Hard Mode IC2 without Gregtech. Is there a way to configure the fuel usage of the Iron Furnace?

I am working on a modpack to make the regular ic2 more hard mode style, but I am not using GT.

The ic2 config file gives great optioins on balancing the mod. You can decrease the output of all power generating blocks but... this makes the vanilla furnace pretty OP. Why would anyone burn 1 charcoal to smelt 4 dusts in an electric furnace, when a vanilla furnace will smelt 8 dusts for the same piece of charcoal?

My idea was to remove the vanilla furnace recipe and iron furnace recipe, but this makes smelting in the early game impossible. I can't find any config option for the iron furnace, does anyone know if there is a way to configure it? Or if there is a way to get around this?

Side note: has anyone else noticed in the IC2.ini file (config) that you can add custom recipes? Not as robuts as minetweaker, but still, pretty handy if you only wanted to add a few recipes.

If anyone has any suggestions on how to make ic2 more 'hard mode' I would love to hear them.

Thanks for the tip. I think ill be removing the machine casing recipe, to make it more expensive.

No it should smelt more than 8 dusts per charcoal. A vanilla furnace is 8 per charocoal, i would *hope* an electric furnace would do more. An iron furnace is more efficient than a stone furnace, so an electric ideally should be even better.

My point was that if i change the ic2 config so that each energy generator block outputs say....20% of what they do now, it will mean that coal in a generator burns 5x as fast.

But in a vanilla furnace, it will still be the same... no one would use an electric furnace, especially in a pack where energy is harder to get than most packs.

Quote from SpwnX

Electric one ideally would not be better. You lose energy on the convertion to electricity (a very good bunch btw) aswell on the conversion of electricity back to heat.

This seems to be the theme of GT these days, and it's why Im working with just IC2. To me, how things work in the real world often don't equate to gameplay balance. So for this pack, think of forestry multifarms costing 5x as much metal, and apatite lasting even less time than on Hard Mode. Energy is scarce, which promotes being as efficient as possible, that's the point of making technology (at least in the pack). Then have electric furnaces smelt one or maybe 2 dusts per charcoal, not 8 dusts. No one will make an electric furnace in this environment, they will make vanilla furnaces. Possibly the electric furnace would be used once solar panels come online I guess.

The other problem is that ic2 machines will be much more expensive, so a furnace made out of only stone would also be crazily cheap.

@blockmaster, i would think people would just make 4 stone furnaces to compensate for 1 electric furnace. Now they smelt a stack of items as fast as the electric one, save themselves dozens of ingots and get a much more efficient furnace. Making an iron furnace harder to get would be better, but then you have the electric furnace as the 'bronze age' type furnace and the plain iron furnace as the top tier furnace. Doesn't really fit, IMO.

And if I just make regular vanilla furnaces harder to make, how do people smelt items at the beginning of the game?

I must be missing something because to me it would make no sense for an electric furnace to be less efficient than a stone furnace. It would be like an industrial grinder (oh the poor long lost grinder!) only giving you two dusts and no bonus dusts, but then costing much more and being harder to power.

Quote from SpwnX

It is the inefficiencies when turning stuff into electricity. I'm not talking about balance or anything related.

Ok then, I misunderstood sorry.