The endless hunt for coal

Suggestions
1

Clear a mountain to get peaty soil, end up with more stuff to refine with fuel, bones for glue when things attack, clay soil for bricks, rocks to make decorative. Fuel is used for heat, my furnace above lava doesn’t help. I can burn leaves, lumber, and timber for fuel for the beacon. But only lumber, coals, peaty stuff, for furnaces and the spark core.

Could leaves be compacted?

Maybe could timber be treated into a fuel brick with resin and/or tallow?

Is fuel supply purposely controlled by Hammer/shovel users

As a pure hunter it is not possible to get a source of sparks?

Is wood cutting at higher lvls a waste of skill points for axe mastery? And is wood cutting on higher tier worlds for crafting materials( sticks) pointless.

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2

I’m a fan of the idea that meteorites should drop some as well. Homeworld meteors soft coal, moons medium coal, ringworlds hard coal.

Also, possibly Hoppers? I mean, they do flame and gas and 'splode. Maybe they ate too much coal and have really bad indigestion :wink: :man_shrugging:

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3

I’ve made several posts on this. Coal is the single-largest !#%block in this game right now. I can spend hours upon hours farming coal and the moment I finish compacting it, it’s all gone and I still have tons of materials awaiting more coal.

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4

I would love to throw my Smart Stacks of tallow into a refinery to make some sort of bio fuel! :heart: XD… i think i even made a post suggesting this very thing quite some time ago (bio Fuel)

I think it comes down to balance though… Hunting is the only way to get fuel for portals (Very Important), and for now, with the new Meteor events, the best way to get gems… so the portal ppl and anyone that needs gems (miners, hunters, & builders… everyone?) now relies on hunters/hunting. if hunters could get fuel for spark and smelting… then there would be almost 0 reason to go digging / mining as coal is the main reason they are needed (until they fix gems spawning or make metals more useful) =/

if you could get spark/heat, portal fuel, and gems reliably from hunting… then why would anyone do anything else? and while hunting is great fun… Boundless is striving to be much more than that and part of that is ensuring that each roll / job is interconnect through dependencies on each other to promote cooperation and trade between players

all this said i think that SOME basic source of heat/spark from hunting should be possible w/o making miners obsolete as long as it’s a very small amount… but you could argue that such a system is already in place since you can already get a bit of coal from Meteors on Home worlds…

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lol yeah unless you deliberately mine ONLY coal… there will always be more to smelt than there is coal ><… but i think that’s the whole point of it… Coal is a time sink / tax on crafting… Is smelting all that ore really worth the time/$$$ in coal? or would you be better served by selling it or just storing it away till you really need metals?

economies need to be based on something and fuel seems a reasonable thing to base it on… not to mention it’s notoriously hard to balance economies in games o.O

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I suppose it kind of makes sense in a way, I mean look at big coal/oil/gas IRL. Fuel is the lifeblood of technology and civilization.

I do think its a bit TOO much of a grind in Boundless atm, though. A few extra sources of it (meteors?) and perhaps like has been suggested, a little more bonuses for mining drops based on various skills. Or make a coal shovel that doubles coal harvests. … something.

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7

Id be happy with simply, better forges = less fuel… and also speed boost because screw patience

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8

I wish this was the case… anything to stretch coal farther!

also… better forges do reduce Cook/Smelt times… it’s just not shown as a speed boost from the fuel type… however the reduction is lack luster… just shaves a few seconds off each smelt =/

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9

One way to make it feel better might be to restrict coal to just forges (and beacons?); and use some other fuel source for spark cores

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10

Spitters running on a wheel ftw

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11

And roadrunners for that high tier energy

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12

Solar power and wind turbines, waterfalls spinning turbines ftw :slightly_smiling_face:

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Any smart society becomes a green and sustainable society…

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14

There you go!

also hydro wind and solar would be cool… building needs more perks ^^

Edit: oops had to go afk and Oggieogham beat me to it! =p

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15

Which says so much about our real society, lol :wink:

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16

let me put up an oil rig so i can make gem city in desert whoehahaha
get bored and buy stupid stufff hahaha

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Oil extracting machines that need to be built and maintained in specific locations that provide a limited daily supply of oil are an interesting idea. I like the idea of some resource that requires building, possibly even in remote locations to supply resources.

If such a resource could be used to supplement coal, I’m all for it.

I also like the idea of some daily allowance of renewable spark (e.g. solar panels) for players as well.

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18

lava flow on water steamengine put over it :smile:

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19

How about just a change in the coal generation of at least medium level coal… or something to make it a bit more common.

Don’t get me wrong - I’d love compacted leaves, solar, and a few other things to be added as well. But for me a simple fix to the original issue (which is coal access) should be focused on first.

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20

Or drop the amount of medium and hard coal needed for a mass craft.

1 Like