Greetings, everyone! 
Welcome to the “very first” Preview Thursday!
I’m Dani, lead designer and developer of the Stonehearth ACE project and I’m writing this message to try and start something new that we think you’ll all like! 
But before we begin, I’d like to address a couple of important things that must be addressed - so forgive me for the small wall of text. If you’re an active member of the ACE Discord, you can probably skip the text below
So, the first and most important reason is to let everyone know that the project is alive and going forward nicely! Now, the reason I’ve realized it is important to say that is because we didn’t really see that a perception that the project could be dead or abandoned existed for the simple reason that we stick to our public Discord server, mostly - and sometimes here - but we don’t really venture much into reddit or the Steam forums! So no - don’t worry - it’s not dead nor abandoned and it’s being actively developed without major interruptions since the last update was released. We’re sorry we can’t follow and post on all places, but if you’d like to go to a place where the Stonehearth community is bustling with activity everyday (and follow new updates and development) please join our Discord server by clicking here!
Good! With that out of the way, I’d like to talk about the next update… Yes, it really is taking its time! But we promise you this will be the most game changing, massive update ever! The amount of things being worked on, improved, expanded or entirely remade is huge (we’re currently sitting on top of 16 pages of Patch Notes) and - unfortunately - it’s expected that such a big update would also run into lots of issues, balancing, etc… So that’s mainly the reason for this big interval. The idea of such a big update is because we want this to be the last “base game” tweak - and from that point forward we’ll delve straight into the unfulfilled promises and new content, starting (of course) with the Dwarves which I’m hoping we can deliver as a Christmas present
)
That said, there is a lot of awesome things we’d like to already be able to share and show you all! There’s a lot of features and nice little things we are eager to see in the hands of the community, and because of that (we can’t wait!) we’re starting this new trend! Unfortunately making videos like the previously attempted continuation of the “Desktop Tuesday” tradition is somewhat too demanding in time - and for that reason I’ve settled my heart with some text and picture updates
Let’s get started!
FUEL SYSTEM REWORK
The fuel system was one of the first things we added to ACE. Fuels were already somewhat present in the basic experience of Stonehearth in the form of the wood you needed for the firepit or the wood and coals you needed for some blacksmith recipes, but being such an important part of human development and resource management/colony sims, we wanted to enrich the fuel experience in SH!
Additionally, many of our plans and things coming with, for example, the dwarves, require fuels to be more consistent and engaging. Our main approach, at first, was diversifying the fuels as lower grade, good grade and high grade, and create multiple sources for the player to acquire them (mining, crafting, etc…)
However we didn’t innovate much in how they were implemented, being just a crafting ingredient (like the vanilla fuels were before) and so we ended up introducing some issues we didn’t mean to.
The major problem was that for certain kingdom or biome combinations - for example, Rayya’s Children in the desert - the system was extremly taxing. Every single clay crafting that uses the kiln required fuels, and pretty much all their buildings and recipes are clay ones. Added to that, the desert is the biome with the least amount of trees. This clearly resulted in a very frustrating experience…
And added to that, there are also some issues that were caused by the way fuels were introduced: additional AI work and orders since many common recipes (cooking, potter, blacksmith…) now required an extra ingredient to be collected; some weirdness like the cook putting coal inside the cook’s pot to make soup, etc.
Something had to be done.
Enters the new fuel system!
From the next update and forward, all work stations that previously required fuel on their recipes will now start - when placed - unlit. A small notification above them will tell the player they’ve ran out of fuel (or have no fuel yet) - and the recipes that required fuel have now been changed to not require it anymore.
Whenever a tool is out of fuel, hearthlings will try to fill it with more fuel.
There are a couple of advantages to this new system. The first, most obvious one, is that now each item can have an individual fuel value that represents how many crafts that single unit of fuel can perform. What that means, in simpler words, is that you can now create more than one recipe with a single piece of fuel instead of requiring one piece of fuel for each recipe.
For example, one Bundle o’ Firewood allows you to perform 4 crafts. What this means is that while right now you need 20 Bundles o’ Firewood (or 10 wood logs) to bake 20 foodstuffs, now you’ll need only 5 (or 3 logs with one spare Bundle o’ Firewood).
Additionally, this new mechanic allows us to customize the different types of fuels more, giving them different efficiencies and value, and allowing other mods to create custom fuels or change the efficiency of fuels.
The second greatest benefit is the ability to choose what fuels you want used for each tool. Now that tools behave somewhat like a storage for their own fuel, you have filters - just like a chest - to define what fuels to use:
Each tool will have their own capacity and fuels allowed - but what basically defines the fuels that can or not be used are the grades. For example, the Cook’s Stone Pot accepts any lower grade fuel - while the furnace on the picture accepts any common fuel. For modders, there are mixins that you can easily use to add the fuel requirements to your own tools!
There are some AI/performance gains as well, since the amount of running back and forth for each recipe will be less; and crafter efficiency will also be slightly increased since they’ll have less ingredients per recipe!
We expect that, with this change, many ways of playing the game will become viable again and the experience will be much better while still having the depth and resource management that we wanted. Players will have a greater ability to customize their workshops and won’t be struggling as much for wood in the desert!
That’s it for the first Preview Thursday!
I also plan on trying something fun on Sunday - Surprise Sunday - where I’ll basically just drop some funny spoiler images and you all have to figure out what it means Then the next Preview Thursday might be related to that!
Let us know what you think, thank you for your time and stay warm