Darmo

Do a google search for "salt pans". Evaporating briny water in open-air ponds has been done for thousands of years, and is still done in places today, and yields perfectly useable salt. In fact, today people pay a premium for this 'organic' salt vs laboratory derived salt. You absolutely do not need a vessel of any kind to produce good edible salt. The trace minerals contained in it are considered a virtue. Of course one can use heated vessels to speed the process for small amounts, but then you have to use a fuel source. Not a problem in TFC necessarily since it's just one to a few people and trees grow back in 8 days, but very much a problem in ancient times when they needed large quantities. In TFC the most complicated it would need to be would be to place a clay vessel over a fire pit and continuously stoke the pit for like, an entire day or two. I'm not sure where this focus on potassium comes from. What purpose would that serve in TFC other than a chemistry compound?

Support beams support within a range of 4, however every time you mine raw stone it checks for cave-ins up to 10 (iirc) blocks away. If it finds an unsupported block, it has a *chance* to begin a cave-in, and that cave-in can spread back into your supported area, despite your supports. Supports only prevent the blocks in the supported area from *beginning* a cave-in, they do not prevent the cave-in from starting outside the area, and working back in. Most likely there was a natural cavern that you didn't see, and the cave-in started there, and propogated back into your mine. It's an unfortunate side effect of the current mechanic. It makes mining in or near natural caves very tiresome. Hopefully this is not the intended mechanic, and eventually it gets fixed, if not in the current game, in TFC2 at least. Your best bet is, once you have these kind of hidden cave-ins start, you need to start supporting your ceiling with smooth stone, or wood blocks, or some other gravity-defying block. If you can eventually find the cave, you can go in and support every single ceiling tile. However, if you let the cave-ins continue long enough, eventually the ceiling will be high enough they'll mostly stop.

Most of what you said there supports my point that alcohol distillation doesn't need fancy glass tubes and valves. So not sure where you were going there. But in any case, TFC2 isn't very far along at all I think, as far as game mechanics go. I think Bioxx is still solving the fundamental world generation and stuff right now.

Ya, that just happens sometimes. Arid island starts are a bit unusual in my experience, but arid lands with no clay, not that terribly unusual. It can make for an interesting start though - just travel until you find land with enough moisture for clay. Along the way you'll probably pick up enough copper to make all your basic tools when you arrive, no panning necessary. You can also kill all the animals you find along the way, since you probably won't be back for them. As long as there's some trees around, you'll probably survive. Without trees, it gets harder.

I'd originally intended to suggest a distilling apparatus under my chemistry thread in the TFC2 forums, but as mentioned, alcohol has no real uses, so it'd just be an aesthetic thing really. But the ability to hammer out a copper boiler and tubing would give an actual thing to do with smithing of copper. Glass tubes and even valves aren't really necessary for basic distilling. Moonshine was made without such technical things. With regards to distilling for salt, besides being suggested many time already and declined by the devs, it would not require a distilling apparatus of any kind. Distilling is really for separating liquids with different condensing points - alcohol and water. Separating a solid (salt) from water requires only evaporating the water. In ancient times this was done simply by filling a large and very shallow pool with water and allowing the sun to evaporate the water. There are actually a lot of interesting techniques to salt refining, including some that use fire to speed evaporation, but they are still generally very large scale vs an alcohol still.

Might want to add something about how supports don't prevent blocks from caving in if a cave-in starts outside the supported area, and then propagates back into it. I think that's a common misconception. I have another mining related question though. Recently I've had a few incidents where ore disappeared, and cobble appeared below. This was not ore below unsupported stone - I scrupulously avoid that. But I had previously thought that ore was A: not in itself affected by cave-in mechanics (only by falling cobble), and B: acted as support for a raw stone block directly above it. At first I thought my B assumption was wrong, and the raw stone directly above the ore was caving down through it, meaning ore does not act as support, but that didn't really make sense as all ore blocks, exposed or not, would be in danger. Then, the most recent time it happened I'm almost certain there was no raw stone blocks above the ore, and it was the ore block itself that spontaneously turned to cobble as a result of my nearby mining. Was this a new feature of 79.24, along with the nerfing of cobble farming, or has it always been this way? It's not a rumor or myth I've heard elsewhere, just my own observations, so sorry if it doesn't belong here.

Right, but the hoe has no left-click use, so it could be switched over? I guess all the left click actions I can think of remove a block rather than change it to another though. Perhaps best considered a TFC2 idea, though this is not that forum.

Perhaps Miner is referring for example to servers that have a world with borders? I believe I read that HappyDiggers pre-generates their entire world within the borders they've set, which takes days apparently. Then there's less lag when a bunch of players hop on and scatter?

Well, there's always making hoeing ground take some time. Like mining or chopping wood. Then there would be efficiency. On the balance a player doesn't need nearly as much farm ground as they do mining of rock, or probably even chopping of wood I'd guess. So might not be too grindy?

I'm with AC on this one. The UN is utter garbage. The rights of US citizens do not stem from it at all. They stem from our constitution. I'll depart from AC though and not try to bring god into it. God is all well an good in a philosophical argument, but at the end of the day if a dictatorship with goons says you don't have some rights, and god says you do, only one of those two parties is going to enforce their opinion. I'm more interested in that case. I also have no problem with gay marriage, though I have extreme problems with people being forced to violate their religion to provide such a wedding cake, among other flagrant constitutional violations. I also have no problem with polygamy, and I don't see how a logical argument can be made for the former without also allowing the latter. Well, that does depend on one's definition of "a lot". As with many topics, I see the statistics over the years, but I don't keep a statistics diary. It's cumbersome to try to dredge this stuff up, but for instance, we all know Wikipedia is not to be entirely trusted, but it is a good jumping-off point for finding some quick sources. That page cites government as well as 'private' research. The lowest figure I saw was over 50k incidents of defensive gun use by civilians, and that is the NCVS, a 'government' survey. Most of the data is rather old, but I see no reason to assume it's changed much in terms of magnitude. The private studies seem to mostly estimate higher than the NCVS. Some rather wildly so (I don't particularly believe there are millions of legitimate defensive gun uses in a year amongst civilians). Again, the problem is while shootings are relatively precisely recorded, non-shootings that don't occur due to the mere threat of gun use are not. There will frankly never be undisputed statistics for that. But for me, even 50k legitimate defensive gun uses (and again, this is the very bottom-end estimate, conducted by the US government) completely and totally justifies the second amendment. Ya, we get it. And in my fairy-tale land I would give gun rights back to all of Europe and the world. Click your heels Dorothy! Oh, there's nothing wrong with suspicion. I fully encourage that. Both sides of the argument have organizations that present themselves as conducting 'academic' research when in fact it's agenda-driven biased research. I don't even consider government research unbiased. Ya, it would have been nice to see clearer numbers sources. I did not find anyone directly disputing the numbers - and there are plenty of people devoted to disputing pro-gun studies - and I imagine they're relatively easy numbers to find for people that know where to look. It'd be a lazy and easily exposed fudging so I take them at face value until I see them disputed. He links to several news stories with well-reported casualty figures. I assume none of those are in dispute. I believe Norway's toll comes from that one very large shooting which I think has something over 70 deaths. That one at least seems like a lock. As for bombings, he's not adding that figure to mass shooting deaths. I believe he's pointing out that in countries with lower gun ownership, other weapons are found. Including bombs. So for a country with a relatively low gun-death rate, it's possible for it to have abnormally high 'mass-killings' from other methods. It's basically an aside to the argument It's funny, my thoughts on Europe are similar. They basically formed all the great foundations of the world as we know it today - including many modern innovations and the notions of tolerance and freedom. And now it's just a decaying heap of socialism and laziness (except Germany) antithetical to freedom. And maybe a hotbed of theocracy in a couple generations, with all the Muslims you guys are taking in and, if the news is to be believed, not assimilating very well. That'll be interesting for the atheists among you. But for now it's a very warm and comfortable decaying heap of socialism, I'm sure. Oh, and as for the financial crisis,the US did not invent modern banking systems, so insofar as the current world financial system is one giant ponzi scheme that is designed to fail over and over, that's not our fault. Every western nation was complicit in that. Our 'housing bubble' was a trigger that was pulled, and just as much to our detriment as everyone else's.

I like this idea. Doesn't seem like it would be too grindy too me, considering how short the stone age is. Too bad about the code issues.

As AC mentioned, there is a good chance that the military as a whole would not go along with widespread government tyranny. So if half the military defects, them combined with an armed population will have the advantage. Quite frankly, if it ever came to that, I think the tyranny in question would be bringing in foreign troops to fight the people, because the US military would not. This does not address tyranny by small degrees though, unfortunately, which is how things are progressing currently. As for the second amendment, the supreme court has already upheld that an active Militia is not necessary for these rights to be in force, so in fact it is still currently valid. So do you believe that guns used in self defense are *always* used against other guns? You don't think they are ever used against people with knives or other melee weapons, or by lone defendents against groups of non-gun-armed attackers? You don't think that hearing a pump-action shotgun being racked is enough to scare off home invaders (armed or otherwise)? You don't believe that some meth-head and his pal, in the rural parts of Kentucky or any other heavily gun-owning state, has ever thought "hey, we should go rob someone tonight" and then thought "Oh ya, 3 out of 4 homes around here have guns, let's not go try to rob someone". If you've never thought so far as these situations, and moreover that they likely occur very, very often, then quite frankly I'd say you've never put any real thought into the issue. The only way to achieve a situation where criminals don't have guns, is to make sure the populace in general don't have them. Because criminals come from the populace in general. So your choices are, respect the second amendment, or trample over it and take all guns from everyone. Everything in between is just pandering and hand-waving. Yes of course JR Lott is biased. I'm biased (being a gun owner and hunter). Quite frankly anyone that bothers to post on this topic is probably biased. Anyone that writes books and papers almost definitely is. This is true on both sides. So instead of poisoning the well, did you actually read the article? Or do you begin a such a read by looking up the author and if he has ever been on Fox news you instantly discredit him? If you read it, do you dispute any of his figures? I'm not a statistics major myself, and I'm immediately suspicious of most statistics, as they're very often used to mislead. But this is basic stuff. Mostly in terms of deaths per capita. That's not as easy to fudge as surveys. It is possible to split hairs over 'gun deaths' vs 'gun violence' and there are also timeline choices that can be questioned, which is always the case. But that's why I said "Food for thought" and not "Read this, it's gospel". His thesis was basically that Europe is not really so far above the US when comparing *death* *rates* from "mass public shootings". He's examining rates, which is better than just bare numbers, due to population disparities. He's examining deaths, not injuries. And He's examining a specific definition of mass public shootings - one which used 15 deaths as a threshhold, which does seem a bit arbitrary. As a reader, keep those things in mind, and then make a judgement. If there are actual factual flaws in his data, I'd love to hear about it. I have an open mind. But I'm not interested in ad-hom based on which news stations he's been on, or internet rumor-mill bull****.

As is your comprehension of what the second amendment provides. As a preventative measure, the benefits of guns can be hard to quantify - it's difficult to count things that do not occur. Your completely biased cartoon conveniently omits all the lives saved by people using guns in defense of themselves and their loved ones. Or do you believe that this never happens? Food for thought: http://crimeresearch.org/2015/06/comparing-death-rates-from-mass-public-shootings-in-the-us-and-europe/

cuttlefish

The stone age is so short anyway, I don't see the need to change anything. Knapping tools isn't that big a deal. It makes you appreciate metal tools more. As for cobble wall bases in the start, they're no better than dirt, and dirt is even easier to obtain, and also to pick back up, unlike cobble, so I don't really see the need to make surface stones more scarce either. These things seem fine how they are to me.

Sounds like a fun experiment! It does seem like surviving without wild crop food drops would make the game start very hard. Even with onions, that's 20 days minimum for first garden crops. And you're far from guaranteed to find onions at the start. You're going to be after seaweed and animals for a long time. If the goal is truly to have everyone in one town, then you just really need that first start though. After some crops, and especially animals and fruit, get going, it should be doable. You could even cheat in a bit of food at the very start, just to get people past that first bit. It may even have the effect of making a specific person be the butcher for awhile, so that their skill levels up faster, and everyone can benefit from more meat. It sounds like a very useful experiment in multiplayer to me!

Ya, it all depends on how random things get, and how many materials are incorporated. The current metal tech tree involves a lot of grind, many hours of time, and people seem to be more or less ok with it. But it could also be that people are ok with it because they know exactly how it will go at each stage, they just have to put in the hours to get the materials and work them. It is a good question, if randomness would bring less tolerance for spending the time. There's a few factors that would influence the uh...'work level', of the profession. First, assuming it followed the solution-reagent-etc path I outlined (two random ingredients per each) the degree of work would be increased by the number of materials involved in the system. That is, how many minerals, and if other materials come into play. I'm going to give a shot at classifying the existing TFC minerals according to their abundance vs usefulness. These are based on my experience in the game, and a little on what I see other people say, so please feel free to give your own opinion: MINERAL TIERS Tier A (11 types) common-minimal-use - lead, platinum, gypsum, jet, cinnabar, saltpeter, sulfur, gold, lignite, bituminous coal, and Kaolinite. Minerals which are abundant and either entirely useless, or the uses are few enough relevant to the quantity that there is a large surplus available in game to where I think both the metal and alchemy uses could easily have enough --- In include coal because it's easily replaced with charcoal. I don't even know why we need two types of coal that occur in exactly the same rocks. Saltpeter, sure it's useful in gunpowder, but personally I don't consider gunpowder worth the effort. By the time I've got much saltpeter plus the other ingredients, I could have spent that same effort actually mining the mineral in question. I'm sure other will disagree on that point though. Sulfur is the same deal, and entirely renewable. Gold is only needed in small quantities, imo, relative to the amount that exists. Kaolinite, again, small quantities needed for as common as it is.Tier B (5 types) Common-useful - Bismuth, Cassiterite, Native Copper, Sphalerite, and Tetrahedrite. Minerals which are used in some quantity by metal tech, but still, there is probably enough for both the metal and alchemy techs to use lots, and still not have scarcity, because they are basically the bronze matierials, and the metals tree eventually moves beyond them -- Tier C (8 types) rare-minimal-use. Silver, pitchblende, lapis, sylvite, cryolite, borax, Malachite, and kimberlite. Relatively useless materials that are rare(ish) --- Malachite is copper, but there are two other kinds of abundant copper, so it's rare-ish, but lets say, 'expendable'. Borax is useful actually, but rare, and can be replaced with massive amounts of flux stones (which are 4 stone types as opposed to the 1 stone type borax occurs in) which is why I group it as rare-but-useless. Of these, Malachite and Lapis are probably more common than the rest, at least in my experience. Silver is also kind of common if you happen to find a top layer gneiss or granite biome, but it seems to be one that people often are looking for. Silver is kind of borderline Tier C-D possibly. Tier D (2 types) rare-useful - Graphite and Garnierite. Minerals which are rare and useful, seemingly always in high demand relative to quantity - Silver I put in tier C, but is borderline Tier C-D I think. Tier E (3 types) Iron - Hematite, Limonite, and Magnetite. Iron minerals which are pretty common, but needed in large quantities for metalworking, in perpetuity EQUAL-USE ORE SCENARIO So tier A and B are basically extremely common minerals that could be 'the backbone' of alchemy, needed in large quantity - I'm going to call them 'pyramid 1'. Tiers C-E should perhaps be less used (pyramid 2). It's 29 total minerals, which for one example would be enough for 14 two-part 'solutions', in turn enough for 7 two-part 'compounds', followed by 3 two-part 'reagents'. Randomly combining 29 mineral extracts at the base level would be way too random, even with solutions only requiring two. That's, what, over 800 combos? (disclaimer, I'm not a math or statistics guy) Nobody would ever invest that much time. So The solutions I think need to have definied pairings based on characteristics. 14 solutions still has like 196 possibly combos in pairs, so still probably a bit much for total randomness. However, 7 combos would be only 49 possibiloities, and that may be doable on a total randomness basis. So maybe the compounds' characteristics would not be used to determine the proper pairing, it would just take experimentation. But that all assumes we only use 2-part recipes. If we want to add more ingredients, it quickly gets out of hand again. TWO-PYRAMIDS ORE SCENARIO But, the above example also assumes equal use of all minerals. The alchemy system could be split into subsets (I'll call them 'pyramids') that use materials available in large quantity, and a separate for rarer ones. So tier A & B only have 16 minerals. That's 8 solutions, 4 compounds, and 2 reagents. Manageable on a totally random basis, as long as the player knows which minerals are in tiers A and B. Tiers C & D, being rare, could be used in a separate 'pyramid' of reactions. Tier E, I could see being in *either* the first or second pyramid. It's true iron is used a lot in metallurgy, but there really is TONS of it. Both those scenarios are based on random ingredient combination, using only the current minerals/ores list. Other things could be added - bone, spider eyes, wild flowers, clay, charcoal, flux, etc. Those would increase the complication. Likewise, totally removing some minerals/ores from alchemy would reduce it. And we haven't even touched some other factors yet. PROCESS-BASED RANDOMNESS The Equal-Use and Two-Pyramids Ore scenarios are based on random ingredient combinations. That doesn't even need to be the randomness, although I think it helps to avoid the grousing about 'realistic' chemical derivations. But some or all of the randomness could be based on the processes. In that case, the player would know that combining copper solution with Hematite solution results in chemicalX. However, what they have to DO to copper and Hematite could vary by seed. There's the solvents mentioned in the original post. There could be acids involved (themselves derived by other processes), they could have to be distilled or baked at specific temperatures for a certain interval (requiring them to monitor temperature), they could need to be done in a sealed test-tube environment (requiring noble gases, and sealed glassware joints). So maybe at a certain tier the player knows they need solutions of two minerals, and they know that each has to be processed with two or three things:- a certain acid or solvent (3 choices) - a certain temperature (3 choices) - a certain gas combination (3 choices) So what the player would know is, to distill copper into a solution, they would have 3 factors, each with 3 choices. So the player knows that from the wiki, but it's up to them to find out which actual combos whit seed has. Three choices of 3 results in 27 combos, for just one mineral solution. A bit much perhaps for tier 1 but maybe not unreasonable for a high tier. 3 choices of 2 would be 8 combos, two choices of 3 nine combos. 3/3/2 18 combos, 3/2/2 12 combos. An eventual balance would have to be found of course, where the effort is worth the reward. Since each reaction takes time, it might be more appropriate for tier 1 solutions to have only like 8 possible combos, if each take 4 hours or so. Remember that *on average* the correct combo will be found in half the possible combos. So if there's 8 possible combos, on average it will only take 4 tries to get the one you want, and that's just for the first one. It will be faster for all the others. As you go up the tiers, they can take more time, and have more combos. Basically, if a decision is made with regard to the *average* time desired to discover each solution, reagent, etc, then the hours and number of combos can be designed appropriately. But using process randomness means the player will know exactly which minerals they will need to make anything, what they won't know is which processes will be required to refine those minerals into useful chemical components. That will be the random experiment factor. The advantage to this system is that specific minerals could be assigned based on their commonality/usefulness, and even how 'realistic' they might be. ORE+PROCESS The systems could be combined. There could be sub-sets of ore randomization, with a small amount of process randomization. So you know that making a certain second tier compound will require two solutions from a sub-set of 4 (solutions themselves will just involve some process randomness, as the original post outlined). And two processes, each with two options. You'd have 4 process combinations, for 4 minerals, resulting in the player having to make as many as 16 tries to get the specific solutions they needed. This would maintain a little of each world, in terms of randomizing ores and processes. It might help divorce minerals from their 'real world' counterparts, but also allow them to be in manageable small groups, tailored to how they fit in the rest of the game, especially vs metal working. So graphite and garnierite for instance could be their own group, but each have up to four process variables. That would be 16 process combinations for each minerals, resulting in as many as 32 tries (but an average of 16) to get the specific solution needed (being a group of two, they would never be combined with each other, only outside the group). And you'll probably need both so really the concern is the number of tries per mineral I think. This method would also conveniently allow for certain minerals to produce specific things. For instance acids. So the player could know that Borax, Lignite, Cinnabar, and Jet will all produce acids. The player will further know that Lignite and Jet produce tier 1 acid, Cinnabar tier 2, and and Borax tier 3. The tier 1 acids perhaps have two process of 3 options each. They're both valid tier 1 acids for any reaction that requires a tier 1 acid. So to get the required solution of either group only will require a max of 9 efforts. Simple. HOWEVER, her we can hybridize the system more. Lignite solution, for instance, must be combined with *either* copper or Hematite solution. Only *one* of those two is valid for a given seed. So the player might find Lignite, and KNOW that it will work, but they will have to experiment to find out which of copper or Hematite works with it. Copper and Hematite are both from another group, each requiring 3 process of two options each. So 8 combinations at most for each. With the nine combinations for Lignite solution (9 tries at most). The process of combining lignite solution and one of the other two is itself a 2/2 process lets say, so 4 options. So in the worst case scenario, if the player explores all the copper options(+8), combined them with lignite(+4), and none are it (at that point they've expended 9+8+4=21 efforts), and they only get the right hematite processes on the very last try (+8 efforts), and if they only get the very last of lignite/hematite (+4), then in total, they've done 33 experiments to produce their tier 1 acid. So maybe that's an average of 17 or so efforts? If each is 4 hours, that's about 3 solid days on average, which is probably too much, But even then, they will have discovered the correct solution recipe for copper, which will surely be used elsewhere, so those efforts there were not wasted. It could get pretty interesting, but it will take a lot of organization, and good documentation, making sure the average hours required do not get out of hand. This combination system probably would be the most complex though. At the same time, it would allow finer control, so that Tier A sedimentary minerals could be a group, and Tier D could be their own. I might better support recipes that allow for players to have a couple pathways to producing a given acid, solution, whatever, to adapt to different rock biome situations. It could also allow for a given chemical to have an 'easy way' that involves a rare mineral (so they can get lucky), and a 'harder way' that involves common ones.

The problem still remains that unless TFC2 incorporates some sort of unique/increased ore spawn near volcanoes, or some use for magma, volcanoes would just be scenery, at best. Potentially destructive scenery nobody would want to settle near at worst. If the devs think it's worth it for scenery, great. But that's all it would be. Now that TFC2 is open to some fantasy, I could see adamantine or some such appearing near magma, and potentially Dwarf-Fortress-Like magma forges to process it and possibly other ores without fuel. In that case though I think the random magma on the surface might need to disappear entirely for balance sake. Right now magma has exactly two uses - infinite light source, and trash incinerator. Well, and dangerous weapon.

What's your timezone? And perhaps more relevantly, what times do you tend to be on?

Do you know if there's nearby caves? I'll leave the details to Kitty, but probably the cave-in is starting in nearby unsupported caves, and propagating back into your mine.

It's hard to tell who you're talking to in most of your post Trey. Just anyone I guess. This list though, reads like the typical pie-in-the-sky liberal laundry list. All great sounding things, but it falls apart at the brass tacks. Everyone *already has* equal rights and the *ability* to make a living wage (excluding of course homosexuals in the marriage deparment, but that's on the way out). Those issues are just democrat vote-getting drums. The rest is basically the fault of the federal government inserting itself into the economy way too much, screwing up and mismanaging everything, and then wanting to pass more laws to try and fix what they screwed up. Democrats/liberals being the party of all-but-open desire for government to control every little aspect of peples' lives, I side with republicans/conservatives. The duality is a sham, it's true, used to control the political system, but it's where things are, and at least the R/conservative side has to pay *lip service* to freedom. The problem is, for some people, happiness is being wrapped in a warm government blanket, and never having to think or act for themselves, never having their feelings hurt, and basically being a child their whole life. Other peoples' happiness is the exact opposite. That's the cultural conflict we live in right now. You can talk puppies and lollipops all you want, but there's a limited supply of puppies and lollipops, so to give them to one person you take from another. Don't be surprised when the takees get upset.

In my experience, chalk and granite are the whitest stones in the game, and look very similar. Marble comes in second, with a faint pink hue.

Check out the magic thread. I suggested books be involved in magic.

Have you read, understood, and followed all of the rules: ya TFC Version #: .79.21 Forge Version #: 10.13.4.1448 SinglePlayerHave you deleted your config files or are using default configs and are still able to reproduce this bug? haven't changed themDo you have any mods other than Forge and TFC installed? WailaIf you have Optifine or Cauldron installed, can you still reproduce the bug after uninstalling them? don't use those I was experimenting in creative with lava, and noticed some kind of odd behavior and wanted to see if there are any guidelines I'm missing as to how it works. Basically, I was trying to make lava channels to move it around. I noticed that when I drop it down a level, It doesn't always take all the available channels. I had one case where there were 3 channels at 90 degrees, and it only took one of them. In another case, I had four available channels, and it took 3 of them, but not the other. I found that in the second case for example - 4 channels - if I blocked off the 3 channels it preferred to take, it would indeed take the fourth when it dropped. And if I then broke open the preferred channels after it had dropped, it would take them, resulting in lava in all four channels. However, if I blocked off the shunned channel, let the lava fall and fill the others, and then broke open the shunned channel, the lava still would not flow into it. I could detect no rhyme or reason to how the lava chose which channel(s) to take. I'm not saying there's a bug or anything, but I was wondering if there are guidelines, or maybe this is a mechanic that hasn't really been examined and could be cleaned up to be more consistent, or what. Here's an example of the first case, where the lava chose to take only 1 of the 3 available channels. It will take others if you block off the preferred channel. If you then break the block obstructing the preferred channel it will flow into it. But if it is already in the preferred channel, opening up other channels will not make it flow into them.

So I was flying about in a ceative mode test world, and noticed that a large forest fire had started around some lava pools in an acacia forest. So lava is indeed starting surroundings on fire, but I wonder if maybe world gen should be tweaked to not have trees generate near lava? I watched the forest fire for quite awhile in an ever-expanding ring, and it seemed like it could burn forever. Or at least until it rains I guess. Not sure if world gen tweaks are in the cards at this stage, or if lava generates before trees, but I thought I'd point out that lava pools are kind of a severe forest danger now.