I'm wondering, is a way to make an extra stage to the research, to develop the machines slightly further, either with only slightly higher production rates, or just fewer workers? Or adding ones that are just slightly as good as the lowest tier of production

Such as...increasing the rate that mice are caught (using better bait in the construction) or using bread as an input resources to catch a certain number of rats (5-10 raw meat), increasing the amount of workers to gather stones quicker, making a two in one water algae producer (like the hybrid stone mine), maybe adding a pet bed for bone dogs to rest and heal up.

I've actually decided to roll my mods into one "final" mod idea where as these mods were kind of stages

the final mod will have its own game start - it will have a upgraded tech system (allowing creation of books / ancients / engineer plans - but not ai cores) as well as a 5th super hard to make resource

I'm also building turret barrels basically a barrel to man crossbow turrets atm they use the animation of a skelleton but can be purchased from a shop / wandering traders they will be useless for pretty much anything but turrets - robot pack mules which will be the iron spiders for sale from same vendors (plan 6 "scrapyards" similar to the holy empires farms)

also making new / refined structures from this pack - water generator which uses a pully to hand a barrel of water that pulls a rope down (uses 1 watter barrel every 2 days as "repulling it) low power output but slow source of steady power early on

as for the mouse trap that was always meant to be a tier 1 idea I plan on larger rat farms / animal farms depending on time and how difficult it will be

as for dogs you can actually pick them up put them in a bed already and i believe there is a mod already that allows dogs / animals to rest

I didn't know that about the dogs...lol. Learn something new everyday.

With the mouse traps, the idea of a group of these "hobos"/Urban Ninjas (in the case of my character) feasting on sewer rats, just seems....both disgusting and rather charming at the same time. So, being able to get larger quantities of meat for the group just kind of hits my personal character, improving on basic techniques just makes sense.

An awesome idea for the water generator, thought the Moisture Farm is just plain awesome.

Robo pack Mules, dude....awesome. Thats all I can say.

Is there an estimated "release" date for this new version/mod?

well the robo pack mules are in my alternate start - ironclad errants - you get 2 laden with supplies for crafting

well I took the water generator from RL tech a guy figured how to make cheap safe power with a crank and dirt/rocks to power a light bulb as a replacement item

the moisture farm really was inspired by me and some friends talking about inovative ways to survive and and we were like well if you had power you could use a dehumidifier to get clean water

as for the release - a while - 30-60 days minimum as I'm working on stages

stage 1
restoring / refining all tier 1 - 2 buildings and adding a bit more basic common sense items

a custom start with 1 lead character (enginer) - 6 servitors (lobitimized barbarians slower skill learning but higher damange resist) 1 doctor - 2 robo mules (iron spiders) with supplies for a town from food to consturction gear - start in the hub

Custom start 2 - will be same team but starting instead of in the hub they will start in a destroyed town with enough cash to buy the buildings and start repairs - this will allow me to start people with larger then average buildings but not OP them by giving them the tech

stage 2
5 outposts with "Legio Mechanica" people in it these are a sub set faction of the core faction - they believe machines should be preserved and traded but not really improved on - they will sell engineering supplies and trade some iron spiders (mules)

restoring tier 3 buildings


Stage 3
wandering traders who sell robot items like the mule and some smaller combat oriented reclaimer spiders - construction bots (basically hulked out robots to make them look bulkier) who are slow but with massive lift capacity

tier 4 buildings

ect ect

Welp....this has become my favorite mod. So thank you for the mod in its current state, and for future updates. Awesome job.

well I took a bunch of ideas I'd thought of when watching videos on tech / survival shows and tried to make them in game with vanilla pieces (for mb size atm)