Coal: A not so abundant resource.

Might be wonderful. I'm lucky to get bursts of 20 coal at a time if I'm lucky on most worlds.. Once in awhile i'll find a BIG stream but thats so unlikely. I find more regular ores then coal, and even finding sand doesn't help much (Current world sand is proving to not be worth the effort)

 

Oh it is all over the place, but I typically start a world off with a drop shaft and branch out from there, after the set up (takes about an hour to get to the core), I usually net around 100 coal and a bunch of other stuff in a 30 minute dig session. But as I stated I could just get lucky with my worlds, it might not always be so plentiful, Done it on a jungle world, 2 forest worlds a desert world and an arid world so far.

 

the deforestation aspect is something i'm adding into my RP/fanfic. Kinda Easter Island-ish

 

I too found coal a bit hard to come by to start but by the time I got together enough to get to the Beta system it wasn't really a problem anymore. Even just visiting 4-5 alpha planets and just getting the easy deposits of coal nets you enough to get out and about. You not wanting to leave you system is kind of your own road block you putting in place not the game

 

Wood > Stone > Workbench > Torches > Stone Pick > Start Spelunking. Down, down, go down. As far as you can. You'll haul up 100 coal in no time. All this 5:1 wood ratio, not enough coal blab are from people who wont dig and can't find any coal fucking around on the surface.

 

I haven't seen a shortage of coal on any worlds I've been on. After a decent trip spelunking in a Gamma world, I'll have an upwards of 500+ coal.

 

This! But you don't have to go down so far for coal. The soft layers will have as much coal as the depths in my experience, but not so much platinum or diamonds (which show deep in tier 1 worlds now). The fast digging of the soft layers makes it quicker to get basics, like coal. I favor going deep as well though... it is the way of the dwarves. I look forward to the future updates adding more underground structures to find. I think 'in no time' should probably be ammended to be 'in an hour'. A lot of people are just impatient.

To be fair, that is Gamma. Worlds get more ore rich as you go up in tier. I haven't seen a severe shortage of coal on any tier 1 world though. Surface coal, perhaps. A 'tiny' size world might only have 30 or so surface coal. If players actually put that pickaxe to use, they'll find coal deeper down though.

 

Again, this doesn't work on all planets. That was the first thing I did and I found NO ore alt all. Even did a complete loop of the map and only picked up about 25 coal a bit of copper and nothing else. Blanket statements don't work in this game.

And as an aside, that's part of the reason why I never go down the cave shafts. 90% of the time then end half a screen down in water and they almost never have any ore in them. Aside from this one starting planet I'm on, it's much more productive to just loop the map and dig all the ore you need that way. Which is fine with me. Digging's a bore with a capital O.

 

Sure, and that's fine, but you admit you don't dig and find it boring, so you can't say coal's not abundant. You need to go to where it is, not gripe that it's not where you want it to be.

 

You do know you can dig down farther than the surface caves right? There are more caverns below those, sometimes even massive caverns that you can fall to your death in. You can find slime biomes, flesh biomes, sewage biomes, poison pits, super freezing zones, lava, and all kinds of nasty things down there. Also treasure. And ores. Lots and lots of ores.

 

What version was this ? They rebalanced ore generation in Indignant Koala so if it was a planet you first visited during Frustrated Koala it's very possible. You could try deleting that planet file from the universe folder and checking if coal is still as rare ? (if you haven't built anything you can't part with)

 

The issue with coal is people have different mining styles. I learned from minecraft I F*£KING hate mining. I don't like digging out large patches of dirt (Stacks) and spending massive efforts to just get 10 or 12 coal, Also when ever I did down I always hit that gravel patch that plunges me into lava. I don't enjoy caving because the inherit danger isn't worth the reward at least in the alpha sector or the planets i'm on. A desert planet you can get away with crap, infact i'd reconmend finding a desert planet you like and just stripping it down. However I've been shafted by coal before, even when it was common, and dramatically more when it was rare. The issue is different play styles conflicting here. What i consider easy mining is a single shaft and the interconnecting caves with some deviant if I see unconnected caves or follow ore trails. What i don't consider easy mining is multi branch strip mining. Because that takes far too much of patient especially with cobblestone and endless stacks of dirt. Also to give an idea of Mining you need to take account the resources used DURING the trip. 40 torches is twenty coal so you need to find twenty coal just to break even. I've found forty on one trip but even that doesn't spell sucess a rough underestimation of 30 minutes lead to a bare profit of 20 coal. Call me lazy all you want. There needs to be a stark balance between Exploration, fun and absolute choir. Maybe i wouldn't feel so bitter towards the underground but between lag and unability to fight off monsters effectively undergrounds a death trap for me. Just my unpopular opinion that i'm 99% sure that somebody will qoute and start yelling at me about How I'm lazy and that i should find a mod for creative mode or w/e. So if you're going to do that DON'T. People need to see a middle ground or at least grasp differing opinions.

 

Your opinion is unpopular, you are lazy, and you should use a mode for creative mode (or whatever).

Oops!

I agree entirely. That is why I'm glad they added the ability to turn wood into coal. Now you can have an almost certain gain in coal supplies by going to a forest or jungle world, and harvesting the vast forests/jungles, and converting them into coal.

The two alternatives that have been tried are as follows:

• Wood can be used as one fuel unit.
• Wood cannot be used as fuel.

The alternative that is the middle ground, and currently in use, is that wood can be used as fuel only after being turned into coal, at a cost of ten wood for one coal, or wood being worth one fifth of a fuel unit.

That is pretty fair (personally I think it is too cheap, still) as it gives both play styles a chance to excel. If someone STILL has trouble finding coal now, they need to rethink their play style.

 

[quote="Guswut, post: 1551498, member: 1025"
That is pretty fair (personally I think it is too cheap, still) as it gives both play styles a chance to excel. If someone STILL has trouble finding coal now, they need to rethink their play style.[/quote]

That is what gets me. A lot of people complain that their play style isn't working out right. Currently a lot of "Waaaah I don't like to dig below the surface" often veiled as "I can't find coal!". The game dictates the viable play styles and not every play style should be effective. If a player wants to limit themselves to surface ores, then they'll quickly deplete the planet they are on. It would be foolish for the devs to put the majority of the ores right on the surface just as would be foolish for them to give us all chests stocked with infinite ores. A game requires challenges, and one of Starbound's primary challenges is mining.

Fortunately, they are working on adding more underground features to explore, so hopefully the anti-miners will find a more enjoyable/interesting experience below the surface. Well... even us miners will to I'm sure!

 

The possibility of most of these complaints being that is why I take this issue with a grain of salt. Tis is a game with mining as a primary theme. Learn to mine and quickly scout our the surface layer for coal deposits if nothing else.
P.S. another quick tip for non miners is to mine some blocks out beneath the ground then mine the back wall out. you'll light up part of the surface aler that way.

 

When you generate a seed, that seed is supposed to take you to that same planet every time it's used. From ore placement, to chest placement, to that random rock sitting in the middle of nowhere. If seeds aren't doing that, it's a bug. A bug brought to attention while I was playing on your seed and finding way more coal than you did. So yes, I did find it as I've not seen it mentioned before.

Now then, before you keep it up with your baseless insults how about you help with the solution?

Go to your universe folder in your Starbound directory -> Find the alpha planet matching your coordinates (the first two sets of numbers in the file name) -> Make a backup of it and delete it -> Go in game and travel to those coordinates (which will generate the planet with current patch values) and see if you get results similar to mine or your original venture.

If you do not get results similar to mine, there is a problem with seeds and it is indeed a bug.

 

Enough of the wood to coal ratio, 3:1 would be the thing, at least for me that can't a find a planet with abundant coal or trees. That brings me to the next point, coal should be common, but, FARMABLE, his is a new concept, but thing about it, a piece of wood burried underground would make a coal "seed", a block that would spread coal to adjacent blocks to it, this would have a limit on how much coal there can be in a block radius, but it would be good to those who aren't a nomad but dont stay home for long.

 

It's not a bug. All seeds of a given version are identical. They've been messing with ore generation post-wipe.

 

However in my experience going underground is Far more dangerous them braving the surface. I've gone down one screen and have had 5 hostile mobs spawn above me. Basically effectively boxing me in, and as i mentioned before lag causes that to be dangerous. I've had monsters run up to me when I was strip mining box me in before I can get a weapon out to kill them. I constantly keep on riding gravel to my death and the amount of Coal I find compared to other resources are so slim I don't want to go underground for coal, but rather to upgrade crap. Sure the chance of DEATH is worth it to get from a copper to gold pick, but not for scraps of coal. If i truly and desperately needed i'd be stripping the world of wood and digging a small tunnel beneath the surface because it poses less freaking risk on my part. RISK < REWARD 20 coal is not worth at least 40 minutes of time and 70% chance of death in my book.

However, what if people aren't finding coal because they can't see it? what if they made coal a bit more visible? because increasing is taboo and DECREASING it as some lunatics have declared would cause riots. What about making it a tiny bit more easier to spot, at least from nearby shadows because i've seen crap that looked like coal but was actually just Iron, or copper hiding in the shadows like a freaking ninja. Just a thought that popped into my head, since coal blends in a bit TOO well.

 

Don't let dying deter you. You don't waste that much time dying if you start your dig close to your spawn. Money loss isn't that big of a deal either, since you can just go kill a bunch of mobs on the surface to make money, or dump some ore in the refinery. I prefer killing for the pixels though because it's faster IMO.