Getting Started (Flaxbeard's Steam Power)

This guide was written by and  of the .

What should I have before I begin?
To introduce oneself to Flaxbeard's Steam Power (FSP), there are a few basic ingredients needed.

Getting Started
Author your own copy of Esteemed Innovation, by crafting a zinc and copper ore with a book. Look, it even has your name on the cover, what a brilliant inventor you are, or will soon be!

Create a crucible from netherbricks, because, let's be honest, no one uses the one made from clay, and make brass by tossing in three copper and one zinc. The Nether crucible uses the inherant energies of the nether to stay hot, otherwise you'll need to put a fire under it to keep it melting metals.

This metal will need a Mold block to get the metal into a useful shape. The Mold block can hold a shape mold. Click a shape or shapeless mold on a carving table to rotate between your options.
 * Plate molds are arguably more useful than ingot molds, especially since they are 3 nuggets cheaper, however they cannot be used in many recipes from other mods.

The Steam Network
Regardless of what kind of uses you desire to put your steam power to, you will need steam. Steam is generated by boiling water in a boiler, and moves immediately to a steam tank above it. It is powered by solid fuels such as coal, or equivalents such as lava buckets.

Steam can be stored in devices known as Steam Tanks. These tanks are modular, allowing for maximum expandability. Connected tanks will share pressure and steam capacities. An overfull steam tank will explode, which is not generally a desired outcome. This is often referred to as a meltdown or the brass creeper.

Steam can be transported between boilers, tanks, and machines through the steam pipe. Most machines have a set of specific faces through which steam can be pumped into.

Steam pipes, as well as boilers and several other blocks can be disguised at most non tile entity blocks by simply shift (or otherwise crouching) clicking on them with the appropriate block. Be forewarned though, that breaking the block results in the return of the steamwork block, but not it's cover.

An end to the Bucket Brigade
The Archimedes screw is the inherent machinery to move water within Flaxbeard's engineering lore, though the boiler is compatible with any other method of moving or creating water.

The Archimedes screw takes in steam and moves a water block from below to the higher end of the screw, if this is a legitimate water container, such as a boiler, the water is placed inside.

Steam safety
Now that we've discussed how to keep your boilers full, it's time to talk about steam safety. This is especially wise if playing on a server, where wandering people may load the chunks with your boilers without your presence.

The Steam Gauge
The Steam Gauge is the second most important piece of safety equipment for boilers, after rupture disks and before blast resistant armor. The Steam gauge reveals without clicking on a boiler, how much steam is in an attached steam network. This critically interacts with a comparator, allowing you to construct safety valves from vanilla redstone, or to stop fuel input to a boiler.

The Rupture Disc
The Rupture Disc is an emergency steam releasing device, which can be connected to most steam storing machines. When the steam network reaches critical pressure levels, it will burst open, releasing steam into the atmosphere from the network. Once burst, however, its flow can only be stopped by repairing it with a Zinc Plate. This can be done through shapeless crafting, or directly using the plate on the block.

The Steam Whistle
Noise to alert you to potential explosion or your boilers, or even the activation of rupture discs, can be a key to safety for those disinclined to fully automate their safety. If this is the case for you, by all means build a steam whistle. The noise from this device will sound before a rupture disc would normally burst.

Ore Processing
In FSP, ore processing is done through the Rock Smasher, a multiblock device used to physically smash blocks in the world. The Rock Smasher multiblock structure is built by placing 2 smashers facing each other with a single empty block between them. In this empty block, ores and other block materials can be placed to smash them. Smashing ore blocks will drop 1-2 Smashed Ores, which can be smelted at a 1:1 ratio to ingots.

Smelting
The Steam Heater is a simple device powered by steam to heat up Vanilla furnaces (and clay crucibles) without the need for fuel. A single heater can be placed on any side of the furnace, with the maximum heaters being 5, or 6 if accessing the furnace isn't important to you.

Now that you have some basic machinery in FSP, you're ready to begin experimenting with new, more fun inventions.

Firearms
Ah guns, the great unequalizer, as thankfully skeletons haven't picked up the knack of using them.

Before attempting to engage in this field of endeavor make sure you have both a moderate stockpile of gunpowder, and an engineering table. Cartridges are made shapelessly using paper, nuggets, and gunpowder, producing 1 or 2 per gunpowder, depending on the mod's configuration.

The basic parts to muskets, blunderbusses, and pistols are all readily available.

They key to Firearms' power is in their modification via the engineering table, allowing the addition of a wide variety of special effects and qualities to what is already a significant improvement on the bow. Retooling your trusty guns only takes a few seconds, and allows you to be ready to handle most threats.

Exosuits
The exosuit, a steam powered suit of modular armor, is a quite innovative invention. With the Engineering Table, you can apply upgrades, and stylistic changes to your suit. It requires a steam tank in the chest to operate. Wearing a full exosuit will increase usability in regards to speed and climbing, unless it contains no steam, in which case it will weigh you down.

There are a wide variety of upgrades applicable to the exosuit, allowing for such things? as flight, reaching great distances, and launching entities.

Additionally, customized plates, made from 4 plates of a given material, can be applied to each suit piece to give it a given aspect.