Best way to get around frozen ocean?

[Taika]

Greetings.
Me and my friends have been running a server and we are very big on sea travel but an issue we've noticed is that the biomes bleed into the ocean as there isn't an "ocean" biome and because of this, if the water happens to be in a Taiga biome, the water will permanently freeze every time it snows which means it would have to be manually broken afterwards instead of unfreezing after the winter is over.

We have been getting around this by putting blocks surrounded by torches over the ice in order to open up paths for the boats.


However, when it comes to unfreezing large areas such as an entire coast or ocean, this solution is less appealing as you end up with a bunch of floating blocks on the water so it doesn't look very nice and doesn't allow for the freest boat travel since you gotta be dodging blocks.


A possible non water surface invasive solution I arrived at is that you can put a cover over the patch of water at the world limit with say, glass which keeps the water under it from refreezing.


Another thought I had was using redstone to drain patches of water for the winter and reflood during the warm seasons but this would only be viable for small passages and not a massive region.

For my use case, I want to unfreeze a large region of ocean around the spawn island and my island so that constructing large ports and ships is feasible but right now, glass at the build height limit is looking like the most appealing solution.

Is there anything that I'm missing? I would like to hear your thoughts on the Taiga Ocean problem

[wigglymiggly]

You could use ice skates, build an underground rail/canal, use a nether portal, or put lights under the surface of the ice to make a path through it.

[Taika]

You could use ice skates, build an underground rail/canal, use a nether portal, or put lights under the surface of the ice to make a path through it.

Ice skates, underground rail/canal (we are already working on an underground metro line that goes under this ocean), and nether travel don't really solve the core issue which is large patches of ocean being frozen and getting in the way of surface ocean travel and the construction of logical (as in, a large port constructed over permanently frozen water makes no sense) ports/ships.

I did try putting light sources under water but in my testing, this is the best you get which is crazy considering how many surrounding blocks are visibly lit up

[Hinklehonk]

I think glassing over the roof of the world above your waters is the best bet. If you use an activator full of glass, some reinforced pistons, and a little bit of very simple redstone you can easily automate the placement of a 25x25 sheet of blocks. The entire setup takes less than a minute to make. If you figure out where you need to place these setups, you can make one, let it rip, and make another while the previous setup is chugging along. Depending how fast you can make these things you can get a really big amount of blocks being placed simulataneously. I covered a 7x7 chunk area using this method a while back and it worked great

Note that if you use reinforced pistons (regular pistons work too, just the area is 12x12 blocks) you need to place some starter glass down to stop the placed glass from being flung into the ocean.

That leaves the ice remaining. TNT would make quick work of an ice sheet, and would be fun too.

[wildforester]

TNT dispensers under the ice wouldn’t be the worst option for making temporary paths. Could also try flowing water for the paths, I don’t think that’ll freeze.

Glass is the most permanent option

[UmbralMay]

Given the fact they're actually usable in BTA, make a railway over the ocean! From what I've seen it's mostly a matter of convenience for boats vs minecarts, and carts are just so much better for round-trip stuff cuz you can just open inventory and tab out if it's a large distance.