Unnecessary Smything Waste

[PhotriusPyrelus]

I mentioned this in the other smything thread on the front page, but figured maybe it deserved its own thread.

It would be nice if the game would let you recover the material it forces you to remove when smything from an ingot.  For instance, if you smythe out 4x nails from an ingot, you have to remove 6 voxels of metal.  It's one of the less-wasteful patterns, though, I use it only because I'm most familiar with it.  Smything a knife blade makes you waste - I think - well more than half the ingot.

This makes NO SENSE AT ALL.  If I'm beating on a piece of metal, and I take off a bit I don't need, it goes right back into a crucible to be melted down for my next project.  So should it be in-game.  When you remove a voxel of metal, you should get an item in your inventory* called "<metal> scrap" where the <metal> is whatever metal you're working with.  As an ingot is comprised of 42 voxels, and requires 100 units of metal, each voxel removed should be worth 2.38 units of metal.

If that number is as unpalatable to you as it is to me, then blacksmything as a whole needs a numbers pass.  It doesn't really make much sense to me in a game where stack sizes are multiples of 8 that blacksmything stuff is largely round, multiples of 10 (again, except stack size, for some bizarre reason).  First, ingots should probably be increased to 64 voxels (8*4*2), this makes each ingot 'one stack' worth of voxels.  As such, each ingot should probably require 128 units of metal, that makes each scrap worth 2 units.  Perfect.

The one problem is that this would require 28% more resources per ingot.  That's not good.  If you increase each nugget from providing 5 units of metal to 6, it only requires 6.667% more, but you run into the problem of 128 not being neatly divisible by 6, so you can't melt one ingot's worth of metal in a crucible, you'll have left over unless you do multiples of 3 at a time.  7 is even more ugly, so that leaves 8.  It very nicely handles all sorts of things.  Suddenly one full stack of 128 nuggets actually makes an even number of ingots, unlike presently, where 128 nuggets is 640 units.

If each nugget yields 8 units of metal and each ingot requires 128 units, that effectively makes metal 20% more abundant.  So rather than muck about with how much each block drops, it seems the simplest solution would just be to make metal veins either 20% less populous (reduce the number spawned at world gen) *or* reduce their size by 20% (reduce the number of blocks per vein).

Lastly, it would be nice if a pass was done on the molds to consolidate the amount of units of metal required by them with the amount of metal required by smything the same item.  The cost for the ease of mold use compared with smything is paid in making the mold, I don't really think it needs an increased metal resource cost as well.  Also, why can't we mold knife blades, saw blades, and nails?  x_x

 

* - or dropped on the ground where the character is standing if the character's inventory is full

[Thorfinn]

Is it a huge problem to have nuggets reduced to providing 4 units instead of 5, and more or less keep everything else you suggested? Chisels are awful for "waste", as are knives and shears, but if you are getting back about half an ingot when you smith a knife, that puts you appreciably ahead of the current 5 per nugget. Only things that have little waste, like anvils, nails and strips, etc., would cost more in terms of how much you need to mine/pan.

I'm guessing there must have been a reason to just go with waste. Maybe it's as simple as knapping often leaves you much of the stone as waste, so what's the difference? But I'm just guessing.

I suspect the reason for not casting knives, etc., is to lock some things behind enough metal for an anvil. That and it is fiendishly difficult to cast anything that will hold an edge. Most metals I can think of are far too brittle or weak without forging.

[PhotriusPyrelus]

7 minutes ago, Thorfinn said:

Is it a huge problem to have nuggets reduced to providing 4 units instead of 5, and more or less keep everything else you suggested? Chisels are awful for "waste", as are knives and shears, but if you are getting back about half an ingot when you smith a knife, that puts you appreciably ahead of the current 5 per nugget. Only things that have little waste, like anvils, nails and strips, etc., would cost more in terms of how much you need to mine/pan.

Only 4 units per nugget requiring 128 units per ingot would be 32 nuggets per ingot instead of the present 20.  That's a 60% increase in resource cost!  There's no way the savings from scrap would make up that difference.  Though admittedly, this could be addressed in a similar way to my suggestion for counteracting the effective increased abundance of metal; increase the number of veins on world gen, or increasing the size of the veins generation.

That said, something I *hadn't* considered was creating alloys.  4 is much better for making single ingots of alloyed metals.  In fact, with 8 units per ingot it's basically impossible to melt down enough metal to create single ingots of most alloys.  So maybe 4 is the way to go, and just increase the amount generated...

7 minutes ago, Thorfinn said:

Maybe it's as simple as knapping often leaves you much of the stone as waste, so what's the difference?

The difference is that by the time you could melt down the stone to recombine it, you should be well into copper.  Also, stone is orders of magnitude more common than even the most plentiful metals.

7 minutes ago, Thorfinn said:

That and it is fiendishly difficult to cast anything that will hold an edge. Most metals I can think of are far too brittle or weak without forging.

This I didn't know.

[Streetwind]

The background of "smithing wastefulness" is a simple game-mechanical decision:

One ingot makes one tool. This is consistent throughout the entire game, including all of casting, all of smithing, and even all of knapping (where one stone equals one ingot).

(A few metal recipes exist that yield multiple items from one ingot. In those cases, it is always the output that is multiplied; the ingot itself is never subdivided. We do not make individual lamellae out of fractions of an ingot - we make an amount of lamellae at once that the devs have set as equal to one ingot. Effectively, a pile of lamellae or arrowheads or the like is "one tool". This, too, is consistent.)

Mechanically, smithing is a minigame, the steps of which you go through to earn yourself the tool. The voxels you see in the ingots are elements of that minigame, nothing more. They do not represent any specific amount of material. The final voxel count of the finished tool does not represent any specific metal cost (because the cost is always "one ingot"). It is just an abstract representation; you could just as well replace the entire minigame with a peggle clone, and that would serve the same purpose. Except that would be much less immersive, of course. We don't want no peggle in our smithing.

 

If you want to start talking about having a smithing system where cut-off voxels can be recovered, you need to realize that you're breaking this fundamental rule, and that this has implications on way more than just smithing. Suddenly you'll need to do math on casting molds as well, because some tools clearly need more voxels than others. But did you know that casting molds use different voxel sizes, voxel counts, and recipe shapes than smithing recipes? An axe mold looks nothing like what you form when you forge (or knap) an axe, and the area of a mold is totally different from the area of a knapping or smithing recipe. You could make the casting molds use the same voxel sizing and shapes as smithing recipes, but then you'd get a noticeable visual fidelity downgrade on the molds that people will complain about. Also, by changing molds in this way, you need to change the entire clayforming system from the ground up too, because it also counts voxels in its own way (1 clay = 25 voxels IIRC), and all of the non-mold recipes are created and tuned for the exact voxel sizing we have now. Or, you could make knapping and smithing recipes use the same voxel fidelity as the casting molds, but then these mechanics become incredibly tedious because you'll need to move/remove twice as many voxels (perhaps more, in some cases). And there's no guarantee that you can even match the amount of voxels used to the 100 metal units contained in an ingot in an evenly divisible way...

 

Edited June 21, 2023 by Streetwind

[Thorfinn]

I just consciously decide whether the improvement in speed and durability of a given copper tool is worth the effort to collect 20 nuggets and spend the time working it. If it weren't, I would not use copper, but stick with stone. For example, making firewood is not usually a task for copper, chopping trees often is. If you didn't prune most of the leaves, time-wise, you are usually better off sticking with flint unless it is a tree with few leaves, like acacia.

Now that stone knives have doubled in durability, it's really hard to justify a copper knife. It's a bit over twice as durable, and only 20% faster, which means for the most part they just aren't worth it -- it turns something that would require 5 whacks to only 4. By then, apart from skeps, you already have harvested most of the cooper's reeds you need, which are the major slow stuff for which the speed boost would matter; forging a scythe is a much better use of time and materials. Indeed, if you value your time, you are almost always better off sticking with flint knife tech until you can make an iron one.

Yeah, point being there's more of a balance act than just metal "disappearing". Tweaking speed or durability would be a better means of accomplishing the same end, IMO. And would give a reason to make some tools at all, other than for bragging rights.

Edited June 21, 2023 by Thorfinn

[PhotriusPyrelus]

16 hours ago, Streetwind said:

The background of "smithing wastefulness" is a simple game-mechanical decision:

One ingot makes one tool. This is consistent throughout the entire game, including all of casting, all of smithing, and even all of knapping (where one stone equals one ingot).

(A few metal recipes exist that yield multiple items from one ingot. In those cases, it is always the output that is multiplied; the ingot itself is never subdivided. We do not make individual lamellae out of fractions of an ingot - we make an amount of lamellae at once that the devs have set as equal to one ingot. Effectively, a pile of lamellae or arrowheads or the like is "one tool". This, too, is consistent.)

Mechanically, smithing is a minigame, the steps of which you go through to earn yourself the tool. The voxels you see in the ingots are elements of that minigame, nothing more. They do not represent any specific amount of material. The final voxel count of the finished tool does not represent any specific metal cost (because the cost is always "one ingot"). It is just an abstract representation; you could just as well replace the entire minigame with a peggle clone, and that would serve the same purpose. Except that would be much less immersive, of course. We don't want no peggle in our smithing.

 

If you want to start talking about having a smithing system where cut-off voxels can be recovered, you need to realize that you're breaking this fundamental rule, and that this has implications on way more than just smithing. Suddenly you'll need to do math on casting molds as well, because some tools clearly need more voxels than others. But did you know that casting molds use different voxel sizes, voxel counts, and recipe shapes than smithing recipes? An axe mold looks nothing like what you form when you forge (or knap) an axe, and the area of a mold is totally different from the area of a knapping or smithing recipe. You could make the casting molds use the same voxel sizing and shapes as smithing recipes, but then you'd get a noticeable visual fidelity downgrade on the molds that people will complain about. Also, by changing molds in this way, you need to change the entire clayforming system from the ground up too, because it also counts voxels in its own way (1 clay = 25 voxels IIRC), and all of the non-mold recipes are created and tuned for the exact voxel sizing we have now. Or, you could make knapping and smithing recipes use the same voxel fidelity as the casting molds, but then these mechanics become incredibly tedious because you'll need to move/remove twice as many voxels (perhaps more, in some cases). And there's no guarantee that you can even match the amount of voxels used to the 100 metal units contained in an ingot in an evenly divisible way...

 

Yeah, I'm realy tired of this shit.  I suggest game mechanics that violate realism, "BUT MUH REALIZMS!"  I suggest game mechanics to improve realism, "BUT MUH GAME MECHANICS."

I guess I'm done with this forum for a while.

[l33tmaan]

Aw, don't be like that. Everyone comes to Vintage Story with a different idea of what it should be. Some want uber-realism, some want a cozy homesteading 'experience'.

Not to get too off-topic, but the discrepancy between most item stacks being a multiplier of 4 while interface items like barrels and ingots being a multiplier of 10 is odd. Probably not a huge deal, but it does get annoying to work with sometimes.

[Streetwind]

13 hours ago, PhotriusPyrelus said:

I guess I'm done with this forum for a while.

Respectfully, the Suggestion subforum's purpose is the vetting and refining of suggestions among members of the community.

You should expect people to point out weaknesses in your proposal, present counterpoints, and perhaps outright disagree on a pure opinion basis. That is the nature of a discussion, especially online. Your job is to attempt to convince the opposition, and perhaps adjust and refine your proposal to circumvent issues that other people are seeing.

 

Edited June 22, 2023 by Streetwind
Typo

[daretmavi]

On 6/21/2023 at 9:27 AM, Streetwind said:

you need to realize that you're breaking this fundamental rule

Sometimes breaking fundamental rule is not a bad thing

[Streetwind]

That is true! It just tends to come with extra baggage in the form of knock-on effects to a number of other systems, and you have to assess carefully if the effort is worth it.

[ChubbyDemon]

On 6/21/2023 at 12:27 AM, Streetwind said:

The background of "smithing wastefulness" is a simple game-mechanical decision:

One ingot makes one tool. This is consistent throughout the entire game, including all of casting, all of smithing, and even all of knapping (where one stone equals one ingot).

(A few metal recipes exist that yield multiple items from one ingot. In those cases, it is always the output that is multiplied; the ingot itself is never subdivided. We do not make individual lamellae out of fractions of an ingot - we make an amount of lamellae at once that the devs have set as equal to one ingot. Effectively, a pile of lamellae or arrowheads or the like is "one tool". This, too, is consistent.)

Mechanically, smithing is a minigame, the steps of which you go through to earn yourself the tool. The voxels you see in the ingots are elements of that minigame, nothing more. They do not represent any specific amount of material. The final voxel count of the finished tool does not represent any specific metal cost (because the cost is always "one ingot"). It is just an abstract representation; you could just as well replace the entire minigame with a peggle clone, and that would serve the same purpose. Except that would be much less immersive, of course. We don't want no peggle in our smithing.

 

If you want to start talking about having a smithing system where cut-off voxels can be recovered, you need to realize that you're breaking this fundamental rule, and that this has implications on way more than just smithing. Suddenly you'll need to do math on casting molds as well, because some tools clearly need more voxels than others. But did you know that casting molds use different voxel sizes, voxel counts, and recipe shapes than smithing recipes? An axe mold looks nothing like what you form when you forge (or knap) an axe, and the area of a mold is totally different from the area of a knapping or smithing recipe. You could make the casting molds use the same voxel sizing and shapes as smithing recipes, but then you'd get a noticeable visual fidelity downgrade on the molds that people will complain about. Also, by changing molds in this way, you need to change the entire clayforming system from the ground up too, because it also counts voxels in its own way (1 clay = 25 voxels IIRC), and all of the non-mold recipes are created and tuned for the exact voxel sizing we have now. Or, you could make knapping and smithing recipes use the same voxel fidelity as the casting molds, but then these mechanics become incredibly tedious because you'll need to move/remove twice as many voxels (perhaps more, in some cases). And there's no guarantee that you can even match the amount of voxels used to the 100 metal units contained in an ingot in an evenly divisible way...

 

This basically removed my complaints and annoyance I had about slicing off entire slabs of my copper ingots to make a saw or knife.  One ingot, one tool, is good game mechanic.  However, I personally believe that an exception should be made for the knife blade.  Have the ingot hammered into two blades instead of one, because as it stands you really shouldn’t make a copper knife, and I like all my tools looking nicely uniform.

[Omega Haxors]

4 hours ago, ChubbyDemon said:

This basically removed my complaints and annoyance I had about slicing off entire slabs of my copper ingots to make a saw or knife.  One ingot, one tool, is good game mechanic.  However, I personally believe that an exception should be made for the knife blade.  Have the ingot hammered into two blades instead of one, because as it stands you really shouldn’t make a copper knife, and I like all my tools looking nicely uniform.

It used to be 2 blades from 1 material but only for knapping and it was awful. So instead they just removed the 2nd blade and doubled the durability across the board. Much nicer.

[ArgentLuna]

Vanilla wise its fine but there is also a good mod that lets you recoup the "lost bits" and also lets you recycle the broken tools somewhat. 

[Bumber]

It's kind of weird that chains and plates both use 2 ingots, especially considering plates are added on to chain armor to make them a higher tier.

[VaelophisNyx]

the 1 ingot:1 tool design mindset is clashing quite hard with the game that people expect.

[Maelstrom]

I don't have an issue with it.  And I think most people are similar.  I think a lot of the problem is with what is the size of an ingot.  I think the default thought on an ingot is the traditional gold bar that's 12 inches long, and roughly 6 inches high and deep.  What if VS ingots are smaller?  Are knives really pairing knives, or are they more of carving / butcher knife?

[Owktree]

Of course the scythe is a real deal then given the size of the blade you're getting from that one ingot.

[Thorfinn]

On 9/26/2023 at 10:14 AM, Maelstrom said:

I think the default thought on an ingot is the traditional gold bar that's 12 inches long, and roughly 6 inches high and deep.

The most common gold ingot is about 3" x 1.5" x 0.75" and is 1 kg. That's a common size for pretty much any casting material, lead on up, largely because it's convenient and easy to figure out how many you need for any given mold.

The biggest gold ingot is 400 troy ounce, somewhere around 25#, is only about 10" x 4" x 2" and has a spot of just under 80 large.

[NastyFlytrap]

A game as realistic as this has no excuse for not giving those pieces back. Its dumb.

[Maelstrom]

Ummmm....  Do you have real life experience in smithing metal?