Hello,

Interesting mod ! I started a new run with your mod and got some early feedback.

It would be interesting if melting would give a productivity bonus since it's a more complicated process with 2 steps, 2 machines and by product. Something like 50% or +100% (2 plates for 1 ore instead of 1 to 1 in vanilla).

Then normal smelters could be kept and not disabled, so the player has the choice of the classic direct smelting or a more efficient but more complicated melting + casting process.

For now the only benefit seem to be the much less machines required (8 casters and 4 melters instead of 48 furnaces), which could be tuned aswell to require a bit more machines but taking less space than furnaces is interesting aswell.

Coal usage seems very very reduced 15x less than furnaces ! Which seems excecisve.

Also steam production by product is interesting to generate power at this stage, however it produces a tons of it that could be tuned down especially considering the very low coal bruning!

Thanks for your time !

ok so 238Mj of steam from 4mj of coal a tad over powered. hahaha

Hi and thanks for your feedback.
Productivity:
As you progress the Techtree youl unlock machines with a speed of 1.5. Since the mod just introduces a 2nd step in the smelting process (like with smelting steel in vanilla) the next caster upgrade is 1.5 times faster than the vanilla one.
Further you'll get slag as a byproduct which can be (again with further progress in you tech) processed into raw ores. I should mention that the slag process isn't finished by any means.
So there is already a bonus in productivity but you have to develop the tech first.

Smelters:
There is an option which lets you choose if you want to keep the vanilla smelters or not (off by default)

Coal/Energy:
I didn't rly put much thought into it as i just wanted the system to basically work. I think i'll up the energy consuption of the machines so that youll need to use the steam to support the whole setup.
This mod is somewhat of a ripoff from a private one i've written like 3 years ago (https://github.com/Yokmp/Factorio-Smelting-DLC).
Back then i used water in the casting process as coolant aswell but it just vanished magically. Then i added waste water (there is still an icon left) which had to be cleaned but it wasnt rly fun to end up with boring water. Now its steam to generate power.
I think inceasing the pouwer usage on each machine to like "counter" the steam production could work.
This way you would need more power plants which use more boilers which in return use more coal ...
Or a more radical solution: reduce the coal spawning but that would potentially conflict with some other mods.

There will be a solution at some point.