Having a cost to travel is good for a number of reasons, it maintains a feeling that the you actually travel from one place to another and makes it so you actually feel stranded in the beginning of the game. That said, I feel that the high costs involved in interstellar travel is unnecessarily high. It may make sense from a realism standpoint (well, as much sense as using coal for FTL travel can make) but does make the game feel a bit like a chore at times. We should be space travellers, not coal miners! Cut the cost to 20 fuel-units for interstellar travel!
20 seems like it'd be way too little. I'd opt for 100 per insterstellar jump and 20-25 for jumps within the same solar system. Perhaps even 50/10. I agree that coal can be a bit scarce, making things very costly at times but better not go overboard with reducing costs.
Perhaps keep high costs for inter-sector jumps to indicate the larger distance travelled and to have a sense of progression? Personally I use my ship like my base but I imagine that the costs seem prohibitive for those who prefer to maintain planet-side bases.
Fuel isn't /that/ terrible to get. I think trees should slowly regrow (possibly with a maximum tree count per planet or something if we aren't going the 'let players plant trees' route) but yeah. 300 for out-of-sector, 200 for same-sector, 50 for solar system, like, 5 for nearby?
I really haven't had that many problems with fueling, surprisingly enough. I know, I though 100 units was steep too. Turns out, it really wasn't for me. Actually, I think 1 fuel unit for same-planet hops is way too cheap as-is.
I've never found any problems finding coal. I'd like it if they possibly actually -increased- fuel cost but make additional, more energy dense, fuel resources. You could find Uranium, and be rather excited of the discovery because it means you could power your ship for a while. And use coal only as a last resort, if you don't find any better alternatives.
I don't know about Uranium, but you can find plutonium in asteroids if you fly or build a space elevator. It is not worth all that much more than coal though, certainly not enough to be worth the effort of getting.
It could be if you could glug some Plutonium Space Fuel into the tanks of your ship, which you can with my mod. Check it out here: http://community.playstarbound.com/index.php?resources/spacefuel-tamefoxx.8/
