Improve Raw Coal technologies

[Prezombie]

Goal

increase the viability of recipes in Raw Coal - Stage 1 and 2

Why?

The only recipe in Raw Coal 1, crushed-coal, sucks.
At Py1, raw coal is in high demand because it's the only source of coke oven gas, needed for hot air production, and also distilling raw coal into coal, and then into coke (and optionally coke to ash) is how you get coal gas, tar, and all their lovely byproducts, and a majority of the gas and tar is made with that first step.

Crushing the coal doubles the total MJ of the fuel, but you can't do anything with the crushed coal/coal dust at this phase except burn it directly, so you have no real incentive to do anything interesting with the results like refactor your distillation plant around pure coal. It's useful if you're still relying on baseline boilers for electricity instead of oil boiler/geothermal/etc, but that doesn't need you to separate the results.

Similarly, Raw Coal Stage 2 has some glaring issues. Coarse coal has 10 MJ and 100 stack size, why would you ever want to use that to make 4 MJ/50stack coal, when the only way to make coarse coal gives you plenty of coal already?

Lastly, Coal dust, until logistics, is basically just raw coal except you can stack more. You already get a lot if you kept up ash separation. Considering how IRL, coal dust is dangerous to burn in bulk (powder explosions), it seems like there's a decent niche for an early intermediate step to press the coal dust into safe to burn bricks?

Steps to achieve? (if known)

1. Change Coal Dust to be a very weak fuel, like 100kJ or less, so that using a full yellow belt would still have bad uptime on a furnace/boiler stack.
2. Move gasify-coal-dust and coaldust-ash from coal processing 3 to much lower tech, first would fit in the tech that opens up syngas, second with ash separation since there isn't a dedicated pressurized oven tech. (also might want to rename something so internal names consistently use just coal-dust or coaldust?). Add an early recipe that lets you make coal dust into pressed coal bricks.
3. Reconsider the intermediate ingredients between Raw Coal and Coal.

• One option would be to follow a similar line of the other raw ores, and make raw coal a much weaker fuel that can be cooked in a furnace to become coal, and then each stage of raw coal processing techs produces more coal. Pros, Makes raw coal stage 1+2 more essential and makes coal distillation setups more futureproof, cons, would make all the raw coal reliant recipes need to be rebalanced.
• Another option that I like more, would be to conclusively push crushed and coarse coal to be a higher tier than coal by having a coal to crushed coal recipe alongside the raw coal to crushed coal at raw coal stage 1. Commit to them being "real coal" with distillation and coke oven recipes that eat coal bricks, crushed, and coarse coal, etc. Raw coal stage 3 and 4's end coal recipes could be renamed into crystallized coal and purified coal and used in tier appropriate recipes.

[manslaughter]

I disagree with your evaluation of the usefulness of coal 1 and coal 2.

Regarding coal 1, the 65% increased MJ from the coal is enough of an incentive to crush it and dealing with the multiple types you get as a result is an interesting logistical challenge. Some people might not like that challenge though so I think making it optional as it currently is is a good balance. If you have a raw coal line that is being used exclusively for boilers / coal plant power this is a no-brainer for improving the efficiency of that line. It's very possible that a player will get coal 1 before geothermal and extremely likely they get it before oil boilers.

Regarding coal 2, it's a direct 125% MJ increase. The stack size is not relevant if you are using the coal for boiler / coal plant power. It also serves as another way of getting pure coal but by this point the demand for pure coal isn't as high since rubber stoppers can be switched to using rubber instead of pure coal.

I do not like the idea of changing coal dust's fuel value as it would make early game power generation and ash management even more of a hurdle than it already is.

I do like the idea of moving gasify-coal-dust to earlier in the game, giving a unique use for coal dust earlier, but don't see the same justification for moving coaldust-ash, as all it does is provide another void for a material which should already be in demand, and it can already be voided by boiling.