I watched Javita’s video on spark cores.
I get all that, but what does having spark going into your machines actually do for the machine?
Thanks
It enables crafting of items that require spark in addition to the materials.
It’s kinda like electricity. Not all things you craft require it, but the ones that do, you can’t craft without having enough stored in your cores.
And for the things that don’t need spark, having it has no effect (and none is consumed).
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Its a fuel. You fuel your Spark Generator and more advanced items have a Spark cost, that drains the generator.
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On a related note, Peat is your best friend.
You will probably need coal to get your initial spark up. But, after that, use your compactor to turn 180 peaty soil into 25 compact peat. That will be your go-to furnace and spark fuel for a while (until you are at the point of making compact coal). I still use compact peat in all my furnaces.
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That’s interesting.
Any particular reason why you like it that way?
Nowadays I prefer to do the opposite and use peat for spark and compact hard coal for furnaces (after the values had been normalized), since I appreciate the speeding up when mass cooking bricks (I use a lot of bricks) and such. Spark generation tends to be less time sensitive for me.
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You know, I never really considered compact hard coal for the speed reasons.
I generally use com-peat in furnaces because it’s cheap, lol. I don’t mine as much as I should so my coal reserves are always really low. I also have seven Titanium furnaces set up so, if i’m in a rush, I spread the job out among them.
I do, however, burn through spark like nobody’s business. So I shove the compact coal in there for “bang for your buck” reasons.
I’ll have to take a closer look at time savings.
Yeah, that’s why I asked, because at some point compact peat was more efficient than coal for furnaces specifically, and vice versa, and people got in the habit of doing that, but it’s been a while since it has been normalized and now all fuels provide the same ‘heat’ as they do ‘spark’ so the only difference is the speed. 
(The speed multiplier also makes spark generation faster / slower, but since I always pre-emptively refuel it before it gets too low, time is never a factor for me in the spark side of things, so it’s interesting to learn that for some people it might be the reverse)
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OK.
Thanks
It’s compact hard coal for furnace in my case. For speed of course. Compact soft and medium coal go to spark core. I dont bother to use peat anymore.
Never calculated that one. I know hard coal has faster spark production rate than medium and soft but then again single block of it gives more spark so waiting time for a fuel block to turn into spark always seemed kinda the same to me. Anyone have the maths in their head now?
I had it somewhere but I forgot where I put it. Easy enough to calculate however, just gotta stick the things in the spark cores and furnaces and math it out. There we go:
| Soft | Medium | Hard | Peat | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spark/Heat | 1500 | 4500 | 15000 | 500 |
| Per Second | 10 | 15 | 30 | 5 |
| Total Time (s) | 150 | 300 | 500 | 100 |
| Total Time (m) | 2.5 | 5 | 8.33 | 1.67 |
all values are for compacted versions.
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Differences are larger than I thought so.
Doesn’t matter for me now as I stay above million spark most if the time. But a few moths ago when having less coal coming my way and when sometime in want to craft something as fast as possible, I would have think twice what to use as spark fuel.
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Yeah, as a rule I don’t use peat much either but sometimes I have surplus from clearing plots to build and whatnot so, if I’m not gonna use it as decoration, might as well burn the thing for spark.
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Next time you have a few smart stacks you can sell it to me. I’m building artificial hill/mountain. Has to be soil built as I also plant grass and flowers to give it distinctive look.
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And just for fun here’s the math for a million spark:
| Soft | Medium | Hard | Peat | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Units | 666.67 | 222.22 | 66.67 | 2000.00 |
| Time, 1 Core | 1666.67 | 1111.11 | 555.56 | 3333.33 |
| Time, 16 Core | 104.17 | 69.44 | 34.72 | 208.33 |
Time is in minutes.
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Interesting.
Lately I found myself doing a lot of crafting and spark making in advance. Putting a lot in queue. Sometime 36-48 hours worth. So soft and medium coal will remain my spark source even though it takes longer to turn it to spark.
Funnily enough I don’t do long queues in furnaces. I usually smelt or cook on the spot what I need and want to use pretty much right away so speed matters for me there.
Looks like choice of fuel really depends on how one uses machines.
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Yep, that’s how I do things too. I cook or smelt what I need as I need it, so all my titanium furnaces are powered by compact hard coal to speed things up. Tho I keep a bit of stock of iron bars and copper bars for general day to day use, only 16 smart stacks or so, and those I only smelt when the stockpile starts getting low.
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how much spark do you keep in your generator? Does it use it while it is just sitting there or it just stays at that level?
My son had moved his generator when we moved to our new home and he didn’t lose any of the spark. But a couple days ago I moved my spark generator up one floor and lost all of the spark that was in it, over 400k. A huge loss. Let it set for few hours to see if it would appear, but no spark fuel at all. Showed zero. Added some coal and all I got was what that was worth. In the process of building it back up, but wondering if I should keep it low unless I am going to be doing a lot crafting/booking/baking and so add more fuel.
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The generator also acts like a battery. As long as you don’t break the block it retains the spark level, and only consumes what you use to craft.
Moving generators is tricky. They ‘share’ energy when adjacent so you can place one, break the previous, place the one you just broken, and so on, moving the spark block by block until you get to where you want to move it to, but that’s such an annoyance that I usually just craft stuff to drain it before moving, if it has a lot of spark. If it’s just a little I don’t even bother.
I’ve never seen 'em retain spark when broken but I’ve heard of it happening before. Maybe if its quickly replaced within the same chunk/plot or something, but I haven’t tested this at all.
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