Jonas Tech - Synthetic Sun

[Bruno Willis]

Make a strange mechanical core which lights up a huge space, increases the temperature of glasshouses significantly, allows you to grow crops underground, and then panic as your now crucial machine flickers and whines, begging for maintenance that you just don't have the parts for.

Essentially this would be a costly multi-part Jonas tech orb that a seraph could make which would be able to light up huge amounts of space. If enclosed in a glasshouse it would add (up to) +10 to the farmland temperature, and enable crops to be grown underground within about 20 blocks or so of the synthetic sun. It would also produce a temporal instability zone, similar to a temporal rift, but much larger and much less potent (and invisible). But...

• As salvaged tech from an ancient era, the synthetic sun would be liable to break down. There would be a timer which would slowly tick down, lasting between 1 and 2 months. At the end of that time, the synthetic sun would start malfunctioning. The light would occasionally fade or flicker, the farmland temperature improvement would fall to +8, and the temporal instability zone would become a little more potent. At this point a seraph could get close enough to interact with it (well within the instability zone) and tinker with it. The synthetic sun would be hot, requiring them to use tongs and a wrench, and ideally play a voxel re-arranging mini-game to bring the synthetic sun back to full operating power. 
• If left un-tinkered with for more than 14 days, the synthetic sun would become damaged. The light would be noticeably dimmer at all times, and would often brown out or flicker. The farmland temperature improvement would fall to +4 and the temporal instability zone would become as potent as a normal rift, but far larger. The fixing mechanic would be the same as before, just requiring a randomly chosen, specific Jonas part or temporal cog. 
• Finally, if left damaged for more than 7 days, the synthetic sun would go critical. It would produce only a faint, pulsing red glow and no farmland temperature improvement. The temporal instability zone would double in size, meaning the whole area once lit up by the synthetic sun would be fully in the rustworld. The fixing mechanic would be the same as before, but it would require a a whole host of different Jonas parts. 

Imagine how useful this would be for living in a frozen wasteland or deep underground, and how fun it would be as a challenge, requiring maintenance and if you are lax, requiring you to go out and find more Jonas parts. It would make natural stories for a late-game world where the players are already good at finding Jonas parts, especially in multi-player. Of course the clockmaker would have to have a bonus to tinkering with and fixing these, or perhaps to how long their fix would last. It seems like the sort of technology the inventors of the past might have rigged up in the last moments to warm the depths and let them try to grow food. 

[JokoJose]

i think you made a typo on the 3rd point, because for the 2nd point you stated 14 days, then for 3rd point went back to 7 days, making the machine be way worst after 7 days and go back to middle danger at 14 days. But beside that, it is a nice idea!

[Facethief]

1 hour ago, JokoJose said:

i think you made a typo on the 3rd point, because for the 2nd point you stated 14 days, then for 3rd point went back to 7 days, making the machine be way worst after 7 days and go back to middle danger at 14 days. But beside that, it is a nice idea!

No, it says once it is damaged (2nd stage) it takes 7 days to go critical, so it actually takes 21 days to go critical.

[JokoJose]

2 minutes ago, Facethief said:

No, it says once it is damaged (2nd stage) it takes 7 days to go critical, so it actually takes 21 days to go critical.

ah, ok, sorry, i missunderstood as english is my 2nd language

[Professor Dragon]

First up - I applaud the concept. Big picture thinking - love it. You've obviously put some thought into how it would work and integrating it into the lore.

I have some concerns though. 

The first is that this is a very specialised, very late game tech. that most players will never see nor need.  This I think is the main issue that kills it in the current form.
It feels similar to the problem with Terra Preta, which is "By the time you have it, you don't need it."

The second is that I don't believe that Jonas parts are as reliable to get as would be needed. In my current world, which is currently 11 years old, I have never seen one. Admittedly, I have an anathema to monsters and caving, but I have trouble imagining that people have enough spare Jonas parts for the usual Rift Wards and other nice to have items you would get first.

Next is producing Temporal Instability seems counter-intuitive. That is a high price to pay for warmth and light. If anything, I would have such an expensive mechanism produce a region of Temporal Stability, like a Rift Ward.

My view is that this idea would actually be better presented in a Lore Book that you find - as a cautionary tale of some mad scheme in the past as a failed last ditch attempt. It is a nice piece of world building.

Either that, or as a mod, because it has such a specialised use case. Then at least Creative world players could implement it for otherwise unlivable spots. They might still be better served by breaking up the effects into smaller mods though, such as a mod for boosting Greenhouses, a mod for warmth, a mod for stability and so on.

Professor Dragon.

 

Edited September 22, 2025 by Professor Dragon

[Bruno Willis]

3 hours ago, Professor Dragon said:

My view is that this idea would actually be better presented in a Lore Book that you find - as a cautionary tale of some mad scheme in the past as a failed last ditch attempt. It is a nice piece of world building.

Yes, or as a mechanism in a ruin, which could be repaired to make exploring the ruin safer or ignored if the parts are unavailable, leading to hard-mode exploration. 

3 hours ago, Professor Dragon said:

First up - I applaud the concept. Big picture thinking - love it. You've obviously put some thought into how it would work and integrating it into the lore.

Thanks! Yeah, the idea came more from thinking about what the past humans would have wanted than what current players might want. 

What I'm most interested in with this idea is the idea of fixing technology which is too advanced to make ourselves. I really think there could be an interesting voxel-based mini-game like knapping flint, but on the far opposite end of technological progression. It would be used to activate advanced and/or unique technology (and alternatively let you loot Jonas parts and ruin the tech).