Making steel - a consideration.

[Kent]

As I understand, if you put 4 iron ore into the furnace, you get 4 standard iron-bars. If you you put three iron ore and one lump of coal, you get 4 bars of steel.

What's running around in my mind is that the lump of coal adds negligible volume to the mix, so the yield would be three bars of steel. I know I'm asking for a nerf (sigh) but it is a step towards realism.

What do you think?

Edit: 1. Noot has made a good point.

2. An alternate to my above-suggested recipe is: four iron ore plus two lumps of coal yields four steel bars. (How big are these lumps of coal?)

[Nootau]

If you are going for the sake of realism why not also blend in the need for nickel, sulfur and many other elements. For a closer feel towards original steel making multiple different types of iron: wrought iron and cast iron, would be a better step than just nerfing the end results. Lowering it to a 3 to 3 transfer makes it seem as if steel is just slightly treated iron and not a different blend all together.

[xavier]

i also don't see the reason alloys need to be made straight from ore, why can't iron bars be placed in with the coal. or copper and tin bars be placed together to make um bronze? I tried to alloy some bronze and came out with four slag lumps, when they started out with perfectly good metal bars. I'm not harping just saying, and i've let gm's know.

[Rithiel]

Bars do work, and I confirmed that they still work since you submitted that bug.

Perhaps there was something else in the forge, or the weights of the bars weren't the same, so the formula was off.

[xavier]

well i kind of thought about that before I began so I started with a standard copper and standard tin. then i put them in the bar cutter til i had nothing but tiny bars. I admittedly didn't weigh them before placing them in the forge but i can assure you the furnace was completely empty before i put things in it and it held only the bars I put in before I pulled the bellows. Did the wierdness about weighing some bars get worked out? I remember being able to hold a bar in hand and weigh it ten times and get a different weight almost everytime