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Alloying Mechanic details


redram

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So I discussed this a bit with Tyron on discord but wanted to start a post to get other opinions, and in case anyone else wanted to contribute ideas.  The issue is, right now VS has an alloying system that doesn't let you ruin batches like TFC did.  But it still has the same issue tfc had, in that a tin bronze recipe, for example, will only accept pure contributors of copper and tin.  You cannot add already made tin bronze ingots.  See following picture:

TinBronzeIssue.png.acafa05df68351bb14f9a2239020b881.png

You see there that 11 copper and 2 tin makes 300 units of tin bronze.  And you can even smelt an ingot of copper, plus 7 copper ore, plus 2 tin.  That also works.   But if you try and smelt already-made ingots of tin-bronze in there with pure metals, it won't work.   Now this isn't a problem in the current situation, as we only have one crucible, that does not let you ruin recipes, and only 3 alloys, all of which are bronze alloys. 

But, what happens if/when VS wants to have a crucible that works more like TFC's did, where you can add material bit-by-bit, and melt it down together?  You're going to have the same issue if you get into that crucible mechanic.  The 'unknown ingot' problem was a very big problem in TFC, and led to a lot of dissatisfaction I think, especially if people ruined an entire crucible of colored steel.  I thought it worthwhile to discuss how VS might avoid this, but still have a highly dynamic crucible mechanic.

OPTION-SELECTION BASED

One option, is that the code makes some very basic predictions about what you're doing.  For one, the melting crucible accepts *either* raw metals, *or* alloys, but not both.  Once you've melted one or the other into it, you've set the pattern.  Then, it makes some predictive limitations that further limit what you're allowed to put in. So if you put in bismuth, it knows that (currently) you can only make bismuth bronze, or bismuth ingots.  So you can only add more bismuth, copper, and sphalerite.  No other raw metals, no alloys at all (even already made bismuth bronze, because some day there may be other recipes that take bismuth).  *MAYBE* if you've already added copper, sphalerite, and bismuth, and thus locked in your recipe, THEN it will allow bismuth bronze ingots.    

If you start with copper, it will allow you to add any of the other 5 bronze ingredients, but once you pick tin now you're limited to copper and tin. If you follow the copper with silver, now you can only add more of those, or gold.   This may or may not cause issues at high tiers though, if iron (a pure metal) needs to be combined with alloys. 

PER-INGOT TRACKING

Another option would be that each ingot actually tracks the constituent pure metals it is composed of.  So when you toss them into the melt crucible, they are broken down into their constituent units.  This neatly avoids the issue, while still allowing mixing of alloys and pure metals.  However, now your ingots can't stack in your inventory, unless they have the exact same recipe (presumably?)  Or they can't stack at all.  Not stacking at all might not be the absolute worst thing in the world, as it would make them a pain to transport, hence making special conveyances for ingots useful.  If they don't stack at all we may as well also not allow them in chests, TFC-style.   Perhaps ingot stacks though, can have a list of all the ingot mixtures they contain, and the quantity of each?  The player withdraws them in first-in-last-out format?  If you think of TFC, the only alloys were bronzes and colored steels.  Copper, Iron, and steel were pure metals, and assuming they work the same in VS, they would not have the same problem.  Even in TFC, I personally always used exactly the same recipe for the colored steels.  If the player carefully controls their alloys, they can avoid issues with mis-matched ingots not stacking in inventory.  Personally I think this would be a good way to address the issue.   

You could still have an issue if the player reach max crucible capacity, and didn't allow enough space.  So if the crucible has 2000 unit capacity, and they added 1900 units of copper and 100 of cassiterite, well, they now do not have a valid recipe.  BUT, those unknown ingots they pour will ALSO track their contents.  They can now pour them out, and then re-add most of the ingots, but not all, this time leaving enough room for cassitterite.  So that case is solved.

You'd still have the possibility of the player screwing up their ingot contents entirely if they added entirely the wrong metals.  Then it won't matter how many times they sub-divide it.  The ingots will still be invalid.  However, this is where you add a high-tier centrifuge or distillation column smelter, that will allow the player to separate all the constituent metals out.  It will be fuel and labor intensive, but it allows them to get the metals back out of those unknown ingots.

So that's my idea - track the units on each ingot.  I'd like to hear what other people think about how that would affect the non-stackability of ingots.   Also if anyone has any other ideas of course, it'd be great to hear more ideas.

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I like ingots not stacking outside of an ingot pile. More ingots fitting in a chest than an ingot pile is a travesty. Plus not being able to stack iron and copper ingots together is silly outside of a game perspective. I think we should allow any alloy and have tool properties such as durability change depending on the mix. For instance too much tin and it has a chance to fracture which takes a big chunk out of durability on use. Too little and it has decreased durability and is too soft to mine certain things. Impurities such as iron also increase brittleness increasing the chance to fracture. It will make a good blacksmith more than just her stats, it'll also be her knowledge of alloys. 

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On 3/10/2018 at 6:43 PM, Stroam said:

I think we should allow any alloy and have tool properties such as durability change depending on the mix.

Sounds too difficult to balance to me, relative to the benefit.  And I'd also guess that most players would rather have hard and fast rules rather than infinite possibilities, which I think would lead to a lot of decision paralysis.  Just my opinion.

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I like what Tinker's construct did with alloying.  If you add two metals, it alloys what matches the recipe, but leaves the rest in layers.  Say 3 copper to 1 tin recipe for bronze.  Adding 10 copper and 5 tin would alloy 9 of the copper to 3 of the tin, leaving layers of 1 copper and 2 tin leftover.  Not realistic, but gets rid of the unknown metal issue.  I guess it depends on how technical you want to get with metal working and whether you want there to be penalties for mistakes. 

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Interesting mechanic Will.  Does that mean you select the alloy you're trying to make, so it knows what is correct? Because copper is shared by all 3 bronzes.  Or can you just melt a ton of copper and then a bunch of bronze alloys and get a variety of bronzes?  does it pop out ingots, or how does the output work?

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TInkers construct used set values for transformation of alloys, it did not have ranges. If say you had a TC smeltry with 900 units of copper and you added 50 units of tin. The tin would get consumed along with 450 units of copper to make 500 units of tin bronze. So now in the smeltry you'll have 550 units of copper and 500 units of tin bronze. Lets say now you add 50 units of gold. Nothing mixes because there's no valid recipe combinations so you have 550 copper, 500 tin bronze, 50 gold. Then lets say you add 50 units of gold. Now the gold, silver, and 400 units of copper would become 500 units of black bronze. Now the smeltry would contain 150 copper, 500 tin bronze, 500 black bronze.

Because the recipes are fixed ratios instead of ranges like currently, you'd never need to worry about different ingots having different ratios.

 

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Ya, that works as long as no recipe shares any 2 ingredients, with one recipe requiring only that.  So for example no other recipes involve copper and tin.  I suppose it'd be similar to TFC in that there'd be a GUI with slots for ingot molds where the metal is output to.

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