Firepit productivity and dynamics

[heptagonrus]

1. Currently burning clay bricks or chalk takes tons of fuel and time. Since people would like to have tons of brick blocks for building castles, plaster for interiors, and clay/chalk is abundant, this might be a serious limitaion.
   It seems that the reason of the issue is that the heated item stack looses all the heat when the top item has finished processing.
   According to devs, this is intented, otherwise pirepit would be too powerful (see raw quotes in spoiler below).
   But still it feels illogical that it all cools down each time Could you please update the mechanics and make it more productive?
   Maybe just future content would include a machine for mass-production or mass-burning.
   Spoiler

   #Tyron:
   well thats actually intentional, it's a bug that you can take it out and re-add it
   but i did want to do something about it
   hm i forgot again
   i don't want to simply not reset the temperature
   that makes smelting/baking/cooking way way way easier
   because for example
   meat will keep heating up to 1000 degrees
   and cook 6 times faster
   but also not need to heat up
   so it cooks like 20-30 times faster(edited)
   i could cap the max temperature, but then we loose that mechanic of extra cooking speed from high temps
   #SeptangulaRus
   I didn't know higher temp cooks faster
   I thought that green arrow filling speed depends from material and contents amount (crucile) only(edited)
   #Tyron
   yea, the speed the green arrow progresses and the speed the item heats up depends on the firepit temperature(edited)
   #SeptangulaRus
   nice. Btw I wanted to suggest on forum to allow weaker fuels heat up firepit faster. Since they burn quicker.
   So player can manually manage firepit at start, stick->firewood->log->coal or something. At least stick -> firewood
   #Tyron
   sounds reasonable
   #SeptangulaRus
   Anyway, it hurts to watch firebricks burning. Also seems illogical. But I see your point. Oh well, with brown coal abundant it is not that a problem
   I wonder tho if new players would not understand it, because "How? My stack just heated up to 1000 and now it is 20? Whoot?"
   #Tyron
   If the fuel requirements are too great, then thats a thing that we can discuss in the forums or so. But yea. Just not reseting would be overkill(edited)
   so far no player was very surpised about that
   at least not that i know of
   #SeptangulaRus
   fair enough. gonna try to make fforum post about this feature too then

    

2. Please consider giving different fuels different heating dynamics. I.e. sticks will raise temperature very fast, firewood slower, etc.
   So if a player doesn't care - they still can just throw stack of logs and forget.
   But if they want to get result Right Now and are ok with some manual work - they prepare a stick or two and firewood, and start fire with them, reaching maximum temperature very fast.
   Atm mid-game sticks and firewood are kinda obsolete: I have tons of logs from tree farm and tons of brown coal from caving+bombs.So dont even need charcoal.
   Well, sticks are used in torches and ladders - disposables when mining.
   Honestly idk how to resolve conflict with burning time, because probably it will still be quicker to use logs only, because sticks and firewood burning would still take time ...
   Sorry for this idea incompletness.

[tony Liberatto]

Maybe one thing that would help would be to have an actual Clay Kiln that would burn stacks all at once. It's realistic and immersive. We could even require the player to optimally arrange the bricks inside the Kiln to optimize the space and air flow.

In reality, everyone that works with clay will save all their pieces until they have enough to fill the Kiln, because it will use the same amount of fuel, no matter how many pieces you have inside, or the difference is so negligible that it makes no sense in burning just one piece. This could be the drawn back of the Kiln, it would always use the same amount of fuel. It would be less than the current consumption, but too much to burn just a few pieces.

[redram]

I guess my understanding of a good solution was for the entire stack to heat up and finish at once.  So rather than a stack of fire bricks taking 20 minutes to complete, 1 at a time, the entire stack heats up for 10 minutes (assuming we're trying to save the player fuel) and finishes all at once.  You maintain the linkage with quantity, the only thing you lose is the 1 by 1 output, which I think it's fine.  It's far more realistic for everything to finish at the same time anyway, imo. 

I do think this needs to come with more cooking/heating blocks, and different stack limits for the firepit.   I would propose the firepit have a stack limit of 16, and only accept wood fuel products.  This would mean you can't smelt the major metals in it, just low temperature things like lead and I think cassiterite.  To me, metal smelting should be moved to the forge, which is just as stone-age currently as the firepit.   Maybe charcoal is also ok in the firepit, allowing the player to smelt small amounts of metal there.  But I think it's best to try to move the player on from that in the iron age at latest.

The issue with charcoal is interesting.  I too try to avoid using it most of the time, using bituminous coal instead in the bloomery.  I don't know if that's the way things are intended long-term?  I like that it makes coal very valuable, and it will only get more valuable as machinery is added.  I think that's good for the game balance, and economy.  Unlike TFC, where coal was worth very little - basically only as forge fuel - and the veins were way oversized for such limited use.

I would further propose that as cooking devices are added, and also industrial devices, that there be somewhat of a separation between coal and wood.  Grilling food with charcoal is going to have a very different result compared to grilling it with lignite coal. 

[tony Liberatto]

I think all ovens or kilns or smelting should use a fixed amount of fuel, depending on the size of the crucible, not how much metal we have inside it. 

I imagine that in reality there is a difference in smelting 1 Kg of metal and 100 Kg of the same metal. But if you are using a big crucible that can fit 100 Kg of metal maybe that difference is negligible. Because the fire has to heat up the actual crucible before it starts to smelt the metal.  Maybe the best solution would be to have different size crucibles, at least 3 ( Small, Medium and Large).

One way or another to be burning the clay bricks one at a time and not the whole stack is not natural.