Metalwork Downgrading

[ruggbean]

So with the addition of bone soil panning, I've noticed a huge increase in the amount of copper spearheads that I've been getting. While I do appreciate being able to have this supply of weaponry at hand, it can get overwhelming very quickly. I know that at least two people have spoken on this topic previously, but I have a very particular suggestion for this implementation that I think would be ideal.

Provided that the tool has not been made yet, you can melt down the spearhead back into their base or alloyed metals, but you need multiple spearheads instead of just one to make one ingot. Some of the original ingot has to be split and hewn in order to make the item that you wanted to make in the first place, so it requires more pieces for you to recreate one ingot. You could even make it to where small items like shears require four times the amount of metal, medium items like pickaxes require three times the amount of metal, and large items like swords require twice the amount of metal. (So one sword would be equivalent to 50 units of metal, one pickaxe would be roughly equivalent to about 33.3 units, and one shears would be equivalent to 25 units)

This would probably make the quick click mistakes that are made (you clicked sawblade when you really wanted a sword) a little bit more tenable in the long run because you're not losing 100% of the work that you've made, despite there being no real way to mitigate the loss that you would take to your resources (metal, charcoal, and hammers). And for people who choose to be on smaller worlds, it allows them to save as much as possible by recycling. I, being on 1M seed, am going to have more resources to take from than someone on a 50K or 10K seed.

[Hal13]

a sword blade, pickaxe head etc. all can be cast and are equal to 100 units of metal and any unfinished workitem can be smelted back into the full amount of metal it is made of (which in most cases is 1 ingot) as long as you don't get the metal shavings back when smithing, to resmelt them later, there shouldn't be a huge loss of material when recycling the item.

shears and knifeblades are less than half an ingot, but still you need to invest the full ingot.

I think it would be nice to make smithing/casting a tiny bit more complicated:
ingots (which are 42 voxels) stay at 100 units.
when casting you'd need 2.5 units of metal per voxel of the items recipe (rounded up at the end)
when smithing any metal voxel you hammer away gives you a unit of metal shavings worth 2 units of metal
any metal item can be turned into an amount of shavings equal to voxels of the recipe times left durabilty over max durabilty, rounded up or in case of workitems voxels left of the ingot
that would mean casting and recyling you'd lose 20% of the metal; smithing and recyling in the end slightly less, because you get 2 bonus voxels when casting an ingot, but mistakes in smithing might come at costs.

That way smithing would be better than casting without actually having to touch itemstats.

Edited December 29, 2020 by Hal13

[Hal13]

shameless self plug to my list of ideas for some changes to metal working.
https://github.com/anegostudios/VintageStory-Issues/issues/691
I think discussing them here might be a better way than bloating the issue on github. Would love to see some codders input on how difficult the changes would be.

and to the mod that inspired some of the suggestions i made.
https://www.vintagestory.at/forums/topic/1823-1140-metal-recovery-for-anvils-014/

[ruggbean]

I have yet to get into the mod scene for VS, but I'm very excited to see the different kinds of mods that are being introduced and updated along with the base game. Also, having looked at the post that you linked this post with, I'm happy to see more people who want to see this being worked, albeit with different keywords.

If they haven't implemented the mod as a feature by the time I upgrade my computer and workspace, I'm definitely going to check it out; thank you!

[Hal13]

okay adding a few related topics:

 

 

 

[Erik]

On 12/29/2020 at 12:31 AM, Hal13 said:

a sword blade, pickaxe head etc. all can be cast and are equal to 100 units of metal and any unfinished workitem can be smelted back into the full amount of metal it is made of (which in most cases is 1 ingot) as long as you don't get the metal shavings back when smithing, to resmelt them later, there shouldn't be a huge loss of material when recycling the item.

shears and knifeblades are less than half an ingot, but still you need to invest the full ingot.

I think it would be nice to make smithing/casting a tiny bit more complicated:
ingots (which are 42 voxels) stay at 100 units.
when casting you'd need 2.5 units of metal per voxel of the items recipe (rounded up at the end)
when smithing any metal voxel you hammer away gives you a unit of metal shavings worth 2 units of metal
any metal item can be turned into an amount of shavings equal to voxels of the recipe times left durabilty over max durabilty, rounded up or in case of workitems voxels left of the ingot
that would mean casting and recyling you'd lose 20% of the metal; smithing and recyling in the end slightly less, because you get 2 bonus voxels when casting an ingot, but mistakes in smithing might come at costs.

That way smithing would be better than casting without actually having to touch itemstats.

I don't even see why such a metal shavings system is even needed, we can already have "partial ingots" via metal value in crucibles or in a bloomery. Having voxels represent actual metal value doesn't seem so fun to me, as it introduces a bit of micromanagement, when I feel like a plate or chain being worth (and able to be remelted into) two ingots is simple and effective. The only thing that's missing is smelting recipes for iron/steel that produce iron bloom and for the tool heads.
There is only one slight limitation that should be removed: When I want to remelt my arrow heads, I can't just use one arrowhead and a few nuggets that add up to a full ingot, it must be enough arrowheads to make one ingot. Not the end of the world, but something that can probably be solved.

[Hal13]

On 2/26/2021 at 2:06 AM, Erik said:

[...]we can already have "partial ingots" via metal value in crucibles or in a bloomery.
[...] when I feel like a plate or chain being worth (and able to be remelted into) two ingots is simple and effective.
[...] There is only one slight limitation that should be removed: When I want to remelt my arrow heads, I can't just use one arrowhead and a few nuggets that add up to a full ingot, it must be enough arrowheads to make one ingot. Not the end of the world, but something that can probably be solved.

when was that introduced? And how:
- would that make smithing better than casting without touching itemstats?
- are these "partial ingots" usable anywhere? And like you said, where are these things for iron and steel?

And what about recycling old tools you don't use anmore? you can't uncraft them into stick and toolhead to smelt the latter, and even if you could it would mean you would only need enough to make a single toolhead to reuse over and over again.

[Erik]

4 hours ago, Hal13 said:

- would that make smithing better than casting without touching itemstats?

It doesn't, that is not the point of the system. I mean, with your system of metal shavings from voxels, the metal cost used for casting could still be adjusted to match the cost of smithing. Likewise, I could adjust the metal cost required for casting to be higher, to make smithing better without touching itemstats. It isn't something that is uniquely tied to the shaving system. Personally I think giving forged items a stat boost like more durability would be a better thing than a lower material cost, since such a system is bound to be introduced anyway, when quenching and tempering are introduced.

4 hours ago, Hal13 said:

- are these "partial ingots" usable anywhere? And like you said, where are these things for iron and steel?

Metal value stored in a crucible is very usable. And while there are no partial iron/steel, since it can't be molten in a crucible with any of the currently available fuels. But you could still put them in a bloomery, if they added up to at least a ingot.

4 hours ago, Hal13 said:

And what about recycling old tools you don't use anmore? you can't uncraft them into stick and toolhead to smelt the latter, and even if you could it would mean you would only need enough to make a single toolhead to reuse over and over again.

Broken toolheads, two of which resmelt into an ingot, could theoretically be implemented. But for this I think an metal shavings (though I like the name metal scrap more) system would be better thing, to represent some generic metal parts. Though I still thing it's a bad idea to integrate them as shavings for smithing, they would be best to just be for breaking metal stuff down for remelting.

[Hal13]

On 2/27/2021 at 12:25 PM, Erik said:

Metal value stored in a crucible is very usable.

How? If it's less than an ingot you can't do anything with it. It just blocks the crucible from being used again or blocks a mold and gets lost if you break it to store it somewhere.

On 2/27/2021 at 12:25 PM, Erik said:

Broken toolheads, two of which resmelt into an ingot, could theoretically be implemented.

No matter if i recycle a full durability tool or a tool that only has 1 durability left, that system gives you always exactly 50% of the used metal back, you lose 50% of the metal if you go from copper age to iron age (never really had a bronze age in any playthrough) or later to steel age and recycle the unused tools on the other side you would benefit big when recycling tools nearly broken or even broken tools, depending on if you want to indtroduce getting broken toolheads when the tool actually breaks. 50% loss when resmelting metal is too much, i mean you can resmelt plates without loss resmelting unused tools with 50% loss is way out of proportion.

[Erik]

20 hours ago, Hal13 said:

How? If it's less than an ingot you can't do anything with it. It just blocks the crucible from being used again or blocks a mold and gets lost if you break it to store it somewhere.

You can't do anything with just one metal shaving, can you? You can however save up, till you have enough metal to fully fill a mold.

20 hours ago, Hal13 said:

No matter if i recycle a full durability tool or a tool that only has 1 durability left, that system gives you always exactly 50% of the used metal back, you lose 50% of the metal if you go from copper age to iron age (never really had a bronze age in any playthrough) or later to steel age and recycle the unused tools on the other side you would benefit big when recycling tools nearly broken or even broken tools, depending on if you want to indtroduce getting broken toolheads when the tool actually breaks. 50% loss when resmelting metal is too much, i mean you can resmelt plates without loss resmelting unused tools with 50% loss is way out of proportion.

That is why I prefer a metal scrap system here more. However, getting back 50% of the metal is still much better than getting back nothing, also why would someone have unused tools anyway?

[Hal13]

3 hours ago, Erik said:

also why would someone have unused tools anyway?

because for example copper tools are not durable enough and you want spares? and heating the forge once and do a longer smithing session to make several tools is more efficient in terms of charcoal use and time than heating it each time you need a new tool, not to mention finding them in ruins.

4 hours ago, Erik said:

You can however save up, till you have enough metal to fully fill a mold.

That's right, but depending on the mold you wouldn't need a full ingot worth of it. apart from that, it eases alloying. And keeping a stack of shavings in a chest doesn't block anything from being used.

[Erik]

11 hours ago, Hal13 said:

because for example copper tools are not durable enough and you want spares? and heating the forge once and do a longer smithing session to make several tools is more efficient in terms of charcoal use and time than heating it each time you need a new tool, not to mention finding them in ruins.

Well, you can just carry the tool heads and craft the tools on the fly, since tool heads can't be damaged they would be able to be remelted for full metal return, so I see no problem there. I also don't see a problem with undamaged tools being able to be resmelted.

11 hours ago, Hal13 said:

That's right, but depending on the mold you wouldn't need a full ingot worth of it. apart from that, it eases alloying. And keeping a stack of shavings in a chest doesn't block anything from being used.

Currently really everything needs some amount of full ingots. I also don't see how blocking a single mold would be such a big problem, you can still not melt the metal stuff and keep it in a chest if you really cared about it.

Overall, I'm not against the concept of some generalist form of a small unit of metal, what would essentially be a nugget in Minecraft, call it metal shavings or metal scrap. However, I don't really see the need for it. Most items that should be resmeltable would in fact logically resmelt into full metal ingots, like tool heads (with plates, chain, etc. already being able to resmelt). Only exception would be arrow heads, which would require multiple (9) to resmelt.

The ability to remelt damaged tools is however something that is up to debate from a gameplay perspective, but here some scrap metal mechanic is required.

I think adding metal scrap/shavings from splitting voxels on an anvil is a bad idea, as it adds nothing really of value imo. Sure, some tools would require less metal when made with the anvil, but balancing metal cost around metal used in the recipe is not always a good idea and the shavings also add a lot of micromanagement, as you would obviously not be able to resmelt your toolhead for a full ingots worth with it, but have to also add the correct count of shavings and you would therefore not be able to regain the full material when the toolhead was made with a mold, which is very annoying. A better way to make the anvil more desirable would be to just give tool heads crafted with the anvil a slight durability boost.

[Hal13]

Looked some more into foundry work... And am not sure anymore there should be big differences between casting and forging, tempering can be done with both, and apart from spillage when casting the results are very similar.

And as long as we ignore pure iron for now the amount of metal will not change in objects significant enough to justify any recycling penalty for metal (again that's not true for iron, but i don't think a mechanic solely for irongoods is necessary). therefore I think you are right @Erikjust the option to resmelt any metal object should be added... and when dismantling an anvil you should get back the full 10 ingots not only 8 (after all you do use up the chisel completely). And simplified like that we'd not need adjusting the costs of items, BUT: any metal item that gets used up should stay at 0 durability and just become unusable instead of vanishing into thin air.

Of course that would change my suggestion for repairs in Armor 2.0 too.

I still think adding an item worth less than 5 units of metal would be nice for alloying though, maybe nuggets could be pulverized into 5 items of metal powder worth 1 unit each, stackable to 1024?

[Hal13]

Correction, tempering can't be done with neither cast nor wrought metal (or it's another thing that's wrong with iron)...

Damn metallurgy / foundry work is (or seems to be) a mess of contradictions...