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About this mod
Complete overhaul of nuclear, fissionable and fissile materials from scratch, right down to the smallest detail for as much realism as possible.
- Permissions and credits
NuclearBound 2
Original project here: http://community.playstarbound.com/index.php?resources/nuclearbound.453/
Design document (more detailed information and info about upcoming things, you can suggest things here as well):
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1FmF93Fc2TF2sj6Xj442Bj554eaqgnHIYWzPUlFaS0J0/edit?usp=sharing
What is NuclearBound 2?
This mod completely reworks the way nuclear materials are treated in the game. No longer are they treated as a colourswap to coal, they now have their own intricate system of extracting every last drop of energy. The whole system is based off real life, but tweaked for a game setting so it's fun, instead of dragging on forever.
What has changed?
There are 5 new machines included in this mod:
- Nuclear Refinery, which is the centre of the mod
- The Light Water Reactor (LWR for short), and it's big brother, the Heavy Water Reactor (PHWR for short)
- The Fusion Reactor, which is a simpler way to generate power by using a small method to turn pixels into fuel
- And the Entropy Accelerator, which processes elements through the decay chain (more about that later)
Uranium and Plutonium Ores are each split into two isotopes:
- Uranium is now Uranium-238 and Uranium-235, each having different purposes. Both are required for creating fuel rods, but the amount of U235 determines how powerful, or enriched the fuel is. U238 is also used in the decay chain, to be synthesized into Pu239.
- Plutonium is split into Pu238 and Pu239. Pu238 is useless, other than being an ambient heat source, so you can just put that directly into the ship's fuel compartment. Pu239 must be turned into a fuel rod, and is the most powerful one too.
Uranium Ore must be processed through the Nuclear Refinery into Yellowcake, which can then be processed into U235 and U238, since Starbound cannot handle more than 1 thing being crafted at a time. Naturally-occurring plutonium is now only Pu238.
There are new ores and fuels, too.
- Neptunium-239, which can only be synthesized. It's slightly more powerful, so you get more bang-for-your-buck if you go the extra mile through the decay chain.
- Thorium-230, which is slightly less common than iron on level 3 planets and higher, is much less powerful and needs better equipment to use, but it's abundance outweighs it's cons. I plan to make a form of alloy with thorium, and depleted uranium.
Decay Chain and the Entropy Accelerator
The Entropy Accelerator is your gateway to the decay chain. Anything that happens in the decay chain can be replicated in this very machine.
A cheat sheet to which conversions are possible in the machine:
- U238 > Np239 > Pu239
- U235 > Th231
- Pu239 > U235
- U2O (Uranium Ore) > 230Th
Light Water Reactor vs. Heavy Water Reactor
The LWR is essentially the first-gen reactor/budget reactor, which isn't very good compared to the superior PHWR. It only extracts half as much power from the fuel as the PHWR, and it can only handle Plutonium, Neptunium and Enriched Uranium, while the PHWR can extract energy from barely-fissile elements, such as Thorium and even Uranium Ore (assuming you made the respective fuel rods in the refinery). Other than that, the only difference is that the LWR is much cheaper to build.
The final frontier is Active Rods, which each reactor outputs. Since there is no current way of adding fuel to the ship automatically, the reactor outputs these. Just put them in the fuel compartment, and you're good to go.
Quick instructions on how to start your adventure in this mod
- Smelt 5 uranium ore, pick up the reactor core which unlocks the recipes
- Make a nuclear refinery, and a light water reactor at the very least (unless you want to save up for a PHWR)
(You can stop here if you know what you're doing, if you want to gain some experience on doing it keep following) - Get some materials to make some low enriched uranium fuel rods for just right now
- Craft it, and put it in the LWR
- You should get some active rods as output, put it in the fuel compartment of the ship and you're good to go.
Just as a final note, I would like to thank some people. Thanks to the Anons from /sbg/ who kept my spirits up when I had it rough, and special thanks to the sprite anon who created the images for the machines, as I'm not very talented myself.
Without these people, I wouldn't have been able to finish this mod.