Voyager - End Expeditions for MineColonies

Discord: discord.gg/BVztrTtXFu - questions, dev builds and bug reports.

A new MineColonies profession that explores the End. Build a Departure Point - a Launchpad with a rocket, or an End Gate - hire a Voyager, and every launch window they pack rations and supplies, lift off and come back a while later with a haul from the End: end stone, chorus, purpur, ender pearls, shulker shells, the occasional elytra… if they come back at all.

Since 0.3.0, two more professions, built around Exposure: an Astronomer at the Observatory who keeps the watch at night and photographs the sky, and a Photographer at the Photo Booth who photographs the colony and its visitors. See below.

BETA - the expedition loop, both building looks, the research tree and the effects are play-tested in single-player and LAN games. The Observatory and the Photo Booth (0.3.0) are new: tested in single-player and on a dedicated test server, but not yet by many hands. Dedicated-server play and a few research effects are lightly exercised. Please report bugs with your latest.log (every expedition is written there with a [Voyager] prefix).

Two looks, one building

• Launchpad - a rocket on a hazard-striped pad with a control room, gantries and fuel tanks; by level 5 a three-stage rocket with boosters, a crane tower, mission control and a fuel farm. The crew boards through the hatch, the engines light and the rocket really lifts off - it is gone until the expedition lands again.
• End Gate - a ring gate of purpur and obsidian with a glowing portal film, chorus trees and an observatory; by level 5 a monumental ring with floating chorus islets. The ring spins up, the Voyager vanishes in a flash and a purple beam carries them into the sky. The portal glows day and night, no shaders needed.

Both are alternatives of the same building in the build tool, levels 1-5, with one footprint for every level so upgrades never outgrow the outline you placed. The structure pack is inside the jar and works next to any colony style.

How it plays

1. Research Reach for the Stars (University → Technology, after Open the Nether; needs a Nether Mine).
2. Build a Departure Point and hire a Voyager. Adaptability shapes what they find, Agility the odds of coming home unhurt.
3. Stock the hut: a sword, a pickaxe, armor, rations (Rations tab) and the expedition supplies - 64 cobblestone, 4 ender pearls and 16 torches per trip.
4. Wait for a launch window: every three days at level 1-2, every two days at level 3-4, daily at level 5.
5. Read the Expedition Log in the hut to see what happened out there.

Higher levels bring bigger hauls and rarer finds (purpur and end rods from level 3, obsidian and dragon's breath from level 4, a small chance of an elytra at level 5), but also more fights. Every level lets the Voyager carry better gear - iron at level 1, diamond at 2, netherite at 3, anything from level 4 - and between fights they eat rations to recover, so keep the pantry full. Not everyone comes home: a Voyager lost in the End gets a grave by the Departure Point's console, so the Undertaker can bury or resurrect them.

Research

Reach for the Stars opens its own corner of the Technology tree:

• Void Insurance I / II - 25% / 50% less damage in the End
• Starlight Navigation - one more expedition per launch window
• Rapid Refit - expeditions take 25% less time
• Buddy System - a second Voyager per Departure Point (Launchpad crews take turns with the rocket)
• Ender Harvest / Shulker Whisperer - extra pearls and shells from beaten mobs
• Dragon Hunt - level 5 Voyagers may run into the dragon: a dragon head and dragon's breath for the survivors
• Long-range Comms - the Voyager reports to the colony chat while away
• Return to Sender - a lost Voyager's gear comes back to the hut

The Observatory and the Photo Booth (0.3.0)

Two more buildings, built around Exposure and its Space and Expanded add-ons. Both are optional - without Exposure the Departure Point works exactly as before.

The Observatory - the Astronomer. A night worker who lives at the building: at dusk they walk out to the instrument (a telescope, an armillary sphere, a gnomon, a ring - five looks, five levels each), keep the watch while the sky is clear, and come home at dawn with a plate. What is in the sky comes from Exposure: Space's 256 cosmic objects (or any datapack of them), read as data. The darkroom develops the plates into prints - a first sighting becomes a genuine Exposure photograph of the night sky that hangs in the study - the colony is paid the objects' own rewards and keeps a sky book of everything it has recorded, and the building runs its own studies, paid for in nights of watching, some of which reach the Voyager. When there is a hill with a clear sky within forty blocks, the astronomer keeps the watch from the lookout instead, with the colony's camera, and brings back a real photograph of the sky with tonight's object in it; a setting sends one or two guards along as an escort. On event nights the whole colony stays up for a star party.

The Photo Booth - the Photographer. Crafts everything Exposure makes (film, cameras, stands, frames, albums, flashes) and, when the bench is quiet, photographs the colony - rendered on the server out of the world's own map colours, colonists in the picture, through whatever film, lens, filter and flash the colony fitted to its camera. Every building the builder finishes is photographed for the colony chronicle, an album on the shelf signed as a volume when it is full; from level 2 visitors come in for a portrait and, with Trade Post for MineColonies installed, pay for it in coins.

Both huts have photograph frames on their walls and both workers hang their pictures in them - the astronomer's night skies in the study, the photographer's portraits on the gallery wall. Put a camera and a roll of film on each building's shelf: the workers ask the colony for one and say so when it is missing.

What needs what

• Departure Point and Voyagers (the End expeditions) - only MineColonies and Structurize. They work exactly as in 0.2.0 whatever else is or is not installed.
• Observatory and Astronomer - the sky is Exposure: Space's: without it the astronomer keeps the watch over an empty sky (nothing caught, nothing paid, the sky book stays empty, the lens studies cannot be bought). Exposure itself makes the pictures: without it the plates, the rewards and the sky book still work, but there is no darkroom photograph, no lookout photograph and no frames on the walls. Exposure: Expanded supplies the first ("Bad") lens - Exposure: Space lists it as required anyway.
• Photo Booth and Photographer - needs Exposure, full stop: without it the building can be placed and the photographer hired, but there are no recipes, no camera, no photographs, no chronicle and no visitor portraits. Trade Post for MineColonies only adds the coins - without it visitors still sit for a portrait, nobody pays for it.
• Colonist Errands 2.2.0+ is optional and gives the astronomer and the photographer their voice.

Short version: install Exposure, Exposure: Space and Exposure: Expanded if you want the Observatory and the Photo Booth; the End expeditions never needed them. (0.3.0 could not load a world without Exposure at all - fixed in 0.3.1.)

Requirements

Minecraft 1.21.1 · NeoForge 21.1.x · MineColonies 1.1.1300+ (tested with 1.1.1368) · Structurize

Optional: Exposure 1.9+ (the Photo Booth, and the Observatory's photographs) · Exposure: Space (the sky itself) · Exposure: Expanded (filters and the first lens) · Trade Post for MineColonies (the visitors' coins)

Optional: with Colonist Errands 2.1.0+ and Talking Colonists, Voyagers tell you about their last expedition and chat with their crewmate while waiting for the next launch window; with Colonist Errands 2.2.0+ the astronomer and the photographer know their work too.

Credits

Made by Lovkar & Claude - designed and play-tested by Lovkar, coded by Anthropic's Claude. Thanks to the MineColonies team; the expedition mechanics follow the Nether Miner's design in our own implementation. GPL-3.0-or-later, source on GitHub.