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[Kian]

So I just started my metallurgy industry, and wanted to make some bronze. The smelter has the options of using either bars or ore for the alloy. I was curious, what is the difference between the two options? Is it the same, is one more efficient than the other?

[Quietust]

If you make an alloy from ores, you need less fuel since you don't need to smelt the ores into bars before alloying them. Also, it allows you to use "impure" ores (e.g. you can use tetrahedrite to make alloys that require silver, even though smelting it only has a 20% chance of giving a silver bar).

[Lagslayer]

However, using impure ores means you cannot get the extra bar out of it, and you will only use impure ores if you do not have pure ores available.

[Hans Lemurson]

Except in cases where you are truly starved for metal (i.e. never), when given the choice to smelt from ore or bars, do it from ore.  It's more fuel-efficient, since you're only spending 1 fuel on
"malachite + cassiterite --> 2 bronze"
instead of
"malachite --> copper, cassiterite --> tin, coper + tin --> 2 bronze".

Also, as mentioned, using ores gives you the chance of "upgrading" impure ores to their higher form.  Galena or Tetrahedrite + Native Gold --> Electrum is both fuel-efficient, and gets you greater net value than using silver would have.  The only disadvantage here is if you seriously needed the extra copper or lead that smelting the tetrahedrite or galena would have given you.  Given that copper is common and lead is nearly worthless (not worth the fuel used to smelt it), you can't really go wrong with "use ore".