Overview
This guide helps you use mods and modded blocks in campaign mode. I demonstrate how to install and get the mods, which ones to use, common pitfalls Ive encountered, and modding the mods for balance.
Introduction
Campaign mode is a lot of fun for me personally as I enjoy building up and acquiring new technologies and blocks. However it tends to get rather repetitive after a few playthroughs since the order in which you get stuff is heavily weighted in a particular direction.
As such, I tried out using mods and modded blocks which made the game a lot more enjoyable. It was a pain though. This guide is here to help you enjoy the cool mods and new stuff while helping make it as painless as possible.
All in all the process is fairly straightforward and you can get up and running pretty quickly, depending on how much tweaking you want to do.
Depending on what you want to do you can just add a few utility blocks to make things easier, or you can go full out Cray Cray.
Seems Legit…
Installing Prerequisites and choosing General Mods
The first thing you need is the TerraTech Mod Manager. Google it if this link dies.
[link]For most of you, run the Windows native version TTMM2. Otherwise follow the instructions for your platform.
Once you bring it up, it will look like this. I made sure to include all the github mods in the SS.
Note that the checkboxed ones in the github section indicate you downloaded them. They are only active if in your Local section and checkboxed.
Lets go through them. First up is the various infrastructure mods that custom blocks may need to work. Go ahead and enable all of these. Do NOT use the checkbox…hit download at the bottom of the screen to install.
Nuterra block injector
Nuterra native options
Nuterra UI
motion blocks
mod config helper
terra tech buff blocks
Next are individual mods you can choose or not choose:
SPCheats – Never really used it. You hit the . (dot) key to bring up a cheat menu that can let you spawn blocks…. IF you know its ID which you won’t.
Increased Range – Allows everyone to fire at longer ranges. Cool but annoying since your turrets blast away at things they can’t possibly hit.
Explosion nerf – This reduces effectiveness of big boom guns and their ability to magically bypass shields if their explosion is large enough. Makes lasers, etc more vlable. I like this one.
Weapon Aim – Adds a new tab to the Options menu. Allows your guns to shoot independently at multiple targets if easier for them (based on their firing arcs). Also, can “lead” enemies for much more accurate shooting. You can enable this for ENEMIES too, which boosts difficulty.
Laser Mod – Turns all generic laser weapons into actual constant beam, insta-fire guns. Increases difficulty especially early since narrow/wide lasers are common.
Local Multiplayer – Have not really messed with it much but seems to allow mapping of another controller so someone else could help run the tech, instead of being crowded around the keyboard.
Weapon Groups – Allows a new block called Hawkeye Weapons Controller. Add to tech and you can add hotkeys to shoot certain weapon groups. Its really cool! However, its so lategame that it is not all that helpful to be honest. More irritatingly, they don’t tell you the part ID so you cannot even use the above cheat utility to spawn it! ugh.
No block detach – A double edged sword. No more of your blocks falling off because they hit a tree which is good. They stick until they die. However, ENEMY blocks do the same! So this means NO SALVAGE at all! This definitely makes the game harder, so this mod can counterbalance some of the lift you get from modded blocks.
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One more thing. When you get the mods you want, you are good to go. Just exit the mod manager. It patches AS you do your thing, so theres no “save” or “go” or “do something’ button.
You NEED to run the game, so it can create some directories for you.
Under your Steam/steamapps/common/TerraTech dir, there should now be a “Custom Blocks” and “Custom Textures” folders. If not, create them manually.
Common Problems with Mods
Installing the mods does have some issues which I will go over briefly.
1) The modded blocks are not particularly well organized and you have to just kind of dig through forums and find them. I will guide you through this process but it does take some shopping.
2) Everyone wants THEIR mod to be “Super duper uber ultra elite top of the line” stuff. As such you wind up with a TON of superguns and stuff that would not normally even be available until you’ve pretty much beat the game. Even better, they make them license FOUR (non GSO) so you can never even buy them! Or find them in chests. I consider those pretty worthless. However you can do some adjustments to help a lot.
Seriously?
3) Game balance. Some blocks are OP. In any case, just having more options means more power in general right? To combat this, just dont use the OP ones. You can also give enemies the ability to lead their shots, or increase engagement range via mods discussed before. Or, remove the ability to salvage blocks off of enemies.
4) Too much junk! The shop has a limited stock and some full-corporation mods just LOVE adding a bunch of crud which weighs things down. My first attempt all I would ever see is 2 corps worth of conveyer belts, new conveyer tubes, silos, and like 20 different observation bubble things that give you a first person perspective which is cool but useless.
You will need to trim the fat and not just include everything in these cases.
Modded Block choosing, installation and fixing.
The main folder for modded blocks is here:
[link]Go to the Custom Blocks first entry. Open all the links on the first post to the most common block packs.
Then you will dig through all 12 pages looking for goodies.
You will download them as zip files, then unzip them and dump them into the Steam/Steamapps/common/Terratech/Custom Blocks/ directory. Then when you start the game you will see stuff that shows these blocks being loaded. And it can take a while.
FIRST however, you will probably want 7 zip or winzip or equivalent. You need a program that allows you to select multiple zip files and extract them in one action, so you don’t have to unzip each individual component!
NEXT you need to go acquire grepWin. This is a program that allows you to traverse any directory and examine the contents of any file, looking for a specific text string. I use it for programming sometimes and we will use it to mod some of these modded blocks!
Here is what I recommend:
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Rafs Custom Blocks (& Skins) – He has a lot of cool stuff like angled hoverpads, plus the GreenTech corporation which is GSO and thus actually relevant for the campaign! He has 7 pages of stuff with individual downloads which is no fun.
Go to page 7 and click the google drive link he has.
[link]
Click the arrow next to Rafs Custom Blocks and you can Download the ENTIRE THING! Definitely do that.
The bad news is that when you unzip it, you get a whole folder of more zips. Use above tips to extract it all and move to your steam…/terratech/Custom Blocks directory.
Id suggest you remove the FPV, voyager cab, viewports, tube conveyers.
Next, fire up grepWin and navigate to Rafs blocks. Search for “Grade”: 4 with the 1 quote.
As you can see, this is the list of stuff marked grade 5. The actual grade is ONE PLUS the given value. Repeat this with Grade 3 2 1 and 0. Seeing a pattern?
So much grade 5…
I recommend changing the String Bean Omniwheel to grade 4 as both it and the bigger version are grade 5. The smaller version is already grade 3 which seems about right.
For the most part, he did a really good job with balance and stuff.
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Lemon Kingdom – These are geocorp based blocks. Quite pricey but at least provides usable stuff really early in the campaign.
He has a dropbox link in the very first post. use it and Download at top right to get everything.
I’d get rid of the Floors, pillars, battlements. I’d also remove the useless uberguns – Duchess, Orchard, Knightfall, Solaris (lol its 5.7 million cost/value), and the Banner and Anchors. And remove the Flak cannon as it is stupidly OP.
Make a special LK directory and unzip everything into it. Bring up grepWin and search for “Grade”: 3
Notice that literally everything is grade 4?!? Yeah… nope. So, in the Replace column of grepwin, add “Grade”: 2 and hit Replace. Now everything is grade 3! You can find it in chests and stores.
Yay. Its still pricey though.
I would actually change the Armini mini cannon to grade 2 as well as the small stud and blunderbuss shotgun.
IMPORTANT: You need to copy the LK_tex_1,2,3,tracks files into the Custom Textures directory. Otherwise the LK stuff will be missing textures.
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Legionites TAC – Hawkeye elite stuff. Still cool though with some adjustments. He has a dropbox link first page for latest .51 version. Click Download, Direct Download to get everything at once.
Once you unzip, I would remove the TAC Base folders. This is their conveyer belts, anchors and stuff. Redundant. You might remove all their expensive basic blocks too.
Same deal as above…everything is grade 4. Do a similar hax as above to make it all grade 3.
Furthermore, you might make some weapoons grade 2 such as: bowling ball launcher, extruder gun. I would also change the mech and crawler wheels to grade 2 as they work best with smaller techs and are very cool.
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Soz’s Custom Blocks are decent. I really like the AA and naval and air packs. They are GSO too so they are relevant.
However do this. Using grepWin, Search for “Grade”: 3 and replace to grade 2. Then grade 4 to grade 3. You have to go from bottom to top or they will all cascade down.
This makes the guns a lot more usable.
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Saelem’s Hawkeye Black Lab Blocks – I liked some of the stuff. It suffers from Elite syndrome so you need to nerf the grade with grepwin.
In particular the antimatter engines are nice. They work like linear accelerators or rotors that you can use to control the height of a hovertank or other flying thing.
He does like large direct fire, non aiming guns so keep that in mind.
If you like big wheels check out the Ymir!
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Did not really care for Pachu’s wild west or LicFlaggs better future stuff. Or the other hotlinks in the first post.
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Digging further through I did find:
— Hawkeye drill. Great idea. I’d make it grade 2, multiply cost and HP by 10.
— Page 3 has 2 better future cyberdisks and a HE 5 pound cannon.
— Right below are some cool flak cannons that I like. Make em grade 2.
— The better future mobile solar panel is really cool too.
Remember…some of this you will already have as per the TAC, LK, etc. Some of it is mixed in with the main forum.
— Page 4 has the GC Autominer V2 which is a geocorp autominer that is larger and faster. Very cool.
— page 5 has the GC Swarm Miner which you hold down space to fire tons of rockets that seek out terrain and blow it up! So cool for mining!!!
— The relic turret is cool but cant hit the side of a barn. Make it grade 3 and enjoy. get the page 6 version, not the first one.
Conclusion
If done properly and you spend a little time on it, the modded blocks really add a lot to ones gameplay experience.
Feel free to leave comments and point out other cool modded blocks that I have missed. Have fun!