Cobble blaster

[Norren]

Sort of a new take on an old common request, or at least a search makes it seem like it was common last year, but it occurred to me that it would be quite amusing to throw cobble and a stick of dynamite inside a crucible, mythbusters style, and detonate a piece of cobble into several pieces of gravel.

[Panda]

Well its at least a original take on it and i understand it could be automated, but how does it fit the spirit of btw and why is it Needed? Hoping it flush out more details hun. : )
Panda

[Elevatator]

Fc´s statement:

Spoiler

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Any resource you can make out of cobble can then be produced with a cobble-generator. There is basically an infinite supply of cobble available that the player can get at any time, so basing other resources on it will mean those resources can be similarly acquired.

So no, I won't be spending time adding resources that can just be produced out of thin air, or nerfing other resources by allowing them to be made out of cobble.

[morvelaira]

I'll give you, the idea is cute and made me smile, but there is no need for it, nor any justifiable reason for this one. Sorry - not going to happen.

[Dr. Kylstein]

Since I've been ninja'd, I'll just summarize: cobble to gravel is wrong. It doesn't matter what "to" involves.

[Sarudak]

Fc´s statement:

Spoiler

Show

Any resource you can make out of cobble can then be produced with a cobble-generator. There is basically an infinite supply of cobble available that the player can get at any time, so basing other resources on it will mean those resources can be similarly acquired.

So no, I won't be spending time adding resources that can just be produced out of thin air, or nerfing other resources by allowing them to be made out of cobble.

While it's true he did say that. Dynamite is a relatively expensive resource to produce and so *might* be enough cost to allow the production of gravel. That said wouldn't it just blow up the crucible?

[Norren]

Well, the thought behind it is similar to the spirit of redneck fishing. I referenced mythbusters, in particular the episode where they take a cement truck that has had a load harden and throw dynamite in it to test the old myth of the construction worker who did same. (The myth was that he blew up his entire truck, they discovered all it did was knock SOME of the concrete loose and the smaller bits turned into small pieces of rock.)

FC's belief in the past has always been balanced about creating it solely out of cobble (infinite cobble + mill = infinite gravel), my idea here isn't "let's make it solely out of cobble" but "hey, let's make another dynamite joke that can be useful." If it requites dynamite, just because cobble is infinite doesn't mean your recipe is "Free", it involves a considerable amount of farming for the dynamite components themselves. You'd need a reed farm, animal farm for rendering tallow, a quarry of netherrack, and lumber mill, besides your cobble generator.

It's uses would be part of a labor process to generate flint, sand, and through sand, glass and sandstone.

Edit: on second thought, maybe it shouldn't be cobble you're blasting, but soul cement instead. hm.

[Sarudak]

Cement is just stone...

What if instead of throwing it in a crucible mining charges dropped gravel when they blew up cobble? This wouldn't really affect mining charges in their typical use case. It would be expensive enough to justify getting a new resource and best of all you could automate it with some block dispensers and pistons. The results from the drop could easily be sorted /filtered/etc. It makes sense too with the cuncussive force breaking apart the cobble into smaller pieces!

[morvelaira]

I do see the link between this and redneck fishing, but keep in mind, redneck fishing isn't /just/ a silly joke. It's the only way to automate fishing, and therefore the only way to quickly gather a unique resource needed for pleasing our feline overlords. It has a purpose behind the amusement factor.

This would be amusing, but I still don't see the purpose.

[Sarudak]

I do see the link between this and redneck fishing, but keep in mind, redneck fishing isn't /just/ a silly joke. It's the only way to automate fishing, and therefore the only way to quickly gather a unique resource needed for pleasing our feline overlords. It has a purpose behind the amusement factor.

This would be amusing, but I still don't see the purpose.

Well there's currently no way to automate gravel -> sand & flint -> glass production. Many people have been asking for this for a long time.

[Elevatator]

Yeah, didn´t mind that. And since 1.8, there are no gravel beaches anymore, what makes the gravel kind of rare.

[Norren]

I do see the link between this and redneck fishing, but keep in mind, redneck fishing isn't /just/ a silly joke. It's the only way to automate fishing, and therefore the only way to quickly gather a unique resource needed for pleasing our feline overlords. It has a purpose behind the amusement factor.

This would be amusing, but I still don't see the purpose.

Well there's currently no way to automate gravel -> sand & flint -> glass production. Many people have been asking for this for a long time.

Flint is a huge resource I never have enough of, my primary means of hunting mobs is arrows, and there's always seemed like a resource hole between AoW3's composite bow and aNA1's Broadhead arrows. the composite bow encourages you to use the bow more, but you're at the mercy of the RNG and luck of exploration as to how much gravel and thus flint is available. Hopper filtering helps eliminate the gap between RNG gibs with gravel not dropping much flint, but there still feels like a gap regarding the use of conventional arrows. (And broadheads are somewhat expensive when you first break into aNA1.)

As for sand, beyond just glass productions, there's also Sandstone Bricks/heiroglyph blocks to consider. I set up shop in a desert and I'm still running out of sand for all the sandstone stuff I want to build. It just seems like there's never enough sand for everything.

[Mr_Hosed]

Since any mob trap solves arrow scarcity and since you can already turn gravel into flint, why would anyone want this feature?

I literally have a double chest of flint that I don't need for anything sitting around in my world and that's just from basic branch mining and getting rid of gravel via a hopper filter (wanted sand, flint was just a useless byproduct).

[Itamarcu]

Since any mob trap solves arrow scarcity and since you can already turn gravel into flint, why would anyone want this feature?

For unlimited sand. Flint isn't the main goal, especially since Broadhead Arrows use Steel.

[Urian]

This is something that might be in the plans. A similar suggestion (backed by all three mods plus a bunch of turtles) was forwarded to the golden feature suggestion thread quite some time ago and no comment from FC on the matter. No comment usually mean A) It's already planned to be included at some point or B) It's too stupid to deserve an answer or C) FC is messing with our heads. Usually C is the right answer, regardless if A or B is also true.

[Sarudak]

He's been conspicuously silent on this topic also...

[Norren]

I just figured FC didn't want to say anything just to watch how the conversation unfolded. Sometimes ideas with good merits disqualify themselves based on motivations behind them, and official commentary tends to make it harder for ideas to hang themselves. (I used to mod a forum for a fangame project years back, it took a while to realize the concept of "Giving people rope", but it works remarkably well.)

If it's possible something that has a similar end result is already slated to be added, I'm content to sit back and wait.