Titanium vs. Ilmenite Harvesting

[Maethius]

One thing that threw me upon entering the age of steel was Ilmenite. I could see it was used in refractory bricks, and less than 100 blocks from my base were two caves that prospected as having "More Ilmenite than Boeing." Okay, that's a little tongue in cheek; the highest quantity you can find in the game. When looking for ilmenite, though, you won't find it as an ore; you find titanium. Thing is, this is the opposite of how it works in the real world; you look for ilmenite ore and then you refine it to extract titanium oxide and refine that to produce titanium for alloys. What's the difference? First, without the need to dig into wikis, the refractory brick ingredient should be titanium, sourced through ilmenite. But more importantly to the game's mechanics, you shouldn't require steel to acquire the ore; you are not breaking titanium to acquire ilmenite, you are breaking stone to obtain the ore; you would then require steel to pound/process THAT to get titanium, which would be used in refractory bricks.

Since titanium currently isn't used in the game to make weapons and armor (which would be amazing but would require an amazing blast furnace and lathe as well!) it could be used as a late-game replacement for the quern; a machine with grinding plates using titanium oxide that could turn ANYTHING in the game into a powder. Diamonds could be used in a similar fashion.

Just a thought or two.

[StCatharines]

7 hours ago, Maethius said:

the refractory brick ingredient should be titanium, sourced through ilmenite.

That's not how ilmenite is actually used in real-world refractory materials. We directly use the ilmenite, crushed or powdered. I have a bag of it in my shop, actually.

Separating the iron and titanium as pure metals is extremely difficult, generally you end up with iron and titanium oxide. Just my thoughts.

[LadyWYT]

8 hours ago, Maethius said:

you shouldn't require steel to acquire the ore

The steel requirement to mine it is probably to encourage players to upgrade their tools in order to progress, instead of relying on the cheapest tools for everything. It also ensures that players have access to what they need in order to process it, instead of letting them dig it up and then get frustrated when they can't do anything with it.

[StCatharines]

42 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

The steel requirement to mine it is probably to encourage players to upgrade their tools in order to progress, instead of relying on the cheapest tools for everything. It also ensures that players have access to what they need in order to process it, instead of letting them dig it up and then get frustrated when they can't do anything with it.

And, to be fair, anyone with ore blasting bombs can absolutely harvest it right then and there. I generally end up with ilmenite ages before I can actually make the steel pounder caps to pulverize it.