Me and a friend find this mod very useful for our next multiplayer world! Right now, the mod works perfectly for me, because of one reason: you can use cuprinickle in the bronze age/make jonas devices using cuprinickle during the bronze age. 

But this could be seen as an inconsistency; technically, you need iron to mine nickel ore to make cuprinickle, but everything else from the coke and the anvil,only needs copper at most (t1 anvils can work cuprinickle). You can even blow up nickel with a bomb, making it also "technically" completely copper available 

But, I would see how people could disagree with jonas devices being copper age (or, as of right now, bronze age) due to nickel being a "iron" resource 

I want to propose, maybe, make and alt copper/bronze age, where if a player does something like /tb set T1 or T2, they can use cuprinickle during copper/bronze age, otherwise it defaults to it being unavailable- this seems like a good solution to the grey zone, and lets the player decide if bombing nickel for cuprinickle/tech should be allowed earlier on, or if it should be restricted to iron, (or who knows, maybe there could be an alternate option where tech is entirely banned seperate from the ages, and people can choose when to unlock their "tech age"- whether is be copper, or a while after steel)

RumpleRatskin

It's a great idea but not for the scope of this mod, maybe for another bigger project!

Noraboo

Sure I can look into that! 

I'd say if that was gonna work you'd prob need to have requirements to "tech up" as one could say such as reading specific lore books or obtaining a better ruins schematic.

And the specific level of tech would change its requirements...

ADVANCED

Example: reading all the Reflection lore books OR the field engineer's diary (or similar lore books) would allow you to craft jonas components.

BASIC

Example: when encountering traders, you could trade say 5 gears for a specific branch of knowledge such as trading 5 gears and unlocking all of the basic wattle fence types.

RUDIMENTARY/PRIMITIVE

Example: Essentially the most basic as it mostly requires you to obtain all the materials (and sometimes craft others) for the recipie to unlock such as obtaining the materials to craft bone armour and already having crafted the improvised armour, would allow you to craft bone armour.

INNATE (SPECIAL TYPE)

Example: picking clockmaker would firstly give you the ability to craft jonas components and most carpentry/stonemasonry such as bricks and shelves. picking blackguard could give you the knowledge of how to craft primitive weapons such as javelins from the combat armoury or tailor would anyway just give you the ability to craft most things requiring cloth.

Literally making a server based around this idea, to limit player progression. Would it be possible to have a command that would allow individual players able to be at another tech age? Example, they through gameplay learn how to craft with copper,iron, etc. so an admin could run the command and unlock the next tier specifically for that player while everyone else stays in the stone age?