[1.12.2] Industrial Foregoing for Newbies (2024)

Industrial Foregoing for Newbies
A Reference for the Rest Of Us!​

This mod is the natural successor to MFR, which some may remember from the 1.7 era, which in turn was the natural successor to MineFactory which was waaaaaaay back in the day in the Beta era that Forestry was the successor to. So we have successorcession? I dunno, either way, this mod is pretty awesome on its own merits.

Tapping dat tree​

Plastic is a material which is required for virtually every machine in this mod. In fact, the only two machines that don't need plastic are the two required to produce it. And unlike in a different mod which requires treetapping to get sticky resin to turn into rubber, or MFR's rubber trees simply dropping rubber as you chop logs, there's actually a somewhat involved process in obtaining this substance with multiple steps and multiple machines involved. So, let's go over how to do that so we can all enjoy what this mod has to offer.

First off, making plastic requires you to smelt a dry rubber. You get dry rubber by crafting nine tiny dry rubber. You get tiny dry rubber by pumping latex (fluid) and water into a Latex Processing Unit (which also requires power). And you get the latex by placing a wood log in front of a Tree Fluid Extractor. Which will eventually break said log. Yes, you can have multiple extractors on the same log, no you won't get any more latex out of said log, you just collect it faster.

So the logic process for an automated latex factory (let's not make those sorts of jokes, eh?) is as follows:

1. Automated method of placing said logs in front of the extractors, using any number of methods depending on what mods are available
2. Pumping the latex out of the extractors into the Latex Processing Unit
3. Pumping water and power into the Latex Processing unit
4. Pumping Tiny Dry Rubber out of the Latex Processing Unit to an auto-crafter
5. Crafting Dry Rubber
6. Smelting dry rubber into plastic

Not trivial, but not excessively complex. Fairly straightforward once you understand the logic behind it.

Decentralized Tier System​

Unlike many tech mods, but like its MFR predecessor, in lieu of a definitive 'tier' system, you have an integrated network of dependencies which all work off of each other. The only exceptions is that you need the LPU and Extractor to make any of the others, and we can consider the laser drill to be the end-game toy of the mod.

At present, this mod does not have any sort of belting or piping system, you will need to rely on other mods for automated movement of items, liquids, and power. I consider this a good move for the developer. After all, odds are pretty high that whatever mod pack you find this in is already going to have a half dozen or so different ways of moving such things around, another system would merely be redundant. Well, technically, this mod does have ONE way to move energy around, but we'll discuss that later, and it is still dependent upon a separate power grid to function.

Ooey GUI Goodness​

Okay, so before we start on about what machines do, I'm going to want to go over some standard practices for the GUI, which is a significant improvement over how MFR handled things.

When you open up a given machine, odds are it's gonna look rather complex. If it requires power, you'll see that on the left, then likely some item and/or fluid slots, depending on the machine. You'll also notice that you can see your equipment in this GUI over by your inventory as well. And on the far right are four upgrade slots. Below the power/item/fluid area are a series of boxes, a circle, and a redstone torch icon. I want to discuss these with you because it is an often overlooked but very powerful system.

As you mouse over those colored boxes, you'll see different parts of the GUI highlight, indicating a correlation between them. Clicking on it will bring up an interesting interface that looks very suspiciously like a sided interface selection, because that is precisely what it is. You can manually configure precisely which things can be moved into/out of which side for each discreet resource produced or required by the machine! So, say, you want power and items coming from the bottom, and fluids piped out the side? You can do that.

As a note, these machines do not automatically 'push' or 'pull' like Thermal Expansion machines can, you will still need some method of pulling or pushing items to them (hopper, ducts with servos, etc...), however you can fine-tune which sides will permit this to happen. So if you have an adjacent pipe that you just can't seem to get to not connect, you can simply disable that side's ability to push into the machine, and won't have functionality issues.

That circle icon is really awesome, and a huge upgrade from the way MFR did things. You remember that 'Precision Sledgehammer'? Yea, not necessary, that's what this little button does. Click it, and it turns into a slimeball, and you can then see exactly what area it will operate in. This will factor into account any and all range upgrades, as well as any other factors that might change this, so what you see is what will be affected by the machine if it were to turn on at that time. Click it again to turn it off.

The redstone torch icon will change redstone functionality (always on, only with signal, only without signal). There's also a couple of icons at the far top left of the GUI. One will just flat-out pause the machine, bypassing any sort of redstone control, making sure that the machine will not run until you click it again (icon goes from a green triangle 'play' icon to a pair of red 'pause button' bars). The other brings up recipes or outputs for the machine.

So, what exactly can these machines do? I'm glad you asked that!

Agricultural Automation​

The first two machines we will probably want to discuss is the Plant Gatherer and Plant Sower, which veterans of MFR would probably call 'harvester' and 'planter' by force of habit. The Plant Gatherer collects crops, trees, and other vegetation within an area in front of the machine. The default is 3x3, but can be provided with upgrades to increase that.

* PROTIP: Increasing the area a Sower or Gatherer affects does NOT increase the speed at which it processes, therefore a Sower or Gatherer with an upgrade that is affecting a 9x9 area will complete a revolution of its entire area nine times slower than one without an upgrade since it is harvesting or planting an area nine times larger. For this reason, it may be more beneficial to you to have multiple machines working in tandem for a large field rather than a single machine with a very large area upgrade installed, if speed is more important than efficiency.

Spores Recreator is the next machine I'd like to address, and one that is new to this mod. Give it steady access to water and power, and a mushroom, and it will continually produce mushrooms of that type. Useful if you want a fungus among us.

Another feature that veterans of MFR may be familiar with is the Sludge Refiner, although veterans will probably still call it a Sludge Boiler out of habit. However, unlike MFR's version, this version is OSHA and EPA compliant and does not spew toxic residue during operation. The Gatherer will slowly produce sludge as it works, this is piped into the Sludge Refiner to produce soil-like substances, including (very rarely) soul sand and Mycelium.

Plant Fertilizer. Not to be confused with the substance this machine consumes, it functions much like the MFR machine of the same name did: it applies a bonemeal effect to plants within its area of influence. It consumes Fertilizer to do so, and may be compatible with fertilizers from other mods, depending on which mods you have installed, and if you have the addon Integration Foregoing.

Hydrator. New to IF, this handy machine speeds up growth ticks in the area of influence when provided with power. CAN stack with the Fertilizer to produce extremely rapid crop growth. May also stack with growth techniques from other mods, individual testing will need to be done.

Animal Husbandry​

Of course, what is agriculture without the distinctive odor of animal byproducts getting shoveled out into the field? In addition to tree farms and crop automation, this mod, like MFR before it, has several things to make your barn blossom.

The Animal Rancher is a passive machine that, when supplied with power, will produce milk if there are cows in its area of influence, and will also shear sheep in the area and collect their wool. No animals will be harmed in the utility of this machine.

One of the pesky things about animals is how they need to eat constantly if they are to reproduce. Fortunately, the Animal Feeder does just that for any animal in the area. Provide it with food of the appropriate type for the animal you are breeding, and some power for the automated dispensers, and there you go. Note that the dispensers will deactivate once it detects more than three dozen animals in its area of influence, due to population crowding (and server-lagging) issues.

But of course, as animals eat, there is another byproduct they produce which needs to be dealt with. Fortunately, there's a solution. An Animal Sewer will collect the odoriferous refuse. Of course, collecting it does little good if you don't do something with it, or it will just pile up and become an awful mess. And wouldn't it be nice if it turned into something... I dunno... useful? Well, the Sewage Composter does just that! Keep it powered, and it will turn two buckets of Sewage into Fertilizer, which can then be loaded into the Plant Fertilizer to grow your crops faster!

Speaking of the miracle of life, ranchers will often wish to separate the young from the adults into their own pen. The Animal Baby Separator will do just that! From there, you might wish an Animal Grower to accelerate the growth of these infants into fully grown animals, both so their parents can get busy with the next generation and so you can appropriately process them. It will require both power and food of the same sort that their parents prefer.

There is also a Resources Fisher, which, when placed over at least a 3x3 of water and provided with power, will catch fish for you.

Mob Interaction Utilities​

But of course, many Minecrafters these days consider mob grinders to be a form of agriculture as well, and why not? Reduce, reuse, recycle... every zombie is 100% post-consumer product! And this mod has several machines to assist you in that endeavor.

The Mob Crusher might be a familiar face to veterans of MFR, who probably will still call it a Grinder. It will kill anything in its area (except players) and produce the resultant drops and liquid xp for use elsewhere. Oh, even better. It counts as a player killing the mobs so rare drops still drop. So, if you had some Thermal Foundation Blitzes or something? Yea, they'll be able to drop those rods.

The Mob Slaughter Factory also kills mobs in front of it, but instead of producing experience and drops, will produce liquid meat product. Now, I'm sure you are asking: just what good is liquid meat? Well, if you put it into Meat Feeder, it will automatically feed you whenever you are hungry, no more manual eating! Don't worry, our liquid meat product is both nutritious and delicious, with a double-no-money-back guarantee!

The Mob Imprisonment Tool, which for legal purposes must clearly be stated that it does *NOT* closely resemble any such device for capturing animals for purposes of dueling, will in fact contain a single mob within it for whatever purposes you so desire. It is completely reusable, and can be used for a number of tasks, including transportation of animals to their new loving home.

The Mob Imprisonment Tool is also used in the Mob Duplicator, which will scan the DNA of the contained entity and reproduce precisely a duplicate. Not to be confused with a duplicant, whose primary use is to text oxygen content of environments, this duplicate will act in all ways as the original, including drops. It does, however, require a considerable amount of liquid mob essence obtained through the Mob Crusher in order to make such a duplicate.

Ever spent way too much time running through a village trying to find that one guy that had the trade you wanted? Well, your legs will thank you for your consideration when you bring the Villager Trade Exchanger, which looks at each villager in its fairly sizable area of effect and will let you remotely trade with each of them.

Many people have tried to make automated wither farms, but have had significant problems in actually building it in a contained location without the building mechanism being destroyed. Industrial Foregoing has a solution in the Wither Builder. Feed it power and the skulls and soul sand, and it will build it. However, it will do so starting two blocks above it, meaning you can have a 'witherproof' floor above the machine to safely protect it from any blasts which might occur from the creation of a wither.

But wait, there's more!​

New to Industrial Foregoing is the Material StoneWork Factory. Feed it power, and it will be your entire cobbleworks. It produces cobblestone as long as it has power, then it can do several things with that cobble. It can Smelt into Stone, it can Crush into Gravel (that can then be crushed into sand), it can craft into 2x2, and craft into 3x3. And it can perform up to four of these operations and return the result. So, for example, you can tell it Crush Crush Smelt, and then it will crush cobble into gravel, into sand, then smelt into glass. Or crush crush 2x2 to make sandstone. You get the idea. Generally, it can only net-result one type of item, so you may need several to get all the various things you'd want out of your cobbleworks, but hey... pretty nifty, eh? It does, however, require Pink Slime to craft, meaning you need to already have a Mob Slaughter Factory going to make one.

Speaking of resource generation, let's talk about the Laser Drill! This bad boy is NOT cheap, and the naming convention is something of a misnomer. You need four Laser Drills to feed power into one Laser Base which is what actually does the resource generation. Like the Laser Drill from MFR, it needs to be able to see bedrock, and you can use lenses to affect the chances of certain items showing up. Lenses also require pink slime.

There's also a Fluid Pump which can replace fluids taken with cobble so as to reduce animation lag in certain environments *cough*nether*cough*.

In Conclusion​

It's a pretty handy-dandy automation mod with lots of machines that can perform many of the tasks you are used to. Some might call it 'too good', so check with your pack dev to see if Industrial Foregoing is right for YOU!