Mod for University education?

[ChrisHonig]

I'm an academic at the University of Melbourne in Chemical Engineering.

I'm interested in developing a gamified learning mod for teaching first year University chemistry/chemical engineering, so looking for advice on getting quotes and finding a dev from the modding community.
1. Where should I post to find a dev?
2. What information would you need to give a quote for the mod (I'd like to draft a complete proposal for a dev)?
3. What general advice do you have for finding a modder (what are potential red flags)?

Brief summary of the proposal:
A new story scenario similar to the Factorio tutorial: Apart from scripted scenarios and map edits, the main mod item for MVP would be a sub-menu added to entities (like the stone furnace, steel furnace, boiler etc) that can be used to embed university tutorial-style problems that give productivity/speed/efficiency boosts like modules.

For example when you add iron ore and coal to a stone furnace, adding them in the correct ratio would reduce waste (or improve the 'yield' in chemistry terms, or improve the 'productivity' in factorio terms).

So the sub-window in the stone furnace would briefly explain reaction stoichiometry and then ask the student-player to give the optimal input ratio (mass or molar ratio) that carbon and iron ore should be added to the furnace:
Fe3O4 (iron ore) + x C (coal) -> y Fe (iron) + z CO2 (carbon dioxide)

Solving for x, y and z would boost the final productivity of the unit (or improve recipe in the game for carbon and iron ore to iron). Getting it wrong would just leave the productivity on default (ie there would only be 2 states, not an infinite number of states depending on the input values). (In this problem x =2; y = 3; z = 2)

With this template of a sub-menu that can provide text/images, can input numerical solutions (with a right/wrong check) to change productivity/speed/efficiency/recipe/pollution of units, I could generate about a dozen interesting problems in the game that sync to my first/second year courses.

So I think that solving real problems with your friends, to hold back waves of biters, makes for a more engaging learning experience than just doing maths problems out of a booklet at home alone. The dream is an educational experience that is so engaging that students just learn/play for fun without the threat of an assessment requirement at the end.

Any advice or suggestions for pathways forward would be very welcome.

[BlueTemplar]

That's a very cool project !

Sadly, I see two issues here :
- Furnaces (which don't show recipes outright) can only take a single (non-fluid) item,
while assemblers can take an arbitrary number of items and/or fluids, but they *do* show the recipes, indeed you have to pre-select the one that you want before they can start doing any work.
- Already researched recipes (including their results) aren't hidden from the player (tech tree, crafting menu...), not sure if they even *can* be hidden.
There's also a mod hiding all the techs except the immediately available ones, not sure if something could be done with that to have players committing to researching one of many recipe choices (and be indirectly rewarded by its efficiency if it's the correct/best one) ?

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As an aside, I was recently wishing for more standardized icons for petrochemical mods, as while for instance angel's "multicolored drops" approach IMHO just makes you learn yet another complex representation system - might as well directly use of spacefill / ball and stick / structural formula(e) ! (One and only one for readability per icon, as appropriate.)

(Open Image in New Tab to zoom in.)

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