Alloys and Forging

[Theunknownspecimen]

      I would like to present a concept that I found in the TFC forums that would actually go really well with this game. This concept is meant to be a late game or end game thing, though it could probably be balanced for early game as well. It involves alloys and ways of mixing them. Here is how they put it:

• In a forge or some other way of melting metals you can mix metals to make alloys. An alloy is a mixture of a group of metals any where from 2 - infinity. The idea is to have alloy you to mix any metals to make an alloy of your own. This allows one to make their own recipe for an alloy and to share that with the other players through the forum or other means of communication.

What they presented it the idea that each metal you have will add and/or subtract from the over all status of the alloy that being:

• Strength/Hardness
• Malleability
• color
• Melting temperature

among other things that could be added or some of these statuses could be removed.

      For example, Copper is a copper-colored, malleable and kind of weak metal, Tin is also a weak metal and silvery in color, but when they are combined in liquid forms into bronze, they become stronger, though it is still malleable it is less so, it also has a new color.

      Some other things I would like to elaborate on is that there could be set combinations for the metals, and that would be for metals like bronze, bismuth bronze, steel, rose gold and other alloy metals that you may want to keep in specific recipes. Hence it being an end game kind of process, keeping the early game easy to do and understand with out this elaborate process.

     Their example goes as such, " You have metals 'A', 'B', and 'C'. When you combine metals A and B they produce a weak, but easily-shaped metal, When you combine Metals A and C you get a stronger, but less malleable than alloy AB, When You combine all three you get a Malleable metal that is still strong because the effects of metal C null or even overpower the effects of metal B. These could also cause different color effects should someone want to this and end up with a bright red or dark black metal to forge with. This would all depend on the amounts of each metal type you put into the alloy to get different effects." Keep in mind that the metals could be anything, metal A could be tungsten, and metal B could be silver. it doesn't really matter what the metal is, just what it does.

This is the concept and the idea I now put forth for the Community and Game Devs.

If you wish to read exactly what they talked about here is the link, though keep in mind that the creators of TFC have decided not to go through with it.

http://terrafirmacraft.com/f/topic/8877-metal-tiers/

 

[Tyron]

I read through some of that forum post and comments. Quite interesting idea indeed. I fear it might be a bit hard to balance though. Definitely worth trying out such a mechanic though! If only I could code faster

[Erik]

Also really like this idea! The TFC-forum post mentions procedural ores, which I'm against. They would be nearly impossible to balance and confuse new players. I asked myself, which ores and metals will be included in VS. -Here was originally a big discussion on which ores should be included, but it was cut, because I realised I just could talk with Tyron on that topic later-

As for metal stats, this idea could be combined with my ideas on tools 

Hardness/strength would fuse with malleability into just hardness, since they are effectively opposite. Another stat that would be influenced by the material would be the base mass, effectively the weight.