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amer

New early game tool: broad axe

15 posts in this topic

I realise that there is already a thread on early game building materials, but I thought this suggesting deserves its own topic since it is only tangentially related. I think it's commonly understood that there is a lack of building materials in the early game, and a remedy to this could be the broad axe. Furthermore, despite the fact that shelter and construction are totally huge deals IRL, it is currently one of the least complex areas of activity in TFC! If the devs have already talked about adding to construction and stuff in the future, I'll apologise for my ignorance and hope this isn't all too redundant.

 

In short, I believe that there is a problem with using wooden planks as soon one enters the copper age; wooden planks are made using saw mills, where timber is milled into the planks. I don't think it's realistic at all that a single person could saw a log into many wooden planks by hand with a hand saw. What is realistic however, and what people actually did at the end of the stone age, was to hew a log into a square using a broad axe. To be clear, a broad axe is not a weapon; here is a video demonstrating the process, for the curious. This timber was then used in post and lintel style construction.

 

It is far more feasible that a person could turn a log into timber using a broad axe. And as a result, I think it is a far more reasonable early building material. The texture could be something along the lines of a solid wood grain. This kind of texture would differentiate it from the support beams, which, on second thought, could be used for some of the same purposes where one could use timber.

 

I realise that this suggestion has some massive implications for the game, like what to do about wood planks if timber was implemented, would it be in the same tier of carpentry, or near the end of a pseudo tech-tree? But for the sake of realism, I do hope it is taken into consideration for diversifying early game architecture and playing.

 

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I really love this idea, I think it's fantastic.

I was actually quite surprised myself once i noticed that there was no wedge in the game.

 

It's quite strange when you think about it. You are capable of hacking down an entire tree into separate logs with a stone axe, but incapable of splitting them into a useful building material.

 

A broadaxe, or a wedge and hammer combination would be a great addition to the game as far as I'm concerned

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Earlier versions allowed you to make planks with a normal axe.  But it was felt this made early game too easy so was removed and you need to get metal first now.  TFC is not about realism it's about pseudo-realism while still maintaining a balanced tech tree.

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Well, I've found no evidence suggesting that you can make a functional broadaxe out of stone.  Inclusion of broadaxes would be fine by me, but they'd have to be metal.  That being said...it's really not that hard to make a working shelter with a handsaw.  Personally, I'd be interested to see sticks being used for more.  Using a stone hammer to drive tool-handle width sticks into the ground would allow one to make a decent frame in which to pile more sticks for rudimentary walls.  Sticks can easily fuel a well designed rocket stove.  sticks by themselves make a pretty poor, but still somewhat effective weapon...anyway...enough derailing.

 

yeah...metal broad axes would make sense.

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As some one who helped build the house I'm sitting in right now from the ground up I feel qualified to at least say this; it's much more practical to make a house out of planed pine logs than with planks you made with a HANDSAW. Besides the weight issue of getting the logs into place, building the walls of our square log house was actually really quick and simple. Just drill a hole in the corners for wooden dowels, insert, and add chinking. Boom, super insulative, near fire proof (yes, house made out of wood, but it's pine so you can hold a blow torch to it and it really won't burn. It needs kindling to turn into a bigger fire before those big logs will burn). The complex part was adding modern stuff like toilets, showers, washing machines, gas stove, and electricity. And the roof/2nd story I guess :P

I guess my point is, for gameplay purposes, all I really feel needs to be changed is to be able to make "log" blocks that can be broken quicker and don't have bark on them. I want a log cabin Sooo bad but the bark looks terrible aesthetically. Perhaps once the temp update comes you would have to add chinking of some sort to stay warm.

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You should still be able to split planks to sticks efficiently too. But since the vanilla log-to-stick ratio is 1:8 which in TFC is the ratio for planks, people should be able to split a plank to 2 sticks. But that somehow reduces the usefulness of a scythe...

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Um, I'm guessing the broad axe would be a metal-age tool.

So eh, if we exchange the saw for a broad axe and planks for timber.... er... what do we get?

 

I mean, what would make planks, and what will be the difference between timber and planks?

How far apart would it be? what would be the incentive to change to planks?

 

I don't mean to be rude or anything, but to be frank, this isn't a small change by any means, and I don't see how this can benefit the gameplay.

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Um, I'm guessing the broad axe would be a metal-age tool.

So eh, if we exchange the saw for a broad axe and planks for timber.... er... what do we get?

 

I mean, what would make planks, and what will be the difference between timber and planks?

How far apart would it be? what would be the incentive to change to planks?

 

I don't mean to be rude or anything, but to be frank, this isn't a small change by any means, and I don't see how this can benefit the gameplay.

 

I understand completely. Implementing the broad axe would have some pretty massive implications for the game, and at this point of game development it might not make sense to make the changes. I mostly just wanted to bring into discussion the idea of a materials tech tree using logs.

 

In my mind (and I might be totally wrong on this) I feel like converting a whole tree into wooden planks is a time consuming thing IRL, and that furthermore, wooden planks might not necessarily fit into TFC's stone age time frame; I'm not convinced that our neolithic ancestors used planks as a building material. Instead, they used logs, timber, and bricks. But I understand that TFC's not totally about realism, I just feel like planks, overall, don't fit with the idea of stone age survival.

 

Instead, planks for me fight right in with mid to late game stuff, the part of the game where you're probably not going to starve to death and where someone would have the time to further process trees. Planks have an inherent (and lovely) characteristic in that they function like microblocks (sorry don't know the technical term here). As a player, this is enough incentive for me to make and use planks as a building material, and as a result, use whatever tool or process necessary to make the planks.

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You should still be able to split planks to sticks efficiently too. But since the vanilla log-to-stick ratio is 1:8 which in TFC is the ratio for planks, people should be able to split a plank to 2 sticks. But that somehow reduces the usefulness of a scythe...

 

You can already get 1-3 sticks from breaking logs with a hammer.

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You can already get 1-3 sticks from breaking logs with a hammer.

You can't do it fast, though. Or is it just my stone hammer?

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That's just because you're using a stone hammer. Hammers break logs at the exact same speed as their corresponding axes do.

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Well, I've found no evidence suggesting that you can make a functional broadaxe out of stone.  Inclusion of broadaxes would be fine by me, but they'd have to be metal.  That being said...it's really not that hard to make a working shelter with a handsaw.  Personally, I'd be interested to see sticks being used for more.  Using a stone hammer to drive tool-handle width sticks into the ground would allow one to make a decent frame in which to pile more sticks for rudimentary walls.  Sticks can easily fuel a well designed rocket stove.  sticks by themselves make a pretty poor, but still somewhat effective weapon...anyway...enough derailing.

 

yeah...metal broad axes would make sense.

I would love sticks to work the same way planks do at the moment.  I use planks to frame and hold up cobble stone walls all the time, would be nice to make early game defences. 

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While the idea is realistic, I am ambivalent at best toward coding, adding graphic and basically spending lot of work for a whole new facility designed to be used only in one particular case to make one type of item (even if in different colors). I am not very much against it but I do think that using the saw is - as much as realistically inaccurate - an easy and comfortable simplification, working quite well.

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While the idea is realistic, I am ambivalent at best toward coding, adding graphic and basically spending lot of work for a whole new facility designed to be used only in one particular case to make one type of item (even if in different colors). I am not very much against it but I do think that using the saw is - as much as realistically inaccurate - an easy and comfortable simplification, working quite well.

I am of this same opinion. Visitor stole the words out of my mouth ;)
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The tool used by early neolithic was the wedge.

It does not looks like much but you can split a single log into dozens of planks.

I think it would make more sense and it was used for thousands of years before metals.

History:

http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0051374

The early Neolithic settlers felled mature oak trees up to 300 years old and measuring 1 m maximum in diameter. Stone adzes with transversely hafted blades were used, and the felling cuts were placed just above breast height. The Neolithic logging technique can be convincingly reconstructed according to ethnological evidence [29]. The logs were split first in half with wooden wedges that were hammered in using wooden mauls. Such timber conversion has been verified experimentally for prehistoric times [30][31]. There is evidence on the timber surfaces that the log halves were cut to their final length by adze work and the use of burning charcoals (Figure 3). Molding by fire is also a common technique in Neolithic logboat construction [32]. The trimmed halves were then again radially or tangentially split into the final timbers. After smoothing the split timber surfaces using adzes, the boards were ready for constructional use.

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