Combine surface metal

[Master_Aricitic 6]

It would be nice to be able to lump together the surface metal shards we find in the same way we get surface stone to smelt the entire thing at once. Simply being able to combine however may pieces the surface ore is (a fraction of the regular ore) into one of the regular sized ore would be wonderful.

If you are concerned with realism, don't be. It is entirely possible to take metal lumps and place them all into what ever you are heating them with in the real world (even if you were holding the ore-which would be stupid and you'd get burned by doing). While it is true that multiple smaller lumps of the same material may not 'fit' into the same shape and size as the larger single version, the ores don't come in varying shapes and sizes (except normal and small) so it would not be like putting a square into a circle slot (but putting eight eighths of a circle into a circular slot).

Lastly, two things, you should be able to carry 'x' times the amount of surface ore as regular ore (where 'x' is the fraction smaller the surface ore is), and while I haven't tested it enough to be sure, I think the smaller ore takes as long as the regular ore to heat. This is unrealistic as anything, of the same material but smaller than larger object, will heat faster than the larger object. If the surface ore is 1/8th the size of mined ore, it should melt in roughly 1/8th the time

(note: I did check to see if this was suggested prior to suggesting it myself. While I did not see it, I could have not looked hard enough. If this is a duplicate, I apologize. Let me know what part(s) are duplicates and I'll remove them).

[EternalUndeath 1,208]

Agreed, 8 pieces of small ore should craft into 1 piece of regular ore

Also small should indeed smelt faster, but that was already suggested in another thread

[GCountach 39]

I like this. I found it strange that the small bits take just as long to smelt and take as much coal to smelt as regular sized bits (a point I made in the this thread that EU was talking about), but I wonder how doable it is with the current bloomery coding. This way would allow the bloomery code to remain unchanged (assuming it would be an issue here) while allowing us to cook 8 pieces of small ore for the same cost of one larger ore. Not sure if the conversion is right, but for the added convenience of it costing less to smelt, I'd be willing to accept it.

Really though, either implementation would work, but yours does seem like it would be a whole lot easier to program in (simply add a shapeless recipe for each small/nugget ore?).

The ability to carry more though I'd have to disagree with. Not allowing you to carry more small ore gives you incentive to convert your small ores instead of leave them as is. Similar to the idea that it's easier to store ingots than ore.

[DaGoblin 3]

Converting the ore to larger lumps definitely seems simpler than the current arrangement.

+1'd