Colony Builders

This is a fan-run server mod pack created by Sivart McDorf.  For any issues or questions, please go to the original Mod Author.  This is only being maintained for my kids.

MineColonies at the Center

MineColonies is the core civilization system of the pack, but it is heavily integrated with the surrounding technology, storage, farming, transportation, and world-behavior mods. The goal is for your colony to actually benefit from the infrastructure you build around it, rather than MineColonies, Create, Immersive Engineering, Alex’s Mobs, and storage systems all behaving like separate games.

Some of these custom integrations and behavior changes are still being actively developed and tested. Certain features may be experimental, incomplete, or subject to change as compatibility issues are identified and the pack continues to evolve.

The custom integrations include:

• Tom’s Simple Storage / MineColonies Bridge: A MineColonies Warehouse can use your larger Tom’s storage network as supplemental inventory. Place one Tom’s Inventory Interface directly against the Warehouse Hut block, on any face. Do not connect the interface directly to the warehouse racks. Multiple warehouses can connect to the same Tom’s network, but each warehouse needs its own interface. MineColonies uses its normal warehouse stock first, then the bridge stages only the missing materials from Tom’s into a real warehouse rack so normal courier delivery continues to function. Returned or excess materials can flow back into Tom’s, with warehouse racks remaining available as local storage. This keeps the warehouse and couriers relevant instead of turning Tom’s into direct item teleportation to every hut.
• Automatic Citizen Management: Custom assignment logic reduces the micromanagement involved in larger colonies. Jobs are filled according to priority, with important positions and guards handled first while still considering citizen skills. Housing is then assigned largely according to workplace location, helping reduce travel time instead of randomly filling houses throughout the colony.
• Forester Management: The Forester integration automatically manages which saplings should actually be enabled. It can use the resources available through the colony and connected storage system to determine which tree types should be active instead of MineColonies simply leaving every supported wood type enabled.
• Immersive Engineering Integration: Custom recipe compatibility allows MineColonies crafting systems to recognize more Immersive Engineering materials, components, and recipes. This makes IE part of the colony’s industrial progression instead of forcing the player to manually produce every engineering component.
• Cloche Integration: The Immersive Engineering Garden Cloche has been expanded with missing crop recipes, including MineColonies crops and selected crops from other mods. This allows industrial agriculture to produce many of the same resources the colony actually consumes without changing MineColonies farmer behavior.
• Alex’s Mobs Hummingbird Feeder Integration: MineColonies Beekeepers can maintain Alex’s Mobs Hummingbird Feeders placed throughout colony territory. Feeders are tracked when placed and as colony territory expands. The Beekeeper can check the feeders, request the required Sugar and Water Bottles through the normal MineColonies request system, refill whichever portion is missing, and return the empty Glass Bottles afterward. This allows hummingbird feeders to be used throughout farms, gardens, and enclosed greenhouses without requiring the player to continually refill them by hand.
• Engineering and Recipe Compatibility: Additional compatibility work fills gaps where modded blocks, materials, or recipes would normally be invisible or unusable to MineColonies builders and crafters. The intent is to let the colony participate naturally in the pack’s larger technology progression instead of forcing the player to step in every time a modded component is required.
• Eureka / Valkyrien Skies Compatibility: Custom compatibility helps MineColonies recognize blocks and components associated with the ship-building side of the pack instead of failing because required modded materials or recipes are missing from its normal recipe handling.
• Colony HUD Improvements: Additional Curios slots support the Builder’s Resource Scroll and Clipboard, allowing important colony information to remain visible without constantly opening hut interfaces. The HUD can surface the highest-priority requests so the player can quickly see what the colony is waiting on.
• Living-World Behavior: Citizens are treated as humanoid inhabitants of the world rather than being isolated from the pack’s expanded mob behavior. Hostile wildlife can interact with citizens and other humanoids naturally. MineColonies raiders and vanilla pillagers are also treated as separate hostile factions rather than automatically behaving like members of the same army. The result is a world where conflicts can happen around the colony even when the player is not directly involved.
• Dynamic Shadow Behavior: Shadow behavior has also been modified so shadows are no longer effectively locked to a simple sky-based direction. Their projection follows the changing position and direction of the sun more naturally. With shaders enabled, buildings, streets, forests, machines, and colony structures develop noticeably different lighting throughout the day, making the world feel more dynamic and alive.

The overall result is that MineColonies remains the operational center of the world, while Tom’s handles large-scale storage, Create and Immersive Engineering provide infrastructure and industry, Alex’s Mobs expands the living ecosystem, transportation mods move people and materials, and the custom integrations make those systems cooperate instead of existing independently.

You still build warehouses, employ couriers, assign workers, defend the colony, construct buildings, and develop infrastructure normally. The difference is that as your technology and logistics improve, the colony becomes part of that infrastructure instead of simply sitting beside it.