Potential Recipes Encouraging Resource Renewability/Versatility:
Plantball + Extractor -> Slimeball
Slimeball + Dirt (whatever quantities) -> Clayball
Cooked Steak /Cooked Porkchop + Furnace -> Bone
Cobblestone + Compressor -> Gravel
Coal/Charcoal + Dirt/Sand (Whatever quantities works for game balance) -> Bauxite
Bauxite + Electrolyzer -> Tin (*Cough* Aluminum=Tin? Why Not, eh?)
I can never seem to get enough tin for all the cells my biofuel facility eats.
New Machine: Shaker.
Similar to recycler in functionality, but occassionally yields the small nuggets (tin, copper, iron, gold, uranium, etc x9 -> ingot) or more rarely, gemstones (diamond, emerald), from gravel/cobble (whatever works for game balance). Could yield in a similar way as scrapbox does. Perhaps, as "unwashed stone" item that could be "cleaned up" with a waterbucket to see what nugget you've recieved. Would give the "panning" feel to squeezing the tiny bits out of the mining dregs.
Perhaps even a revisit of the recycler yields could get close to this effect. Right now it gives me far more food than I could ever use. Currently I just plop the food back in again.
Thank you for your consideration!
P.S. Oh, and plantball smiley above yields a tonguey smiley accidentally for the forum gurus.