Ultimate Automation

Station and device automation: smelters, kilns, windmills, refineries, fires, torches, cooking stations, fermenters, beehives, shields and ballistas refill from and store into nearby chests.

⌨️ PRESS F3 IN THE GAME TO OPEN THE SETTINGS PANEL ⌨️

Every feature of this mod is turned on and tuned in the in-game panel.
Can't use F3? Open the console with F5 and type ultimateqol_config.

⌨️ How to use

1. Install and start the game.
2. Press F3 to open the settings panel.
3. Find the Automation options in the sidebar (or type in the search box at the top) and turn on what you want.

Everything is off by default, so the game stays vanilla until you turn something on.

🔑 To change settings you need admin access with devcommands: be listed in the server's adminlist.txt (on a dedicated server) or be the host of the world. Changes are synchronized to all players in real time.

Features

Stations (Smelter, Blast furnace, Charcoal kiln, Spinning wheel, Windmill, Eitr refinery, Hot tub, Frigid kiln, Frost foundry)

Per station type:

• Automation On/Off (Off = vanilla)
• Maximum input 0–100 and maximum fuel 0–100 (0 disables). Input and fuel are refilled when they drop to 10% of the maximum.
• Windmill: Ignore wind (default off) – always full power, ignoring wind and roof cover; the propeller also spins faster.
• Station range, store production in containers (same item first, then any container with room).
• Production speed 1–200 % (100 % = vanilla; a cycle in progress keeps its progress).
• Show production time in the hover text.
• Deep North stations (Frigid kiln and Frost foundry) – same automation as the other stations/cooking devices (input, fuel such as ice or frozen fuel, products into containers, speed). They are recognised by the game's own name, so they work whatever their prefab is called. Extra option Only in the Deep North (default off): the build ghost turns red outside the Deep North biome (the game's own biome rule); stations already built are never touched.

Each station computes when something can next change and sleeps until then (max 10 minutes), backs off for 1 minute when resources are missing, and wakes up when a player adds ore or fuel by hand or when a nearby container receives items. Items on the ground are never searched.

Devices

Per device type (Off = vanilla; only pieces built by players, never dungeon or village objects):

• Torches & braziers (torches, sconces, braziers, lanterns, candles…) and Fires & hearths – fuel refilled from nearby containers at 10% of the configured maximum (0–100).
• Cooking stations & oven – raw food into empty slots, cooked food into containers before it burns, oven wood refilled.
• Fermenter – mead base in, finished mead into containers, next batch started.
• Beehive / Sap extractor – honey and sap moved into containers so they never stop full.
• Shield generator – fuel refilled at 10% of the configured maximum.
• Ballista – ammo reloaded at 10% of the configured maximum (one ammo type at a time).

All devices share one adaptive scheduler: a time-ordered queue (loop 1–4 s, base 2 s) with a CPU budget that grows when work is late and shrinks when the frame time is under pressure. Next-check times are calculated from the device state; ballistas and shields wake on events instead of polling. Wake-ups after loading or a settings change are spread over a few seconds according to the device count. Missing resources → 1-minute backoff; manual interaction or a nearby container change wakes a waiting device. Every transfer either delivers or returns the items (no duplication, no loss).

Console command ultimateqol_stats shows device counts, queue state, budget and timings.

Cooking stations, fermenters, beehives and sap extractors also have a Speed % option (default 100, 1–500): the cooking/fermenting time is vanilla × (100 ÷ speed). The panel shows an estimate (for example "raw meat: vanilla 25s → 5s at 500%"). Only the time changes, never products or ingredients, and it works even with the automation of that device turned off.

Station panel (Alt + E on a station or device)

The admin settings are per type (every smelter, every cooking station…). On top of that, each station or device can be tuned on its own: look at a station or device whose automation is on and press Alt + E (the hover text shows the key). A small panel in the same style as the admin panel opens with:

• Automation of this station – ON/OFF. OFF: that one station goes back to the normal game (it no longer takes items from chests or stores its products); every other station and device keeps working.
• Processes / Accepted fuel / Accepted ammo – the icons and names of everything the station accepts, all on by default. Click one to turn it off: the automation never puts that item in (for example a forge that only processes iron ore, or a shield generator that only burns one kind of fuel). Fuel and ammo lists only appear when the station accepts more than one. Putting items in by hand is never blocked.
• Production limit for each product, with a slider from 0 to 1000 and -/+ buttons (Shift = 10 at a time). 0 = no limit (default). With a limit of 300 iron, the automation stops putting iron ore in as soon as the chests in the station's range plus what is already queued or waiting inside the station hold 300 iron; the other ores keep going. When every product is at its limit and nothing is left inside, no fuel is taken either. Taking items out of a chest wakes the station again. The panel shows how many of each product are in the chests right now.
• Restore default puts everything back (automation on, every item on, no limits). Esc, the × button or Alt + E closes the panel.

The hover text tells what is going on: "Production stopped: processed item limit reached" when every product is at its limit, "Some products reached their limit" when only some are, "Automation off on this station" when it is off.

The settings are stored on the station itself (they stay with the world and are the same for every player) and are sent once when changed: nothing extra runs while nobody touches them, and limits are counted only during the checks the automation already does. Wards protect the panel like the station itself. Admin option Only admins configure stations (default off): when on, other players can open the panel only to look. The key is personal (option Station panel key, default LeftAlt) and is never synchronized.

Where it applies: smelters, kilns, furnaces, spinning wheel, windmill, Eitr refinery and the Deep North stations (ores and products), cooking stations and oven (raw food and cooked food), fermenter (mead bases and meads), beehive and sap extractor (limit only), shield generator (fuels) and ballista (ammo). Torches, fires and the hot tub only have the ON/OFF switch.

Capacity: bigger input, fuel and ammo slots

The "Maximum input / fuel / ammo" value does two things:

• It is how full the mod keeps the device (it refills when the amount drops to 10% of this value, e.g. 20 → refilled at 2 back up to 20).
• If it is higher than the game's own capacity, the device itself is upgraded to hold that much (up to 100): smelters, kilns and furnaces (ore and fuel), torches, braziers and fires (fuel), cooking stations (fuel), shield generators (fuel) and ballistas (ammo). A value equal to or lower than the game's capacity never shrinks the device; it only limits how much the mod fills. Turning the automation off returns the device to the game's normal capacity.

Stations pause while sleeping (option on the Station panel page, off by default): smelters, kilns, furnaces, spinning wheels, windmills, refineries and cooking stations do not work during the hours skipped by sleeping and continue exactly where they were. Without it the game catches up the whole night in one second when everyone wakes up (all products appear at once and cooking food burns). Time that passes while nobody sleeps is not touched.

Why the automation is not instant

You may notice that devices are not refilled the very second something runs low. This is on purpose, to protect performance. Checking every device many times per second sounds harmless, but a large base can have hundreds of torches, furnaces and fires. If each one looked at the nearby chests every second, the server (or the host player's PC) would spend a lot of work on checks that find nothing to do, and the game would lag for everyone. So the mod works like this:

• It does the math ahead of time. A furnace that is full will not need anything for a long while, so the mod works out when it will drop to the refill point and sleeps until then, instead of asking over and over.
• It checks in small steps. The loop runs about every 2 seconds, and only the devices that are actually due are looked at. If the game is busy, the mod does less per step; if it is calm, it does a bit more.
• It does not wake everything at once. After loading the world, or after the admin changes a setting, devices wake up gradually over a few seconds (longer for bigger bases) so there is no sudden lag spike.
• It waits a minute when something is missing. If there is no coal in any chest, looking again every second would not help. It rests for 1 minute, and wakes up earlier if a player adds items by hand or puts items in a nearby chest.
• Ballistas and shields are event-driven. They are refilled right after they shoot or get hit, with no constant checking. The result is that everything still works automatically, with a small and predictable delay, and a big base costs very little CPU. You can see the numbers in the console with ultimateqol_stats.

⚠️ Experimental

This mod is still experimental and may contain bugs. Back up your world and your character, and turn features on a few at a time.

💬 Bugs and suggestions

Join the Discord: discord.gg/aMkN89Cuas

_{Powered by Ultimate QOL, installed automatically as a dependency. The F3 panel also shows its other options, all off by default.}