teragen
commented
1 year ago Had some sleep and more thought. As a material andesite alloy to me is something of a wtf where they thinking? Putting some lore to it is quite the spin. Here goes.
In the advancement tree, Andesite alloy should fit in as the bastard child of a failed attempt to smelt iron. A stray chunk of andesite has some interesting crystals in it, so figure it may have some kind of metal. Can’t heat it enough to melt it, so break it down into gravel. Still no luck, so mix a bit zinc through and whatever else you can think of and chuck that cake back in the oven. ...and you end up some frankenstein conglomerate that loses a heap to slag, but some crude alloy none the less. New attempt, and now thinking how to keep the heat going for longer. You slave away with tried and Bronze, and fashion yourself a bloomery. This time you drop the cakes in the top with some charcoal, fire it up, and play the waiting game. ...much more consistant. You chip chunks out of the bloomery and toss them in a crucible. This time they melt for a much better yield, and leaving enough to experiment with. Mixed results. Seems great for cladding wooden structures, but not so great for tools. That bloomery has shown promise though. Should try heat those other ores people can’t seem to melt.
Could possibly toss in a final evolution in the recipe once iron is found by using some to enrich the cakes (cast iron nuggets or ore) but by that point iron will have a heap of other demands. Besides, steel will be the new challenge by then.
Considering the higher tiers in create use copper or brass, making andesite alloy dependent on wrought iron nuggets seems overly restrictive. Plenty of other places to balance advancement. Work to understand, then automate to free up time for more exploration later. If you need a brake on things, add in fittings and treated wood as requirements for more elaborate devices.
Depending on your world generation, brass can be easier to get your hands on than Andesite, which kind of throws out the tech tree. Also metals used have very different melting points, so you kind of have a split between a pit kilns and a bloomery. My thought is there is room for a bit of tech evolution here, since we don’t need create’s standalone fast forward to the start line. Here’s how I think it could flow.
Getting started: Zinc ore + Andesite gravel fired in pit kiln produces some form of conglomerate that can be worked on an anvil bloom style. Yield is pretty poor, but it’s a start.
Enhancing the yield: Grind down an unworked conglomerate in a quern and mix it with base ingredients to make a cake with a higher yield. This one can smelt directly in a crucible, and should be worth your time despite sacrificing some alloy as a primer.
Lessons from Iron: Once you have a bloomery, run the cakes through the same process you would iron for optimal yield. Could possibly sub iron and zinc, as well as Andesite’s metamorphic variant since they are chemically similar. It’s been a trip, but at least you should be able to stay on top of demand.