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elustran

Balanced recycling of tools

49 posts in this topic

It doesn't seem realistic to completely lose the material of a tool once it's 'used up', except of course for stone tools. Metal tools have almost always been recyclable to a certain extent, however, because they can be melted back down, recast, and reforged. Now, it wouldn't be game-balanced to simply reuse the same ingot over and over again for the same tool over and over again, however, It 's also realistic for the material of a tool to degrade or wear away.

To this end, I suggest allowing metal tools to be remelted in the forge - bringing them up to the liquid point - so they can be made into new tools. I also suggest having them pass only about half an ingot's worth of material. From a game-fun point of view, this retains and perhaps heightens the realistic simulation that TFC is supposed to present, and allows players to not lose as much of the work they've put into accumulating rare resources for advanced tools. From a game-balance point of view, you're still not allowing players to extend resources infinitely, and this doesn't disrupt the tech tree.

This suggestion could also work in concert with other suggestions for extending tool life through maintenance, and so on.

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The idea of recycling metal is different than the idea of repairing tools. Both have been suggested, but it's hard to create a way to balance either that feels rock solid.

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I saw that and made a new post because this isn't a method for keeping the same tool - it's a method for keeping material. Say you have four chisels that you've mostly used up, well guess what - you could melt those down to make a couple of ingots to make a sword with. Or maybe your sword is almost broken, well you could melt that down to make a chisel. You see that in only two lifetimes, we go from four chisels to one - we have a quarter of our original material left - that's the balancing factor. If you want to keep on having a nice red steel sword, you have to keep on mining some material for it, it's just that the chaos of finding rare materials is slightly reduced, and keeping and reusing material is realistically rewarded.
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Only problem is with the current generation it wouldn't be very viable. Find a mega vein of ore and you're set for the rest of your minecraft career. It wouldn't matter to someone who finds said vein.

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I saw that and made a new post because this isn't a method for keeping the same tool - it's a method for keeping material. Say you have four chisels that you've mostly used up, well guess what - you could melt those down to make a couple of ingots to make a sword with. Or maybe your sword is almost broken, well you could melt that down to make a chisel. You see that in only two lifetimes, we go from four chisels to one - we have a quarter of our original material left - that's the balancing factor. If you want to keep on having a nice red steel sword, you have to keep on mining some material for it, it's just that the chaos of finding rare materials is slightly reduced, and keeping and reusing material is realistically rewarded.

I thought you would like that post and want to read it if you hadn't already.

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I saw that and made a new post because this isn't a method for keeping the same tool - it's a method for keeping material. Say you have four chisels that you've mostly used up, well guess what - you could melt those down to make a couple of ingots to make a sword with. Or maybe your sword is almost broken, well you could melt that down to make a chisel. You see that in only two lifetimes, we go from four chisels to one - we have a quarter of our original material left - that's the balancing factor. If you want to keep on having a nice red steel sword, you have to keep on mining some material for it, it's just that the chaos of finding rare materials is slightly reduced, and keeping and reusing material is realistically rewarded.

Actually I quite like this...

One suggestion though - you'd put something like this in a bloomery more likely than a fireplace. The metal you get back should also be inversely proportional to a set fraction of the damage to the tool. Something like-

[metal retrieved] = [2kg {1 ingot worth}] - (2kg * ((1 - [remaining durability% as decimal]) * 0.2))

Should also add 0.5 kg of fuel, from the stick.

So say an axe with 40% durability left is tossed into the bloomery. That's-

2 - (2 * ((1 - 0.4) * 0.2)) = 1.76 kg metal & 0.5 kg fuel

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Actually I quite like this...

One suggestion though - you'd put something like this in a bloomery more likely than a fireplace. The metal you get back should also be inversely proportional to a set fraction of the damage to the tool. Something like-

[metal retrieved] = [2kg {1 ingot worth}] - (2kg * ((1 - [remaining durability% as decimal]) * 0.2))

Should also add 0.5 kg of fuel, from the stick.

So say an axe with 40% durability left is tossed into the bloomery. That's-

2 - (2 * ((1 - 0.4) * 0.2)) = 1.76 kg metal & 0.5 kg fuel

Something like that occurred to me too. Originally I thought that maybe a range from 40% to 90% depending on wear level might be game balancing and remain useful. Not sure about the stick providing fuel for the bloomery - I'd just pretend we removed it because otherwise it would add impurities - that's why the bloomery takes charcoal instead of logs.

Only problem is with the current generation it wouldn't be very viable. Find a mega vein of ore and you're set for the rest of your minecraft career. It wouldn't matter to someone who finds said vein.

Except you don't always find a mega vein of ore, and advanced materials require rarer ores. If you want to make stuff like full sets of armor, you need lots of ore, and if you want to share deposits on a server, this lets people trade material and more broadly advance in tech level. The other thing melting does is allow you to reuse material from older generation tools - your nearly-broken black bronze pick could help you on your way to making some nice and shiny black steel.
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Something like that occurred to me too. Originally I thought that maybe a range from 40% to 90% depending on wear level might be game balancing and remain useful. Not sure about the stick providing fuel for the bloomery - I'd just pretend we removed it because otherwise it would add impurities - that's why the bloomery takes charcoal instead of logs.

Good point, assuming the stick is removed makes sense.

So nix that.

I really like the formula I came up with though. It means that at 100% durability you get the full 2kg back (which is one ingot), but at 1% durability you get around 1.6 kg back. I'd say that since this represents the physical wear on the tool's head, 0.4 kg sounds about right. That's a little over 11 ounces of metal, and I'd say that if you've used a tool enough to actually lose 11 ounces of it, it's pretty well broken.

Of course if you want to decrease the minimum you get back, you can always increase the value of the second (rightmost) 2.

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I assume this would add a broken tool item of some sort, as metal doesn't simply explode when i bash it against something too much.

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I assume this would add a broken tool item of some sort, as metal doesn't simply explode when i bash it against something too much.

...what?

I'm not sure what you mean... why are things exploding?

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...what?

I'm not sure what you mean... why are things exploding?

The tool breaking mechanic currently makes any spent tools literally explode in your hand. It's not an actual explosion, but an explosion animation none the less.
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The tool breaking mechanic currently makes any spent tools literally explode in your hand. It's not an actual explosion, but an explosion animation none the less.

I think it's more of a 'falling apart' animation that represents the head snapping off / handle breaking / whatever

Why on earth would we get a broken tool item?

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Good point, assuming the stick is removed makes sense.

So nix that.

I really like the formula I came up with though. It means that at 100% durability you get the full 2kg back (which is one ingot), but at 1% durability you get around 1.6 kg back. I'd say that since this represents the physical wear on the tool's head, 0.4 kg sounds about right. That's a little over 11 ounces of metal, and I'd say that if you've used a tool enough to actually lose 11 ounces of it, it's pretty well broken.

Of course if you want to decrease the minimum you get back, you can always increase the value of the second (rightmost) 2.

I think the main reason I'd go for lower levels on the bottom end is for game balance. I think the main reason I'd bottom out at 50% is for both balanced and convenience - every two used-up tools you dropped in the bloomery would render one ingot without any tailings, and you'd still have to go out and mine to build up tool stock. It might be realistic to keep it down to 75%, though I wouldn't want that to be the impetus of a change in ore frequency, since it's already hard enough to find. The top end probably shouldn't be 100 since you lose some material in the process of creating a tool in the form of slag, ground off bits, and so on, but if you're going with a sliding scale with a high value at the top, but we're dealing with approximations anyway, and it might be more convenient to assume 100%.

Why on earth would we get a broken tool item?

I think the idea is that you'd be able to collect the broken remains of your bent sword or whatever to reforge it. It's an interesting idea, but I'd rather reward being careful with your tools and make it a bit more of a risk to use if your bar is empty.
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Why on earth would we get a broken tool item?

Because in real life tools don't magically go from looking perfectly fine to disintegrating.

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Because in real life tools don't magically go from looking perfectly fine to disintegrating.

That's why there's a damage bar to show how much wear the tool can withstand before becoming nonfunctional

you don't need a broken tool item

just chuck your tool in the bloomery when the bar turns red

I think the main reason I'd go for lower levels on the bottom end is for game balance. I think the main reason I'd bottom out at 50% is for both balanced and convenience - every two used-up tools you dropped in the bloomery would render one ingot without any tailings, and you'd still have to go out and mine to build up tool stock. It might be realistic to keep it down to 75%, though I wouldn't want that to be the impetus of a change in ore frequency, since it's already hard enough to find. The top end probably shouldn't be 100 since you lose some material in the process of creating a tool in the form of slag, ground off bits, and so on, but if you're going with a sliding scale with a high value at the top, but we're dealing with approximations anyway, and it might be more convenient to assume 100%.

Well then adjust it to

1.8 - (2.5 * ((1 - D) * 0.2))
That leaves max yield at 90% of starting material, and minimum yield at 65%

However I think that having a max yield of 100% makes more sense, since that would only come from a tool with a full durability bar. Keep in mind, there's no random factor here - the amount you get back is completely dependent on the tool's durability at time of melting - If I turn an ingot into a pickaxe, and then immediately melt it back down, there should still be an ingot's worth of metal there.

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That's why there's a damage bar to show how much wear the tool can withstand before becoming nonfunctional

you don't need a broken tool item

just chuck your tool in the bloomery when the bar turns red

Well then adjust it to

1.8 - (2.5 * ((1 - D) * 0.2))
That leaves max yield at 90% of starting material, and minimum yield at 65%

However I think that having a max yield of 100% makes more sense, since that would only come from a tool with a full durability bar. Keep in mind, there's no random factor here - the amount you get back is completely dependent on the tool's durability at time of melting - If I turn an ingot into a pickaxe, and then immediately melt it back down, there should still be an ingot's worth of metal there.

Broken tool item, unusable tool with 0 damage, same thing. my point is that, even if you grind them on a rock, copper does not simply dissapear. there needs to be a way to salvage what ever is left.
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I agree with fred. it makes sense in a gaming point of view to reward the players who are careful but irl the fact still stands that you can take the broken peices and throw them in the bloomery. mabe you would lose a bit of metal but thats it. btw out of curiosity, would there be a problem with throwing an alloy in the bloomery irl? I dont think there would but im no expert.

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Maybe we could make it so that the more wear on the item, the less effectively it works. Then, if it reaches 0 durability, you managed to break the tool head and/or handle and have rendered it useless.

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If we get some form of enchantment system for tools/weapons/armor/etc, I think those should definitely become "broken" items when used up(instead of literally breaking never to be seen again). I've always dreamed of being able to name my legendary sword/pick/etc(like in Dwarf Fortress when a weapon gets a certain amount of kills), so I'd definitely want to be able to keep my legendary enchanted tools via repair or a similar mechanic.

We could always have tools that last forever, too. You might consider this "unbalanced", but really it isn't, especially for SMP when you're working together with a bunch of people and have to share ore veins(this could be a configurable feature or something if you don't like it). This mechanic has worked fine in both DF and Terraria, and the only argument I see against that is that you have lots of dwarves in DF to supply with tools, and that both of these games have finite maps. If we're able to make blocks out of metals or get some other resource-intensive use for lots of metals eventually, this would only be all the better.

For generic metal item recycling you could just have an item give back half(or less) of the metal that went into it's production. This is more balanced than my infinite tools idea, and this could even be implemented alongside it if you ever want to melt down some extra tools back into usable material.

That's my opinion on recycling/repair, anyways.

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Broken tool item, unusable tool with 0 damage, same thing. my point is that, even if you grind them on a rock, copper does not simply dissapear. there needs to be a way to salvage what ever is left.

...No, the copper doesn't disappear... but it does wear off of the tool.

I'm afraid I don't understand where you're coming from, because to me it sounds like you're saying that wearing through a tool will not cause it to shed mass, which is completely wrong. Even if you take an anodized steel chisel and use it to chip away at soft chalk, you're still leaving behind a few micrograms of metal every time you take out a bit of stone. After carving mount rushmore, that chisel will be pitted and dull - it will have lost metal off of its surface. The metal hasn't vanished, but it's not on the chisel either - it's smeared across the rock face in patches a few hundred atoms thick, if that.

A softer metal like copper might even leave visible streaks if you're mining out something like granite.

...And a tool with 0 damage has just been freshly made - I think you're talking about a tool with 0 durability. And no, I still think that they should break once they hit 0. I just think that BEFORE they break, you should be able to toss them into a bloomery while they're still working so you can at least get some of the metal back rather than just losing it completely.

Shovel with 3 durability left? Toss it into the bloomery for a kilo or so of metal, or use it another 3 times and lose it forever - the choice is yours

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I think what fred is getting at is that if you have a tool with very little durability remaining, you can melt it down into X amount of metal, but if you use it until it breaks, you get a broken tool that you can can melt it down into less than X. Is that right?

Makes sense to me. If you're careful and keep an eye on your tools, you can get more back from your old tools, but if you let it break you still aren't left with nothing - a broken tool doesn't just disappear, there is still some metal left.

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Okay yeah sure, metal slowly wears off of tools. But it doesn't wear off of tools until the tool completely disappears, that's just total nonsense. You're not going to use a pickaxe when the head has been reduced to a tiny chunk of metal at the end of a stick.

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I think what fred is getting at is that if you have a tool with very little durability remaining, you can melt it down into X amount of metal, but if you use it until it breaks, you get a broken tool that you can can melt it down into less than X. Is that right?

Makes sense to me. If you're careful and keep an eye on your tools, you can get more back from your old tools, but if you let it break you still aren't left with nothing - a broken tool doesn't just disappear, there is still some metal left.

True - but then smelting them down before they break completely loses all use, and there's absolutely 0 risk in letting a tool get low because you will always always get at least SOMETHING back. I think that the chance of total loss adds a bit to the survivalist feel.

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True - but then smelting them down before they break completely loses all use, and there's absolutely 0 risk in letting a tool get low because you will always always get at least SOMETHING back. I think that the chance of total loss adds a bit to the survivalist feel.

I agree with Eternal here, even though it makes sense that not all the metal is lost when the tool breaks, it just leaves no risk at all. The possibility of regaining metal from your completely broken tools is realistic -i know it's a dirty word ._.-, but not necesary. If you loss the material with the tool, there is a reward for those who care about their tools and see carefully when the tool is about to break, and there's also a punishment for those who don't care (the material complete lost). If you don't lose the material with the tools, everyone, the one who cares and the one who doesn't, has this reward of getting part of the original material. This is fair and realistic, but doesn't fit with the survival mode as it should have been aspect of TFcraft. The one cleaver, stronger, faster, the one who looks after his tools is the one who should be rewarded.

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