Ardennesss wrote:To get an empty smelter as an output is not only dissapointing, but quite not realistic i guess. A full load of ore should give something as an output, or it's "zero percent ore".
Valid point. Ore that gives absolutely nothing is arguably not ore, it's stone. Is our hearthling classifying it incorrectly as ore? Perhaps It should be nuggets and bars only, and lower the chance for a full bar output?
Hi, amateur blacksmith/metalworker here.
Smelting isn't as simple as "insert rock, press butan, receive metal." Smelting even high-yield ore under improper conditions of heat, oxygenation, presence of catalyst, etc. will, in fact, get you all sorts of useless new products that have nothing to do with the metal you want. So yeah, a smelter producing zero metal is indeed a thing that can happen especially in a world before extensive chemical studies and advanced process control equipment. Even masters of this trade will build stack furnaces (the main smelting technology of H&H's era) and fail to produce a useful bloom.
I do think, however, that slag, rather than stone, is what ore should be producing. You pulverize ore before you smelt it, and when you screw up, it's that glass-like slag you get at the bottom.
This, of course, is if you're going for realism. Which we're obviously not (see also: reusable smelters, crops that grow in days, animals you tame by physically abusing them until they suddenly decide to like you) so as a gameplay mechanic the metal smelting is probably fine. A more interesting product from failure might be cool though.