Shoveling coal

[Sevenless]

Right, but why give it so narrow of a purpose. If it's function is similar to a wheelbarrow with a 30 unit limit you could just as easily make separate piles of coal with the right amount to go into a smelter.

I could "easily" make piles of 12 coal right now with bots, adding in a minimover of materials that isn't exactly 12/9 doesn't really help. Still easier just to pick everything up and bot putting into the smelter manually. But if you want it to move 12 dirt at a time too I wouldn't complain; It's just not the purpose I had in mind.

[Mr_Bober]

Seems pointless to have macros for this when an ingame mechanic could replace it pretty easily. Due to how ore is cooked by players wheelbarrowing coal doesn't fill this need, so why not the humble shovel?

If character has shovel equipped:
Right clicking on a coal stockpile shovels up 12 coal if the shovel has less than 12 coal loaded
Right clicking on a smelter with the shovel adds in 12 or 9 if all the ore inside require 9 to cook
Right clicking on ground empties the shovel and creates a new stockpile

I like the idea, but the different amounts based on ores seems a bit too much...
I'd just say make it like a bucket. Can hold up to 12 coal, or less if the stockpile has less, and drops the entire content in the new stockpile / smelter.

[Sevenless]

The reason for two varying amounts is if someone gets the 9 coal mining perk all of a sudden the shovel becomes useless and it's back to botting the dropping in of coal.

[Hrenli]

Making a shovel look through all the ore in the smelter and decide how much coal is needed sounds very convenient. Slightly a bit too convenient if you ask me. It sort of makes you even unaware of some mechanics if you just shoveling coal into a smelter... And makes it very smart shovel. Comparing it to a stupid lumberjacks axe which jumps to your hand of the belt quite often not when its needed etc...

[Muzk]

Why waste dev time on a useless new tool you have to equio and unequip every single time when custom clients let you do both extremely fast? So many suggestions seem utterly pointless

[Sevenless]

Why waste dev time on a useless new tool you have to equio and unequip every single time when custom clients let you do both extremely fast? So many suggestions seem utterly pointless

Why did devs waste time on auto farming or auto mining when custom clients had bots to solve that? Improving the base game by incorporating simple "bots" into it has improved the usability of vanilla massively, and frankly the devs tend to implement it more elegantly.

And makes it very smart shovel.

Arguably it's your hearthling who's the smart one, not the shovel, since presumably they're "checking" first. I'm not sure you need to know that mechanic directly when the credo which enables it explains it explicitly. If you don't include this convenience everyone goes back to botting again.

[Glorthan]

Better solution would be a toggle option on smelters & ovens to limit the fuel capacity to 12 & 4, respectively.

[NeoRed9]

I was very supportive upon reading this post a few days ago. I decided to do some empirical data collecting to hopefully decide if we were being lazy noobs or it was an unreasonably time consuming process. With an inventory capacity of 40 coal it took about thirty seconds to fill up, stockpile right next to the tar kiln and begin collecting again. So it wasn't quite two minutes per fully loaded tar kiln(using blocks), I have three kilns there for six minutes to unload them every three days.

Now, six minutes every thee point five days doesn't sound unreasonable but I'd like to assure you, it is. Not because the time investment itself is too steep but because it is brainless/alt tabbed work. Minimizing this type of game "play" would be preferable.

Clearly we need to shovel coal.

I also have full convenience but I'm unsure if that affects coal gathering.

[Sevenless]

I'm not expecting this would be faster. I'm more referring to frequency of UI manipulation being more than 1-3 times per 10s worth of action. "Fill a smelter with fuel" is one player decision, but requires quite a lot of button presses to achieve in vanilla.