💨 Real Steam

Real Steam adds extra steam ambience to boilers, steam engines, steam turbines, heat exchangers, and steam pipes so your factory feels more alive, mechanical, and industrial.

Instead of steam systems looking perfectly sealed and static, your factory can now show subtle hissing, venting, pipe leaks, pressure vapour, and working-machine steam effects.

Build cleaner. Feel more industry. Keep your steam setups looking active without turning your whole base into a giant white cloud.

🎬 Demo Video

If the video does not load on the mod portal, open it here:

▶️ Watch Real Steam Demo on GitHub

⚙️ What It Does

Real Steam gives your steam-based machines and pipe networks extra visual life.

Boilers, heat exchangers, steam engines, and steam turbines can emit additional steam effects while working. Steam pipes can also show small leaks, hiss points, and venting around pressure-heavy areas such as pipe-to-ground joins.

The goal is not to spam effects everywhere. Real Steam is designed to stay close to Factorio’s normal style while making steam systems feel more believable, active, and alive.

Higher-quality equipment can also look cleaner. When quality support is enabled, better-quality steam equipment produces fewer visible leaks, making upgraded machines feel better built and better maintained.

Real Steam also supports optional interaction with other Real-series mods:

• Real Rain can make steam feel wetter and more atmospheric during storms
• Real Wind can push steam wisps and vapour sideways during gusts
• Real Smoke can run beside Real Steam for a fuller industrial atmosphere

Real Steam works perfectly fine by itself. The other Real mods are optional.

✅ Features

• 💨 Extra steam ambience for working steam systems
• 🔥 Boiler steam effects
• ♨️ Heat exchanger steam effects
• ⚙️ Steam engine ambience
• 🌀 Steam turbine ambience
• 🔧 Optional steam pipe leaks
• 🧩 Pipe-to-ground joins can act as natural leak points
• 🌫️ Fuller steam systems can vent more heavily
• ⭐ Higher-quality equipment can produce fewer visible leaks
• 🔥 Optional boiler smoke replacement
• ⚙️ Runtime settings for effect density and enabled sources
• ♻️ Clean entity tracking for built, mined, destroyed, cloned, and revived entities
• 🔄 Includes /real-steam-rescan admin command
• 🌧️ Optional Real Rain interaction
• 🌬️ Optional Real Wind interaction
• 💨 Works well beside Real Smoke
• ✅ Visual-only gameplay
• ✅ Factorio 2.0 compatible
• 🛰️ Space Age friendly
• 🧩 Safe to use by itself or with the other Real mods

⭐ Quality Support

Real Steam can optionally reduce visible steam leaks based on machine quality.

Better-quality machines are treated as cleaner, tighter, and better maintained, so they produce fewer visual leaks and smaller steam wisps.

This is visual-only. It does not change machine stats, recipes, pollution, power, fluids, or progression.

If quality data is not available, entities are treated as normal quality.

🛠️ Settings

Real Steam includes runtime settings so you can tune the look and performance to match your factory.

🌫️ Steam Density Options

⭐ Recommended Settings

For a clean, believable industrial look:

This gives a natural steam feel without making your factory look too cloudy.

For stronger screenshots or cinematic factories:

For large factories or multiplayer:

🧪 Behaviour Notes

• Steam engines and turbines only emit extra steam when they are actually working
• Boilers and heat exchangers can add extra ambience while active
• Pipe leaks are meant to be subtle and atmospheric, not constant across every pipe
• Pipe-to-ground sections are more likely to show light venting or hiss points
• Higher-quality equipment can appear cleaner with fewer visible leaks
• The mod is designed to stay lightweight and practical for normal gameplay
• Wind and storms can push steam more naturally when Real Wind is installed
• Rain and storm conditions can add atmosphere when Real Rain is installed
• The mod is visual-only and does not affect recipes, stats, pollution, power, fluids, or progression

🔗 Compatibility

Real Steam is designed to work well by itself, but it can also optionally interact with other Real-series mods.

Works on its own

You do not need any other mod installed for Real Steam to work.

Optional linked behaviour

If other compatible mods are installed, Real Steam can react to them automatically:

• Real Rain
  Rain and storms can make steam systems feel wetter and more atmospheric.

• Real Wind
  Wind and storm gusts can pull steam wisps sideways for a more natural look.

• Real Smoke
  Pairs well visually with Real Steam for a fuller industrial factory atmosphere.

Quality support

If quality data is available, Real Steam can use it to reduce visual leaks on better-quality equipment.

This keeps the mod flexible:

Great alone. Even better together.

🔄 Rescan Command

If your steam network ever needs to be rebuilt or refreshed, you can run:

/real-steam-rescan

This forces Real Steam to rescan valid steam entities.

📌 Design Goal

The aim of Real Steam is to make steam builds feel more alive without going over the top.

It is meant to sit somewhere between vanilla Factorio and a more immersive industrial look:

• More active than vanilla
• More believable than random puffs everywhere
• Still clean enough to use in real factories
• Tunable for performance or atmosphere
• Cleaner-looking when using higher-quality equipment
• Stronger when combined with the other Real mods

☕ Support

Enjoying the mod and want to support my work?

You can buy me a coffee here:

☕ Buy Me a Coffee

Any support helps me keep improving and polishing my Factorio mods.

🙏 Credits

Mod maintained and polished by Squishy1870.

Built using Factorio base-game smoke prototypes as the foundation for custom steam-style vapour effects.

Factorio is made by Wube Software. This is an independent fan-made mod and is not affiliated with or endorsed by Wube Software.

📜 License

GNU General Public License v3.0