Darmo

If you have a graphite-bearing surface layer nearby, it'll be far faster to blanket pick that, vs strip-mining the middle layer.

Agreed on the climate limitations.

On the one hand, it would make it so that one cannot just discard a vein based on the very first ore block found, since there could be other types.   Probably a good thing.  But you don't want to remove the thrill of finding a rich vein, so I'd say that rich should still be relatively rare mixed in, except in certain 'richer' veins, where it would dominate.  I think the thrill of finding an abnormally good vein is an important part of the game.  Also it'll tend to fill the inventory faster, having 3 types of ore per vein rather than 1.  Overall I'm pretty happy with the way things are really.

I know about chisel, but what about red standard minecraft brick (BTW, what is 'vanilla' stand for?).

Vanilla refers to either the base minecraft game, or the base TFC game.  In either case without mods (mostly meaning without mods that modify mobs and items and in-game stuff).  You kind of have to watch the context of the conversation to see whether people are talking about 'vanilla minecraft' or 'vanilla tfc'.  This derives basically from the notion that vanilla ice cream is your 'basic' ice cream.  Then you add toppings to it - chocolate, sprinkles caramel.  The vanilla game is the game without anything added to it.

The lack of red clay brick is an unfortunate lack of TFC.  Your best simulation is to find chert stone and make red bricks from it.  Unless you find SO much graphite that you want to build a building out of fire brick blocks, that is.

Blanket picking the surface to locate ores is just 1 strategy.  If you have the right rock types, it's not really necessary.  As far as tin, zinc, and silver, just pay attention to the wiki page on stone-ore spawns, and eventually you'll find the nuggets.  Make sure to read and absorb the wiki page on stone types and the ores that spawn in them.  You should have no trouble finding sphalerite/zinc.  Tin can be a bit harder in theory, but I've never had any problem.  You don't need much so even a poor vein is sufficient.  silver will be your difficult one, as it's only found in two stone types.  You'll just have to search until you get lucky and find a surface layer of gneiss or granite, or find some silver nuggets on another surface layer, because it has gneiss or granite below it in the mid layer, and close enough to leave nuggets on the surface.

Back to blanket picking, that's usually most useful in the case of "minerals" (as opposed to metal ores) because minerals don't leave nuggets on the surface.  kaolinite, saltpeter, sylvite, coal, redstone, lapis, borax, and graphite are all minerals that don't leave nuggets.  Of those, by far the most important is graphite, because even though it shows up in four stone types (twice as many as silver, and four times as many as nickel) it's a rarer deposit in terms of how often it shows up within it's stone types.  So between being a rarer deposit, and not showing nuggets, graphite is one case where blanket picking can be very helpful.  Otherwise you just have to get lucky and see it exposed in a hill/mountain side. 

Kaolinite is just as necessary as graphite for crucibles and blast furnaces, but it shows up in twice as many stone types, and seems like a more common deposit in terms of frequency.  You should run across exposed kaolinite by chance long before graphite, so even though it doesn't leave nuggets, you should not need blanket picking to find it. 

If you ever wanted to find kimberlite/diamonds for any reason btw (it's useless in the base mod), my experience is that it is the rarest of all deposits, and blanket picking will be very helpful.

Personally, I only really use blanket picking for graphite and saltpeter.  In my experience you'll find 8-10 times more saltpeter blanket picking than you will just watching for it exposed.  You also have a much better chance of finding borax and sylvite, just so you can say you've seen them (they're minimally useful)

Now, maybe you've been lucky so far and been able to just find nuggets, dig down, and run into the pocket.  Over time you'll find that's not always the case.  Veins have many different characters - some are very dense, and some are very diffuse.  Some hug the top or bottom of your stone layer.  Over time, by the behavior of your propick you will learn to identify these vein types without even seeing a single ore block.  This is when the propick really shines - when you can figure out by the results you've run into a diffuse deposit, that's not even worth your time to find.  And then the excitement of realizing before even breaking through the dirt that you've found a dense, easy to mine deposit.

Ya, narrow scanning would definitely be tedious - I'd definitely be disinclined personally. The area scanned could be changed to find an happy medium maybe.  But consider that any given vein, at a deep range, you're probably going to have an entire chunk that would scan as solid (have at least 1 block of ore in a given column to a depth of 35-ish), with a good chance of adjacent chunks having scattered blocks.  Even if the scan column of 3x3, you'd probably only need to hit every 6th block or so to do an extremely thorough job.  And a casual scan could basically be done with just 1 per chunk I imagine.

Some tools might work best in combo.  For instance how a sluice scans a huge area and pulls minerals found in the area.  The player can use this as a broad-scan tool, and then use a very narrow range tool like the dousing rod to narrow it down.  an entire world is of course overwhelming to use a narrow range tool.  but a 200x200 area is around 150 chunks.  not totally insurmountable for cursory deep-narrow scans perhaps.

Another example - magpies.  A player can capture one and familarize it.  And a magpie can be given a command or treat or something, and it scans a broad sluice-ish area, and if it finds certain 'shiny' metals, it brings a nugget to the player.  This search takes a few minutes, so it's not spammable, and maybe magpies can't search at night.   Now the player knows that somewhere in this area is gold, or copper, or silver, etc.  Having gotten an indicator with their broad-shallow tool, now they can use their intermediate (propick) or narrow-deep (dousing rod) tool to narrow down the location.  

So those are two examples of broad-shallow tools - sluice and magpie.   The sluice takes a lot of time and requires a saw, but operates automatically.   A magpie operates faster(?) and doesn't require metal tools maybe, but perhaps finds fewer kinds of metals?  And no gems.   Probably would still have to contribute to overworking for balance sake.  Unless magpies were rare enough that it's just considered lucky if a  player finds one, so they can use them to find nuggets as much as they want.  Or maybe magpies are very unreliable, unless used by a druid (if such a class existed).   Animal training skill? So many detailed options.

I think the main issue is the lost veins.  So maybe just having some advanced methods would be enough to address that.  Magic that can scan an area as wide as a propick, but 35 (or more) deep.  The propick scans a wide enough area that it can be used to carpet-pick an area - I've done this a lot.  Unfortunately it's just short range enough that in the deepest soil areas it can mostly miss the top rock layer.  So if there were some magic that could get to nugget depth, with a scan range similar to propick, that'd pretty much address the stripping of nuggets making for lost veins. 

In any case, I think it would be interesting if higher tier methods(magical or not) had advantages and disadvantages; maybe some don't work if there is water within a certain range.  Some might not work without sky exposure.  Some might work only a sub-7 light levels.  Some might require trained animals.  Some might work only for specific minerals/metals.   Another might involve a structure, take a long time, but eventually scan to very deep levels (though limited by the new lower sea level of TFC2 I guess). 

I could understand if, in the end, this was left to modders, since it's a specific target crowd (large servers).  But The results are almost certainly going to be better and more immersive if 'baked in', I'd think.

One possible way to deal with the issue is to have a variety of detection techniques, each with their own advantages and disadvantages. 

1-Propick is great, as is scans over 15k blocks.  Disadvantage is that it requires metal, so the player must first find some metal (possibly quite a bit, if they make saw and pick first).  

2-Another option might be flowers.  Advantage - they respawn if removed, and require no resources from the player.  Disadvantage - they only are good for 5 blocks down.  So they only indicate shallow veins.   

3-Another method might be a dousing rod.  Advantage - made from four sticks, and detects the same range down as nuggets - 35 blocks.  Disadvantages - It only detects in a 3x3 (or 1x1?) column directly below the player, and it does *not*  indicate the type or quantity of ore (although it does only detect metals, not minerals).  Also it takes a little time to use (if possible code/animation-wise), so the player must stand still. 

So there you have 3 methods - 1 shallow, taking no resources, and renews iteself, another intermediate depth and large area, but requiring metal to make, and a third requiring simple materials, deep detection range, but only good in a very limited column, and not metal-specific.  Having a variety of methods each with their own strengths and weaknesses might help address the nugget-scouring issue of servers.  None of this of course addresses the methods magic might bring to the table.  But I'd envision magic as being a post-metal tech, so less about starting players finding their first nuggets, more about finding those 'lost' veins.

Also if you have any blocks inside the fence right by it, that'll allow animals to hop over.  Or if you don't fence 1 beyond elevation changes, if there fence has elevation changes.

 having objects take up certain number of spaces in your inventory might be a fair compromise.

That's been suggested more than once.  I'm curious if that's even realistically possible within the scope of things.  It seems to me like it would be a very, very huge change to the code (my apologies to the actual coders for inserting my uneducated opinion here).  Is there any other MC mod out there that has done this?

I still think the current system of assigning a size to each item, and restricting what sizes of items fit in what containers, works just fine.  It's just a matter of how logical to make it, vs how convenient for the player. This can exist right alongside a weight system, thereby incorporating both weight and volume.   A fishing pole is light, but you can't fit it in anything (is how it should be).

Well thought out suggestion there.  I'd say maybe don't feel like you absolutely have to have one animal of every type in every 'zone'.  There could be areas with missing potential I think, to mix things up.  It's probably not necessary to shoehorn an animal into every circumstance.  That said:

CLIMATE ZONES

Your inclusion of desert as it's own distinct area actually opens up an interesting topic I've been wondering about for awhile.  We know that the plan is for there to be 5 climatic zones (none of which is specifically desert).  I think this is a very good idea, as it will allow a given island to have a somewhat uniform ecology, presumably without the annoying straight lines of acacia forest borders.  But moreover, within a given climate zone, could there in effect be 'biome' islands?  What I mean by this, is by having distinct islands, you could open up the tropical zone for instance, to have jungle, savanna, and desert islands.  I know TFC1 was strongly against the notion of flora and fauna biomes, preferring to mark them instead for temperature and geographic conditions.  But it might be interesting if one island was predominantly savanna, and another predominantly jungle.  And especially predominantly desert, since they seem to be so rare in the current version of TFC.  In the temperate latitudes, there could be for instance an 'asia' themed island, with bamboo and pandas.  Further on, a temperate steppes area with yaks.  Such island biomes could have specific sets of plants and animals to choose from, different from other biomes.   So one set of temperate steppes might have yak as a native species, while another may have bison.  Same latitude, but different fauna selection, similar to how right now any given area has 3 native trees to select from.  This might bring more interesting variety.  And of course an island doesn't have to be all steppes or all forest or all swamp, that'd be boring.  But they might be heavily predisposed toward a given geography - for instance a 'swamp island' might not be allowed to have mountains, instead being twice as likely to have swamp, and a more pronounced likelihood of willows.   But a given island at a given latitude will have a table for each biome that can be present there, and a specific selection of plants and animals, perhaps drawn to from a theme.  This may become more pronounced with the introduction of fantasy elements.  For instance a heavily swamp island might be populated with a lizard race.

Or maybe that's too complicated.  I guess the same effect could perhaps be achieved by assigning an island a certain range of rainfall.  So an island that lands in the 100-500 rainfall range will be very likely to produce desert over much of it's surface, while an island in the 2000-8000 range will have no chance of desert, and instead morel likely to have swamps and forests.

ANIMALS

Now as for animals themselves, I think it would be interesting if there were more gradations of what they provide.  Right now, a cow is a cow.  It gets you one bucket of milk a day.  But I think it would interesting if in TFC2, there would be many varieties of milk giving animals, with varying levels of providing.  So the ideal milk animal would be perhaps a cow or yak.  Depending on genetic variation, maybe they provide anywhere from 500 to 1000 mb a day (in increments of 100).  Second tier milk animals would be goats or camels or such.  They would provide 100-500 mb a day.   By allowing 100mb gradients, you allow for different tiers of milk providers, and also genetic variation within a given species.  There could even be 3 tiers; 100-400, 500-700, and 800-1000.  I think even 3 steps per tier would provide incentive to breed the superior bloodline.  This would of course require buckets to be changed to accept varying amounts of liquid from 100-1000mb. 

 

This could allow then for some climate zones to have advantages, but not exclusive advantages.   Top tier milk animals could be in certain temperate zones, with lower tier elsewhere.  I could be arranged that any zone which has the potential for top tier milk animals does NOT have the potential for top tier wool animals.  Or it could just be whatever is logical, and maybe the player gets really lucky.  But the idea being to allow for a great variety of milk/wool/feather providing animals (and maybe other types of resources, such as fur?). 

I'm a bit surprised this topic hasn't been locked yet, since it flagrantly violates rule 5, and most of the ideas are not new.  There's a 3-page clothing topic like 9 lines below this, on the front page, that goes into far more depth.  Most of the other stuff has already been discussed as well.

Ya, I was kind of wondering about the system too.  I'm not sure what it's adding to gameplay.  It's good to have a way to address natural cavern collapses.  But I've been wondering if this will make support beams obsolete, since it seems to have much greater support range.  Personally I feel like the support beam system is more interesting.   I do love the rubble though, how it behaves more unpredictably.

I'm really unclear how exactly the system determines where the 'ground' is.  Does there have to be a solid column all the way to bedrock?  or will deep subterranean caves cause unexpected collapses once they receive a block update?   Or does it simply check for a  certain volume of solid blocks, like 5x5x5 or something, and assume that's solid ground?  Regardless of if that 5x5x5 is hovering in air?  It seems like the whole thing is really fraught with complications, and I'm not sure what the gameplay benefit is.

What if caves were addressed by making a second class of natural stone - 'cave ceiling' or something (similar to how there is naturally generated living logs, and then player-cut logs), which only generates immediately above air blocks?  And this second type of natural stone is immune to collapse?  The player can't tell the difference, and it acts in all other respects just like normal raw stone.  I assume that's better than using metadata?  This would keep caves and interesting natural overhangs from collapsing due to player mining activity.  But if the player breaks through the ceiling, the stone above will be in danger of collapse, because only stone blocks that naturally generate immediately above air blocks are 'cave ceiling'.  I'm not sure how practical this is, in terms of world gen.  I don't know if caverns are in effect 'dug' through the solid ground?  Which comes first, the stone or the air?  If the air is 'hollowed out' of the stone, then theoretically each air block checks above it for a stone block and if there is one, it changes it to 'cave ceiling'?  That cave ceiling block can then get vaporized by another generated air block, which turns the next block above to ceiling?  This keeps from having to have a fancy way to figure out where the ceiling ends up?   But in any case, assuming it's technically feasible, it seems like this would address the problem of hidden cave collapses, but still keep support beams a necessary part of mining.

Just a thought.

Well ya, they'd definitely smith layers of different steels together.  That's pattern welding though, not casting.  I thought you were literally suggesting casting a core, and then casting another layer around it.  Which I've never heard of as an irl process for tools or melee weapons.  But ya, pattern welding and case hardening to simulate hardening of work surfaces is a great idea.

As for tool casting, so basically you propose having steel visually poured from the crucible into the rough tool casting mold, and then worked on the anvil.  The pouring would be a neat visual step, but proceduraly, it's pretty much the same as the current work flow.  You make the metal, melt it, pour it into a mold, and work the result on the anvil.  The only different is currently you pour them into ingot molds, whereas in this proposal you must use specific tool molds.  To me that illustrates why it's more likely tools were made from generic bar stock - it's much  more adaptable.  Currently an ingot can become any tool.  Very versatile.   But if I have to pour the metal into a specific rough tool mold, then I can only make that tool from it.  So I may find myself needing an axe, but only having available rough castings of picks and chisels.  So now I have to melt down the rough casting and recast it as an axe.   Whereas currently I just heat an ingot up and make whatever I want. 

It just seems to me like it makes no real difference mechanically - it's still melt, pour, smith.  And it actually reduces flexibility due to the specific rough castings.    One could argue it's more realistic, but I'd argue it's actually more realistic to have generic stock that can be made into many things.  I think smiths would have in fact used generic bar stock to make pretty much everything.  So even though an ingot isn't a perfect representation of that generic stock, it does make for pretty stacks, and I think it's a serviceable stand-in for bar stock, personally.  you can find a lot of youtube videos of people making things from rough stock.  This video shows some guys make a pick head from apparently a hydraulic piston plunger or something, I'd say maybe 3-4" diameter (skip the first 45 seconds or so).  They use a trip hammer and 3-4 guys, which is probably about required for the metal alloy they're working, which is very hard I think.  They're pretty clearly not experienced in making pickaxes.  But the point is, it's not totally unreasonable I think to make a pick or any tool from an original chunk of metal very different in shape.

Definitely would love to seem some more involved casting mechanics.  Personally, if allowing casting of higher tier metals I'd kind of like to see it be more complex.  It should kind of be a big step to be able to cast tier 3+ metals, ya?  As an integral part of smithing high tiers weapons and tools, I sort of question it.  I'm not a historian, but I'd argue that it was actually probably most common for your average smith to get - maybe not ingots per se - but generic bar stock.  I would imagine it was most efficient for a foundry to cast their metal in shapes that could be used in many applications.  So long thin bars could be made into straps, blades, spikes, nails, and even flared out to make hoe and axe blades. 

Honestly casting is an energy and labor intensive process from what I can tell.  I think it's most efficient when you can do it in huge batches and pour it into very generic shapes that many people can use to make a variety of things.  So I imagine it was pretty common for forge a pickaxe head from a 2 or 3 " square bar.  On the other hand, the game is more about the individual and maybe for an individual without access to a commercial network with foundries producing bar stock, casting small quantities may save some time.  But I guess for me, I'm ok with forging ingots.  It's an approximation to me, of starting with bar stock.

As for swords, I keep hearing people talk about this casting of a harder metal over softer.  Where is evidence of that?  I've never heard of that.  Everything I've ever heard is that the hardened layer is from case hardening, or work hardening.  I've never heard of casting a sword or any tool in fact, in two layers.   I ask this in seriousness, as I know you're a historian Tony.

Personally I'd have casting in the form of sand casting, and have it be the next metal tech level, used to cast machine parts such as gears, flywheels, engine blocks, piston heads, and other things used in automation.  The sand could be a mixture of regular sand and graphite, and may have a random chance to be "used up", like bowls (to bring an ongoing use for graphite).  I would have the process incorporate wood patterns which the player carves from a plank block using the chisel microblocking.  At least, if that ever makes it into TFC2.    The player must duplicate a required pattern exactly, at which point it pops off as an item - a very laborious process and the primary time-sink.  The player holds this item and right-clicks it on a sand bed, which then changes the sand bed to have the pattern embedded.  They then tamp the sand around the pattern in a mini-game similar to hide scraping.  when done the pattern is removed, leaving an impression (or just a texture representation of an impression, for simplicity sake).  It'd be neat to have a special minecart to put the crucible on.  The player could move the minecart along, and when it's adjacent to a mold, pour it in.  Move it to the next, etc.  The idea being to maximize the use of the heated crucible.  Or they just build the sand pattern next to it, one at a time.  The point being to make it a very involved process, that uses some rare material (graphite).  That and the hand-carving of the patterns (also randomly used up) would make it a labor intensive process, truly the next step in metal working.

A very similar idea to this post.  Except that one didn't envision actual pouring animations and so forth.  At first I was against the notion of casting metal tiers above tier 2, but I think with a sufficiently complex system, it might be justifiable.  As you say OP, casting loses out on any smithing bonuses.

The size is an issue, but maybe is just a question of texture? there is not much we can do about the fact that it uses a full block, unless we want it to behave like a carpet with a 1/8 texture. but that would prevent us from placing blocks on top. Now I am not sure if you talking about the size of the block or the size of each brick inside the block when placed in the world.

If you were asking me, my concern is merely the texture.  Building a brick block 1/8 layer at a time is definitely not something I'm asking for.  I'd just like regular brick blocks with the same general texture as fire brick blocks.

Some good ideas there - As for smithing requiring a hammer of equal or greater tier, there's one problem with that - how do you make the hammer, if it requires a hammer equal or greater to itself to craft? That is, after you're past the early tiers where you can cast a hammer.   Are hammers the one exception to that rule?  Or maybe the hammer requirement is 1 tier lower, or greater.

I definitely support the idea of multiple armor types.  I don't think layering armor is really necessary though.  Assuming there will be a clothing system for warmth, I think it'd be better to have one set of locations for clothes only (to deal with climate), and one set for armor only (to deal with combat). 

In general I think armor should require more smithing.  Right now making a chest plate costs 8 ingots, 4 plate smiths, 2 other smiths, and 4 welds.  I separate plate and other smithing acts, because plate smithing is used so often it becomes memorized and a bit trivial.  However the acts where you form the armor are used far less, so they matter more.  To me, ideally there would be several steps where you have to have the base unfinished armor piece in the smithing slot, with another piece beside it.  So you have an unfinished breastplate, plus a piece of chainmail there beside it.  You smith those together to make the next stage.  Welding pieces on is too easy, imho.  It takes no smithing at all, just one piece of flux.   If there were multiple types of armor, they could take more smithing acts the better the armor.  So maybe for a breastplate, you smith the base breastplate, and then do like, 3 smiths attaching a piece of generic armor plate, and 4 smiths attaching a piece of chainmail.  Then you've got like 8 smithing acts just attaching things to the breastplate.  Never mind the smithing acts to make the generic armor plates and chain mail.  If those each take 1 act, you could have 15 total smithing acts for one breast plate, which would make it a serious accomplishment.

There would be the issue of the fact that irl, I think that chainmail takes quite a bit more work than lamellar.  However, for game purposes I think it'd be best if the work went up purely based on the relative benefits of the armor, rather than real-life work.

The problem with the above is it would require many item ids for the many stages and I know the devs sort of lean towards conserving item ids.   In that case, maybe the breast plate has the two stages it currently is, but gets crafted in the crafting grid with other plate and chain and maybe leather sections, for a couple other intermediate steps.  This method could involve up to 8 other chain or plate pieces per stage of breast plate, but only require a couple extra item ids.  (double plate -smith->stage1breastplate -craftgrid-> stage 2 breastplate --smith->stage 3 breastplate -craftgrid-> stage 4 breastplate -smith->finished breastplate)

I like the notion of heavier armors affecting the player adversely, and I'd add slowing down the weapon recharge rate (in the 1.9 combat system) to the adverse effects of heavier armors.  It'll also weigh a lot more presumably, and I think it's the intent for weight to slow players down on a sliding scale in TFC2, so probably that would not an intrinsic function of the armor itself, but simply the weight of the armor will tend to make the player slower by adding to their overall encumbrance. 

For weapon improvement, in the past I suggested two methods:  case hardening, and pattern welding (in regular suggestion forum, due to being from before we had a TFC2 forum).  I think having a variety of weapon improvements would be good for separating professional smiths better.   Some of those sound a bit overly detailed perhaps, for a system as clunky as minecraft's.  But I'd love to hear more detail on how they might work. 

Dual damage types seems a bit op unless the player has a way to choose which attack (and hence damage type) they're doing with any given attack, so that they don't get both damage types in one attack.  Otherwise why even have damage types and resistances if any given weapon is 66% likely to have an appropriate damage to pierce the resistance?

2. Remove the ability to carve bricks using a chisel. Bricks would be made by crushing the rock into a powder with a hammer or quern, mixing it with the mortar and placing it in molds.

 

3. The ability to make a variety of new bricks by mixing rock powders and mortar.

If we're going to more realism, it would be more accurate to have bricks just made from plain clay.  Being able to glaze them with powders would be cool, though I think perhaps best for glazed roof tiles.  It'd be great if there was different clay for each rock biome, just like there is different dirt.  Thereby providing a variety of brick colors.  But that's probably more effort than the devs would want to spend.   There'd probably also need to be a brick oven.  Fire bricks are bad enough, I can't imagine trying to pit kiln enough normal bricks to make a large building.

The thing that bugs me most about current bricks is their size.  They're not brick sized, they're half a meter tall.  irl there'd be around 13 courses of brick in a meter.  Obviously a 16x16 texture won't allow for that.  The fire brick block is a good depiction of brick though, having four courses.   The current 2 course pattern could be kept, and called ashlar, which would be accurate.  And in fact chiseling would be an accurate way to produce ashlar blocks.

For as realistic as dwarf fortress mostly is, it's always bugged me that they have heavier metals do more bludgeoning damage.   Here are the densities of the metals in TFC1 (in kg per cubic meter): Copper 8940, bronze 7400-8900 depending on alloy, iron 7850, steel 7850.   Those are the rl weapon metals of TFC1.  There is not a lot of difference between them.  Try getting hit by an 8 lb hammer, and a 9 lb hammer.  I'll bet you can't tell the difference.

Every 'normal' metal (i.e. not rare earths, or hard to process stuff like tungsten) fall within these ranges, except lead, which is 11340.  As a practical matter, lead is a terrible metal for weaponry.  It is soft, and after repeated use, it will work it's way loose of the socket, or simply break apart.  If you want a heavier bludgeoning weapon, it's a far better idea to use 30% more of a sturdier metal.  Lead is great for a weapon like a sap, which needs to be concealable and small and is held in a pouch.  Terrible for anything else.

Moreover, I think the notion of higher tier metals doing more damage is not a good one.  If you get stabbed in the gut with a copper sword, or a steel sword, it will make 0 difference.  Your guts and muscle are much softer by far than either metal, they will both do the same amount of damage.   

This is one reason I proposed the tiered armor vs weapon system.  The idea being that the weapon material doesn't really make a difference in damage.  It makes a difference in how much of the damage gets through the armor. Certain metals are harder than others, and therefore can more easily pierce the inferior metal, getting through to flesh. 

Personally I think it would be better to have weapon damage affected by things like smithing skill, or special processes such as pattern welding, or enchantments.  To me metallurgy is a better fit for durability increases. 

I'd envision heavy furs being compatible with chain mail or leather, based on the chain mail being *under* the furs.  I would agree that heavy furs should be incompatible with heavy and medium armor. 

As for the mechanic, I'd guess there will be a way in which heavy clothing and armor makes one overheat.  Hadn't given much thought to that mechanic.  First let me disclose, I'm American, so my native temperature if Fahrenheit.  I'm going to try to use C, as that's what the game uses.  If I say things in Celsius that seem odd, that's why.

Could be a simple system, where Each piece of clothing and armor has a tier, which corresponds to the climate zone(s?) it's intended for.  There's 5 climate zone: tropical, sub-tropic, temperature, sub-arctic,and arctic.  The game simply checks each location and for each zone away from the idea, adds or subtracts to body temperature, or fatigue, or something.  So maybe plate armor is 'safe' in temperate and sub-arctic.  Beyond that you start to have ill effects.  Leather is 'safe' in tropical through sub-arctic. Something like that.  That wouldn't respond to seasons or temperature well though.

To respond better to actual temperature, a given piece of clothing has a 'safe' temperature range on it, and if the temperature is below, the player takes cold damage, scaled depending on how much below.  If the temperature is above, the player takes heat damage, or their water goes down faster, or their heatstroke/fatigue meter.  Whatever.  This can add up for the 5 different locations (if back is included).  Maybe wearing a wide brim hat in hot weather provides some artificial 'cooling' to offset other worn items or the general heat.  Heavy furs might be safe in the -30 to -5C range ( -22 to 23F).  Light cotton might be safe from 20 to 42C (68 to 107F).  Plate armor might have a safe range of 12 to 25C (54 to 77F).  Leather might be 15-30C (59 to 95F).  Etc.  Each piece of armor and clothing is checked, and if the ambient temperature is outside those ranges, things happen.  

MORE COMPLICATED SYSTEM

Or perhaps a more complicated system - each piece of clothing adds a set warmth value, and the total of all worn warmth clothing offsets the actual temperature the player experiences. 

So a player maybe has 20C of clothing on (note that this is not an actual temperature, this is merely added to the actual outside temperature).  It's -20C(-4F) ambient temperature outside.  A player produces perhaps 10C of body heat naturally.  Adding clothing plus body heat (30C) to the outside temperature results in 10C, which results in the player being at 10C(50F).  Chilly, but not freezing.  Maybe that puts the character in a range to get sick.  This could be signified by the player making sniffling or shivering sounds once in awhile.

 

However, if it the player wears those same cloths when it's 20C(68F) outside, the additional 30C puts them at 50C(122F) which is dangerously overheating.  In such weather a player needs to wear clothing that does not produce any heat.  So then their natural body heat puts them at 30C(86F) which is tolerable.  However, we should probably assume the player sweats in warm weather.  Apparently the human body starts to sweat at 37C, but this is an internal temperature.  Perhaps above 30C(77F) ambient temperature, the player's body natural reduces its heat output to 5C by sweating.  This gives a greater range with the same clothing.  This natural reduction may not happen with any clothing that provides much warmth (sweating is less effective when you're covered in thick clothes).  Another dis-incentive to wear warm clothes in hot weather.

 

Armor could also affect body temperature, but probably needs to mostly affect it by causing overheating in hot weather, and not much warmth in cold weather.  If most armors nullify sweating, that would be a way for them to exacerbate overheating while not providing actual warmth.  Then they could add maybe 2 or 3C per piece.  That might be enough to deal with cold but above freezing temperatures, but not enough to deal with below freezing.  It'd take a bit of balancing, to make the possible armor and clothing combos have sensible results, *if* clothing can be worn with armor.

 

I'd say it would be appropriate for all clothes and armor to add at least a little heat.  In a tropical climate, you could have light cotton clothing add 2C each, with a wide brim straw hat adding 0 or even a slight negative (the only exception).  That'd be a net +6 or less.  From what I read, a person is in danger of hypothermia, when naked, at ambient temperatures from 20C(60sF) on down.  There is a of course a wide variation based on physiology. Basically it seems like it might be reasonable for the player to target a perceived temperature between 20 and 35C ( 68 and 95F) or thereabouts.  If their perceived temperature, factoring in all clothing, falls outside that, then they can start to suffer ill effects.

So ya, there's some thoughts on how the mechanics might work.

I don't really see an innate need for clothing to be tiered.  It's meant to fight the weather, which I guess I'd assume doesn't get worse the further east/west you go.  I guess it comes down whether clothing and armor are strictly separate, or if some clothing acts like armor.   Can we wear a cloak over everything, perhaps in the back spot?  Is clothing a separate layer, that can be worn in combination with armor?  Or does the player have to choose between warmth and protection?  If my suggestion for a tier vs tier system were adopted, it would probably make it difficult to have armor be both clothing and armor at upper tiers.  Since most any armor that provides warmth is going to probably involve mostly leather/hides, which in current tier scheme at least, is very low tier.  Unless higher difficulty mobs provided 'high tier hides'. 

However, I could see maybe a system where each body location has a clothing spot, and an armor spot.  The clothing is made separately and does not provide damage protection.  It could vary from wool trousers to full on caveman style hides.  The armor is what provides protection against attacks.  The armor must constantly advance to keep up with the increasing tiers of mob attacks as you go east-west.   The clothing is of course tiered for degrees of cold (or warmth?), but not east-west.  The difference I suppose being that clothing wears out over time, whereas armor only wears out from damage.   So armor replacement is compelled by damage and tier progression.  Clothing replacement is compelled simply by wearing and using it. 

If different kinds of armor made it into the game (rather than everything simply being plate armor), they could have varying cross-compatability with clothing levels.  Chain mail could be worn with any clothing, from trousers to bear pelts.  But maybe plate armor can only be worn with light clothing, and so would not be very suitable for long exposed periods in extreme cold or heat (barring magical temperature regulation, of course).  Maybe there's a middle-ground armor that can't go with heavy pelts, but can go with most other stuff.  A cloak could perhaps be worn on the back over any kind of armor, so that even in plate armor, a player could have a bit of protection from the elements.

I do like the idea of requiring bandages for ongoing healing of hp.  It could give more use to burlap and cloth.  Maybe one bandage allows the slow regeneration of 200 hp or something.  It could also make hot springs more interesting - maybe instead of providing accelerated regeneration, they just provide normal regeneration without bandages.  If they remain as common as they are now, the player shouldn't have too much trouble finding one in an emergency.  And that could open the door for magic/herbalism/alchemy to increase the healing rate.

Ah, I see.  I like the notion of providing a different method of production, that has more intense time requirements, but produces a better product.   trading constant attention (like the blast furnace) for a product that doesn't require a bunch of refining seems somewhat reasonable, depending on the balance, and material factors.  Though really, for all we know, the processes might get totally revised and shuffled anyway.

You know, now that TFC2 is planned to have discreet islands with their own weather, perhaps a new weather type of volcanic ash rain could be added?  It would be a disaster, and would pile up ash layers like snow.  This ash would kill all grass and crops.  But it would just affect the island the volcano is on.

Either that or not have Iron on the first Island, It could work if we only had Copper on the first Island, on the second we would have the ores needed to make Bronze and only have Iron on the Third Island.

I guess I've been assuming that's exactly how it was going to work.  I'm pretty sure that's how Bioxx said it would be.  Each island you get to go up one tier.  Although I wasn't sure if the first island was going to have copper, or make you do a whole island in the stone age.  I'm hoping the starting islands have copper, and not make you go through clearing it (and/or the next one?) with stone weapons.