard. Damage types include Fire, Acid, Electric, Poison, Physical, and Explosion. If you want to use lasers in space, or you like using mods that add enemy types, these are for you.
• Void Beacons - Beacons that also allow productivity/quality modules and have both a high multiplier and high transmission range, but use much more electricity and interfere with each other more than normal beacons.
• Additional Lab Speed + 3 (non-infinite) levels of research productivity
• 2 levels of worker (non-infinite) robot speed

AI Usage

No generative AI is used anywhere in this mod, and has not been used at any stage in its development. All code, assets, and ideas are lovingly 100% human-made from start to finish. (I'd rather die than use that slop.)

Credits & Thanks

A full list of credits can be found within the mod's zip file or on the github page.

Special thanks goes out to Syen-ce, malcomriley, Hurricane046, Hornwitser, valent125, thesixthroc, & Tserup for various graphical assets (many of which I have personally modified). Also many thanks to the modding discord community, particularly PennyJim, shemp_71881, Osmo, & BlackATM for their amazingly helpful advice. Finally, many thanks to my own close friends, who did not work on this project but gave me plenty of emotional support. I seriously couldn't have done this without all these wonderful people.