How can I obtain coal with kittens?

Question

I just unlocked the Steel upgrade from the library, but nothing has changed (I think). The tooltip reads

Unlocks Coal and Steel production

but I don't get any coal. To produce steel, one should combine 100 iron and 100 coal in the workshop. My smelter's (I've got 3) reads

ironPerTick: 0.02

coalPerTickBase: 0

goldPerTick: 0.001

Even when I increase happiness to 91% (with hunters loot) there is no coal.

According to this question, I should have 30% of the materials, but I've got 3K wood, 1.8K minerals and 600 iron. That should do the trick if a new building should be unlocked, I suppose.

So, how do I get coal in my kittens-game?

Answer 1

There are three main ways to get coal. The first two you'll get are the Coal Furnace and Deep Mining upgrades at the workshop. These will let you get small amounts of coal for each mine (0.003 per tick, 0.015 per second) and running smelter (base .005 per tick, .025 per second).

But, by far the best source of coal, is unlocking the Geology technology, and assigning Kittens to the Geologist job. Geologists are worth .015 coal per tick , equivalent to three smelters, or five mines. And kittens can improve at their jobs; a Master Geologist is earning about 0.026 coal per tick, which is over 0.1 coal per second each.

There are also quarries, which each give a +35% boost to mineral production, as well as another 0.015 coal per tick. They won't improve on their own the way Kittens improve their skills, but they still help a lot.

There are also several upgrades at the workshop related to coal which can help. Pyrolysis will increase coal gains by 20% from all sources. The Geodesy will increase Geologists' base coal per tick to 0.0225, making even a Dabbling Geologist worth four and a half Deep Mining mines. It also allows Geologists to produce a small amount of gold while they work.

Answer 2

There are two ways to get coal (that I know of, anyways). Both are upgrades in your workshop:

• Coal Furnace: Smelters produce coal while working
• Deep Mining: Mines can also produce coal

Each one of these needs lots of iron (1200 for Deep Mining, 2000 for Coal Furnace) to research, so you'll probably be focusing on storage in order to get both of these upgrades.