1 Grown Fir = cc for 4.7 SI

[Erik_the_Blue]

Assuming a character who is nature/industry neutral and only fires ore smelters and finery forges when full of ore or iron:

At a 10% success rate, a load of 25 ore produces 2.5 CI, using 4 cc.
36 loads produces 90 CI for 144 cc. This allows 10 full loads in the finery forge, using 20 cc total.
At a 50% success rate, 90 CI is converted into 45 bloom for a total of 164 cc.
At a 33.3% success rate, 45 bloom is converted into 15 WI.
This 15 WI can be converted into 15 SI at a cost of 15 cc.
Using a total of 179 cc, 15 SI is produced. This is 11.93 cc per SI.
One fully grown fir produces 28 blocks of wood, or 56 cc.
56/11.93 = 4.69 SI. One fully grown fir can produce enough cc to provide approx. 4.7 SI.

Now I'm not trying to establish market values or anything, I'm only looking purely at material cost. The point is even a single fir is potentially valuable because it can create about 4.7 steel on average. Chop the fir at it's second to last state, and you'll only get about 2.7 steel on average. That's a loss of two SI. So even if you're only interested in producing steel, trees should be valuable to you.

Hopefully now people won't be so quick to suggest chopping young trees to get LP, unless the effective loss of dozens of potential steel ingots appeals to people.

For the record, a fully grown fir provides enough cc for 5.12 WI or 35 CI.