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Darmo

Make flux and salt ores, rather than stones

9 posts in this topic

Something that bothers me about TFC1 is the salt and flux situation.  They're resources that either you have absolutely none of, or you've found the stone type and have what amounts to an unlimited supply.  The only cost is time to collect the stones, and the occasional stone hammer.  So it's feast or famine, nothing in between.

I gather that TFC2 has fewer stone types that TFC1.  But if there's still room left for rearranging, I'm suggesting that salt and flux(borax) become ores rather than stones (and the current TFC1 flux stones become not useable as flux in and of themselves).  So you actually have to search for salt and flux and mine them, even once you've found the stone type they spawn in.  I think for salt it'll be very believable.  I've never heard of an entire expansive stone type made of salt anyway.  It's way too soluble in water.  Now flux on the other hand, irl I gather that you can indeed just use pretty much straight limestone?  Even as such, I think the game mechanics would benefit from having to find an ore.  If nothing else, maybe make the salt and flux stone be veins within other stone types, kind of like clay.  Or at least require that the player bake the flux stone, so that there is some fuel and time cost involved in the making of flux. 

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You've never heard of salt flats? Large flat expanses where they test land speed records. Anyway Salt is super easy to get anywhere next to the ocean. Just poor sea water through cheese cloth and boil it. I wouldn't even bother with salt rock, we have other white rocks. Flux as taken from wikipedia.

The oldest flux used for forge welding was fine silica sand. Early examples of flux used different combinations and various amounts of iron fillings, borax, sal ammoniac, balsam of copaiba, cyanide of potash, and soda phosphate. The 1920 edition of Scientific American book of facts and formulae indicates a frequently offered trade secret as using copperas, saltpeter, common salt, black oxide of manganese, prussiate of potash, and "nice welding sand" (silicate).

Silica sand is really easy to come by. It's found on most beaches and river beds. The higher the melting point of the metal the more pure the silica must be with up to 98% pure for steel products. It's also very good at getting stuck in your lungs and causing long term health issues though we aren't really concerned about that in a video game. To purify silica sand you throw it into sulfuric acid, then float in hot oil produced from animal fat or plaint oil. Silica sand is also used in sand casting! Which means clay is really only good for pots.

So again I would allow sand to be used for lower tier metals and either require borax or purified silica for higher tiers.

 

Edited by Stroam
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31 minutes ago, Stroam said:

You've never heard of salt flats?

I certainly have.  They would be a perfect example of what I would call a localized deposit, along the lines of what I'm suggesting.  Take a look around those salt flats, and you know what you'll find?  non-salt stone.  My main point for both salt and flux is that biome-scale stone types that provide those things provide a very binary mechanic, and the game would be improved if rather than this binary all-or-nothing scenario, the supplies were more limited and the player maybe actually has to consider the best use of their supplies of each.  If the supplies were more limited they could exist in grades like ore (poor, normal, rich) but could also just be a mineral with no grades.  I think part of the thrill of the game is finding rich deposits.  I makes one feel lucky, like they've found a treasure.  Even ungraded, it is more rewarding, imo, than finding an entire region of the stuff and knowing you'll never have to look for it again.

I'd be all for tiered fluxes (and suggested as much in the Alchemy thread).  But I'd still suggest having some kind of processing involved, even for low tier flux.

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Like how many steps are you talking? Crafting together a bucket of fresh water and sand or putting borax in a quern and grinding it up? Or are we talking washing sand in fresh water, then putting it in a pot of sulfuric acid for x amount of time consuming Y amount of acid then tossing it in a hot pot of oil made from animal fat or vegetable oil and skimming it off the top, then washing it a second time in distilled water sort of thing?

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I was thinking either filtering the sand (filters made of wool and/or burlap) or baking it in an oven.  Borax perhaps grinding then baking, assuming it's higher tier than sand.  Toss in acid washing etc as you go up in tiers.   Nothing too complicated for low tier stuff.  But the higher the tier, the more complicated, or rarer the constituent parts.  I'm also a fan of having two ways to do things, with one being the standard hard way, and the other the easy but rare way.  So for sand, maybe the standard way for all sands is to filter them in a time consuming process that uses up wool and jute.  But if the player is lucky enough to find a quartzite island (if quartzite is still a stone type in TFC2), quartzite sand could just be instantly washed with a bucket of water, or mass-washed in a short time in a barrel to produce the flux, because quartz sand is extra-pure already.   This provides a small sense of having 'gotten lucky' if you happen upon the special stuff.

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I agree with the two different ways things. It does make you feel lucky. Where do you get baking from? Is that an actual step in processing borax?

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My understanding is so, yes, though I've not done extensive research.  It seems like basically you bake it to drive out all the moisture, so that when you apply it to the metal you don't have the absorbed moisture forming steam and causing 'boiling' problems.  But beyond that, it's a relatively simple process that the player could have access to in early game, either via fire pit or pit kiln, depending on how fuel/time intensive one wants it to be.  I just kind of extended the idea to sand, even though it's not necessarily a rl thing for sand.

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So what is the benefit of using borax instead of sand

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33 minutes ago, Cattleman said:

So what is the benefit of using borax instead of sand

From what I understand, they have different working temperatures.  Sand being higher.  In the modern context, I think the borax is also easier and cheaper to get perhaps, vs clean filtered silica sand.

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