Possible recent charcoal changes

Have a new general feature to suggest, or think one should be tweaked? Share your ideas here.
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deborah
Posts: 23
Joined: Sat Dec 04, 2021 5:36 am

Possible recent charcoal changes

Post by deborah »

chopping a tree takes a very large amount of work but it is a necessary part of life in Cogg. Most people wish to chop trees themselves but the process of chopping a tree is often an awesome chance for players to get together and accomplish something outside of combat. Further from this, those who help in the tree cutting process should deserve to be paid for their time, as not everyone is willing to help with this process consistently. In order to do so, one should be able to make full use of all the items received from chopping trees and often, timber is the only product that can be used effectively in the quantity received from the tree. Crooked branches and straight branches are very low value items, but they are a large byproduct from tree chopping.

the sale of charcoal allowed for the assistance of this. a few days ago, we had a change that now you can have one campfire per room and that charcoals will be produced less from a campfire. So, regarding the issue that you can have one campfire in a room it is ok, you get warm even with only one campfire. But, regarding charcoal, I'd love to say something. To produce a high amount of charcoal, you should chop a tree, which brings expenses, start fires and keep them up with branches, which takes time, and keep a storage place to maintain all. It is a very expensive process, and in order to make it cost effective, people will generally request free labor.

I think that there should be a balance between one thing and the other. A massive tree should produce less charcoal, but at least, a person who invests time on this, should have profit. There may be other purposes for charcoal, or perhaps an alternative for crooked or straight branches to earn value.

An idea would be to have charcoal more useful in the game. For example, charcoal could be used to make a "weight effective" campfire bundles. Additionally, there previously was a recipe to produce steel. Steel should should definitely be rare, but currently the only known source is through lockboxes in Valeria at a very low rate. I believe that charcoal can help here until coal is released. However, not in the recipe it was before, but to use a vast quantity of charcoal (200-500 to 1 iron). If charcoal was adjusted in this way, and the amount of "useable" charcoal was reduced, it would be a sensible option for frequent tree cutters to receive some money back and keep this a regular community process where any may contribute.
Rilulth
Posts: 178
Joined: Sun Nov 11, 2018 6:22 am

Re: Possible recent charcoal changes

Post by Rilulth »

an average lump of charcoal ... 10 riln (x21201)
This is why a halt has currently been put on charcoal sales to the market. A bug was abused and until it is fixed, sales will not continue.

Regarding steel, a coal mine is in the works to be released soon as a contested site to join the tin mine. It will likely be released one Mistral Lake is ready, so steel will be easier to obtain once that happens.

Currently, charcoal is used as flux in metalworking, so link up with metalworkers to sell your charcoal.

Plan ahead to what you will pay to help fell a tree. Those little totems and figurines you can make from wood sell for a lot of riln. Speak to metalsmith about selling hafts and straight branches. Allow a helper to take a log if you fell and strip a large tree. Sell campfire bundles. Plenty of ways to make riln from a tree!
tulpa —
If we ever get player housing, Mistralite houseshares are going to be full of this stuff. "Damnit who let the thousand-year old angry venomous moths out of their velvet pouch again?"
Rokal
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Joined: Tue May 18, 2021 3:55 pm

Re: Possible recent charcoal changes

Post by Rokal »

I’ve suggested it before, but i always thought it’d be cool to build temporary charcoal pits at logging sites, where crooked branches are placed in, these charcoal pits are dug, and build from branches, lit, then burried over and left to burn for a while. It produces charcoal very efficently. Another option would be more permabent ones on a farm that take a long while to burn branches and net out charcoal over time, giving a steady supply, that can than be sold while burning away all of those crooked branches. Campfires being limited to one per room now makes the clutter of branches stressful (at least to me) so charcoal pits, temporary or farm based would be cool imo
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Maina
Posts: 172
Joined: Fri Apr 24, 2020 12:32 pm
Location: Colorado

Re: Possible recent charcoal changes

Post by Maina »

I would definitely like charcoal to require a constructions of some kind, like Rokal's suggestion. You do not really get workable charcoal from an open flame. It has to be enclosed, or you just get ash.
sophie
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Joined: Sun Dec 12, 2021 6:33 pm

Re: Possible recent charcoal changes

Post by sophie »

I think that it could be based on a time system, maybe would be easier to code in as well, where if you're only burning it for 10 minutes, it give like 20 charcole, but if you're putting in more branches and the like, it gives out more when it finally dies down. Theoretically, you could then come back to it every hour, depending on where you built it, and have that slow but then big profit at the end. This also means people would try and keep it to a less blazing fire if they didn't know exactly when they were going to be done felling a tree or with whatever, since I think most people? put in the most they can because felling and chopping takes a while.
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Marcuson
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Joined: Mon Jul 26, 2021 1:29 am

Re: Possible recent charcoal changes

Post by Marcuson »

Thought I'd add some historical perspective to the discussion: one old-fashioned method of making charcoal is the clamp. Professional charcoal burners were called colliers, and medieval Europe experienced rapid deforestation due to an immense demand for charcoal (among other reasons, such as the prevalence of slash-and-burn agricultural practices).
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Rias
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Re: Possible recent charcoal changes

Post by Rias »

I'm happy to implement more uses for charcoal (and niftier means of deliberate production), but I'm not sold on the idea that charcoal production should remain a viable means of making significant money, as it's a very basic product resulting from a process that requires no skill. Having easily mass-produced basic-level activities and products provide good money takes away incentive from investing in skills and abilities and producing more complex and interesting items. I'd rather encourage people to produce more complex and higher-quality end products to make the bigger bucks.

While we're here, just for clarity's sake: The charcoal-related issue was twofold.

1: A bug with the bundling mechanic was causing campfires to produce far, far more charcoal than intended. This wasn't an adjustment of how much charcoal was meant to be produced per item one-to-one. This was fixing a coding error that was causing bundles to multiply how much charcoal was produced. Five branches wasn't giving five branches worth of charcoal, it was giving multiple times that amount. Obviously, bundling similar items together shouldn't be causing the bundle to produce more than if each individual piece were processed as non-bundled items.
2. The market was allowing for selling more items than should have been allowed by the market flooding caps. There were hundreds of thousands of charcoal being sold within short periods of time, which the flooding mechanic was implemented specifically to prevent.
<Rias> PUT ON PANTS
<Fellborn> NO
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Marcuson
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New Uses for Charcoal

Post by Marcuson »

There was a discussion about suggestions for uses of charcoal on OOC a couple months back that I made notes of, but I never got around to posting them ... until now, that is! So here are some potential new uses for charcoal, in order from least- to most-coding intensive:

1. Require more charcoal for removing impurities. Exactly what it says on the tin: bump up the amount of charcoal required to remove impurities from metals.

2. Smithy charcoal delivery task. Lots of PCs use the furnace and forge (this is presumably in addition to the normal use by NPCs), and I imagine it takes a lot of fuel to keep those both going. These tasks would give PCs a way both to trade charcoal for riln and experience as well as contribute to the smithy's upkeep in-fiction without having to actually require charcoal for those purposes. Balance timer, experience, and riln as appropriate.

3. Town charcoal delivery task. Similar to the first one, this would be a delivery of charcoal to the Shadgard steamworks, which (presumably) requires charcoal to produce gas for heating/lighting. ("Prior to the development of natural gas supply and transmission ... virtually all gas for fuel and lighting was manufactured from coal." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_gas) Balance timer, experience, and riln as appropriate.

4. Fuel for braziers. Fridley and Lexx had some discussion about braziers, which would produce smokeless heat so you could, for example, hang out at your farm without scaring away the bees. I'd suggest that braziers be a Construction project so that they're semi-permanent installations on farms (or any other place where you could build a campfire).

5. Medical treatment. Charcoal has long been used to treat illness or remove impurities, and Physickers could probably take advantage of charcoal's properties when concocting various types of medications.

Lastly, Lexx suggested the ability to build more efficient fires specifically for charcoal production as a recipe for the Woodcutting skill at around 300 or 400 points (and for Bushcrafters at 400 or 500 points). I think that's a great idea, though I'd say make it a charcoal clamp instead of a fire.
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