What are they using the coal for?

[Funk Oracle]

I thought it was just for making tools but each house has some coal in inventory and my 800 citizens are using 1500 coal a year.

[Ebben]

instead of firewood..

[Aragosnat]

Any way to tell them not to use it?

[s0litaire]

Nope! just try to have a larger stockpile of firewood closer then the stockpile of coal...

[Aragosnat]

Dang.

[Sandwiches!!!]

What, you've never had BBQ before?

Oh let me guess, you're a propane kind of guy. Well tough luck Hank Hill, out here in Banish-ville, everybody loves charcoal. We'll have none of that fancy pressurised-gas cooking, so take your business back to Texas.

[Aragosnat]

Nah. We use long pig grease to cook everything nice and fine. But, sadly. They go for coal even if firewood is closer and sometimes the coal gets dumped into the same pile as the wood even though there was a pile right next to the mine for them to dump the coal with plenty of room to spare.

[Sandwiches!!!]

LOL I stopped mining coal in my town long ago. Nowadays I just tell them to make iron tools and trade them in for steel ones. Got tired of evicting deviants who burn coal instead of firewood.

[joefitts63]

The dev kind of screwed the pooch on this one. The citizens really shouldn't use coal when there is plenty of firewood available. The coal has other uses and the firewood doesn't, so there should be a priority on firewood for heating.

[Grace1957]

Just another challenge in the game.

[Twelvefield]

Originally posted by Sandwiches!!!:

What, you've never had BBQ before?

Oh let me guess, you're a propane kind of guy. Well tough luck Hank Hill, out here in Banish-ville, everybody loves charcoal. We'll have none of that fancy pressurised-gas cooking, so take your business back to Texas.

I wrote a paragraph pretty much like yours. Never again propane!

But then I self-deleted when I realized there's a big difference between charcoal and mineral coal. Not in the game, though. It would have been nice if there was a charcoal maker, which would make coals for home use that retain heat like Scarlett Johansson. Blacksmiths use mineral coal - if they can get it - which burns at a much higher temperature than charcoal. Too high for BBQ, which must be low and slow, like Scarlett Johansson in a cropduster.

I've read that blacksmiths will forge using peat, so there's not much reason why they should require mineral coal in the game when they can use other flamable resources. They should at least be able to make their own charcoal, for pity's sake. Anybody can do that. Even Scarlett Johansson. At least it might be fun to watch her try.

[Tom Trustworthy]

Maybe this type of issue can be modded out or something.
I was wondering why so much of my coal was going away, i figured tool making was to blame but maybe not.

[Sandwiches!!!]

Originally posted by Twelvefield:

But then I self-deleted when I realized there's a big difference between charcoal and mineral coal. [...] Blacksmiths use mineral coal - if they can get it - which burns at a much higher temperature than charcoal. Too high for BBQ, which must be low and slow, like Scarlett Johansson in a cropduster.

Nope. Both coal (anthracite) and charcoal burn at roughly the same temperature, from 2000°C to 2700°C depending on purity and oxygen supply. The main constituents of both is carbon (and carbohydrates), the main difference comes from production source. The method of which they are produced are practically the same: heated under pressure without oxygen, except one is artificially created, the other made by nature.

Mineral coal also has a higher chance of containing radiative particles and heavy metals. The main reason people don't use coal to BBQ is because it produces a bad taste. There's nothing stopping you from using coal to fuel a fire under your stove (well, other than poor air circulation which leads to carbon monoxide poisoning).

Technically, coal and charcoal are much more efficient energy sources than firewood, which contains much greater amounts of moisture content. This translates to a lot of lost energy during combustion since a portion of that heat is used to burn off water.

[Twelvefield]

Remind me never to attend one of your BBQ's. 2700°C is too hot!

[Sandwiches!!!]

You *do* know that when BBQ-ing you're not suppose to put the meat directly on the charcoal? The roasting is done by the radiative heat and convective air, not direct conduction from the oxidizing carbon.

Besides, if you just laid the meats on top, you'd snuff out the flames due to lack of oxygen.

[s0litaire]

Originally posted by Twelvefield:

Remind me never to attend one of your BBQ's. 2700°C is too hot!

And the insides are STILL ice cold when the outside is burnt to a crisp.... ^_^