Sensible Crucibles (RESOLVED) <3

[Maga 99]

This is something that irks me and I would like to see it change.

 

Despite the fact that a crucible can hold dozens of ingots worth of molten metals you can only drop ores and items in nugget by nugget. 

It does not seem logical to me that you need to carefully place each chunk of ore in one at a time. I think there should be at least 5 slots to add ores and ingots into the crucible for melting.

Of course melting 5x the ores should take 5x the fuel (and obviously more time) compared to a single ore but it doesn't feel right that I need to babysit the crucible the way I currently have to.

I would prefer a more believable approach where you can place a large amount of metal in the crucible and then go take care of something else (or work the bellows non-stop) while it all heats up all at once (albeit more slowly)

 

Little tweaks like longer melt times for anvils are also realistic but mainly I think the crucible should be able to hold more solid items (kinda like a smeltery in tinker's construct but far less OP)

 

Thoughts?

[AllenWL 186]

I'd like to recycle metal tools and anvils by melting them in the crucible, but other then that.....

I'm fine with it as it is

[EternalUndeath 1,208]

I'd like to recycle metal tools and anvils by melting them in the crucible, but other then that.....

I'm fine with it as it is

 

We... can totally recycle anvils already. I've done it.

 

Tools, we've had this discussion already. It's cheaty, and there's no way to make it UNcheaty without way more code than Dunk can justify writing for such a minor problem.

[Maga 99]

I'm aware that you can melt anvils.

I know tools have been discussed.

I wanted to know what people thought about more slots for crucible input.

 

;_;

[AllenWL 186]

We... can totally recycle anvils already. I've done it.

 

Tools, we've had this discussion already. It's cheaty, and there's no way to make it UNcheaty without way more code than Dunk can justify writing for such a minor problem.

Well, fine by me.

I suppose I should try doing it before asking for it. I just assumed that anvils could not be melted, and had no real reason to melt it down anyways.

 

 

I'm aware that you can melt anvils.

I know tools have been discussed.

I wanted to know what people thought about more slots for crucible input.

 

;_;

Er, sorry, totally my bad.

I don't really care much, but that would be good.

And very much less annoying.

 

Would encourage me to use the crucible a lot more rather then using vessels and pit-kilning for nearly everything

[Shini_otoba 6]

What is wrong with melting tools?  Think about it, if I get a pickaxe in real life and start wacking away at granite till it is blunt and useless %90 of the pickaxe is still going to be there, it's just going to be dull.  There are thousands of videos on youtube of people inheriting there great, great grandfathers axe and refinishing it with some TLC into an axe that is 10x more durable then a brand new axe from a shop, simply because axe makers these days use inferior steel to cut costs. 

[Kittychanley 1,002]

What is wrong with melting tools?  Think about it, if I get a pickaxe in real life and start wacking away at granite till it is blunt and useless %90 of the pickaxe is still going to be there, it's just going to be dull.  There are thousands of videos on youtube of people inheriting there great, great grandfathers axe and refinishing it with some TLC into an axe that is 10x more durable then a brand new axe from a shop, simply because axe makers these days use inferior steel to cut costs. 

 

While this makes sense in reality, it's absolutely horrible in respect to balanced gameplay. If we followed reality, after completely destroying a basic copper pickaxe, which has been used to mine roughly 500+ blocks.. all you would have to do is melt it in combination with a single small copper nugget to replenish the 10% of the pick that was destroyed and re-cast it. This ratio of new metal to new uses gets even worse with higher tiers, since all pickaxes are made with 100 units, regardless of what metal they are made out of.

[Miner239 47]

Well, in TFC, you wreck a copper pick and it's gone. Smelt a copper tool with 40% durability and you get 40 unit of copper, not 94. Add 6 small ores and you get a brand new tool. It actually gets worse with higher tiers because of the long process of making metal and replacing the small amount of the metal.

Can you cast high-tier metal from crucible to mold, and from mold to tool mold?

[Shini_otoba 6]

While this makes sense in reality, it's absolutely horrible in respect to balanced gameplay. If we followed reality, after completely destroying a basic copper pickaxe, which has been used to mine roughly 500+ blocks.. all you would have to do is melt it in combination with a single small copper nugget to replenish the 10% of the pick that was destroyed and re-cast it. This ratio of new metal to new uses gets even worse with higher tiers, since all pickaxes are made with 100 units, regardless of what metal they are made out of.

Actually when I think about it re-melting would not really work anyway.  In real life everytime you heat the metal up it loses strength.  I heard somewhere the devs may add another step in blacksmithing consisting of sharpening.  Perhaps adding the ability to re-sharpen tools to bring some durability back but can only be done once or twice before the tool is no longer recoverable, this could tie into the skill system so the higher your blacksmithing skill the more durability is restored?

[Kittychanley 1,002]

That long process just makes it more likely for players to repair tools in bulk, instead of one by one. So instead of just fixing their half broken pickaxe, they fix their pick, axe, shovel, propick, saw, etc, or on a server they fix multiple broken tools across a group of players. So like 1 batch of metal and everyone's half broken pick is repaired.

 

While higher tier metals cannot be cast, many servers have at least one person who is skilled with smithing. So to fix a batch of say 4 player's half-broken picks, all they would have to do is throw the 4 picks into the crucible, then pull out the 2 ingots worth of metal into ingot molds, turn the 2 full ingot molds into ingots and quickly work into two brand new heads. If they needed to have 4 fully repaired picks to hand back out, then they would just make a batch of the alloy to replace the missing 2 heads. Or, since a lot of servers do alloy mixing in larger batches, it's possible that they already have an ingot pile of the alloy already stocked up, and just have to heat and shape two of those.

 

On a side note, Bioxx intentionally disabled the crafting of two damaged TFC tools together to repair them, which in essence is exactly the same as this system, just obviously without the little bit of extra work and fuel.

[Maga 99]

Gosh darn it. My thread about crucible GUI turned into the ol' re-forge/sharpen/smelt tools and such. As if that topic hasn't been discussed to smithereens already...

 

Requesting lock if it keeps going in that direction. 

[landryx 36]

/

[Guest Simon_science]

i like the real..!:* "beliveble-ness* of tfc. in my opinion a good way to do this is to eliminate the gui. think about it. throw the ores inside the crucible direcley: then, to pour them in, just click on the spout. sure, the no gui would make alloying harder, but a color coded system(sorry colorblind pll) for, lets say, bronze colored for bronze and white colored for zink or tin

[Miner239 47]

We should still see what is going on with the metal inside... I'd like a floating bar showing both the rough percentage and the amount of metal. And maybe the name of the would-be metal.

 

I agree with the main idea because... why not? Fuel is not a problem to me.

[Xervir 5]

This is something that irks me and I would like to see it change.

 

Despite the fact that a crucible can hold dozens of ingots worth of molten metals you can only drop ores and items in nugget by nugget. 

It does not seem logical to me that you need to carefully place each chunk of ore in one at a time. I think there should be at least 5 slots to add ores and ingots into the crucible for melting.

Of course melting 5x the ores should take 5x the fuel (and obviously more time) compared to a single ore but it doesn't feel right that I need to babysit the crucible the way I currently have to.

I would prefer a more believable approach where you can place a large amount of metal in the crucible and then go take care of something else (or work the bellows non-stop) while it all heats up all at once (albeit more slowly)

 

Little tweaks like longer melt times for anvils are also realistic but mainly I think the crucible should be able to hold more solid items (kinda like a smeltery in tinker's construct but far less OP)

 

Thoughts?

 

I'm aware that you can melt anvils.

I know tools have been discussed.

I wanted to know what people thought about more slots for crucible input.

 

;_;

 

 

I despise babysitting what is essential a giant ceramic bowl.  What about being able to put a stack ore into the input slot from which it takes one ore at a time?Maybe make two output slots:

things can be added and removed to slot 1, but things can only be removed from slot 2

if there there are ceramics molds in slot 1 (which can accept a stack) and there is nothing in slot 2, subtract one mold from slot 1 and add one mold to slot 2.

If there is a non-full ceramic mold in slot 2, the crucible has molten ore in it, button reads open (maybe), and the crucible is hot enough for the metal in it to be molten, the mold in slot 2 slowly fills and the crucible slowly empties.

 

SIMPLY PUT:

Take a stack of meltables one at a time off of the input slot

Stack of ceramic molds feeds into output slot

maybe add open-close button so that it won't pour if it isn't the right alloy yet

[Maga 99]

-snip-

Brilliant.

[Moress 27]

Well, what he's saying is that in reality you don't slowly fill a crucible by slowing adding the ores, you would fill it to the point that you wanted, then begin to heat it. So instead of baby-ing 16 ores into it, you would simply plop the stack in, heat it and do other things, like the blast furnace.

[Tsuarok 47]

I don't know about metals, but I used to blow glass (the furnace style, not pyrex).  We would recharge the furnace once a week, during which you had to slowly add a scoop or two of glass, and wait for it to melt.

 

If metal has similar constraints, the current system is fine.  If not, I'd be okay with just throwing nuggets in.  

 

But no more than one mold, you're supposed to be pouring the liquid out.

[dunkleosteus 2,425]

The reason you can't dump a bunch of ore at once is that each ore drops the temperature by 10%, no matter how much metal is in the crucible. This means you have to wait for the crucible to heat before the next ore will melt. Unnecessary tedium aside, as the crucible is largely alloy based, you could easilly ruin your alloy by dumping a full stack of ore at once.

 

By altering the 10% temperature drop, it's conceivable that you may be able to add consecutive ores by holding the stack over the slot and repeatedly right clicking to add the ores one at a time. It's faster than the current implementation, but doesn't open up the possibility of alloy-wrecking.

[Maga 99]

The reason you can't dump a bunch of ore at once is that each ore drops the temperature by 10%, no matter how much metal is in the crucible. This means you have to wait for the crucible to heat before the next ore will melt. Unnecessary tedium aside, as the crucible is largely alloy based, you could easilly ruin your alloy by dumping a full stack of ore at once.

 

By altering the 10% temperature drop, it's conceivable that you may be able to add consecutive ores by holding the stack over the slot and repeatedly right clicking to add the ores one at a time. It's faster than the current implementation, but doesn't open up the possibility of alloy-wrecking.

It's not like people can't already wreck their alloys. People unfamiliar with metallurgy would learn to do it slow and safe. Once people know what they're doing they shouldn't be punished with pointless tedium. Just have one ore smelt at a time and apply the 10% drop each time an ore is melted and reduce the stack by 1.

 

As a safeguard against major accidents with new players just make adding a stack of ores require the stack to be placed with the mouse, and dissable shift-clicking stacks of ores (similar to shift clicking stacks of molds into a forge, you have to place the stack by hand to get the molds to stack in the gui.

[nobeardpete 0]

Being able to put more in the crucible at once would be great.  There are a lot of neat features in TFC, unfortunately, there's a lot of unnecessary, unfun, and unrealistic tedium.  Slowly feeding ore into a crucible piece by piece is one of the worst offenders in this regard.  The crucible can comfortably accommodate an entire anvil, but it can't take a stack of ore.  This is completely unrealistic and implausible.  It makes smelting much more tedious.  It makes metal working less fun.  There is nothing positive to be said about the situation.

 

The simplest fix would work as follows: the input slot can take up to a whole stack of items, be they ore, ingots, or any other stackable meltable item.  Whenever the temperature is hot enough, one item will melt, and the temperature will drop, almost exactly as currently happens.  Assuming it's still on a hot enough forge, the temperature will subsequently rise on its own, and after a while the next item will melt, and then the next.  This lets the player drop in a stack of items, putter around and do other tasks in the area, and not have to check on the crucible every few seconds to carefully slip in another piece of ore.

[landryx 36]

completely agree, smelting ores is not more enjoyable with the crucible when it should make it much more fluid and fun!!

[Kittychanley 1,002]

I've just made the following change for Build 79

• Crucible accepts stack of items in input slot. If temp is hot enough, will melt one item from the stack every 2 seconds.
• Temperature still decreases by 10% each time an item is melted.
• Output slot still only accepts a single fired mold.

[Maga 99]

 

I've just made the following change for Build 79

• Crucible accepts stack of items in input slot. If temp is hot enough, will melt one item from the stack every 2 seconds.
• Temperature still decreases by 10% each time an item is melted.
• Output slot still only accepts a single fired mold.

 

 

 

<3

[nobeardpete 0]

Awesome!  Thanks so much.