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Old 08-11-2009, 11:00 PM   #1
Phantasm
 
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Default Coal missing from High-Tech?

I've been looking at stuff for an upcoming game, and one glaring omission from High-Tech's listings of fuel is COAL! This is the fuel that was used to heat houses from the mid-18th through the mid-20th Centuries, fed the trains that ran across the continents, and created TL6 smog from London to San Francisco, and is still burned today in several electric plants worldwide.

Were the authors unable to come up with G$ prices for bituminous and anthracite coal, or was it a lack of space that led to it being left out?
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Old 08-11-2009, 11:12 PM   #2
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Default Re: Coal missing from High-Tech?

I doubt it was lack of space, considering the Core Rulebooks are larger. A page or two wouldn't have made too big a difference.
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Old 08-12-2009, 08:41 AM   #3
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Default Re: Coal missing from High-Tech?

Didn't notice until you mentioned it, but now that I have its quite obvious. Maybe it was just one of those things that fell through the cracks?
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Old 08-12-2009, 08:50 AM   #4
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Default Re: Coal missing from High-Tech?

No, coal is just missing . . . oops. Unfortunately, I'm no expert on historical fuel pricing, so I have nothing convincing to throw out as stats. Try $285 per ton for good, hard coal and $100 per ton for crummy, stinky coal. Those numbers are at least close to fair for the energy content and extraction costs, when compared to the costs for diesel, ethanol, gasoline, and wood given in High-Tech – although they may have nothing to do with historical commodity pricing. (By the same standards, good-quality, clean-burning charcoal would be $300 per ton.)
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Old 08-12-2009, 11:40 AM   #5
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Default Re: Coal missing from High-Tech?

Given the sheer size of material its bound to happen. Hmm, far as mining it out Dirty Tech wise, could one just use an extrapolation of the Digging Rules?
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Old 08-12-2009, 01:03 PM   #6
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Default Re: Coal missing from High-Tech?

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Originally Posted by Ragitsu View Post
I doubt it was lack of space, considering the Core Rulebooks are larger. A page or two wouldn't have made too big a difference.
Please find the page or two of content to cut, that will displease the minimal number of people.

You can't actually ADD a page or two. You either add 16 pages at once (A full register of paper) or you CUT content to keep it at the current pagecount.
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Old 08-12-2009, 01:06 PM   #7
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Default Re: Coal missing from High-Tech?

I don't know if it helps any, but good coal in my area (not the best coal type but its up there in quality) runs about $50/ton if you haul it yourself. For comparsion purposes, a full size pickup truck bed full of coal is roughly 2 tons.

Of course I live within an hour drive of several coal mines, so proximity plays a part in price.

Also, if you are using it simply to heat a house from a single Franklin style coal stove, two tons of coal will last a year and a half or more. (This I speak from experience as we'd get one ton a year to heat us through winter when I was growing up).
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Old 08-12-2009, 01:11 PM   #8
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Default Re: Coal missing from High-Tech?

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I don't know if it helps any, but good coal in my area (not the best coal type but its up there in quality) runs about $50/ton if you haul it yourself. For comparsion purposes, a full size pickup truck bed full of coal is roughly 2 tons.
Is that the good, hard, hotter-and-cleaner-burning, Pennsylvania anthracite coal, or the much more common (as in mined nearly everywhere else) bituminous coal?

(I don't know of any place other than the northern Pocono/Appalachian Mountains in Pennsy that mines anthracite. I'm certain there's nowhere else in North America that does - it was a source of pride where I grew up that the only veins of anthracite in North America were only a hundred miles to the north of us - but I'm not certain about the other five populated continents.)
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Old 08-12-2009, 01:21 PM   #9
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Is that the good, hard, hotter-and-cleaner-burning, Pennsylvania anthracite coal, or the much more common (as in mined nearly everywhere else) bituminous coal?
The stuff here is classified by the mining industry as a Hard Bituminous that is almost, but not quite anthracite.

Most coal in the world is Subbituminous and some places like Australia have a higher than normal amount of Lignite.

From worst to best it goes Lignite (barely fossilized oily wood), Subbituminous, Bituminous, Anthricite.

Most coal in the US is bituminous (roughly 52%), anthracite makes up about 2%, the rest is subbituminous. We have very little lignite in the US.

Edit: I grew up in an area where coal mining history was a big portion of the local history section in school.
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Old 08-12-2009, 01:39 PM   #10
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Default Re: Coal missing from High-Tech?

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Originally Posted by sjard View Post
Also, if you are using it simply to heat a house from a single Franklin style coal stove, two tons of coal will last a year and a half or more. (This I speak from experience as we'd get one ton a year to heat us through winter when I was growing up).
So, roughly $285 for a year for coal, using Kromm's numbers, vs. $2000 for 20 cords of wood someplace with really bad winters (HT15).

Yay coal!
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