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PaoloEmilio

Bronze bloomeries? Iron furnaces? That ain't be believable

59 posts in this topic

I've deducted that metallurgy furnaces can't be made out of metal due to the simple fact that it's like melting ice in an ice pot... The furnace should also melt over with the metal, especially the bloomery, because bronze has a lower melting point than iron (I know iron doesn't melt in the bloomery) but still, by the time the iron is shining white the bronze sheets should be long melted over right? What about if bloomery recipe returned again to being made of stone (mortar in corners, bricks in the sides, and a hole in the center) and blast furnace the same brick recipe but with a crucible? That is more believable to me indeed. Wrought iron wasn't melted with metal machines, but with a simple hole full of coal and iron ore that was fired. So, to melt iron, instead of using a bloomery it's better to use a simple hole... or a simple chimney...

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The reason that the bloomeries and blast furnaces require bronze and wrought iron sheets is a way of forcing tier progression. If you made the bloomery just out of stone, you wouldn't ever need to make bronze or copper tools (especially since you will be able to get small ore of Limonite and Magnetite in B78 as they will be surface layer ores), and if you could make the blast furnace with just stone and a crucible, you could skip bronze and wrought iron all together and go straight from copper (needed to mine the kaolinite/graphite) to steel.

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Not really, remember the anvils Kitty, those must still be made... And sometimes bronze is more convenient because charcoal is hard to make... But, for example, once I got to the iron age and want to make more bloomeries I must still find more bronze, and that sincerely is annoying.

 

(Yay 300th post!)

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You should also notice that the bloomery structure itself is in fact made out of stone. Only the central control block (required by the game to have something that instigates the multiblock behavior) is crafted using bronze. That could represent access hatches, reinforcing elements and the like - there's no reason you should have to interpretate it as "where the iron is processed". For all intents and purposes, the iron is processed in the stone column in which you stack charcoal and ore.

 

Of course, you have a more valid point in stating you are annoyed by having to find bronze when you are higher in the progression already. This can be very easily addressed by adding another alternative bloomery recipe. Right now you can use either bronze or bismuth bronze; adding wrought iron as a third alternative would require little development effort, solve your problem, and not affect the progression in any way.

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It's a good point that smelters can't be made out of metal because they would melt themselves, but it's also a good point about forcing people to use metals to go through the different ages.

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It's a good point that smelters can't be made out of metal because they would melt themselves, but it's also a good point about forcing people to use metals to go through the different ages.

--

Anvils are still there so we must go through the ages anyways

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Remember its a game, sometimes what is believable must take a back seat to playable.

 

melting ice in an ice-pot works, so long as the size difference in the materials is enough to allow thermodynamics to spread the energy across the greater mass of the pot. Technically if you grind iron into a fine enough powder you can make steel in an aluminum pop can.

 

True you may have some meltage of the pot over time but that is usually pulled out of the iron as slag.

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You should also notice that the bloomery structure itself is in fact made out of stone. Only the central control block (required by the game to have something that instigates the multiblock behavior) is crafted using bronze. That could represent access hatches, reinforcing elements and the like - there's no reason you should have to interpretate it as "where the iron is processed". For all intents and purposes, the iron is processed in the stone column in which you stack charcoal and ore.

 

Of course, you have a more valid point in stating you are annoyed by having to find bronze when you are higher in the progression already. This can be very easily addressed by adding another alternative bloomery recipe. Right now you can use either bronze or bismuth bronze; adding wrought iron as a third alternative would require little development effort, solve your problem, and not affect the progression in any way.

I definitely agree, although it is true that having metal in a smelting contraption would seem counterproductive, we still need to have tier progression

so yeah the metal would only be in the mechanics of the controller block, in the above mentioned ways

 

Remember folks, there's only so far you can go with realism in a game like this, or heck even just a game in general.

i honestly will only stand by anything that makes the game more interesting, fun, or playable, anything else just defeats the purpouse of it being a game

 

Realism for realism's sake is neither what we are looking for here, nor element of good game design.

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I definitely agree, although it is true that having metal in a smelting contraption would seem counterproductive, we still need to have tier progression

so yeah the metal would only be in the mechanics of the controller block, in the above mentioned ways

 

Remember folks, there's only so far you can go with realism in a game like this, or heck even just a game in general.

i honestly will only stand by anything that makes the game more interesting, fun, or playable, anything else just defeats the purpouse of it being a game

 

Realism for realism's sake is neither what we are looking for here, nor element of good game design.

--

Did I say realism? The title says believable

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Not really, remember the anvils Kitty, those must still be made... And sometimes bronze is more convenient because charcoal is hard to make... But, for example, once I got to the iron age and want to make more bloomeries I must still find more bronze, and that sincerely is annoying.

 

(Yay 300th post!)

 

Charcoal hard to make? 

 

Willow trees and time, my friend. Willow trees and time.

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--

Did I say realism? The title says believable

did i say that i was talking about you directly?

 

i'm just kinda saying this to everyone in general

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I am just saying that I feel incomforted because I know the bloomery and the furnace are made of metal sheets to pass through the ages... But once I am  endgame it is annoying to find that bronze again... Just annoying...

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I do have to say that bloomery blocks made out of bronze seems pretty silly and is something that has bothered me since they were introduced.

 

Why should metal progression be forced linearly, anyway? The OP made a good point when he said that he sometimes preferred to use bronze instead of iron when charcoal became scarce; materials shouldn't necessarily have absolute superiority over others. There should be tradeoffs to make, as in real life; this, if you ask me, is a hallmark of good game design.

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Possibly use any tier of metal from bronze on up for bloomeries. Perhaps make them get hotter and more efficient

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But once I am  endgame it is annoying to find that bronze again... Just annoying...

 

Don't you mean to say "midgame"? Because in the endgame you a.) do not use bloomeries, you use blast furnaces; and b.) you need to find copper, zinc and bismuth again anyway because they are a required ingredient for tier 5 and 6 alloys.

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You use the bloomery to make iron for a new blast furnace... how does that sound?

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Anyways, I personally don't care about the tiers and ages and etc... The only reason our ancestors didn't leave from stone to copper age in an instant is because they didn't know copper was useful for tools. Same with the people of the bronze age. They didn't know iron, or it was too hard to work that they preferred bronze. But not necesarry, for example, if some pioneers settle in the Great Plains, will have to go all way to the bronze age. (If I can explain myself). They went directly to the iron working. So what about, bronze and copper tools could be made, for example, if you run out of iron for some reason, or you are in a hurry. So yes, make bloomeries of 8 brick blocks (Considering you must still be in the copper age to get them :) for mining the stone and sculpting it with a chisel). And make blast furnaces with firebricks and a crucible. (Even if you can still mine kaolinite and graphite with copper, the amount of mining it will require will make you get bronze tools in the middle, so there it goes, the two damned ages before steel age).

 

The reasons this works:

-You need copper tools at least to get the stone for the brickblocks of the bloomery

-If, when mining for the kaolinite and graphite you find cassiterite, bismuthinite, or sphalerite, you can make bronze tools, as common sense says bronze tools work better than copper ones. (And believe me, on my way to find kaolinite and graphite I have found atiborrant amounts of tin and zinc.

-Getting bronze for new other bloomeries is very annoying.

-The ages happened because people knew only to work certain metals

 

So, please, start changing the recipes of the bloomery and the blast furnace

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I'm posting this here because I agree with PaoloEmilio.

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I also think it's kinda lame to have to mine so much copper for bronze bloomery blocks. The game does not need to be dragged out unnecessarily long to get to the reasonable good stuff, wrought iron. There is still plenty of progression after that, even for multiplayer. My main concern is that after conquering all technologies, TFC should still have a playability factor like building. Building is only fun with efficient tools... Sadly, I never got to that point.

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Steel tools are far enough efficient tools to start to build.

You don't have to upgrade that far to start building your house or your husbandry! ;)

Bronze ones are reasonable.

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Actually, a lot of forges IRL *are* made with metal. The hottest parts are in the center of the forge and the outside has the great advantage of being exposed to air, so it doesnt melt down. The only parts hot enough to actually heat/melt the metal for further working are in the center of the forge covered by coals. It's like a cooking pot; tin IRL can definitely be melted in the hottest parts of a good bonfire style campfire, but people still use pewter pots above the fire. 

 

It's totally believable.

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Actually, a lot of forges IRL *are* made with metal. The hottest parts are in the center of the forge and the outside has the great advantage of being exposed to air, so it doesnt melt down. The only parts hot enough to actually heat/melt the metal for further working are in the center of the forge covered by coals. It's like a cooking pot; tin IRL can definitely be melted in the hottest parts of a good bonfire style campfire, but people still use pewter pots above the fire. 

 

It's totally believable.

-----------------------------

 

The reason it's not believable for me here is that the metal is the only material you can make these objects from. Ceramic refractory materials (as simple as clay) would be the obvious prefered material - and they're not used for the purpose of imposing a rather arbitrary progression limitation.

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I have a furnace in real life and ive melted steel before, and my furnace has thin sheet galvanized steel around it to keep the ceramic fiber in place, I see this the same way with the bronze bloomery. The bronze sheets would act as a support they wouldn't melt. But if its a bronze box made out of sheet metal, and your melting steel, nickel, and platinum? yeah that's unbelievable on my part, more of the ridiculous end actually. I do see that its a issue of progression in game. but its not believable to melt Iron in a bronze box.  but I don't know. that's the devs choice.

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Anyways, I personally don't care about the tiers and ages and etc... The only reason our ancestors didn't leave from stone to copper age in an instant is because they didn't know copper was useful for tools. Same with the people of the bronze age. They didn't know iron, or it was too hard to work that they preferred bronze. But not necesarry, for example, if some pioneers settle in the Great Plains, will have to go all way to the bronze age. (If I can explain myself). They went directly to the iron working. So what about, bronze and copper tools could be made, for example, if you run out of iron for some reason, or you are in a hurry. So yes, make bloomeries of 8 brick blocks (Considering you must still be in the copper age to get them :) for mining the stone and sculpting it with a chisel). And make blast furnaces with firebricks and a crucible. (Even if you can still mine kaolinite and graphite with copper, the amount of mining it will require will make you get bronze tools in the middle, so there it goes, the two damned ages before steel age).

 

The reasons this works:

-You need copper tools at least to get the stone for the brickblocks of the bloomery

-If, when mining for the kaolinite and graphite you find cassiterite, bismuthinite, or sphalerite, you can make bronze tools, as common sense says bronze tools work better than copper ones. (And believe me, on my way to find kaolinite and graphite I have found atiborrant amounts of tin and zinc.

-Getting bronze for new other bloomeries is very annoying.

-The ages happened because people knew only to work certain metals

 

So, please, start changing the recipes of the bloomery and the blast furnace

 

This is incorrect.  The reason we did not go from Bronze to Iron immediately is because Bronze is actually a superior tool material compared to most Irons.  It takes far more skill and finesse to make an iron that is as good or better than bronze than it does to mix copper and tin (and other metals) together to make various bronzes.  The reason bronze fell out of favor and we went to Iron is because at the end of the Bronze Age some serious shit went down in Europe and the trade routes that supplied the tin to most areas in the Mediterranean and Mesopotamia broke down.  Not because Iron is better.

 

[edit]If you actually wanted 'realistic', then you would have bronze be better than Iron.  And you'd include soft and hard irons.  And cast iron.  And pattern welding, etc.  But most people don't actually know anything about real metallurgy, and the Stone -> Copper -> Bronze -> Iron age progression is parroted by people who don't have Classics majors for fathers.

 

[edit the second]Also, I recall at some point long ago cast iron was nixxed, and more 'realistic' metallurgy, firstly, is much more complicated than I think you'd like, and secondly, not very believable to your average person, because, again, they know nothing about it and refuse to believe them when you tell them bronze is a better tool material than iron.

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I don't understand the point of arguing about this. Its been stated a number of times, and is evidently obvious in numerous aspects of the game. Realism / believability, whatever you want to call it isn't the objective of the game. If it was, the height of a tree wouldn't affect how much your axe wears down, or how the player starts out as a hunter gatherer, but there are no herds of anything (and I cant make tools from bone), or how you cant use a rock to break another rock, when you certainly can in real life (assuming relative hardness factors and whatnot). It just seems that any argument about a mechanic of the game, which makes people play the game the way the dev's want them to play, which is based on it not being realistic / believable is doomed to fail.

 

Just sort of an after thought, the whole 'philosophy' of TFC in general is open to interpretation. I've been hanging around the forums for long enough to know with certainty that things like "TFC is meant to be believable" and "TFC is an SMP oriented mod" are laughably absurd. I've yet to see people really agree on what TFC is supposed to be, and what its supposed to portray. I get that its supposed to be a little "man vs wild", but imho its whatever the devs want it to be and nothing more. Always has been.

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