Improved Metallurgy

Are you the server blacksmith and hate iron blooms?

Do you have a basement full of ingot molds?

Do you blame yourself for your parents divorce?

This mod solves all but one of those problems.

Improved Metallurgy aims to add smithing progression beyond the cementation furnace by adding three new advanced alloys, tool steel, hadfield steel, and inconel, and the blast furnace.

 

The Blast Furnace

This multiblock structure is designed to be a large-scale crucible for producing large amounts of metal at a time. It is also capable of reaching temperatures far beyond the burn temperature of your fuel using a bellows.

But be warned, while this structure accepts all refractory brick tiers, refractory bricks now have a safe operating temperature associated with their tier.

Tier 4 refractory bricks have also been added.

Tier 1 - 1,350°C

Tier 2 - 1,500°C

Tier 3 - 1,750°C

Tier 4 - 2,000°C

Attempting to run the blast furnace hotter than your bricks can handle risks damaging your bricks. 

The blast furnace also requires flux (lime) in order to function. As a byproduct of the smelting process, slag is produced. This slag must be tapped into a slag barrel, but when cooled and crushed it can be used as a fertilizer.

 

By default, the blast furnace has a cook time multiplier of 0.8, but this can be changed using /blastfurnacespeed which accepts values from 0.1 to 5

 

Molten Metal Runners

These runners can be used to automatically pour metal into any valid adjacent mold or runner. This allows for entire batches of metal to be poured at once.

Be aware, not all metal will be pushed into the next runner as some is required to keep the height needed to keep the flow going (factor this into your batch sizes)

These are designed to be used in conjunction with the blast furnace but can be used independently.

Metal that solidifies in the runners can be extracted as nuggets using a hammer and chisel. 

 

Known issue: Runners do not like to pour into two vanilla ingot molds in the same block. 

 

Triple ingot mold

'Nuff said

 

New alloys

<span style="text-decoration: underline;">New alloys can be disabled with /IM metals false</span>

• Pig Iron
  • This is an intermediate high-carbon iron alloy to be used in higher tier steel recipes. It can also simply be melted down again to produce regular steel.

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• Tool Steel
  • This alloy is designed to be faster and slightly stronger than regular steel. More expensive than hadfield steel, but still relatively cheap to produce

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• Hadfield Steel
  • This alloy is very cheap and extremely durable, providing higher durability than tool steel but slighly lower speed and damage

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• Inconel
  • This is a nickel-based superalloy with extreme durability and the best speed and damage stats in game. However, these stats come at a cost, being the most expensive recipe by far and requiring the most durable refractory bricks available.&nbsp;

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• Stainless Steel
  • Added recipe, no tools or functionality currently

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• Cast Iron
  • Added recipe, no tools or functionality currently

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Polymetallic Nodules&nbsp;

<span style="text-decoration: underline;">Nodules can be disabled with /IM nodules false</span>

These ore-rich stones can now be found only in the deepest parts of the ocean, providing the resources required for these advanced alloys.

This resource is designed to be extracted in conjunction with Abyssal Depths, although it is not required.&nbsp;

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The default spawn depth is 60 blocks deep, but this can be changed using the command /improvedmetallurgy depth, which can be set anywhere from 5 to 100 blocks deep

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Commands

A few commands have been added to allow for better control over the mod as a whole, the full list can be accessed by using <span style="text-decoration: underline;">/IM</span>

• metals (true / false)
  • enables / disables the new metals, requires world restart for change to take effect
• nodules (true / false)
  • enables / disables the spawning of the polymetallic nodules
• speed (0.1-5.0)
  • speed multiplier added on top of cook time for the blast furnace (Values below 1 will reduce time, greater than 1 increases time)
• depth (5-100)
  • changes nodule spawn depth, default of 60

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Compatability

Expanded Matter 3.5

Toolsmith (In RC testing)

Smithing Plus

Infantry Dolabra

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Most modded alloys should already be compatable

All modded molds should work unless multiple can be placed per block

Combat overhaul is known to have some compat bugs, I am working on ironing those out