Idea discussion smelters

[Umbra.Animo]

so a while back i talked about a idea i had. smelters. at the core the idea is for ingots to be added and players can make them from any metalable material. glass plastic and metals. using the smelter.
its mostly for storage. like you just scrapped a car or replaced a bunch of weaker parts in your vehicle and thus have a bunch of useless parts. while stille fairly heavy for their size ingots are very space efficient.
any thing you guys want to add or discuss?

[Heartwawy]

Use the minecraft smelters as a base for ideas: adding more types of item would produce a different composition of ingot, which can then be crafting into cooler stuff. In Crazy Cataclysm, throwing bodies in there might make meat ingots for food and glue.

[Umbra.Animo]

glue maybe but meat ingots. that would be more of a grinder/crusher. and ingots would work as parts of anything the forge uses. ingots at the core should mostly be just for storage. anything that would use ingots could use scrap metal.

[Vinicius]

nice idea, i want to create a armor from iron or brass ingots.

[Trigon]

My initial reaction is that this is unnecessary, but thinking on it I suppose it could serve a similar purpose to the already existent charcoal smoker where you just dump fuel and items in and let it chug away while you do something else. I think making it a required step ignores the actual reality of forging items out of scrap metal though so making it an ancillary option is ideal.

Additionally we currently have a “recycler” in game that turns random things into scrap metal.

If you want to do something like this I recommend looking at the code for the recycler and charcoal smoker to see how they accomplished it, and maybe construct something similar.

[kevin.granade]

Melting metals to ingots is a totally reasonable thing to do, and it something of a precursor to alloying metals. Side note, smelting is dealing with ores, if you’re melting down scrap, it’s just metling AFAICT.

Having said that, alloying is a totally different thing, and I’m not sure how far down that path we’re going to go, especially since literal tons of usable alloys spawn in the game world.

I think making it a required step ignores the actual reality of forging items out of scrap metal though so making it an ancillary option is ideal.

It’s the opposite, if you’re forging something with tight tolerances like a tool or weapon or structural member for a vehicle, you invariably melt your input down to an ingot before starting to improve consistency.

Directly forging scrap into a weapon or tool would yield a much worse product, and would only be something you would do if pressed for time or lacking appropriate tools.

[Trigon]

You’re correct, but based on the recipes in the game I assumed you were simply using the crucible and forge to turn the scrap directly into a blank, and thereby skipping the process of making an ingot, since the purpose of the crucible is to melt the metals together into a more homogeneous steel. I should have probably worded my point better.

[Umbra.Animo]

oh the ingots are not ment to be a step in forging. its not, get metal, forced to make it to ingot then forge.
the ingots are just a forge material option. lets say you make something with 10 scrap metal and ten scrap metal is a ingot. then you can use ten raw scrap metal OR a ingot. Ingots are purely for storage. it weighs just as much as the amount of material used to make it but takes much less space. the smeltery is simply a device to make storing lots of things that melt or use the forge in little space. though its also great for easy scrapping. like you have a ton of steel frames that take lots of space but are useless you can toss them in the semelter and turn them into a bunch of smaller ingots

[kevin.granade]

based on the recipes in the game I assumed you were simply using the crucible and forge to turn the scrap directly into a blank

Aha totally, the requirement is melting and casting, not specifically making an ingot. And yes I do think most if not all forging recipes have a crucible (I think we handwave the sand mold or whatever you’re pouring it into).

Ingots are purely for storage.

I think it’s totally useful for this, it’s what they’re used for IRL after all. I do still think this would be the output of an alloying process if we decided to go that route.

[Trigon]

Yeah I can get behind ingots for storage for sure. Especially as you describe with the very high volume stuff.

And again if the smelter doesn’t require constant supervision that’s a double plus.

[Umbra.Animo]

oh yeah its a dump fuel and forget item. would something to remove cast ingots or other items since I started thinking it could be usefull for items forged in bulk like nails arrowheads or bullets (casing,primer, or the bullet itself but not a full bullet)