Kayser's Pre-Industrial Era

Captain of Industry has always begun halfway through its own story.

Introduction

In vanilla, you arrive with motorized logistics, proven machines, established shelter, and the first industrial lessons already learned. It feels primitive only because of what comes later. In truth, it is an advanced, unrealistic start. Kayser’s Pre-Industrial Era addresses that.

Kayser's Pre-Industrial Era (KPIE) is the way Captain of Industry was meant to be started.

In KPIE, your expedition reaches the island with just people, hand tools, salvaged supplies, and a damaged Shipyard that can barely keep everyone alive. Choose where your settlement begins. Send lumberjacks into the forest, miners into the earth, fishermen out to sea, and foragers to search for edible plants. Raise timber frames, stretch canvas, patch roofs with iron sheets, and mason a lighthouse to attract refugees. Construction parts are no longer starting inventory, they are the victory.

The era ends where vanilla begins. When pickups, harvesters, and blast furnaces arrive, you’ll smile, because they replace handcarts, lumberjacks, and stone furnaces. KPIE takes nothing away from the Captain of Industry experience. It gives that experience a realistic beginning.

Available languages: English, German, Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Swedish, and Chinese.

Spoiler Alert! The mod features a built-in tutorial. Stop reading here if you want to explore the mod for yourself in the game.

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Contents

• The Tutorial
• The Opening
• Laborers
• Foraging
• Fishing
• Buildings
• Research and the Vanilla Handoff
• Compatibility and Save Safety
• What KPIE is—and is not

The Tutorial

Your team is standing on the shore, awaiting your first orders. Good luck, Captain!

Your first decision will be whether to keep the tutorial or not. The welcome message lets you keep or disable tutorial goals and rewards for the new save.

The tutorial goals teach the new rhythm step by step:

• Timmmmber! introduces automatic tree felling, optional harvest designations, Haulers, the Storehouse, and the Wood supply chain.
• Establish a Foothold guides construction of the Labor Depot, Makeshift Housing, and Field Canteen, then assigning Potatoes to the canteen.
• Get Dirty introduces Miners, material priorities, automatic searches for exposed Dirt, and the Stockpile. Mining designations are optional.
• Daily Vitamins introduces automatic berry foraging: recruit Foragers and serve Berries alongside the opening Potato rations.
• Organize Research teaches how to build and operate the Makeshift Lab.
• Strike While It Is Hot guides Stone Furnace research and construction, coal mining, scrap smelting, and the first Iron production.
• Nothing Goes to Waste guides Manual Assembly research and construction, then the first Construction Parts production.
• Let's Get Electric leads through Electricity research, the Diesel Generator, and upgrading the Makeshift Lab to the Basic Lab.
• Make Camp Last guides Settlement research and the upgrade from Makeshift Housing to permanent Housing.

After the KPIE goals, the first vanilla goal lists take over.

Disabling the tutorial disables the KPIE tutorial as well as the vanilla tutorial goals, giving you the full, immersive experience of being alone on a deserted island, until you can establish trade and repair the ship.

The Opening

Eight Haulers and one Lumberjack arrive with no buildings placed whatsoever. You decide where to establish the settlement.

A new KPIE game begins before the normal industrial foothold exists.

The damaged Shipyard temporarily provides up to 40 beds and serves available foods from its cargo, including the little Potatoes that are left. That support is deliberately bare-bones: it keeps people alive, but it does not provide the health and Unity benefits of proper housing or a functioning canteen.

Your first objective is to turn nearby natural resources and limited salvage into a self-sustaining foothold. Wood becomes shelter and storage. Native plants and fish feeds the small crew.

Mining helps establish research and craft stone masonry, required to grow food and create fire-proof buildings. Iron Scrap, Coal, and hand-built production eventually lead to Iron, Construction Parts, and Electricity. Only then does the familiar industrial game begin to open up.

Repairing the Shipyard eventually removes its emergency accommodation and food service capabilities, in favor of exploration. Residents without housing or damaged Shipyard beds incur a Homeless health penalty proportional to their share of the population.

Laborers

KPIE adds seven manual labor roles. They use Captain of Industry's real job and transport systems rather than acting as abstract production bonuses.

Hauler

A Hauler carries one unit of countable, loose, or fluid cargo between eligible storages and machines, considering restrictions and import/export priorities.

Miner

The Miner combines extraction and delivery. Set a material priority, and the Miner prefers matching mining designations before automatically searching for exposed deposits. Rock-priority Miners can also gather harvestable boulders. Undesignated terrain mining keeps an eight-tile buffer around buildings; explicit designations and boulders bypass that buffer. The Miner extracts one unit before carrying it to the nearest eligible destination.

Lumberjack

The Lumberjack fells marked trees, or automatically reserves and fells the nearest eligible tree when no trees are marked. It can have assigned haulers and trucks, but haulers can also collect the Wood without being assigned; dedicated Hauler assignments remain useful when you want to prioritize a Lumberjack's output.

Forager

The Forager forages food from the native plants and brings it to the nearest eligible storehouse or field canteen.

Cart Hauler

Handcarts research unlocks the Cart Hauler, with four-unit capacity. Also slightly faster than the Hauler, it is the first meaningful logistics upgrade: far more efficient than carrying every load by hand. It has a larger footprint, so requires more clearance.

Fisherman

The Fisherman fishes from shore, catches one unit of Fish at a time, and carries it to the nearest eligible destination.

Fishing Boat

Fishing Nets research unlocks the Fishing Boat, a two-person rowing crew that carries its boat on land and rows to offshore fishing grounds. It is more efficient than the Fisherman.

Vehicle Limits, Workers, and Realism

Manual workers consume workers and space under the normal vehicle cap and continue to be somewhat useful after mechanization, in constrained layouts.

Recruiting laborers and Pausing laborers difficulty toggles are available: choose whether new recruits wait for free workers and whether paused laborers continue to occupy one worker from the pool.

When starting a new game, the Realism difficulty bundle controls the default for both toggles. Because Admiral defaults to Realism on, it includes both. Sailor and Captain difficulties default to Realism off.

Foraging

A Forager beside a berry bush, ripe with Berries.

The wild berry bushes around the island provide a nutritious source of food in the opening. Berries will keep your people alive and provide additional Unity and Health when served alongside other foods.

To pick them, recruit Foragers at the Labor Depot. Foragers automatically pick from the nearest available bush. Only some types of bush have Berries. Select a Forager to highlight ripe bushes in yellow and regrowing bushes in blue. Bushes regrow Berries in 12-15 months.

Berry picking is covered by the Daily Vitamins tutorial.

To control picking areas, Foragers can be assigned to Forestry Towers (when those are unlocked). Assigned Foragers only pick berries inside their tower’s area; unassigned Foragers can gather both inside and outside Forestry Tower areas. Assign Foragers through the Forager selector in the Assigned tree harvesters panel.

Though Berries can continue to be served directly; they also have later uses. Baking can use them in place of Fruit for Cake. Berries can also be digested for fuel gas and compost.

New bushes can establish when growing planted trees, as Forest floor is created. Customize difficulty / Nature includes Natural berry bush growth, enabled by default and saved per world. Disabling it stops new bush establishment; existing bushes remain and continue recovering Berries.

Fishing

A Fishing Boat and a Fisherman, carrying today's catch.

Fish adds protein to the expedition's diet, complementing Potatoes and Berries when served in Field Canteens.

Fishermen work from the shore with hand tackle and carry their catch back to the settlement. After Lighthouse, Net Fishing research opens up offshore waters: a two-person Fishing Boat crew carries its boat to the coast, rows out to cast a net, and returns with its catch. Both Fishermen and Fishing Boats need access to the sea.

After a catch, an offshore fish spot needs 12 months to recover, so boat crews move on to fresh spots and let previously worked grounds rest. A stretch of accessible coastline gives them room to explore and keeps the settlement's fishing fleet from relying on a single spot.

Fish can be quick traded for Electronics at the nearest village. After Food Packs research, fish can be processed to Food Packs together with Berries.

Buildings

KPIE's buildings share a modern expedition language: practical timber frames, rough planks, pallets, drums, salvaged sheet-metal roofs, stonework, and visible hand tools. They are improvised, but not historical. This is a stranded modern crew rebuilding capability from what it can recover.

Settlement and Logistics

Labor Depot constructs and manages Laborers. Upgrades to vanilla Vehicle depot.

Want your own flag? Replace flag.png in the mod directory with your own flag.

Makeshift Housing moves the crew out of the Shipyard and into real shelter. It eliminates the health penalty from sleeping in the damaged shipyard, and grants more Unity. Upgrades to vanilla Housing.

Field Canteen serves a player-selected food and restores proper food service. Higher Unity bonus from food than the damaged shipyard. Upgrades to vanilla Food market.

Storehouse holds countable products, without transport ports. Upgrades to vanilla Unit storage.

Stockpile reserves a prepared outdoor area for loose products. Useful as a drop-off point for Miners and loading point for carts. Upgrades to vanilla Loose storage.

The Well produces fresh water. It requires a groundwater deposit. Fresh water is required to build other masonry buildings like the Stone furnace and Lighthouse. Upgrades to vanilla Groundwater pump.

Research and Production

Makeshift Lab begins organized research without electricity. Required to advance through the era. Upgrades to vanilla Basic laboratory.

The Earth mound converts Wood to Coal, for use in the Stone Furnace. It is convenient if Coal is not available at the starting location. It upgrades to the more efficient vanilla Coal Maker.

Manual Assembly produces Construction Parts, at a fraction of later industrial speed. Upgrades to vanilla Assembly.

Stone Furnace combines crude scrap smelting and casting around one labor-intensive furnace yard. Makes Iron from Iron scrap and Coal. Upgrades to vanilla Blast furnace.

Lighthouse burns Unity to attract a refugees. Less effective than vanilla Beacon, which it upgrades to.

Research and the Vanilla Handoff

KPIE adds predecessor research rather than rewriting the vanilla technologies. Its early branches establish primitive ironworking, manual assembly, settlement infrastructure, and basic food production. Handcarts and Lighthouse are valuable optional branches rather than mandatory gates. Some buildings that were available without research in vanilla, like Housing and Basic lab, have been given early technology requirements.

As the early milestones are completed, the ordinary Captain of Industry research tree takes over. KPIE buildings align with or upgrade toward their vanilla successors where appropriate, so the settlement evolves instead of becoming a museum beside the factory.

Compatibility and Save Safety

• Designed first and foremost for a new game.
• Can be added to an existing save; progressed saves receive sensible research unlock reconciliation instead of being forced backward through the opening.
• Cannot be removed from a save after it has been added. KPIE adds serialized prototypes and entities that the save may depend on.
• Uses vanilla islands, natural resources, products, recipes where suitable, and the normal maintenance system.
• Does not require another mod. Can be combined with most other mods.

What KPIE is—and is not

KPIE is a modern post-apocalyptic expedition bootstrap. It is not a medieval conversion, a historical simulator, or a separate game bolted onto Captain of Industry.

It is also not an attempt to make the opening tedious for its own sake. The purpose of manual labor is contrast: scarcity makes invention meaningful, physical work makes machines exciting, and vulnerability makes the first stable settlement worth caring about. The destination remains Captain of Industry. KPIE makes the journey feel more rewarding.

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