On charcoal and smouldering log

[Hirachosan]

I feel smouldering log should be able to turn to charcoal somehow

[Hirachosan]

if its surrounded by full blocks or other smouldering logs./ already transformed charcoal.
If charcoal would work like other ground cover and be stackable ( if fallen on top of eachother for instance), it'd basically be like Vintage story

[SimonMeskens]

Of note: TFC and Vintage Story make it clear that this process is happening with particles

[vgl266]

Could potentially ruin progression by giving the player easy access to torches in early-game.

[Hirachosan]

Crude torches, and you can already get those right at the start. It does make gathering coal pre pick slightly easier depending on how slow you're playing. But would that ruin progress? If anything, it could help progress is what i think

[ammoore00]

Personally I don't think it would affect balance very much. Coal isn't very hard to come by except in the super early stages where it would also be difficult to set up such a charcoal making setup.

[vgl266]

I can elaborate a little on crude torches and progression.
So currently there are a number of mechanics making lighting branch of the tech tree interesting.
You can get coal in early stages, sure, but:

• It is ineffective, giving you only 1 Coal Dust per block. So the player is presented with a choice — either to waste some coal (which isn't so easily accessible when you only have sharp stone at your disposal) to make first cave dives a little safer, and simultaneously forced to be smart about torch burn time, as not to waste those precious torches and thus coal, or to be a little more greedy and make less torches, making them potentially save some coal, at cost of becoming less safe while caving.
• It exposes player to at least some danger. I know that there are veins than seem to be completely safe to mine, but these are rarer, and most of the time players gather their first coal at cave entrances where there are some sunlight, potentially getting an arrow in their head or getting blown up by a creeper coming from the cave. As I can see in this suggestion, making charcoal would require only some dirt and fire, which are not really hard to come by in early game, and the only danger would be to cause a forest fire I guess.
• Coal is a non-renewable resource until you get access to blazes. And blazes give you permanent torches anyways, so why would you need a metric ton of coal when you already able to use kiln? It's not like there is currently a shortage of resources to feed your ovens, since 1 lump of iron requires 1 log to smelt. So until players get their hands on hibachis, they are kinda always have to keep an eye on their coal supplies and to be a little conservative on torch usage. Especially in big caves, which can really eat through your torches, since it's not really safe in a big cave to leave a big stretch of a path back unlit. It isn't that much of a pressure, but it's a pressure nonetheless. Two or three failed cave dives in a row can really make the player feel it.

By "ruining" I've meant that making the player progress faster than they meant to may ruin the fun. You should really speed up only those parts of a game which feel slow. Does gathering coal in early game feels too slow?

I'm not against the idea of TFC-like (I assume that the mod that was mentioned before do this pretty similar to TFC) charcoal making, but keep in mind that it worked so well in TFC because it fits well into overall grindy theme of TFC, where for the most part you just do a lot of grinding at your home base slash mine, and TFC required a ton of coal to progress through.

So overall, I'd say that it requires more careful thinking and testing than it seems to.

[Hirachosan]

Sure, it changed balance in such a way, that it is possible to get renewable coal before even getting into caves. my point is having more coal in the early game isn't a bad thing, or much useful. In my experience once you get a stone pick, you can get easily infinite coal already. so we're talking about the first 5- 10 days on a fresh spawn where its possible to gather up coal before you could go into mines to gather that up. In that time you hardly have room, and wasting time in making huge coal gathering pits or something(it's not even discussed how effective these things should be) just seems like a silly waste of time.

to set up a kiln to get charcoal in a stable way requires a lot of technical insight of game mechanics, its not just unlock kiln: go make infinite coal, its implementation before automation is near impossible and with automation requires a technical mastermind. This charcoal method isn't focused on early game because it hardly impacts early game in a tech progression kind of way. It's focused on the part of the game where you're supposed to be able to make charcoal in a game in a manual kiln, but opens it up to a wider tech frame with a mechanic that's well known to a lot of survival game players.

my considerations what this charcoal pit would mean:

• a potential manual way to keep your base lit up without being outright wasting resources pre nether torches, potentially leading to more investment in a bigger settlement.
• more deep ventures into caves to find those first bits of iron on a tough spawn (A moment in the game where a lot of new people are really struggling, without coal caves are out of the question until you find at least 8 surface ores or some coal to hope for a bit just a torch width in) ->this part could quicken tech progression, which i describe as a good thing in that particular time.
• easier to get renewable coal in general throughout the game, a resource that you won't be short on untill crafting dynamite or soulsteel. and which is less risky than the already non - risky method of branch-mining.
• opens up a way of getting coal in an intuitive way without changing the technical challenge of having an automated way of doing this, opening up renewable coal to a larger audience