It is indeed very annoying

It's one of the first things I noticed in the game that annoyed me and continues to annoy me each time I encounter it. Pretty silly oversight. (unless it's intentionally there to punish us in the afterlife )

ya right now it takes 22ish coal for 10 ore... touch annoying.

I've taken to running through my forges and loading up all the ore, back through a second time with coal - this gives them enough time to go from 20/20 to 19/20, then back through a third time with one more coal each to get them back to 20/20. They take care of themselves from there.

It sounds like more of a hassle than it is when you type it out, but when I get back from wherever/whatever, everything will be smelted and all the coal will be used, ready for another round.

And of course, you can always just get the mod that fixes the ratio and skip all that.

Yeah, it's an off-by-one error in the code. (>= where it should be > or vice-versa) Someone put out a mod that fixes it, surprised IG didn't sort it out while they were improving cooking station UI for H&H.

Actually, I say mod but I think it was more like hacking instructions for modifying the offending .dll file yourself. Not sure it was ever released as a simple plugin.