After explaining my idea/suggestion to the moderator in the ideas-suggestions Discord it was clear that she didn't get what I was talking about, and proceeded to ignore my point to irrelevantly talk about how reality needs to take a back seat to game design and that's why we don't have to go the restroom or why our character doesn't get tired after 8 hours.
When you burn wood to make charcoal, it shouldn't matter what you use as a fuel. If anything, burning wood to make charcoal using coal as a fuel should give you more ash than just using twigs. I can understand that you want newer players to use twigs, but when ash is an essential component, and glass needs to be made, from a gameplay perspective it makes no sense that the player cannot choose to use coal as a primary fuel source and is punished by making charcoal using coal.
Since the Ash tooltip says "Ash left by burning wood.", I thought I could use coal as a fuel and burn a heap of logs, make charcoal, get ash and continue to produce glass, bottles of chemicals and various other things such as ammo.
It's unnecessary and unfair on the player that you would railroad them into using twigs as a fuel source when coal is FAR better and more convenient to use. Especially since I can't just burn a heap of logs and make ash directly, I am left with no choice but to arbitrarily chop down trees and forage for twigs when I wouldn't otherwise. Breaks my workflow, and makes me do something "just because" when it should in fact reward me for being more efficient with my time.