Removing wood as a fuel source adds a lot to the game by limiting our bouncing between planets.

If you need coal that bad, join a server and have someone teleport to your space ship and give you some, it's that simple.

 

Until I'm bored of it. If a planet doesn't have anything interesting, then yes, it may be five minutes. If I'm feeling particularly inquisitive and find a cave system entrance on the surface, god only knows how long.

The point is, it should not matter how long I stay on a new planet. If I don't like a given planet, I should be able to write it off and go find something else to play with. Otherwise, what is the point of these "near-infinite, procedurally generated worlds" if getting to them is tedious busywork for every jump?

 

I need to use lots of coal for torches, to dig deep and find more coal, and still somehow have some left over for fuel, which isn't likely since it's going into torches to find more coal. So I must be missing something, since there's talk on these forums, about finding lots of coal being trivially simple. How are they doing it without light, or, finding _so_ much that they can make light and fuel? A couple of pieces isn't enough to hold me over, torch-wise, until the next coal vein.

 

I like that wood isn't a fuel source, but I kinda like being able to hop planets too. Sometimes 5mins is all I need to decide the place isn't what I want. Upping the value of coal would be nice.

 

After the patch I've actually decided to set up a home base on my starting planet since it's a forest biome. I originally attempted to visit a desert biome but found the lack of wood too risky to stay there for a longer period of time. I'll return once I've progressed more and developed my loadout/fuel resources on the forest planet!

Much agree with the OP.

 

I am exploring huge cave systems on a desert planet, and I am getting more gold than coal. I hardly can get enough coal for the torches!

There is a fine line between challenging and tedious.

 

I get your point but as any source of energy or in this case fuel, you are bound to run out of it sometimes, you can;t gather coal once for example and then be able to explore the space forever without mining anything again (A car for example: you buy fuel, you then can drive for 100 km's but then it runs out of it so you have to buy more fuel, it's the same thing). Personally each time I arrive on a planet I leave a landmark where I land, head to a direction, stop when I get bored, leave a landmark where I stopped, then I proceed to dig for let; say 10 minutes. By doing this I get enough resources in fuel to go to another planet and at the same time find some other ores that I may need. More often than not I end up finding some underground dungeons or curious caves filled with ores and random stuff like hay and carrots.

 

In my experience Forest, Grassland and Desert biomes present plenty of coal.

 

I think it's good that wood isn't a fuel source anymore, in Starbound like in other similar sandbox games you need to work a bit to get what you want, think Terraria or Minecraft. Besides it seems to me a little bit random that you'd complain about the grinding of coal to get to another planet and not the grinding of everything else to get better weapons/armor it takes about the same time to do one and the other. I think the current fuel system is ok, it could improve but I don't think reinstating wood as a fuel resource is the answer. In fact, you are stranded in a planet without fuel, if it were easy to get and jump elsewhere, then you aren't really stranded. I believe when the story mode is complete, getting out of the first planet is going to be even more difficult.

 

I've noticed that if you create a character after last night's patch there is a good chance you'll have a starter planet with tons of gold and silver but very little coal and copper.

One character's world literally had two chunks of coal ore on it total (I used a modded pick to check)

 

I disagree. I can never have enough wooden platforms. NEVER.

 

My first planet was a lush, temperate, rather idyllic little world, tragically marred by hordes of creatures that want your flesh, and had attacks that could one- or two-shot someone in starting armor. It also had virtually no coal or ores on the surface, and most of the underground was taken up by a vast, expansive tar pit where no ores of any kind can spawn.

A friend of mine helped me out with some Silver armor. With that, i was able to barely scrape together the 200 coal needed to get the heck offworld. My second world is the polar opposite of my first - it's a toxic forest planet, with bitter-cold nights and days that are barely tolerable, water that's poisonous, fruit that's poisonous, and few things to recommend it aside from the fact that it has both wood-bearing trees and plant fiber trees on the same world, and the local monsters aren't quite so vicious (most can't hit for more than 40 damage and their attacks are easier to dodge). However, it's stupidly rich in ore - I've found veins of gold and silver right there on the surface for the taking, and coal veins that have been worth 30+ units in one vein. Surviving the harsh climate and environmental hazards is easy, and I can eat meat for food - especially since I can actually kill the mobs on this world. Having the better and more plentiful ore spawns lets me finally get stuff DONE, and expand the options I have sooner.

Personally, being stuck on my first world with no way off it except to scrape together coal between getting horribly murdered by blood-spitting ants and demonic lightning-flinging bats was no fun, and so I really can't support anything that limits one's ability to travel between stars and worlds unnecessarily. Having more fuel types allows you options when you find yourself stuck on a world that completely bars progression - like needing to make a crafting table on a world that only has plant-fiber trees.

 

Also, the cost of jumping planets in a solar system is rather low (But I don't remember the number). Picking suns with lots of planets helps a ton.

Yikes. That RNG hates someone.

 

That's great. What if someone randomly spawns in a no-moon, one-planet system on something that isn't one of those biomes?

 

Two pieces of ore in the entire world? Now that ladies and gentlemen, is scarce. Keep coal counts less than where they were irritated koala, but definitely more than annoyed.

 

I would say that there's a line between when things go from work-reward to a chore. Things like ore generation that have a random component will take some time to calibrate properly and are definitely something to which beta testing is well-suited. Coal is complicated because you need it in moderate amounts all throughout the game. I think they're going to be tweaking it over time.

However, I definitely agree with the decision to remove wood as a fuel source. It's not that expensive to putter around the nearby solar system and it should feel like a big achievement the first time you manage that. I think coal needs to be less abundant than it was at release, but I don't think these particular cases devoid of coal are intentional. Every planet in the Alpha Sector should have the resources to get yourself started and able to move to another planet without it pushing into chore territory. However, moving to another planet should not be a light decision, else each planet would feel less special. I know when wood was removed as fuel I started becoming much more economical with my torches and had a habit of putting more effort into building a nice home on the planets I visited and ultimately it was a more compelling experience.

 

Maybe turn pixels into fuel?

 

I do suppose it would still have enough coal so that you can go to a nearby planet of the same Sector, it doesn't use that much fuel to do that. I don;t think spawns are that random. I made several Floran characters and they all spawned on different Forest biome planets. I usually don't have enough fuel to go from one planet to another without mining, that's how I play. On each planet I have to mine to find some sort of fuel, So far I never ever landed on a planet in which I couldn't find enough coal to leave.

 

If someone only found two lumps of coal in an entire planet I'd have to say it might be due to the revised ore generation code.

Perhaps the coal is being replaced by higher-tier ores like gold and silver, which may be a bug or just a simple oversight.

They'll have to tweak it a bit but I think beyond that coal as the only early fuel source is just fine.

 

He means a system with only one planet, which exist. Also, I heard next patch wood can be smelted into coal at 10:1, lemme see if I can scrounge up a quote ...