Fuel efficiency

[Kavelach]

Hi, I was testing fuel efficiency between black coal and charcoal in forges and the cementation furnace, and it seems like the game does not reflect the burning times from the description in those cases. Despite the much longer burn time, I don't see the difference in my tests.

Regardless of fuel, when I add one piece of it in the forge, it heats up the material to around 900°C before it runs out. I tested it with charcoal and black coal, and the temperature it reached was just about the same.

The same thing happened when testing the cementation furnace. When I used two full piles of charcoal (2×32 items) and let it burn out, the result was a 19% progress in the process. When I used two full piles of black coal (again, 2×32 items) it also got to 19% of the process.

Is that intended? It seems like looking for coal is not worth it at all in the current state.

[Thorfinn]

The forge is coded differently than the firepit where you can see the effect of higher temperature fuel. I do not know why, other than to make sure the forge requires coal or higher, to be hot enough to soften iron and steel. There is a reason that the Iron Age had to wait for charcoal.

Looking at the code, it is intended. There is no attempt to adjust anything, other than burn temperature is at least 1000.

Re: coal being worth it, if you have ore blasting bombs, you might as well if you found some. I wouldn't go out of my way. But there are a lot who find charcoal way too tedious.

[Kavelach]

I looked into the code (it's very cool that it is available on github) and you're right - only the max temperature is checked. I do not feel like it is expected though, and I can see there is an open issue for that part, so I hope it'll get patched.

[Space6011]

I noticed the same thing. It kind of sucks because I spent time trying to find anthracite coal for my steel furnaces so I didn't have refill them as often; but it doesn't matter what you use it all burns the same in that case.

[k1ngofpentacles]

It's worth it in the sense that it takes much less time to get several stacks of coal as opposed to charcoal, but my issue is that it renders the differences between coals largely irrelevant. Finding anthracite is right now only much of a boon in the aspect that you will also find fireclay with it. Both the forge and cementation furnace should definitely take the burn rate and temperature into account, with higher burning coals carburizing and heating faster as well as lasting longer. This would make anthracite a lot more valuable and also separate coal sources into different functions. As it stands right now, there's not much use to it if you find black coal, and even black coal can be replaced in most cases with brown coal, which is much more available ime