PPP: Was coal/refined carbon forgotten?

[imazined]

Just playing with the PPP content - which is basically the base game situation - there is no obvious path to get refined carbon for steel production.

There is the possibility of heating up peat in the simulation but this is unusual for ONI. Usually we have a less efficient building option and the option to use the simulation.

This looks like an oversight to me.

[axxel]

Seems like heating resin is a good option. Using one batch of molten glass on some kilograms of resin do the work.

[BezKa]

Coal gets offered in care packages, but I feel like that's an oversight- a lot of irrelevant items are there, Frosty plants mostly.

[Carib94]

I agree I thought they would use Peat for refine carbon recipe but they only do it for Ceramic which is odd. Wood can be used to make refine carbon but on Relica Minor(havent look at classic size) their is no way to get wood there unless I miss something.

I was lucky that I rolled for Geodes on Relica Minor and got a Coal Geode lol.

Edited May 24, 2025 by Carib94

[Pproy]

On 5/24/2025 at 12:05 PM, axxel said:

Seems like heating resin is a good option. Using one batch of molten glass on some kilograms of resin do the work.

This. After a while, we can even boil amber to mass produce coal if we want.

While I do agree that its not the most obvious solution, I actually like it this way. I feel that a recipe in the kiln to let say transform peat to refined carbon would be a bit boring.

[synnic]

I found this thread while searching specifically for it because it honestly feels like an oversight.

It seems right from a common sense standpoint to have peat cook straight to coal or refined carbon in a kiln, which is what I expected setting up steel production. I thought surely I must be missing something.

As far as I know, the Prehistoric asteroid is the only one that does not have all of the ingredients for steel and this feels very inconsistent with ONI's design philosophy.

I understand that it's possible to cook resin into refined carbon, but we're talking about a conversion rate of less than 20% on a material that is VERY slow to farm. In addition, using a glass forge to drop molten glass onto resin surrounded by vacuum and insulated tiles seems like the kind of mousetrap I would be building at cycle 300 for an abyssalite flaker, not a basic build I'm working on at cycle 50 to get my first aquatuner going before the farms cook off.

My workaround (playing spaced out) was to teleport coal back from the very bottom biome of the oil asteroid, but this seems very goofy. If I was playing no teleporters or non spaced-out my only option would be a ridiculous resin cooking contraption and a farm of 20+ lura plants.

If it's an intentional balance decision, maybe we could do something very Prehistoric themed like an Emulsifier recipe that uses biodiesel+peat and outputs refined carbon+natural gas.. this is similar to a coal gassification process in real life, which outputs carbon and syngas.

[axxel]

It's kinda ironic that peat will eventually turn into coal after million of years and the DLC is called Prehistoric. Using the kiln to refine peat into coal sounds easy but it will lose its special status.

It's kinda a bummer the oil biome still exists on a prehistoric asteroid when the oil and diamonds should not be envolved yet. If I would change something to have an easier access to coal I would change the oil biome. Bitumen is an unused element that could be refined into carbon,  diamonds could be switched out for gagad (which could be also refined into carbon).

[imazined]

Another option would be any wood producing pathway. How about bambus like prehistoric plants?

And just to give some context to the resin cooking. To replace one regular hatch that produces 70kg of coal per cycle I would need 13.25 lurka plants. For a sage hatch 26.5 lurka plants.

As someone who likes space mining and stopped Demelior really close to the starting asteroid this sounds a bit taunting.

[Pproy]

7 hours ago, synnic said:

I understand that it's possible to cook resin into refined carbon, but we're talking about a conversion rate of less than 20% on a material that is VERY slow to farm. In addition, using a glass forge to drop molten glass onto resin surrounded by vacuum and insulated tiles seems like the kind of mousetrap I would be building at cycle 300 for an abyssalite flaker, not a basic build I'm working on at cycle 50 to get my first aquatuner going before the farms cook off.

 

4 hours ago, imazined said:

And just to give some context to the resin cooking. To replace one regular hatch that produces 70kg of coal per cycle I would need 13.25 lurka plants. For a sage hatch 26.5 lurka plants.

Well, that number become ~5 if you add some mimica and a farming station. And later on, there plant mutation.

For the contraction to boil it, you can use the heat from the very same metal refinery that you're going to use for making steel anyway. The way I see it, on Relica, refined coal is the bottle neck instead of lime. And beside, how mutch refined coal do we really need early to mid game?

I do agree that for making diamond for drill, it does feel excessive. But that problem lies more in the fact that space drilling is gated by to mutch research. A earlier option would be welcome. Perhap a drill head that cheaper, but yield less resources per trip?

[ImDontknow]

I agree.  Am trying to rush to get petroleum to make the intracosmic blastshot, but without steel, it gets very difficult.  

There needs to be some way to get refined carbon to make steel with what exists on the PPP without a huge change.

Why would the kiln not be able to use peat to make refined carbon - even at a significant mass-loss?  That seems the simplest fix to just add a recipe for peat to refined carbon.  I know this is still testing branch - but Klei please consider this strongly.

Other than that, I am enjoying PPP a lot.  However, even as a very experienced player and I am probably going to fail on the 200 cycle asteroid destruction without access to steel.  I have 70 cycles left - let's see what I can come up with.

[Carib94]

2 hours ago, ImDontknow said:

I agree.  Am trying to rush to get petroleum to make the intracosmic blastshot, but without steel, it gets very difficult.  

There needs to be some way to get refined carbon to make steel with what exists on the PPP without a huge change.

Why would the kiln not be able to use peat to make refined carbon - even at a significant mass-loss?  That seems the simplest fix to just add a recipe for peat to refined carbon.  I know this is still testing branch - but Klei please consider this strongly.

Other than that, I am enjoying PPP a lot.  However, even as a very experienced player and I am probably going to fail on the 200 cycle asteroid destruction without access to steel.  I have 70 cycles left - let's see what I can come up with.

Why rush to petroleum when Biodiesel access with the seakombs to refine to phyto oil to biodiesel then to blastshot maker? you can make it in time to take down demolier within 100 cycles and even more so with 200 cycles of time, unless you are not opting to use the biodiesel for challenging i guess.

Edited May 27, 2025 by Carib94