Loringoring Posted August 23 Report Posted August 23 Greetings, I've been playing a local multiplayer server with some friends and we've advanced to just under the steel age. By (un)luck, we haven't found any sort of coal yet despite prospecting far and wide, leaving us to rely solely on charcoal. Obviously this means chopping lods o' trees and sacrificing lods o' flint axes for the firewood to charcoal employment program. We like industry which means we like scale, and the current exchange rate of ONE log to FOUR firewood is frankly abysmal for our needs. It's become a genuine problem; when it's time to refill the charcoal pit, there's a palpable sense of dread at the non-trivial amount of busywork it's going to take to hold LMB on numerous trees, knap numerous axes (because screw wasting durability on firewood), then stack-by-stack turn those numerous log stacks into firewood. With charcoal being our sole source of metallurgical fuel, we've found ourselves wishing for an improved charcoal-acquiring process, and we've figured that a sawmill would work wonderfully. The basic idea is that a mechanically powered sawmill would receive logs as input, and output firewood with some multiplier. 2x (1 log → 8 firewood) seems good, but 1.5x (1 log → 6 firewood) would be acceptable too. We figure this firewood multiplier would be inherently balanced by the infrastructure necessary to get a sawmill operational; if you can afford to automate iron bloom refining, you oughta be able to streamline your fuel production as well. Tangentially, the developer's plan to take this game into the steam age, which famously relies upon coal burning to produce the titular steam. If a player were to get lucky like us with their lack of naturally spawning coal, then something like this sawmill idea would help save their temporal sanity when it comes to producing the fuel necessary to power their machinery and metallurgy. TLDR: Add a mechanically powered sawmill to increase firewood yield from logs so that producing charcoal isn't such a slog at scale. 1
Rainbow Fresh Posted August 23 Report Posted August 23 I'm all for a sawmill, if only to bridge the incredible lack of anything meaningful to do with your mechanical power. Not to mention the immersive effect of the sense of progression that could generally replace the crafting grid insta-craft (as the devs want to gradually remove from the game anyway.) The Immersive Woodworking Mod already does a great job introducing these things and I love playing with it ever since; higher yield from investing into better equipment.
SnapJelly Posted August 23 Report Posted August 23 I agree with the notion that we should be getting more than 4 firewood per log, a tree trunk that is (technically considering the dimentions of the blocks in game) a whole meter wide should be split into more than 4 chunks, if in game it would take a sawmill to get that then I'd be fine with it. Also not related to the sawmill but we should be able to burn sticks into charcoal aswell
qualicabyss Posted August 24 Report Posted August 24 Wouldn't a sawmill leave you with less wood? firewood isn't made with a sawmill...
SnapJelly Posted August 24 Report Posted August 24 (edited) 1 hour ago, qualicabyss said: firewood isn't made with a sawmill... yeah technically this is true but technically planks arent made instantly either ya know? It's a balance between game mehanics and believability Edited August 24 by SnapJelly I typed wrong cuz I'm a dum
Rainbow Fresh Posted August 24 Report Posted August 24 (edited) 5 hours ago, qualicabyss said: Wouldn't a sawmill leave you with less wood? firewood isn't made with a sawmill... Realistically is might be true that a proper, normal sawmill operating on entire logs does not make firewood, which are rather chunks split out of a small part of a small log; but I think the notion of video game progression is a fun enough argument to make it believable enough that firewood in VS is just 1/16th chopped out of the log (seeing as visually 16 firewood occupy the same space as one log [even if it actually stores 32]) so having a 3-bladed sawmill through which you shove a log twice (cutting, flip 90°, cutting) could work. Naturally the process would be slower than the current mass stack conversion in the inventory but as SnapJelly said, realistically speaking you don't just alchemy-transform items and if the devs eventually get rid of grid crafting I'd assume the process of manual firewood splitting would become atleast as slow and tedious as putting a log on a chopping block and clicking it with the axe there. Therefor an automated sawmill approach would atleast allow for automation so that you can slowly process entire stacks again without constant supervision, much like an automated quern. Only problem would be how to differentiate between wanting to saw a log into board and sawing it into firewood, but going by the decent example of aforementioned mod there'd be two different machines for that. As for why it'd give *less* wood I really don't get. No matter if you saw a log by hand or by fixed contraption, the resulting volume would be the same - and speaking from a videogame balance perspective there needs to be an incentive to upgrade to higher tiers of equipment so if the good ol' axe made in 10 seconds from a stone and a stick gives you 4 per log, a big machine made from a shitton wood and metal and requiring a functioning mechanical network as starting investment better give more than that. Edited August 24 by Rainbow Fresh 1
hjvtdev Posted August 24 Report Posted August 24 2 hours ago, Rainbow Fresh said: As for why it'd give *less* wood I really don't get. No matter if you saw a log by hand or by fixed contraption, the resulting volume would be the same I think what they mean is it would be less than from splitting a log with an axe. That kinda-sorta makes sense, a saw will turn some wood in it's path into sawdust, wile an axe just splits the log along the grain
Rainbow Fresh Posted August 24 Report Posted August 24 27 minutes ago, hjvtdev said: I think what they mean is it would be less than from splitting a log with an axe. That kinda-sorta makes sense, a saw will turn some wood in it's path into sawdust, wile an axe just splits the log along the grain Hmm, I guess. Though considering we currently incur a loss of 75% of the log's volume by chopping it by hand, I think the game-ification process of tier progression (stronger/more expensive lategame tools = more output) could still rather increase this. As mentioned before it also doesn't have to be an actual sawmill with saw blades. Could just be a mechanically powered splitting head.
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