It takes coal to mine coal

Theres barely any at the surface and to get a good tunnel going you need like 40 torches which is 40 precious coal. I hate travelling now !!!!!!!!!!!

 

Flashlights and yellow stims yo. Also I'm drowning in surface coal, so dunno what you're talking about with barely any coal on the surface..

 

I usually find tons of surface coal on desert/arid planets.

 

It could just be the planet or sector your on, the coal could be at different levels on that planet/sector.
But I find lots near the surface

 

Flashlights barely light up anything and you can't use them with any good weapon.

Yellow stimpacks and flares last for like 10 seconds (I haven't actually timed it, but it's a ludicrously small length of time). I've actually brought up that stimpacks need to last longer before, but I don't think the devs saw it.

Honestly, I wish I could just e-mail the devs directly, posting on the forums is like shouting into the wind - important issues like the pathetic length of stimpack effects is instantaneously buried under five pages of "this game is too hard!" and "where's all the coal!"

Er... no offense to the OP.

 

I'm one of the many people that finds 50 pieces of gold to 5 pieces of coal, and i'm not joking.
I don't understand the taking away of wood as a fuel. Is it to encourage exploration of the world?

You shouldn't be forced down a corridor to into exploring a world that you don't want to, the exploration should feel natural, as it DID, but now it doesn't.
Now I visit a planet, explore the surface and mine the loose minerals I see on it, then I think "oh wait, now I need to spend 30 minutes looking for enough coal to get anywhere useful because my ship can't be powered on silver and gold".

 

Luck is luck. In our recent start after this last patch our world had tiny amounts of coal. We had to mine over an hour to get enough to get to another world - including exploring the entire surface, digging down to lava, digging sideways. Hardly any copper either. Decent iron, silver, and even some gold, but it's rough when your starting world has very little coal. I flew my ship to a nearby world with ~20 coal after a couple hours of searching - that's slim pickins!

 

At this point I am finding more diamonds on the surface than coal... there is a serious fuel shortage since the patch and I never used wood for fuel.

 

I wish they would at least allow us to change wood into coal... as an emergency method of escaping. Can be ridiculously inefficient but, at least it wouldn't leave you stranded on a planet.

I wonder if you could have other characters rescue you? I would use one of my characters to assist another by going to his planet and dropping coal in a chest. Or perhaps have merchants sell it... do they sell them? I have no idea, real life is interfering with my gaming.

 

wtb tree growing and charcoal makin'

 

Everyone talks about the surface, meanwhile all the good stuff is deep within the planet. Sure, it may be menial at first. But once you finally get into it, expect to walk out with 200ish coal.

Unfortunate for some, I'd wish the ores on the surface weren't as abundant. Almost wishing for none at all, but that will just make everyone stay underground and that's no good.

So in short:

DIG DEEPER.

 

it takes coal to get coal is my topic.

 

Place Torch, Dig, Get Torch, Dig, Get Torch Dig, If you're just randomly digging and not lighting up your main mining run just reclaim your torch and keep moving. That's all I do random planets.

 

Well, as of this patch you can use plutonium and the other two mentioned ores as fuel.

And for the 'no wood allowed for fuel' is because you can easily get several stacks of wood from tree chopping, which makes it that much more easier to get fuel.


BUT SINCE THIS IS BETA, you can expect some other resource in the future that isn't ready right off the bat.

 

You're exaggerating.

It's 20 coal for 40 torches. And the torch requirement for coal mining is highly flexible given you can take some of the former if you're in really short supply.

 

Yeah the lighting is, one of the poorest aspects to the game for me.

Sure, could use the flash-light, but none of the mining tools is 1 handed so not while mining. Meanwhile we have FTL travel but not something so simple as a miner's lamp or an area light?

It just breaks verisimilitude for me.

 

For higher elevations just dig the background. Lights up pretty good. I have no problem finding coal in dirt elevations, just using my club to smash a tunnel through the dirt. I personally don't make many torches. You can start printing oil lanterns if you find one at a camp.

 

Protip: If you are near the surface and going into caves, and as long as its day time, you can knock out the background walls to let sunlight in, this will save you torches while looking for surface coal!

 

Sounds like you had a bad roll on your planet. I normally find twenty to fifty coal on the surface, and I've yet to run out of coal as I mine it whenever I see it. Perhaps a reroll is in order?

 

Well, congrats. Because there will be lanterns in the next update. Be excited.