A few days ago I made a little thread about how only using coal should be changed. Now with the new patch 10 wood now = 1 coal. Even though this is a step in the right direction after some playing with this mechanic I feel it is still difficult to get fuel to explore multiple planets. I'm not necessarily asking for unrefined wood to be fuel again but maybe change the rate to 5 wood = 1 coal or just increase the spawn of coal. This is my opinion but how do you guys feel about it?
There's not enough coal. Please make it spawn more. Or are we supposed to be travelling across the galaxy on only barely a half-tank of fuel? Or are we supposed to be spending hours upon hours spelunking, for the SOLE purpose of findingd mining coal, with a, most likely, just barely upgraded to silver pickax? Also, making coal out of wood, but wood being unusable as a fuel source makes no sense. Let wood be used directly again, but keep the ratio if you must have the nerf. There are whole sheets and layers of rock on earth that are nothing but coal, tar, and crude oil, and other stages of the carbon decomposition of plant matter, so why is coal only found in tiny little sporadic clusters in Starbound? This is a planet we're talking about, once you find an actual ore vein, you should be good practically for life since you're only sourcing one person's needs. Finding and exploiting that vein doesn't have to be easy though...
I think the amount of coal in the game is perfectly fine as long as you spend enough time on each planet exploring and mining. Making coal more easily accessible would just make the fuel mechanic in the early game arbitrary and at which point, would probably be better off completely removed from the game at that point because it wouldn't be serving its purpose of limiting travel distance and increasing exploration time.
There's an entire galaxy to explore, and I can't move further out a tier until I defeat a boss anyway, so why does exploration need to be limited in the first place? I may as well just sit down on one planet, gear up to the boss, and then move on the the next singular planet in the next tier, rinse and repeat. I did the whole, explore to the center of the world thing once, besides different block types and colors, and a little higher rate of ore there's absolutely no reason for me to do so again. This is besides the fact that mining through hivestone, blaststone, and hard cobblestone with only a copper pickax was the most excruciatingly painful mental experience of my life and one I would rather not repeat. I'm never digging down deep again without first having acquired at least a silver, if not gold pickax, which means world hopping for surface gold and silver, which requires coal.
Ah, I see where your problem is now. You're not prioritizing digging equipment at all and you think that you should be automagically allowed to progress without any mining involved. Personally my gameplay style, I upgrade my pickaxe FIRST before I even make armor. I always get a gold pickaxe by the end of the FIRST WORLD I explore and I don't leave that world until I've beaten the boss and acquired the best armor I can. That way I'm prepared for every other world in the sector, have the second sector ready for me when I want to progress, and I can explore any other worlds and biomes without fear of instantly dying or being stranded. I always have ample resources and I never feel pressure to mine or progress, I just have fun. Also just a little tip: Even with a diamond pickaxe, digging through blaststone is a pain.
Absolutely untrue, so don't assume I'm looking for "easy-mode-no-work-magic-autowin" -.- I always upgrade my pick first - so, stone becomes copper and then copper becomes... wait silver? Why can't I make an iron pickaxe? Silver is a rare metal, and a soft one to boot - progression makes no sense- and if I can't find enough silver I can't upgrade my pick then can I? Silver then becomes Gold - the softest metal in the universe for a pickax?- which is even rarer than silver, so I'm stuck with copper now aren't I? Unless I get lucky with chests, or do major spelunking expeditions... I always mine any large ore deposit I find, but Silver and Gold deposits are rare, and even rarer on the surface, forcing me to spelunk with Copper - and I'm not going to make several trips up and down from the second biome layer just to utilize the ore I've collected, once I'm down, I'm staying down until I consider myself done and ready to move on, or I die, which I try to avoid doing at great cost. Rather, perhaps that's my problem, I don't consider it good gameplay mechanics to have to carry an anvil and furnace down to the center of the earth with me, or to run back and forth between the center of the earth and the surface world just to beam myself up to my ship's workstation to use them instead. My second character got lucky, spawning the universe when ore was amply provided, and got a fair supply of silver and gold from chests, so I could upgrade my pick quickly straight to gold, and then decided to mine to the center of a moon (out of curiosity and since moon dust is easy to mine) and wound up with enough platinum to upgrade, and almost enough diamond as well. However, I am STILL lacking coal, having just under a half-tank filled on my ship, and a little over 100 pieces for torches and emergency back-up in case I decide to travel too far and wind up stuck somewhere. Neither do I see the point in limiting one's travel within a sector where everything is level 1, while yet the space for exploration is immensely vast. My first character had no problems travelling, because I supplied the majority of my fuel with wood (1 to 1 ratio, easy to collect, and an additive use while exploring the surface of a world), and only supplementing it with a bit of coal and keeping the rest as a reserve in case I ran out and ended up at a woodless world. The second has no such luck, even though I have a platinum pickax, I don't like that I'm forced to spelunk so much just to travel around - Spelunking is not very fun in this game, and even less fun when the only reason I'm doing it is to get coal. Furthermore, you helped illustrate my point. You don't even USE coal (except for torches I presume), until you've geared up and beaten the boss. You are exactly my point. There's a whole universe out there to explore, but yet there's no reason to even do so, and even more, disincentives not to in the form of a very limited coal supply for travelling (and not being able to use wood effectively anymore), and being able to gear up just through spelunking on the first planet. Of course there's more than plenty of coal for people who don't use it to explore the vast whole of sector 1 before gearing out to beat the UFO and progress to the next sector to rinse and repeat the same "use one planet to advance to next sector, while ignoring the whole universe except out of idle curiosity"
^^^ This I don't really need to say anything to this since irrimn pretty much summed up exactly what I would have said, I just don't have the trouble some users seem to be having with regards to fuel. But admittedly I think the mining speed needs to have a small adjustment to improve its speed, it is quite painful even having a diamond drill and it is still a little too slow to get through any hardened stone.
powering an intergalactic space craft with coal and logs seems like a terrible idea, especially when your air-tight pressurized cabin doesn't even have a chimney. I'm happy it even works at all!
Although I don't think coal is as scarce as others do, I do agree that there is at least no reason not to keep the wood ratios and allow it to be used directly. That is not an exciting extra step. I definitely disagree that you should be able to find one vein and it last you the entire life. That would be so broken due to coord sharing. I would be ok with having fuel merchants so that those that dont enjoy mining so much can instead farm pixels in whatever way and use it to buy fuel.
On beta planets i find more silver than i do coal. On delta, more everything than coal. I'm literally stuck on the planet i'm on now because i have to choose between torches and being able to go to a different system. I made a lamp, but it's not very bright and the flashlight is just... not useful.
Exactly. When looking for fuel becomes the entire game, that game is broken. Actually, a carbon burning engine is the most efficient, survivable, and resupplyable fuel idea of any space-faring ship . The only advances that would work out a similar range with equal or greater resuppliability would be solar sails or a solar fusion device. Any other kind of engine would require an advanced infrastructure and trade network to acquire it's highly specific, well-refined, and rarely acquired, exotic fuel source. in a universe where so many planets are habitable and almost every single one grows trees, it's the smartest type of engine one can use. Also, the chimney is part of the engine, not part of your cabin. /off-topic
ok are you speaking about game mechanics or are you discussing real science. if you are suggesting these are FACTS then I want some citation. otherwise you're just talking out your black hole. bare in mind that a couple hundred years ago; whale oil was considered a great fuel source. what we think we know now has no bearing on what what we may know in the future - it may seem great now, only to make us look like chumps in the future.
As things are now, I've never had problems finding at least enough fuel on one world for my next jump, and 5 wood to 1 fuel ensures a forest world will provide for the next two or three jumps if I end up on a world poor on coal -- and that's exploring a planet's surface and a couple caves along the way. Forget about playing online, and being able to teleport to party members' ships at no cost to the player. That alone breaks the fuel system as it is, since only one player has to make jumps for the entire party, and as such fuel their ship. I really don't think we're intended to be blazing around the galaxy on a full tank, jumping on a whim. The entire point is, jump to a world, explore and exploit its resources, and then move on. Fuel's fine right now, as long as you actually plan how and when you jump. Once ore generation is normalized, the situation will be even better.
I was speaking theoretically, science according to the game mechanics. Also, whale oil is STILL an excellent fuel source, we've just developed an overly touchy conscience about exploiting our planet's natural resources. First it was whale oil, then coal, now it's crude oil and nuclear, and soon it will be natural gas, and I wouldn't be surprised if the mercury batteries required for electric to be efficient are next after that. What was once great has not diminished in it's usefulness at all, It's just people feeling self-guilty about wanting to force others into the dark ages again while they glut themselves like kings off our slave labor, and the mindless fools believing their masters actually care about what they say they do, and taking the bait whole, hook, line, and sinker. We'll definitely look like chumps in the future, but mostly just because generations can not possibly get over their pride of being in the present, always assuming they know more, are smarter, or are wiser, than the previous generation that got them to where they now are in the first place.
hahaha I'm not even going to get baited into THAT argument. Energy density be damned! Wringing out pod after pod of qausi-sentient being for the last drops of their precious go-juice™ would prove to be just down-right problematic when refueling my entire galactic space armada.
You just need better harvesting and processing equipment and there wouldn't be a problem. I'm fine with wringing Go-juice out of whatever creature possesses it to fuel my space fleet, even if it means wiping clean entire planets (After of course, I've created an intergalactic zoo to keep their species alive for my amusement). I already annihilate immense amounts of plants and animals to feed my earthbound societial person machine, so what are a couple giant cruisers going to impact anything using the same fuels? It's not about energy density, it's about cost per energy unit. If it costs more money and energy to harvest something than I can get out of it, then it becomes in unprofitable venture. For whales, they had the processing and support infrastructure already set up, so it was profitable. Same with coal and crude oil, Solar and wind can't compete because the infrastructure for cheaper production isn't there, along with having lower efficiencies due to infancy of technology. For a spaceship in a galaxy where most planets grow trees, there could not be a cheaper cost per unit of energy to fuel starships with. And as an explorer, one must deal with a lack of infrastructure at all times, and chopping trees takes the least amount of infrastructure and time of all activities, hence, the most ideal fuel source for a space-faring vessel.
... cmon ... just take the time to mine the planet , theres plenty of coal ... in my first planet i got around 3 full stack of coal ....
