Ore Extracting and Trace Minerals

[Omega Haxors]

There was an idea early on to allow the pounder to break apart ore blocks in order to get double ore yield of of it. This thankfully did not make the cut: DO NOT DO THIS!

Modded minecraft has taught me that ore duplication ruins the game. How? Well imagine you have a magic box that doubles every ore you get. Following me? Well once you have it, essentially all your ore is doubled when converted into ingots, pretty nice, right? It's not, and let me tell you why: when you're starting up a new world, you know this exists, so you start stockpiling ore. Now you feel like crap every time you have to smelt an ore because the back of your mind is nagging you saying "you could have gotten 2 out of that" and it just feels bad. This universally leads to FOMO and toxic optimizing. Things don't stop there, it gets worse. As Modded advanced, everyone was trying to one-up each other which lead to ore tripling, then ore quadrupling, you get the idea. Eventually it got so ridiculous that one ore produced TWO BLOCKS worth of ingots out of a single ore. Yes. Two blocks!! Ores weren't treated as being worth anything since their value was completely arbitrary based on what mods you had installed.

Anyway, I think there's a better solution to all of this that not only fixes the problem but opens up an exciting new avenue to build off of: Ore Extracting and Trace Minerals!
To start off, you put any rock into the pounder to get dust. Then you run that through an extractor. After some processing you'll find tiny little amounts of trace mineral. Over time these accumulate enough that you can make an ingot. What makes this exciting is that you can do the same to ore powders. The yield will be lower than the old method, but you'll get purified metal out instead. This metal when processed will be better than the normal metal, similar to how meteoric iron outperforms normal iron.

Here's where things get exciting: No matter what you destroy, be it a rock or an ore, you'll get a byproduct. These byproducts can be any ore, though it weights based on the stone type or ore type you process, and if you're lucky you might find trace amounts of rare earth material. These rare earth metals can eventually accumulate and you can use them to make a new upgrade for your steel tools: Stainless steel! You won't gain them any faster by using stones or using ore, but when processing ore you'll be getting purified metal in the process, so you may as well throw them in there. Not only that, you can also crush down already-smelted ingots and put them through to purify them and obtain trace material that way too.

This system gives benefits for using it without invalidating the older methods nor punishing you for processing all your ore early, but instead rewarding you for using the new method. Even if you don't have any ore to process it's no big deal; you're not going to be locked out of any content since you can still pound rocks/ingots to the same effect.

Edited September 16, 2021 by Omega Haxors

[Vinter Nacht]

This is a much more appealing approach than "yay double ores!".  I've never particularly liked that ''advancement" tree.  There's not going to be any more metal in the ore, no matter how you process it.  However, there could be resources you would lose in a straight-up smelting process.

Do like. Yes do.

[Silent Shadow]

So turn rocks into sand for more panning? Wouldn't mining the ores normally be more metal efficient and faster anyway? Why bother?

I also don't really like how it passively rewards the player with "byproducts" for zero extra effort. If people want resources, they should have to work for them in a survival game. Just giving it to you is not going to make it valuable to the player, they should have to mine them as ores. If you want these available as early teasers (or gambling) for players just make the nuggets of the ores spawn in the ruins' loot pots. This system would also make players have to decide whether to keep these one or two special nuggets early on in their limited space or chuck it out for something immediately useful or more valuable (which I am fine with, but you may not be with the FOMO thing you said above)

Doubling the ore just doesn't make sense as you said, but I do like the idea of crushing ore with the pulverizers, which would be nice if only to prevent having to replace the hammers I normally use in exchange for time and power. You would get to save the metal for the hammers for something else and it would be a nice function for an otherwise underused machine, but it would not break the game.

[Maelstrom]

I don't like the idea of grinding metal ingots for trace minerals.  Those trace minerals would have been skimmed off during the smelting process.  It also removes the decision whether to save the raw ore for grinding in the pulverizer or smelt via normal means.  Decisions in VS always have considerations to contemplate, allowing someone to gain trace minerals from a smelted metal removes that consideration.

I have no problem with the pulverizer creating more raw metal than a hammer.  The pulverizer is a more efficient means of processing raw ore for smelting represented by an increase in smeltable metal.  I'd be ok with a 5 to 25 percent increase in smeltable metal by using a pulverizer.

[Silent Shadow]

Well, history has plenty of examples where much of the metal smelted from an ore ended up in the slag rather than the ingot, so there is some basis for better smelting resulting in more metal from ore. Crushing ore, either by hammer or heave hammer, should not increase the amount of metal recoverable, and it should only reduce the amount of slag generated (which is entirely absent in the game) and reduce the fuel needed.

[Omega Haxors]

On 9/29/2021 at 2:49 PM, Maelstrom said:

It also removes the decision whether to save the raw ore for grinding in the pulverizer or smelt via normal means.

It's a false decision. You're forced to do it if you want to play effectively. Exactly the kind of design I'm trying to stay away from.