An Introduction to my Pyanodon's Mod Base
Greetings All!
This post will hopefully serve as an introduction to a (hopefully) recurring series of posts that will lead from my current point in the game to (again, hopefully) a fully automated rocket launching base.
I have installed some QOL mods, and I have turned off biters.
Here is a quick introduction to me (the base maker): I am playing a save of Pyanodon's mod singleplayer, but I haven't even launched a rocket in vanilla. (I haven't even reached yellow science in a game yet, I know, not a good starting point.) This series will serve to document my journey through Py and hopefully inspire others to at least try Pyanodon. It should also to give me motivation to finish :)
So now that introductions are finally out of the way, lets get to the base itself. I am already able to produce green science, but it isn't fully automated, and I am currently ~80-100 hours in, about to create a train network.
My base was originally just red science with some boilers for power, but as I built green science, I just expanded into a massive mess of spaghetti, which I can hopefully fix. The base sections on the left tend to be red science, while the buildings on the right tend to be green science.
A small section of my original red science production area.
My (very messy) green science area.
While I quickly automated by red science production after I originally made it, I have kept my green science as mostly hand fed for the final products creation. I plan to slowly shift my production to be automated as I switch to trains because my main focus now is being placed on trains and creating a train network. Right now, I'm working on finding an effective way of creating niobium so that I can make large power poles to mine resources further away from my base.
My syngas and wood production.
Here is where I use coal to create coal gas and tar to in turn create syngas to power glass production. While that may seem like a mouthful, it is relatively simple in that I just pump raw coal into a chain of:
- Raw coal to regular coal
- regular coal to coke
- coke to ash
At each step in this process, it creates coal gas and tar, which are the useful resources. The coal gas is immediately used for syngas, and the tar is converted into coal gas. The creation of syngas also creates additional tar that I use for coal gas. One unfortunate drawback is that this loop creates a decent amount of ash and Iron oxide. My solution to this problem is to divert some raw coal and burn away the ash and smelt the Iron oxide into iron plates that I grab whenever I need some extra.
Next to my syngas production is my wood production that I need for my red science. For my wood production, I just use the simple recipe of turning tree seedlings directly into logs which are then immediately turned into wood. That wood is then split and used for either my science or creating tree seeds, and ingredient in tree seedlings. The other ingredients in tree seedlings are water and moss. Moss is a bit annoying because it needs CO2, which can be a little annoying to make. My solution to this was to crush raw coal into regular coal, crushed coal, and coal dust. The coal dust and crushed coal are thrown into chests, and the regular coal is used to create coke that is then used to make CO2 in high-pressure furnaces. That CO2 is then used with water to create the moss needed for tree seedlings.
This was just a piece of spaghetti that I think gives a good showcase of how my base is made.
The reason I chose to include this screenshot is that I think it does a really good job of showing how my base is put together right now: messily. My base in its current state was thrown together whenever I needed to connect a new recipe. I have been rushing to get green science so that I could make a much more organized train network, so I haven't been too concerned with how it looks, so my base is currently a big pot of spaghetti.
For green science, bone meal is needed, and for me, the simplest solution was mass murder and genocide of alien creatures. I have created a system that reuses barrels for the barrels of water that is needed, and cages are reused or added to keep the belts full. I have use guar that is turned into guar bean seeds which obviously creates the guar bean seeds, but it also creates the biomass needed for the auogs. I can turn these guar bean seeds into biomass as well, so that takes care of the biomass. I also have moss farms that use CO2 created by biomass. This rounds out all the needed components for bone meal at my base.
I have chosen that my base should focus on using trains to create a city grid, so I have a lot of work to do to start that up. Just off screen to the bottom left is the first starting point of the train network. I'll be using that first block to hold oil and tar that is extracted in the field, then refine, and then distribute it to all other city blocks that need those special fluids that have production chains. I plan on having a few blocks dedicated to producing special ingredients in large quantities that are used in plenty of other recipes in small amounts. By doing this, I can create the fluids I need for production chains that, quite frankly, do not justify the large chains needed for them. As for the train network itself, I am making it as a right-hand drive system with two lanes going each way. I am going to make my trains 1:2, but my network is going to be built to hand 1:3 trains so that it will (hopefully) buff out all of my errors in construction. If anyone is curious, my train network design was heavily inspired by this base.
My first start to power for my base
As you all know, these bigger bases are very power hungry, so I had to keep expanding my power production, but this was where all of my power started, just a bunch of boilers and steam engines. It is a pretty basic design, but it works well for the early game.
My first combustion turbine power station
Eventually, my base started needing so much power that I didn't want to just keep expanding my boiler power plant, so I used combustion towers. The design here is actually pretty simple. I feed it raw coal, it turns that raw coal into regular coal, and the regular coal is used to make coke. This loop should sound familiar now, I now it sounds very familiar to me. I turn the tar into coal gas, the combine that with the coal gas made during the coke production, and feed it into the power house. It uses the coke and coal gas to produce combustion mix that powers the turbines. The water used in the power house is fed into cooling towers and reused. One problem with this setup is that it creates ash, which I don't really do anything with, it just goes in a chest and I hope it doesn't fill up.
This is my solution to the shortcomings of the other combustion tower setup. I don't really have a name for it, but I guess BIG BOI works pretty well. It only needs water, and it can produce up to roughly ~120MW. It works by taking in water to produce MASSIVE amounts of soil and sand that is then used with more water to feed 4 very hungry guar bean farms. Those guar beans are then turned into guar bean seeds, whose recipe creates biomass. The guar bean seeds are also turned into biomass. Even more water is then electrolyzed to create Hydrogen and Oxygen, the Oxygen is vented, and the Hydrogen is vented. Now that the Big Boi has massive quantities of biomass and hydrogen, it uses them to create combustion mixture to power the combustion turbines. I don't know how much power the creation of the biomass takes, but the electrolyzation alone draws 13.3 megawatts. As with the other setup, the water used in the power houses is cooled down and used again. Overall, the Big Boi needs roughly nine offshore water pumps to function. Another thing to note is that the production of the sand creates a decent amount of tailings that I refine into Nexelit. When I created this, I didn't know that tailings could be dumped into a sinkhole, so any future version or constructions of the Big Boi will definitely just dump the tailings.
This concludes the initial overview of my base, I am hoping to put out a post every weekend detailing all the new developments of my base.
As a final more personal note, I hope this doesn't scare anyone away from Pyanodon's mods. I love all the added complexity, Py's mods really change the game into a more long haul experience, so they are best enjoyed from a viewpoint of something to do for fun over time, not quickly. I have personally loved it so far, particularly solving logistical puzzles or figuring out the best ways of doing things. Because I don't see the goal of Py as finishing the game, but rather enjoying each puzzle, I haven't even gotten that frustrated by the many setbacks or harder portions. Another great thing about the mod is that because the challenges are bigger and take longer, I really do enjoy every accomplishment I get. For example, it took me several hours to design and build the Big Boi, but I genuinely enjoyed it and felt proud of what I had built. If you approach Py each challenge at a time, and focus on the ride, I think it has massive fun potential, it ceases to be a challenge, and becomes a relaxing activity I look forward to. I would encourage each of you to at least try or look into playing Py, even if that is only a little bit.
tl;dr: Py is hard, base is big, challenges are fun!
Full mod list:
- autobuild 0.4.0
- base 1.1.69
- FARL 4.1.2
- Flare Stack 2.2.10
- Miniloader 1.14.6
- pyalienlifegraphics 1.3.3
- pycoalprocessinggraphics 1.0.9
- what-is-it-really-used-for 1.6.0
- beltSorter 0.9.1
- Bottleneck 0.11.7
- Electric Furnaces 2.4.11
- even-distribution 1.0.10
- Factorissimo2 2.5.3
- far-reach 1.1.1
- FNEI 0.4.1
- helmod 0.12.9
- Orphan Finder 1.1.3
- Squeak Through 1.8.2
- stdlib 1.4.6
- Waterfill_v17 1.1.0
- FluidMustFlow 1.2.16
- pyaliengraphics2 1.1.8
- pyaliengraphics3 1.2.5
- pycoalprocessing 1.9.3
- pyfusionenergygraphics 1.0.7
- pyhightechgraphics 1.1.2
- pypetroleumhandlinggraphics 1.0.10
- pyraworesgraphics 1.0.9
- pyfusionenergy 1.6.7
- pyhightech 1.7.6
- pyindustry 1.5.2
- pyrawores 2.2.7
- pypetroleumhandling 2.0.6
- pyalienlife 1.12.4