Workbay

1.0.0 - 2026-09-14

First release. Minecraft 1.21.1, NeoForge 21.1.249 or newer, Java 21, no dependencies.

The Workbay. One block that hosts up to eight of any mod's machines in a private dimension and reaches them wirelessly. A hosted machine is the real block, ticking as it would on the floor, with its own screen one button away. It saves space, never TPS.

• Links through Connectors. Craft a Connector, pair it to a Workbay, place it against any chest, tank or machine. Every bay can run its own channel through it: items, fluids, energy, and Mekanism chemicals when Mekanism is installed. Each channel has a direction, a filter (drag from JEI or EMI) and a rate. Energy is shared to every bay automatically.
• Three screens. WORKBAY: the bays, the racked machine, a cube to set which face takes what, and the bay's links. FLOW: the whole network as a map, a line per link, pips walking where something is moving. UPGRADES: more bays, other dimensions, higher rates, chunk loading.
• Rooms. A Room, a Wide Room and a Vast Room (3, 9 and 13 blocks inside) rack in a bay like a machine. Build inside; enter from the bay; a lit door dead centre in each wall leads out. A room travels as an item that cannot be destroyed, keeps everything built in it, and nests as deep as you like. Only a room inside itself is refused.
• Networks belong to players. One block is one network; lose the block and a fresh one picks the network back up. A network is born locked; Unlock shares it. Two networks per player by default (workbay-server.toml).
• On the ground, a room spins. The room item's entity never expires, ages like any item so it bobs and turns, and never stacks; one saved with a frozen age reads back fresh.
• Servers. Every packet is bounded and validated; a menu is budgeted to 80 actions per five ticks; a network holds at most 64 links; the registry is written on every change and never throws on load: what it cannot read is carried, not dropped. Measured cost: about 0.05 ms per tick per busy network, no forced chunks, no growth over an hour.
• Without Mekanism a world that had Mekanism machines racked opens clean; those bays empty and keep a record of what was there.
• Guide. Every item explains itself behind Shift; /workbay why <block> says whether a block can be hosted and why not.
• The Workbay costs 4 glass, 4 Shopsteel and an ender pearl (an eye in the pre-release builds), so it arrives with the first furnace.