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[Hans Lemurson]

When I was digging around and found some cryolite deposits, I remember that one of cryolite's uses is as a medium to dissolve aluminum oxide for subsequent electrolysis to convert bauxite into aluminum metal.

What if there were a forge reaction that used bauxite and cryolite in order to produce aluminum?  It's a truly genius idea to transform a rare and useless mineral into an expensive but still slightly useless metal.  But why stop at just modding in an extra reaction?  A forge alone can't make aluminum metal, you need electricity!

Dwarven electricity?  Yeah...I'm thinking make a new building which requires mechanical power to operate and maybe requires some mechanisms and magnetite to build, but which will then be able to do electrolytic metallurgy.

So I have a few questions:
-Can you specify that a certain material be used in the construction of a building?  Like would I be able to specify that my furnace would need magnetite?
-Going one step further, could you specify that it needs a mechanism made out of copper as well?
-Can you specify that a building will use mechanical power? 
-Would you be able to have a little animation to show that the building is indeed receiving power (like what gear assemblies show)?
-Am I insane for dreaming up such a convoluted scheme to produce a material of marginal value?
-What other things do you think the arc-furnace should be able to do?  More fuel-efficient smelting?

[Urist Imiknorris]

The answer to your first two is yes. I'm not sure about the next two, the fifth answer is no because aluminum ties with platinum for second-highest-value matal, and I don't know.

[Hans Lemurson]

Ok, so this probably has some potential then.  My main worry is that this will simply be limited by the amount of cryolite available, which can be about as rare as native aluminum itself in my experience.  I suppose though that cryolite can be imported, and I could make the reaction simply use 1 cryolite and 10 bauxite to produce 10 aluminum.

To be more generally useful, I think that I should probably allow all the metal reactions but maybe cut the fuel cost in half?  Actually, you technicly should only need carbon to reduce the ores.  What about having all of the ore-reactions use 2 ore to make 2 metal at the cost of one coke, but then have the alloy-making be done at no additional carbon cost?

Would doing that require that I write a new reaction for each and every metal?

[Eagleon]

3 and 4, no. At least not in the sense of connecting windmills, etc. and having it work. Not yet. You can have a reagentless reaction produce something, sort of simulating dwarves turning giant flywheels or something to store stuff in batteries or something. Obviously this is highly unrealistic in terms of the amount of continuous available power being produced, but that's about all I can think of that would be similar.

And yeah, you'd pretty much have to write new smelting reactions to produce different outputs. On the upside, many of the ore stones have ore classes (as in, they specify which metal they are an ore of), so you can just write those reactions one time. But the alloys will be tedious. My suggestion is just copy/pasting them all, changing building type, skill (if applicable), and reaction ID by find/replace, then going through and manually changing what's left.

For the batteries if you go that route - my suggestion would be to make them have a high initial cost to produce (say, sulfuric acid from burning sulfur/pyrite and saltpeter, plus lead and steel), and then make them rechargable with dwarf-power. Require a lot of them for one smelting action. That balances a certain amount of pure physical labor required against not needing any fuel.

[Hans Lemurson]

Hmm...batteries, interesting idea.  I guess it would be the equivalent of the glass-furnace's "Collect Sand".

For the alloys, I should be able to just re-use the reactions that the magma-furnace uses, right?  Actually I probably won't bother with alloys in the arc-furnace, since the whole "theme" of it is for the processing of ore.

Oh, idea!  What if I made a reaction to "charge" the furnace which consumed 1 coke, but then provide 2 or 3 units of "charge"?  I'm still unclear on how I would represent this though.

[Troas]

You could represent charge by using two different items to represent charged and discharged batteries.  Create a reaction that makes a discharged battery from raw materials.  Then a second reaction - perhaps in the mill or quern, or using coke in the smelter - that requires a discharged battery as a reagent and produces a charged battery.  Then your final electric smelting reaction should require several charged batteries as input along with your raw materials and produce the same number of discharged batteries along with the output.

[Shade-o]

Pssh, I smelt Bauxite with a nuclear reactor.

[Hans Lemurson]

Pssh, I smelt Bauxite with a nuclear reactor.

Pitcheblende eh?  That has potential too.

[Zaerosz]

I'd like to use this idea in my mod, if you don't mind.

[Flaede]

Hmm...batteries, interesting idea.  I guess it would be the equivalent of the glass-furnace's "Collect Sand".

Try having two "batteries" in the raws. One CHARGED and one EMPTY. That way you can have a separate reaction to "charge" it back up, without having to re-create the batteries entirely from scratch (thus, batteries can be valuable, and require a heavy investment without being a one-use item). I'm trying to remember what they used to call those primitive battery-jar things. It's on the tip of my brain...

[ZhangC1459]

Hmm...batteries, interesting idea.  I guess it would be the equivalent of the glass-furnace's "Collect Sand".

Try having two "batteries" in the raws. One CHARGED and one EMPTY. That way you can have a separate reaction to "charge" it back up, without having to re-create the batteries entirely from scratch (thus, batteries can be valuable, and require a heavy investment without being a one-use item). I'm trying to remember what they used to call those primitive battery-jar things. It's on the tip of my brain...

Leyden jars?