[1.14] The Flattening and Data that is but isn't a Variant

[Draco18s]

I definitely get The Flattening in making blocks that are actually different blocks separate block instances, however, I have a block that uses a data value in a way that only sorta represents a "different" block.

 

This isn't like "oak fence" vs. "birch fence" or "red wool" vs. "white wool," but that I have ores that have a density property. The higher the density, the more metal resource the block contains and the more that drops when the block is mined (the drops are items like lapis or redstone, not the literal block).

 

The problem is that this property should be retained when mined with Silk Touch (the Edge Case) and I'm trying to figure out what the suggested method of handling this should be:

 

Option 1) the density property is actually-different-blocks (the wool analog approach)

Option 2) the density property is metadata when in the world, but drops different Item instances (hybrid approach)

Option 3) the density property is left unflattened (uses ItemStack NBT data approach)

 

Eg this is how it looks in the world with different density values (8 of 16 shown):