While I like the idea of having the tiny pebble sink for stoking in mining, it frustrates me incredibly that it seems to randomly and unfavourably pick whatever it uses the turn on. I know it also speeds things up, but the biggest win is that you only need 4 ores to smelt something down, instead of 5. Which is especially useful for the rarer ores such as gold and chaosium.

I've had it happen on multiple occasions that my stoke turns were wasted on moonstone ores (which only require 1!) or ores that were available in multiples of 5, only for 4 chaosium or gold ores the remain in my cart unsmelted. I would love it if the system behind it was a tad smarter and focused first on reducing the rarer ores of which there are no multiples of 5 available. Or to give us the opportunity to choose which ores to use the stoking on.

Example: I had 14 mithril, 4 gold, 4 chaosium, 5 lorium and 2 moonstone shards in my cart. I had 4 stoke turns left from the previous round. When I returned to my furnace, instead of using the stoke turn on the chaosium, it wasted 2 stoke turns, one on a moonstone shard and 1 on lorium (of which I had 5!) So I ended up with 4 unsmelted chaosium and 1 useless lorium.

It is a small thing, but especially with the cost increasing with each turn, it is very frustrating that it seems to pick the ores that I really don't want to waste my stoke turns on.

I gotta wonder if all the pebble sink QoL "features" are intentionally frustrating to the end user with how ubiquitous it all is across all of them, and not just mining; I agree it's a terrible choice to prioritize ore with 5 chunks in the cart already & the least-valuable ores first (and the moonstone ore at all). The system needs refactoring in a bad way, and I hope these sorts of changes are prioritized over throwing more random professions at the wall to see what sticks.

Being able to optionally choose to manually select which ore to smelt would even be a better band-aid solution to this system that what already exists, but I think throwing more energy into trying to make a system that isn't hostile to the end user so that a band-aid isn't required to begin with would be a better priority.

I'm in absolutely support of stoking, not counting things that only need one to turn into another thing. There's two here, the Florescent Gem, and the Moonstones. I highly doubt that that was the intended response of the QOL, but it was likely one that was simply overlooked. I'm sort of neutral on the other ones. Mostly because I only keep ore I want, and drop ore that I've no intention of smelting.

Support!

Maybe this is just me, but I don't even use the stoking at all because it doesn't prioritize well. It's not a super high cost, but if it's just going to inconvenience me by leaving my 4 lorium alone and then smelting ores I have in 5s to leave me with even more leftovers taking up space, there's not really a point to using it at all. It would be a lot better if it went for the rarer ores first, because then it would actually be saving me cart space not having to haul them around for a few trips and it would save the time it would otherwise take to get that fifth ore.

Definitely support for stoking ignoring moonstone shards and florescent gems, even if it means they're smelted at their normal speed. And I also like the idea of rarer ores being targeted first.

Bumping this again for more attention with the addition of even more 1-"ore" items cluttering the mine cart that STILL take up "stoke procs" for some goofy reason. :/ It's kinda incredible that we got several more items that do this before this was in any way addressed (not enough people noticing or complaining about it?), not even with a note about how it's being worked on.

Thanks for the bump, Reave. My mind was boggled by it too, and I am so incredibly annoyed by it too. It is just happening too many times that my stokes are wasted on single-ore items! Please change this. It feels like absolutely wasting our pebbles in some forced way.