Simple Chains: Steel

Compacted steel? In my mountain? I don't think so! Return to the basics of production chain antics with this iron to steel mod. Used in conjunction with a coal mod listed below, your pawns will now have to work double hard to start building up their steel reserves. Steel is now a manufactured resource created by combining coal and raw iron at the bloomery or the smelter.

This mod is geared towards players looking for some added difficulty and depth as far as resources go. If you play on flat maps, where very little mining is involved, this mod won't have much impact on your game.

Coal

Coal is bundled with this mod, but it is only used if it detects you do not yet have a coal-adding mod. This mod's coal is patched out of the database if any of the following mods are detected:

Coal Expanded, Atlas Materials, Simple Coal, Early Times, Rimhammer, Expanded Materials, Clockwork and Steam.

How it works

• "Compacted steel" has been relabeled to "Iron". Under the hood, it is the same def, so if you load this with an existing safe, all your compacted steel on your map will show as iron instead (and will switch back if you uninstall this mod). This raw iron now drops iron ore instead of steel.

• Take 15 iron ore, and 5 coal, and refine it into steel at the new bloomery building, located in the production category. Bloomeries are meant for tribals and early-game colonists. Once you build a smelter, you can just use that instead for refining steel.

• Any structure or item that called on steel, whether it comes from a mod or just vanilla, works the same as before. You just have to work a bit harder to get the steel now!

• You can technically build metallic things out of raw iron if you really wanted to, but it is brittle and not very good!

• Steel slag and deconstructing anything that gives steel, like ship chunks, work the same as before.

Compatibility notes

• Save game compatible? Yes, but if you use the built-in coal, you'll want to use Mid-saver Saver's retroactive ore generation feature if adding to an existing game.

• Built-in Combat Extended patch (so that raw iron used as a material is balanced)

• Works great with Simple FX: Smoke!

• Not compatible with Lords of the Rim due to it having its own iron production system.

Credits

NECEROS for the coal graphic. Oskar Potocki for the steel bar graphic from VFE Classical.

(CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

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