"a hard, strong, gray or bluish-gray alloy of iron with carbon and usually other elements, used extensively as a structural and fabricating material."
"Coal is cleaned of impurities in a coke furnace, yielding an almost pure form of carbon. A mixture of iron ore and coal is then heated in a blast furnace to produce molten iron, or pig iron, from which steel is made."
So yeah its an Alloy of Iron and Carbon. Coal is Carbon.
Coal is indeed a key ingredient in the processing of iron into steel. So, this mod is perfectly reasonable, and frankly much more realistic than using charcoal. To make things more realistic would require introducing blast furnaces into Skyrim. Perhaps a captive Blood Dragon...?
I started a new game with this and played it over the weekend. I like the concept, but found that I wasn't getting enough coal to keep me supplied with steel ingots. I frequently needed to either buy steel ingots or obtain them by breaking down steel armor or weapons that I looted from bandits. You might want to bump up the amount of coal the player can get from mining.
Another approach that I think would be a lot better would be to add coal deposits that can be mined directly instead of giving the player coal when he is mining some other ore. Scatter these all around Skyrim just like iron ore deposits are. Maybe even add a couple of coal mines to Skyrim containing several coal deposits. I don't know how difficult this would be, or how much work it would be to do this, but I do think it would make coal seem more fully integrated into the world.
So here is how the coal works. And the way I did it was to take up little as I could as far as CK assets go as to reduce chances for conflicting mods.
I added Coal to the Gem lists that allow you to get Gems with mining nodes. So all mining nodes have a 70% chance to drop coal. Now thats 70% per ore you acquire. so you should be able to get 1-3 coal per mining node. Now the problem with creating Ore deposits that spawn coal is placing them individually throughout skyrim. Which has a higher chance of conflicting with other mods.
Oh this is nice! I have problems finding steel bars and have to buy them. Not that its a problem but it would be nice to have the materials to make my own steel.
I am unclear as to what you meant by this: "This mod adds coal as a mine-able resource to all mining nodes." Did you add new coal deposits throughout Skyrim that we can use to mine coal or did you modify existing ore deposits so that they yield some coal in addition to their metal ore? I hope it's the former, but that sentence is unclear to me.
I do like the concept of mining coal. It always seemed a little odd to me to make steel by burning wood at the smelter. Then again, this is just a game, so...
I can see why burning wood would seem confusing at a smelter, but heating wood until it loses its volatile vapors is how charcoal is made. Coke is made basically the same way from bituminous coal found in mines and is more useful when firing as its lost most of the elements harmful to either forging or steel production.
So even if you are using coal it should still be distilled with heat to make coke in order to make a quality steel bloom.
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"a hard, strong, gray or bluish-gray alloy of iron with carbon and usually other elements, used extensively as a structural and fabricating material."
"Coal is cleaned of impurities in a coke furnace, yielding an almost pure form of carbon. A mixture of iron ore and coal is then heated in a blast furnace to produce molten iron, or pig iron, from which steel is made."
So yeah its an Alloy of Iron and Carbon. Coal is Carbon.
Another approach that I think would be a lot better would be to add coal deposits that can be mined directly instead of giving the player coal when he is mining some other ore. Scatter these all around Skyrim just like iron ore deposits are. Maybe even add a couple of coal mines to Skyrim containing several coal deposits. I don't know how difficult this would be, or how much work it would be to do this, but I do think it would make coal seem more fully integrated into the world.
I added Coal to the Gem lists that allow you to get Gems with mining nodes. So all mining nodes have a 70% chance to drop coal. Now thats 70% per ore you acquire. so you should be able to get 1-3 coal per mining node. Now the problem with creating Ore deposits that spawn coal is placing them individually throughout skyrim. Which has a higher chance of conflicting with other mods.
I do like the concept of mining coal. It always seemed a little odd to me to make steel by burning wood at the smelter. Then again, this is just a game, so...
So even if you are using coal it should still be distilled with heat to make coke in order to make a quality steel bloom.