Creating a furnace that uses no energy.

[Xyfi]

Hi everyone,

For starters I'm new to modding in Factorio. I do have a lot of programming experience but not in lua. With that out of the way I hope you can help me.
I'm currently building a small mod to learn modding in general. My idear is to create a mod that generates a ore called "Scrap". Scrap can be burned to generate various ores (iron and copper). The scrap is like garbage, and in real life garbage is burned without added energy and can even produce power. So my idear was to make 2 tiers of furnaces:
- One that can burn scrap without requiring any energy and producing a fair bit of pollution.
- One that can burn scrap and produce power while producing a bit less pollution.

You may allready be guessing what my problem is: Furnaces either require electric or burner energy and I can't seem to find a way around it. Setting energy usage to 0kW doesn't work (error while starting the game), so I don't even know where to start to have the furnace output power.

And while I'm at it: Is it possible to create a new crafting-category, so the new furnace (called "incinerator") doesn't take iron and copper ore?

Thank you in advance.

[johanwanderer]

You might be able to make your "scrap" a type of fuel? That way you can directly burn it in current furnaces and stuff. Afterward, you can also create a recipe that make ores and stuff from scrap.

[Xyfi]

Thank you for your reply, I have concidered it, but how will I let a furnace output multiple items while providing no actual input other than fuel?

[johanwanderer]

Thank you for your reply, I have concidered it, but how will I let a furnace output multiple items while providing no actual input other than fuel?

That you might have to do on a on_tick() event in control.lua. Take a look at Bob's mod. He has an in-land water pump (produces water out of thin air) and some ores that get smelted into multiple products.

[Xyfi]

Yes, I have actually looked at bob's mod and outputting multiple materials can be done easily by creating a assembly machine that looks like a furnace and simply make a recipe with multiple results.

Bob's idea for the pump is good, but it still requires energy since it's a assembling machine that outputs water with no ingredients.