[SUGGESTION] Usage of stone dust

IC2 experimental introduced stone dust as a byproduct of the ore washing plant and the themal centrifuge. My suggestion is very tiny: allow us to use stone dust to craft sand or cobblestone because these plants generates a ton of this dust, and no way to use it other than CF Powder.

My motivation is very simple: sometimes I spawn quite far from deserts, and some mods requires a ton of sand (mainly to burn it to glass). I always have to go to a long boring journey - just for sand?

And other aspect: I do not use as much CF powder as I can craft from this dozen stone dust. And I cannot use this to any other thing... too bad.

Quote from Omicron

You can throw stone dust into a recycler for scrap.

Yeah, but I can throw anything into recycler, so it is not really an usage for stone dust.

Quote from Omicron

A compressor would be a more likely culprit than a furrnace, I'd say... it would be similar to the dense iron plate recipe that already exists.

If we would like to make stone from stone dust, then yeah, compressor is better solution. For sand - I think crafting table should be enough, b/c sand is not differs from stone dust too much.

Quote from mcmz4e

you are all taking stone dust for granted...why?
Let's take a whole different approach:
What does stone dust add to the game? It makes 1 recipe a tiny bit more realistic.
What if we just drop stone dust?...let the ore washers make materials that are already in the game and just change the CF powder recipe.
Cf powder could use gravel instead of stone dust in the recipe.
what would be lost? one tiny bit of realism
what would be gained? one tiny bit of functionality
NOW....I know nothing about geology...but I'm sure there's someone on this forum who does...and with his help we can decide which ore makes what.
Here's a first draft of what stone dust gets replaced with as ore washer output:
iron and silver makes gravel
copper and tin makes sand
gold and lead makes clay
and uranium makes flint
Again...i know nothing about geology and what hardness and composition real ores have....but I'm sure someone can help us figure it out so that it's realistic.
How would this be more functional than stone dust?
Well...for one....takes away one item ID....and for two....saves you a "building mats run" every now and then.
That's my take on stone dust.

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I don't think we should drop a newly-introduced item b/c we think it is useless. IC2 experimental acts as its name says: experimental mod. A bunch of new things was introduced, and this implicite requires rebalancing the gameplay. This mod is under heavy development, and author seems very open for our requests, so if we think we found an item what is currently not have an use, we should first try find a good usage for the item, and if we cannot find any good use for it, then we can talk about dropping an item. IMHO it should be the right order.

Stone dust as a byproduct: MFR introduced slag furnace, what generates stone (not cobblestone, stone) as a byproduct of smelting ores to ingot. If we think deeper, stone is not too useful item except for building. Very few recipe uses stone as ingredient, and not too much required during a whole gameplay to recipes. MFR uses stone as a base of it's machine casing, just for consume some of these items. So, they could found a good usage of slag furnace's byproduct.

If stone dust can be crafted to sand, it can be used to burn it to glass what is an ingredient of some stuffs in IC2 and BC. So technically stone dust become same like tiny pile of <ORE> dust.