small-scale charcoal production

[serVar161]

Reason. Currently, there's a charcoal pit with combustion product (tar) screening. This is a fairly large structure, and even if it's half-filled, the charcoal production process takes a very long time.

Proposal. Add the ability to produce charcoal in small quantities. If you watch "Primitive World," you'll see that a meter-by-meter charcoal mound allows you to produce a decent amount of charcoal in a short time.

Implementation. Logs + leaves or hay + clay/soil + water. It's like making tools. After a while, you break up the mound when it stops smoking and get some coal.

- The quality of the charcoal depends solely on the quality of the logs.
- The quality of the charcoal cannot be higher than the quality of the wood. The cap, whether soft or hard, is made from building material. (Аdded)
- The amount of charcoal produced is less than when producing the same number of logs in a tar kiln—less charcoal in exchange for speed.
- No tar.

Advantages. This will allow you to quickly produce enough charcoal for one firing of the smelter or crucible. This will prevent you from putting off what you wanted to do for a long time if you're out of charcoal or run out. At the same time, tar kilns will be used to produce high-quality charcoal in large quantities, as well as tar.

[Hasta]

This will allow you to quickly produce enough charcoal for one firing of the smelter or crucible. This will prevent you from putting off what you wanted to do for a long time if you're out of charcoal or run out. At the same time, tar kilns will be used to produce high-quality charcoal in large quantities, as well as tar.

Unless there is a quality penalty from soil and water used to make this object and coal quality depends only on logs used, this will make tar kilns nearly obsolete, used only to grind tar.
In general, always think of something that would limit the quality of your suggested item or object, limiting resources being water, soil, sand etc. (on basic level). Otherwise your little cute thingamajig making life of a new player easier might become an immense quality-spiraling behemoth at endgame.

Otherwise it's an ok suggestion.

[serVar161]

Unless there is a quality penalty from soil and water used to make this object and coal quality depends only on logs used, this will make tar kilns nearly obsolete, used only to grind tar.
In general, always think of something that would limit the quality of your suggested item or object, limiting resources being water, soil, sand etc. (on basic level). Otherwise your little cute thingamajig making life of a new player easier might become an immense quality-spiraling behemoth at endgame.

Otherwise it's an ok suggestion.

I see. I thought about that.

I suggested considering only the quality of the firewood, so as not to improve the quality of the charcoal at the expense of other components.
I also suggested limiting the amount of charcoal produced (2-3 times less).
But I didn't consider that after some time, you'll get trees and logs of such quality that the tar kiln will reduce their quality, and it will be more profitable to get less without sacrificing quality.

The first thing that came to mind was a hard cap depending on the quality of clay/soil + water.

[serVar161]

I smelted metal and ran out of coal.

At this stage, this isn't a problem—I went to the mine and mined some coal. But if the mine doesn't exist yet, or it's not deep enough, you'll have to wait a long time.

This is frustrating. Especially if you need metal for buildings, where quality isn't important.

In one game, you dig a pit and fill it with wood, light it on fire, and seal it to limit oxygen. You can choose whether the pit is one square deep or 10 by 10 squares. The deeper the pit, the more efficient it is, since coal production time doesn't directly depend on the amount of wood and the pit's volume (base time + time * number of squares).

But at the same time, being able to quickly produce a small amount of coal is very convenient.
And it doesn't require building a base with multiple resin furnaces.

[Fostik]

Making it easier to produce coal decreases value of products achieved by it, especially at early world.
Needless to say, cast iron is the only smeltable metal that requires coal, the rest can be produced in Stack Furnace, and bronze can be achieved with even a single piece of coal stashed near crucible.
It's not that game made it impossible to achieve certain things behind the grind or gate wall, you have other ways to get hard metal, you have other ways to get coal, and any facilitation of wood coal production is really, really dangerous for industry and quality grind, as basically Hasta explained.
It's the main source of incredibly high quality coal (which at some stage of world becomes higher than what you can reach in L9 mine), and I'd love it to remain gated asf in both horizontal (complexity to construct many HQ tar kilns) and vertical (speed of coal production) dimensions.

[Regulus2424]

var = please Jorb, I'm terrible at long-term planning and monitoring my resources, make one of the most idiot proof gameplay loops even easier for me, while also potentially breaking quality grind

[serVar161]

Making it easier to produce coal decreases value of products achieved by it, especially at early world.
Needless to say, cast iron is the only smeltable metal that requires coal, the rest can be produced in Stack Furnace, and bronze can be achieved with even a single piece of coal stashed near crucible.
It's not that game made it impossible to achieve certain things behind the grind or gate wall, you have other ways to get hard metal, you have other ways to get coal, and any facilitation of wood coal production is really, really dangerous for industry and quality grind, as basically Hasta explained.
It's the main source of incredibly high quality coal (which at some stage of world becomes higher than what you can reach in L9 mine), and I'd love it to remain gated asf in both horizontal (complexity to construct many HQ tar kilns) and vertical (speed of coal production) dimensions.

Thanks for the detailed answer. I took into account what Hasta said and added a limitation—the cap depends on the wall material. Will the quality still be higher than in resin furnaces or in a shaft?

[serVar161]

var = please Jorb, I'm terrible at long-term planning and monitoring my resources, make one of the most idiot proof gameplay loops even easier for me, while also potentially breaking quality grind

var = using a trademark without the author's permission is punishable by law.
As for simplification - it's not about simplification but about convenience. This method has been used since ancient times and is still used today. The idea wasn't to simplify, but to provide a choice: a lot of high-quality, but time-consuming, or a little, poor-quality, but faster?

[Regulus2424]

var = using a trademark without the author's permission is punishable by law.

peepee poopoo

[serVar161]

peepee poopoo

Why aren't you in kindergarten? Is it vacation?