Advanced Electronics

Advanced Electronics

The When

This is an ongoing project with no clear finish goal, driven by player feedback. It is currently not feature ready. See disclaimer below.

DISCLAIMER: Work in progress. This mod is still in alpha. If you want to test it, don't do it in a production server. It may leave orphaned objects in your world or make breaking changes. Test it in a disposable world.

The How

Extract the zip file to C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Eco\Eco_Data\Server\Mods\ (assuming the game is from Steam. if not, you know where it is).

The Mods folder will now look like this:

__core__
AdvancedElectronics
UserCode
Eco.IntegrationTests.dll
README.txt

This will install a bundle readily available for server owners. If you're an advanced player and want to do it your own way, the source code is available at https://github.com/iuriguilherme/Eco-Mod-Advanced-Electronics

The What

What this mod adds is a new tier 5 skill: Advanced Electronics meant to add more content to late game.

Already available

• A Battery which is a new Fuel, and a new Electric Fuel tag;
• A Survey Drone which works like a prospector (rock drill) and autonomously wander around looking for selected materials such as ore in an assigned area.
  • You need to craft one Drone Dock for each Survey Drone. That is the table which will control the Drone.
  • You need to craft at least one Battery, as the Drone uses Electric Fuel.
  • The recipes for Survey Drone and Drone Dock are in the Robotic Assembly Line. The recipe for Battery is in the Electronics Assembly.
  • In the survey tab you need to create a survey area and assign the new area. The drone will start moving automatically as soon as it's assigned to the survey area and results will start appearing in the survey results as soon as it reaches the first plot. You can use the item filter to control what's appearing in the results.

• The Mining Drone

  • Crafted at the Robotic Assembly Line. Slot it into a Drone Dock and the dock grows a Mining tab instead of the Survey one.

  • It digs a shaft per plot: a 3x3 opening at the surface and the full 5x5 beneath it, fifteen layers down, and it keeps everything it breaks.

  • It mines as you. Every removal is performed as the citizen who assigned the area, using a Mining Arm carrying the game's own excavation tag. Settlement laws and private property refuse it exactly as they refuse that citizen digging by hand, and a refused plot is recorded with the reason rather than silently skipped. A law written against excavation tools can name the Mining Arm directly.

  • It works from a survey. A mining dock consumes areas published by a SURVEY dock you own, and only mines plots that dock has actually surveyed.

  • Survey again to go deeper. One pass takes fifteen layers; re-surveying the pit floor opens the next fifteen, and repeating reaches bedrock.

  • It unloads into linked storage and waits at the dock when there is no room, rather than stopping mid-area.

• The Farming Drone
  • This one can be assigned to more than one area. Each area has to have a distinct crop assigned to it.
  • The drone will optionally level the land first, removing and adding dirt as needed, then plow, seed and harvest the area as long as there's enough seeds.
  •  You can set limits to each crop to prevent the drone from harvesting more than you can store or keep. This is set to avoid crops spoiling because the drone harvests too many.

Soon (tm)

• Move the Computer Lab and Lasers to the new Advanced Electronics Assembly table and Advanced Electronics labor;
• Balance the progression, defining proper recipes for the skill book and drones;
• New ores and metals to be integrated in the recipes;
• More autonomous drones:
  • Mining drones:
    • A Mk2 Mining Drone which can both survey and mine;
    • Prospector drone: like a survey drone but for horizontal prospecting in the walls of a tunnel; 
  • Farming drones:
    • Fertilizer Drone: fertilize plots;
    • Logger Drone: chops trees and clear stomps and debris;
  • Terraforming drones:
    • Excavator Drone: opens horizontal tunnels or ramps;
    • Planner Drone: a dedicated drone to make a plan surface for farming;
    • Road Drone: builds roads;
  • Logistics drones:
    • Hauler Drone: automatically transports from one storage to another;
  • Other drones:
    • An automated predator killer turret (suggestion by B.);
    • Dad jokes drone: make random smartass remarks in chat so you don't need an human to keep the mood;
• Assets for all the new additions.

The Why

This in my opinion fits Eco's modernization progression and it's what me as a player would expect late game.

In the late game most players are burned out and no longer have energy to do repetitive work, even with better tools. The design decision to put it on end game is also meant to hopefully keep raw resources being gathered when the player base starts to shrink, or to keep players with less energy to keep playing more lightly.

I have reason to believe many players would see this as a "vanilla extended" / "lore friendly" addition. Others may find it an useful addition, a QOL mod, and some may see it as a way to automate boring tasks early game as an alternate gameplay approach.

The Who