Welcome to Ether Craft!

Ether Craft (以太工艺) is a tech mod built on slot placement (摆格子) as its underlying design. Unlike most tech mods, it also leaves "how a machine is made" to the player: a machine's specific functions are decided by what the player puts into its grid.

"Slot placement" shows up in two places: the plugins dropped into an Ether Adapt Node's functional/upgrade slots, and the production line you build chip-by-chip inside an Ether Process Factory.

The mod is still in development and some content is unfinished.

1 Ether Adapt Node: put plugins into its slots

The node is empty when first crafted; it has no function until you put plugins into its slots.

Plugins come in two kinds — "function" and "upgrade". The former produce or use Ether, while the latter are mostly numeric boosts. Take the upgrades related to Ether streams as examples: any pickaxe/axe/shovel/hoe lets an Ether stream break matching blocks, a sword lets it attack mobs; a boat or minecart lets it carry entities; a written book lets it display text in flight. Different plugins also change the node's appearance.

2 Ether Process Factory: build the production line inside the machine

The factory is the clearest expression of "slot placement": you build the production line inside the machine, one grid cell at a time using chips and separators. The image below is the processing UI, with chips already laid out as the line:

The line must be a strict one-block-wide "channel", whose walls are made of separators or chips; the chip on a wall decides that step's processing, and JEI indicates whether one or two chips are needed. Once laid out, you can preview the product even without Ether; if the recipe doesn't take, it's usually because an extra step was laid in. Feed Ether to start. But the Ether inside a factory decays over time — an incomplete recipe, a gap in a wall, or an extra empty row outside the path all leak Ether (hover the bar to check; it should read 0). When the Ether reaches roughly 10× the total storage of all chips, the machine speeds up and costs more, so it tends to alternate between two speed tiers.

3 Ether & Ether Stream: combine functions, connect blocks

Ether is what powers things. It exists as an item — one item equals 100 points of Ether energy (E). The node produces it and feeds the machines; dropped on the ground, it slowly decays, and a stack eventually becomes a single deactivated Ether. Deactivated Ether is the start of the mod: mined from Ether ore, it crafts the "Ether Craft Guide" with a book, or crafts an Ether Adapt Node.

Ether is used through the Ether stream. The stream is an energy beam fired by emitter plugins, doing logistics and power at once: fire it out, and it automatically pours into any block that accepts Ether, dropping off items it carries along the way; it also recharges plated equipment.

4 Plating: equipment enhancement

Plating is another way to enhance equipment, and it doesn't conflict with enchantments or affixes. To plate an item, use an Ether stream fitted with a converging-chip plugin (the "plating stream"); the key is a piece of Ether Dust. Adding other items grants different effects, and multiple layers can be stacked at once.

5 Glass & miscellaneous

Ether glass is the mod's frameless glass: an Ether stream passing through normal glass, or hitting a glass item on the ground, converts it into Ether glass. It doesn't shatter and can be removed quickly with a wrench; an Ether stream inside it pays less flight cost, and holding Alt lets you operate blocks behind it (though you can't walk through it).

The wrench can rotate and break blocks, and can itself be plated; with a wrench in the offhand and a plugin in the main hand, clicking a node installs the plugin quickly.