Scavenger Frontier
No ore fields. No easy resources. Just water — and whatever you can scavenge.
This is a full economy overhaul: every normal ore patch (iron, copper, coal, stone, uranium, oil — and every Space Age equivalent on Vulcanus, Fulgora, Gleba, and Aquilo) is gone from the map generator. Progress comes from exploring, not mining.
== How you actually get resources ==
- Walking into newly-charted territory has a chance to reveal a loot crate, a tiny hidden ore deposit, or a guarded vault mini-dungeon.
- Loot quality scales with distance from where you landed — the farther you explore, the better what you find.
- Breaking big rocks has a chance of bonus loot on top of the usual stone.
- Vaults are walled, guarded mini-dungeons with real loot inside. Some are sealed shut entirely and need to be breached.
== Scavenger Operations tech branch ==
- Scavenging → Signal Flare: select an area to chart it instantly.
- Deep Scanning → Vault Detector: carry it and sense the direction/distance to the nearest known vault.
- Vault Cracking → Breaching Charge: blow open sealed vaults that have no entrance.
- Prospecting → Prospector's Charge: pay materials + a bit of Ancient Alloy for a guaranteed rich deposit of every ore type native to the planet, right where you need it. The answer to a bad-luck run.
- Precursor Engineering: synthesize Ancient Alloy from advanced materials once you'd rather not rely on luck.
Ancient Alloy itself is loot-exclusive — found in vaults, never mined — and required to craft rocket parts, so leaving Nauvis means you actually have to explore, not just build bigger factories.
== Works everywhere ==
All 5 Space Age planets supported, each with their own flavor of loot. Fully playable on base Factorio too if you don't own Space Age (vanilla dependency only, Space Age is optional).
== Configurable ==
Runtime-adjustable settings for crate/deposit/vault spawn chance, rock-bonus-loot chance, safe starting radius, and how fast loot quality scales with distance — tune it to your taste.
== Localization ==
Full English and Ukrainian translations.
== Compatibility notes ==
This is a deep overhaul of resource generation and the early tech tree — for the smoothest experience, test it on a fresh save without other major overhaul mods (Krastorio2, Bob's/Angel's, etc.) enabled at the same time, since they define their own resources this mod doesn't know about.
Feedback and bug reports welcome!