Does Coal Synthesis seem weird to anyone else?

[Malidictus]

And by "weird", I mean it feels like something that a mod-maker would throw together to get around an annoying limitation without putting in too much work. Hello - I'm that mod maker! :)

Joking aside, though - Coal Synthesis makes no sense to me for a bunch of reasons. First and foremost is how it's unlocked. Rather than being a Technology all its own like Coal Liquefaction, it's just... sort of attached to the Rocket Turret technology. It feels almost like that turret was added to the game late in Gleba's development, then someone went "Wait a minute... There's no coal to make Explosives with on Gleba. OK, uh... Rocket Sentry also unlocks synthetic Coal." Obviously, I'm projecting here as there's no way to look inside the developer's minds, but... Well, that's what I'd do if I ran into this sort of problem at the 11th hour.

Secondly, this makes little sense logically. Explosives require Coal on Nauvis because Coal is plentiful there. Generating coal via the use of Sulphuric Acid, then adding Sulphur back into it to make Explosives feels like an unnecessary roundabout way of doing things. Again - almost as though a mod maker needed to plug their new content into the existing tech tree with the fewest number of new tech and recipes. What would have made sense was to offer an alternate recipe for Explosives on Gleba the same as exists for Plastic and Rocket Fuel and so on. I mean... Boompuffs exist and I'm not the only one who noticed[mods.factorio.com].

Finally, and I think most damningly, though... Charcoal was RIGHT THERE! Wood is reasonably plentiful on Gleba, what with all the trees and such. Turning wood into charcoal is ancient technology here on Earth. Surely the Engineer could figure that out. What was the point of going all the way to Carbon and then Sulphuric Acid, instead of just letting us char our wood? Not only would that be useful on Gleba, but it would also help on Nauvis where wood can be farmed directly.

Can someone explain the design decisions here?

[PunCrathod]

https://wiki.factorio.com/Coal_synthesis

Space platforms. You get carbon from asteroids.

[Malidictus]

Originally posted by PunCrathod:

Space platforms. You get carbon from asteroids.

OK, fair enough. Handn't considered that. Guess it's intended for generating coal in space? But if so, then why is it tied specifically to the Rocket Sentry and not given its own tech? And why not add a Gleba-specific approach to grenades and explosives?

[PunCrathod]

My guess is that they wanted you to be able to make rocket turret ammo in space without needing to supply coal from a planet so they wanted to make sure it was possible when you unlock the rocket turret. And they didn't want to add a new tech just for that.

[Dardomor]

The coal synthesis tech as part of rocket turrets tech makes sense this way.
Still I do agree that wood (to charcoal) and explosives tech for Gleba fauna 'wood' be a very nice addition that also fits vanilla, as getting carbon and explosives in the current vanilla game is also not that hard. But then at least there's more use for the wood, instead of just burning it (or trying to make legendary shotguns).

[Malidictus]

Originally posted by Dardomor:

Still I do agree that wood (to charcoal) and explosives tech for Gleba fauna 'wood' be a very nice addition that also fits vanilla, as getting carbon and explosives in the current vanilla game is also not that hard. But then at least there's more use for the wood, instead of just burning it (or trying to make legendary shotguns).

Right, that's more or less where I'm coming from, as well. The thing is... this isn't just idle chatter. I'm considering putting together one of those low-effort mods that add convenience recipes. Wrapping my head around what Coal Synthesis is intended to do is fairly important, as it determines recipe balance. I've already done something similar with Biodome Industries[mods.factorio.com], but that's a much more intrusive mod designed for 1.1 and before.

I say "more intrusive" because Gleba does most of what I did already. Farming trees, breeding fish, etc. Not the charcoal recipe, though, nor any sort of wood gasification. I've been thinking about explosives on Fulgora and Gleba recently. Fulgora makes sense, as there are no Fulgoran Enemies in Vanilla, but that too can use a recipe for locally-sourced explosives. Makes sense craft grenades and explosives from petrochemicals, not just coal. That sort of thing.

Knowing what's been explained to me here, it sounds like Coal Synthesis is more designed for Space Platforms than Gleba itself, though it's useful there, as well. That's useful information, thank you.

[WereChicken]

From a gameplay point of view it makes perfect sense to give it with rocket turrets as that way you can use them as intended.....

From a scientific/technical point of view it makes absolutely no sense as these would be vastly different areas of material science.

[knighttemplar1960]

To me its always seemed weird that the devs went with a plastic recipe that uses coal in the first place. You don't need coal to make most plastics (see Gleba) all you need is hydrocarbons. I think at the beginning they realized that coal could become practically obsolete once you stop using it to make grenades and switch to nuclear for power and they decided to use coal to make plastic for resource balance. Which they did with similar recipes pre 0.17.

Coal is only available on Nauvis and Vulcanus. Crude oil is only available on Nauvis and Aquilo. Heavy oil is available on Fulgora. Carbon is available in space. You should be able to make plastic and explosives every where and as easily as you do on Gleba. You should be able to make even better explosives on Aquilo using ammonia.

The kind of carbon you find in space should be very low in sulfur and the type of sulfur you can leech out is the inorganically occurring sulfur. If we take asteroids in the Sol system as an example there shouldn't even be carbon asteroids. 90% of them should be nickel/iron and 10% silicon, with ice bearing asteroids (comets) found much farther out. Ice bearing asteroids shouldn't exist in orbit of Vulcanus, Nauvis, and Fulgora.

TL:DR, yeah I think its a kludge recipe to make producing rockets on platform possible. The ratios balance out perfectly.

[Malidictus]

Originally posted by knighttemplar1960:

To me its always seemed weird that the devs went with a plastic recipe that uses coal in the first place. You don't need coal to make most plastics (see Gleba) all you need is hydrocarbons. I think at the beginning they realized that coal could become practically obsolete once you stop using it to make grenades and switch to nuclear for power and they decided to use coal to make plastic for resource balance. Which they did with similar recipes pre 0.17.

True enough. Factorio doesn't like entirely deprecating resources wholesale, so having use for coal in the late game makes sense. I'm honestly not opposed to using it in plastics and explosives in principle - as an option. But there really ought to be other options. Space Age seems to have embraced the Satisfactory approach to "alternate recipes", so having alternate recipes for explosives in particular makes sense. Coal can still be useful via Liquefaction even in the late game, and this just opens up the door to more advanced industry.

Well, at least I have some idea into their thinking now :)