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gtvpo

Separation of fluxes

10 posts in this topic

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Answering "no" to the above question will result in your post being deleted.

I think that there should be a mechanic in the game where certain types of flux are useful for different things, and when fluxes are applied properly, can make life easier. For an example, I am a smith IRL and borax is an excellent flux for forge welding steel and copper (And its alloys) because of the temperature that it melts at. However, sand and glass based fluxes (all fluxstones excluding limestone) are useful for wrought iron due to its higher forging temps. I think that adding a mechanic where you cannot weld copper without borax flux would be riddiculous and aggravating, so maybe making it so that there is a weld quality which determines how well the weld will hold, so if you're making a tool from the metal, it will need to have a good weld in order to last longer, and if you're making a set of armor, it won't have as high of defense unless the appropriate flux is applied in the welding process. That said it should have no affect on anvils, of course.

 

In addition, there is a big part of this post involving limestone flux: Limestone flux is NOT appropriate for forge welding. It will cause more problems than it solves when it comes to welding in the forge. However, when making pig iron, it will allow the usage of coal coke in the blast furnace instead of charcoal. If a player has limestone and wants to use anthracite coal or bituminous coke (anthracite does not coke, but has relatively low sulfur content) they could do so with the application of limestone flux.

 

Just as a recap, the basics of this (Which all comes from experience, either mine or that of the smiths over at I forge Iron, somewhere I highly recommend going for information concerning blacksmithing in the game) is as follows:

 

Effective fluxes:

Borax flux: Steel, copper, copper alloys

"Alaska flux" (Mixture of borax flux and charcoal dust) red steel, blue steel, black steel (AKA high carbon steels)

Stone flux/sand flux (EXCLUDING LIMESTONE!): Wrought iron

Limestone: refining iron ore using sulfur containing fuels (Coke and anthracite) in blast furnaces and bloomeries.

 

If this made it into the game, I would be SO stoked about it from the standpoint of being a smith and really loving this mod! I've made charcoal and refined iron ore in the past, and I must say, this game is surprisingly accurate to the real life processes on everything but blacksmithing. That said, hitting hot metal with hammers is really hard to replicate, so who am I to complain? I can just go fire up my forge anyway!

 

I hope this isn't too confusing, feel free to ask me any questions and I'll try my best to answer!

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So the primary issue that I see with this is that if you start dividing the flux into different types, it's only going to make the problem that players have a really hard time finding a flux stone in the first place even worse, because now they have to find an even more specific one.

 

If you can only use a specific flux for a specific task, you've now restricted the player to having to find a single stone type, or a specific mineral vein within a single stone type, where before they had much more options and were therefore more likely to find one of them sooner.

 

This is actually the exact same reason why we have different iron and copper ores, but they all essentially do the exact same thing. It allows for the ores to be found in more locations, and therefore easier to find and progress your game.

 

I'd like to also point out that in general game design, simpler is often better. You go complex enough that your average person thinks that it is accurate. This was actually discussed in the homepage post about believability. Obviously if you are an expert in something it might not be believable to you, but to all our other players who aren't experts, it is.

 

Adding in differences in durability is a step in the opposite direction of when we removed the ability to get within a range for lining up the smithing arrows. As soon as you introduce producing damaged tools, things get really complicated in the code really quickly, and that's when nasty bugs start popping up.

Edited by Kittychanley
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I do think it would be good to find a way for Borax to be more desirable than it is right now.  I'm not sure anyone cares about it.  It's only found in rock salt, and only yields 3x flux of regular flux rocks.  You'll probably use less durability on your pick, and have an easier time, just mining flux rocks, rather than searching out a borax vein and using up a bunch of pick durability breaking the rock salt to get to the flux.   I think that borax is a mineral that is 'technically' useful, but really isn't because there's easier options.  It's basically just a lifeline if you have no other flux stone around, but happen to have rock salt. 

 

I think it'd help if it provided some kind of bonus to items welded with it, though most tools only use 1 ingot so it wouldn't help them.   If any special smithing stuff came into the game (like pattern welding) it could be the only flux suitable for that. It could also be the only acceptable flux for the procedural metals.  Those are late enough game it shouldn't be such a problem for newbs right?

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Just to be clear kitty, I meant that every flux (Except limestone) could be used for everything, but certain ones would mean something to add convinience... It could even be as simple as a lower weld temp (Which is a real thing, getting fluxstone style fluxes to melt means getting the steel to yellow, whereas borax melts at red and can produce good welds at high orange) and I feel like that would make a great mechanic to simply increase the value of borax witout devaluing the other fluxes. Should've mentioned that as a possibility before, sorry about it slipping my mind!

 

Also, limewater can't be made from borax or marble dust, only from limestone. I feel like including that would be kind of difficult for players to deal with, though, so maybe make it more like it takes less limestone to make limewater than any of the other fluxes (Maybe, say, 4x less so it's got an edge over borax?)

 

On the subject of borax veins, I think that going for a new spawning mechanic for borax could solve that... What with the chemical being so important for human devealopment, I think that you should be able to find borax stalagtites and stalagmites, just like in normal caves, in any cave in the middle stone layer (Or something like that) so it's still difficult to get but you don't need to find rock salt in order to get it.

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Adding in differences in durability is a step in the opposite direction of when we removed the ability to get within a range for lining up the smithing arrows. As soon as you introduce producing damaged tools, things get really complicated in the code really quickly, and that's when nasty bugs start popping up.

 

Instead of reducing durability based on the flux, using the correct flux could provide a bonus, like how in TFC1 we have the bonus from smithing skills. This way it will incentivise using the correct fluxes without making players feel like they have been "cheated" out of their hard work spent smithing.

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Well that was the idea from the start. Aside from armor, a crappy weld won't cause many issues with edged tools (I.E. folded leaf axes, something I would love to see added, taking only .5 ingot but involving a weld halfway through and being less effective. Also, (Toma)hawks with different capabilities. 

 

I'd love to see designs for different axes that can cause certain things to be more or less effective.

 

Folded axes can use less of more expensive materials (Wrought iron chunk for the base of the axe, blue steel bit for the cutting edge, has the durability of blue steel minus the difference between it and its binding agent) and get rid of excess ingot stores of your old metals you no longer use.

 

Felling-specific axes and combat-specific axes could be separate, both capable of doing both of the jobs, but each specifically fine-tuned.

 

This would only require three different types of axe head, which I don't think is too big of a deal (It's almost entirely textures, because it's not a completely new tool.)

 

But that's tool specifics and not tool making!

 

Basically, the important part of this is to increase the ammount of detail in metallurgy and smithing, because that's why a lot of people play the game... I don't think the attractive building crowd would even care because when I want a world for house making I'm always using copper or a bronze to make my tools, and those are cast anyhow.

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Another issue with this is keeping track of it all. Double ingots, sheets and double sheets would no longer be able to stack, because of NBT data storing different flux types that were used to create it. While it would be possible for two double ingots that were welded using the same flux to stack in theory, that's only going to cause extra confusion from players who don't understand why a third double ingot isn't stacking with the other two.

 

On top of that, you've also got to take into consideration that welded items are often welded again in later stages of smithing.  So let's say I'm making a steel chestplate, which requires 2 steel sheets. So we're going to start out with two double ingots, one of which was made with "bad" flux and one which was made with "good" flux. We are then going to turn both of those double ingots into sheets, and then weld those two sheets together using "bad" flux. You can see where this is going.

 

Do we honestly need a system that tracks bad and good flux percentages to then use in some weird calculation to try and do a durability/damage boost?

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My idea was purely that upon final weld for completion of a piece of armor, there is flux taken into consideration, not that each individual welding of an ingot would cause NBT.

 

I was hoping for TFC2 you guys could change smithing a bit so welding is a part of producing products in more ways than it currently is (Folded axes, edged blades, etc.) and is something done over two heats (Heat to red, apply flux, heat to yellow/burning, make weld) instead of the current one. I think it'd make welding more immersive and enjoyable than it is right now (And less finicky! You wouldn't need to worry about ingot demolding at just the right time, you've got a good window to apply flux and then you've just got to reheat to weld temp)

 

So, just to be clear, flux applied in the last weld would be counted toward armor pieces, and if an item is made out of a double ingot (I'm blanking on any tools that are, honestly) it will either not be counted or will be stored in anvil data (Or "This item has been worked" data, where if you want proper fluxing to apply, you would weld it and then hit it a bit in order to make it register? Or maybe welds could be considered hits unless done in a specific way? Make it optional is what I mean [possibly a different button for the different kinds of welds if that's not too odd... "Stock weld" and "Tool weld" buttons])

 

 

Honestly I think it'd only really make sense properly with armor, and would add the ability to make, say, riveting armor desirable if the proper flux isn't available!

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Both the sword and the mace are made out of double ingots. And if any other weapons were added to the game, they likely would be made out of double ingots as well.

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Yeah, I feel like a weight system for metals would work better (Each ingot is 1 pound or so, so enough for a knife or something of similar size, but not enough for picks and axes, so a forge weld is needed after a partial completion) in order to make fluxes a bit more useful with this system?

 

Or maybe we don't need to do anything to make flux cooler, XD

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