My son and I were discussing the area of fuel source. We have coal, peat and wood for fuel for the machines and furnaces.
Coal is the best it seems. You can get peat and compact it to make fuel or cut wood and use it for fuel.
I was thinking that compact peat would be better than wood.
My son goes, no, because you have to use spark to make compact peat, which requires fuel, so you are using either coal, wood or even peat to fuel the spark generator.
You are using fuel to make fuel, which is therefore a waste of fuel, according to him. Time would be better spent to collect coal, not peat or cutting down trees for wood, they should be seen as a byproduct of collecting sap for glue or sugar.
So, number crunchers, which way is best. Is collecting peat to compact a waste of time and usage of fuel to do the compacting? Would players be better off in just mining for coal or cutting down trees to get sap and have the wood for the fuel?
I know there is a video about this, but the short answer is that it is always more fuel efficient in the long run to create better fuels. Compact peat actually has the best percentage return for what it costs to make it and how much spark is gained. Compact coal of any kind is about double what you get from what it takes to make it. The only advantage to using non compacted basic fuels is the speed at which you gain that spark. It takes something like eight minutes for a hard coal brick to return any spark, so popping a few loose coals in might be ideal if you want to save a few minutes on something small.
Most of the time (coal vs compact coal) the spark cost is repayed much more than the cost of the spark so it is worth the compaction. Not sure on peat or wood though
compact soft 34300
compact medium 125600
compact hard 443000
compact peat 6400
and as example compact hard coal gives you a speed boost from x3,0
normal hard coal only x2,6
and you can buy cheap compact hard coal what give you every single hard coal 15000 spark/heat
I sell compact hard coal as example for 380 coins/each in my shop, if you search me
