Those who've used the furnace minecart know that it's a long abandoned item that was buggy to begin with and has never been maintained. Nonetheless the potential of a furnace in a minecart is nearly limitless, if someone just took the time to update it to the standards of modern Minecraft. This isn't so much a mod idea, as much as something I'd like to see in vanilla Minecraft as something new for redstone engineers to tinker with. Alas, if Microsoft doesn't feel obligated to do it, then I guess the job is up to us. Even preferring vanilla Minecraft, I'd happily trade optifine for forge to see this.

>What do I mean?
At first glance it may seem like the entire function of the furnace minecart is overshadowed by the powered rail, but to a redstone engineer there's a few things it already has that COULD be fairly useful if only the thing weren't so buggy. For example, it can be used to hook multiple carts together so that they don't separate. Perfect for realistic roller coasters! It goes at a consistent speed as long as it has fuel even when going over a powered rail, meaning any circuit that relies on a minecart for timing (which some auto farms do for item collection) can be timed more accurately without as much guesswork as a powered rail (which provides a huge boost to begin with that deteriorates in time. The furnace minecart here being the exception, as even going over a powered rail doesn't change its speed unless it's out of fuel).

>What needs changed?

-One strange mechanic about the current furnace minecart is that it has no GUI whatsoever. You hold some coal, right click, and it goes. What's more is it doesn't require fuel at all, the coal just makes it last longer (unlike regular furnaces, such as the one required to MAKE the furnace minecart in the first place. Go figure?). Adding a GUI would just be the first step in modernizing the "minecart with furnace", and would allow the player to use more powerful fuels to change how long it will run without running out of power.

-Being able to automate anything is a redstone engineer's dream, so it'd be fairly convenient if a powered minecart could accept fuel from a hopper. If that fuel happened to be a lava bucket, it should be able to drop that bucket off into another hopper for disposal.

-"Wait up!" The old method of moving YOURSELF with one of these things was to place the powered minecart down, set the cart you were going to be in in front of it, power the furnace minecart and pray you could hop in the regular cart before the two went speeding into the distance without you. Much preferable would be to place both carts down, run the furnace minecart against yours so they connect, then just get in your cart and feed fuel to the furnace cart.

>Existing bugs to squash.

-Bug #1: Connected carts. As stated earlier the furnace minecart can hitch other minecarts together, however thanks to a couple bugs the other minecarts will become unhitched if any of them go around a corner or up a ramp.

-Bug #2: The furnace minecart loses a large amount of power going around corners. Fortunately it can get back to full just by running over a powered rail, but nonetheless the strange power loss is completely illogical and devalues the cart even further.

-Bug #3: Making up for the way the furnace minecart loses its connection to other carts going up ramps is a clipping error that occurs which sends minecarts attached BEHIND the furnace minecart AHEAD of it when going up hill. This clipping gives the other carts an incredible amount of energy and sends them careening down the track ahead at full force, leaving the humble steam engine behind until the normal carts run out.


Anyhow, that's my idea for vanilla Minecraft, or a mod if need be. Thank you for your time, and I wish you a great day.
Sincerely,
Raven's Quote