Star Technology Initial Progress (LV-IV)

July 16, 2026 at 7:14:48 AM UTC

I didn't think to start writing this blog until we already reached LuV. As a result, there is already a significant amount of progress to show off. Since I basically never took any screenshots up to this point, I'll be using some from Mazerak that I grabbed from our Discord chat.

We began our playthrough on June 21, 2026. I originally tried out the hard mode for an hour before realizing it was not very complete, so we switched over to the normal mode.

Very small base with sieves and a coke oven — "time capsule" -Mazerak (June 21) · View original

Nothing too special happened at the start. Lots of manual crafting going on. In general, I tend to work on progression while Mazerak works on automating stuff. He crafted some Create crushers for gravel, sand, and dust, while I set up our first few blast furnaces for steel.

Center shot of the expanded base — LV machines and storage network (June 22) · View original

We got to LV pretty quickly. Maz set up Simple Storage and decorated the base a bit while I crafted several LV machines. I've seen people do a lot of Create automation in their playthroughs, but the early game progresses fast enough that it didn't seem worth it.

Drawers with various sieved materials — Basic large sieve automation (June 22) · View original

We made it to MV, then HV, creating various small automations for rubber, chemicals, steel, ore processing, etc. Maz worked on getting the ME storage system online, while I improved our circuit production. Thankfully, the pack lets us keep ME channels unlimited for this playthrough; both of us have dealt with limited channels before and we don't think it's fun.

Early HV base with Create pneumatic tubes everywhere — Mazerak discovers pneumatic tubes (June 28) · View original

Our base is rather flat and plain. I don't have the motivation to build anything fancy, though Maz still does some decoration when he's bored. I also think highly compressed lawnbases like ours can look pretty cool.

Several ore processing factories in a row — Expanded ore processing setup (June 29) · View original

Tiny cleanroom for making wafers — Trust me, I tried to convince him that bigger cleanrooms are cheap (July 2) · View original

Underside of platform with snaking cables — Pre-Flux Networks view of all the cables underneath (July 2) · View original

Power has pretty consistently been a problem throughout the playthrough. We spent quite a while relying on upgrading lapidary dynamos for our power. Eventually we switched to nitrobenzene, but it's been tricky to scale up. At the time of writing, we have built four different nitrobenzene setups.

Circuit automation — Circuitville! Automatic ULV through HV circuits. (July 2) · View original

We reached EV, and the pack's difficulty began to increase. I started working on platline while Mazerak improved our AE2 infrastructure.

Lots of chemical reactors — Chemical City, with improved production of plastics and epoxy. (July 7) · View original

We made our way through EV and then IV, upgraded production of lots of chemicals and alloys, fixed our power, and passived a variety of items. Finally, we reached the end of the Automation Age chapter on July 10, 2026.

Base overview at the end of IV · View original

I will add the next post once we reach the end of LuV. I'll start taking more screenshots so it will hopefully be more detailed. See you soon!