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[jpvlsmv]

Right now, there is no difference other than cost between a copper pick and an adamantine one.  They both cut through the softest sand and hardest granite with the same ease and bring your marMine corpsedwarfs up to legendary stats just as quickly.  But the pig tail fabric glove they're wearing on their hand will have completely tattered away by that time.  Wouldn't it make sense to have a soft metal like copper wear out also?

So here's a proposal:  have metal objects experience "wear" like clothing currently does.  After digging out a couple hundred hard stones, your -Copper Pick- might become an x-Copper Pick-x and eventually from XX-Copper Pick-XX to nothing.

I'd suggest that the amount of wear that occurs be related to the relative "hardness" between the material being dug and the tool.  So a copper pick is unharmed by sand or soil, has a 5% chance of a "nick" when digging into sedimentary, 10% when into metamorphic, etc.  Iron would be fine going through sedimentary stone, but still have a chance of being nicked by granite.  Item quality could affect the chances as well.  So while a regular Copper Pick has a 5% chance, a -Copper Pick- has a 4%, =Copper Pick= 3%, etc up to a masterwork that could be invulnerable to wear.  A single nick wouldn't turn into an xCopper Pickx, but maybe after 10 or so...

A similar "wear" could be applied to armor:  An Axedwarf slashing through bodies protected by leather armor should damage the armor -- after 3-4 slashes that get through, the armor would become tattered.  For realism, different types of armor could wear differently based on the type of attack.  clothing and leather armor could be damaged by pierce or slash, but not blunt;  chain mail be damaged by slash, but not pierce or blunt; plate armor by pierce or blunt but not by slash.

Thoughts?

[Waparius]

This stuff's been planned for a long while, at least as far back as 40d when you could assign dwarves a spare weapon, it was a placeholder for when breakage came into the picture. IIRC this is going to be the big weakness of obsidian swords.

That said I'm in favour of wear and tear, though most likely when it's implemented it'll be based on assigning each rock, soil, wood and other material type a proper hardness value and interacting accordingly, like the combat engine does with tissue layers.

Either way quality should have an impact here - something made by a dabbling smith shouldn't be anything like the value of a masterwork.

It should also be possible to repair a broken item - doing so shouldn't require any more metal but should reduce the item's quality, unless it's been named/is an artifact, at any rate.

Artifacts should probably only break under exceptional circumstances and even then be fully repairable.

[MrWiggles]

Hi and welcome to for the forum!

I see you made your suggest-something-thats-already-been-suggested thread!

I hope you stick around, and try the place out!

[Starver]

It should also be possible to repair a broken item - doing so shouldn't require any more metal but should reduce the item's quality, unless it's been named/is an artifact, at any rate.

I'd be tempted to say that the repairing by a dabbling smith would repair a no-quality weapon completely fixed, but could actually irrevocably break a masterwork one.

Or certainly reduce one to a needs-fixing item of lower intrinsic quality...  In which case a more expert repairer might even be able to up the associated quality tag.  Not to artefact[1], but certainly there's a chance that a Legendary smith could refine your broken no-quality sword.  Might encourage use of lesser weapons, that your lesser/unluckier smiths managed to create, so that they can get a bit damaged and then reworked possibly into better weapons.

(MrWiggles: You're right, but perhaps a little harshly put.  We don't know how hardy these new people are, and this one might take that the wrong way and take your welcome as sarcastic.)

((jpvlsmv: Basically, you might imagine we've seen a lot of similar suggestions before.  The "DF Suggestions" board is one place where searching for what you thought you might post and then resurrecting a long-dead thread already mentioning your idea to add your own take to it is not only not a bad thing, but actually the best thing you can do.  However, welcome.))

(((Anybody: You'll note that I haven't actively searched for past posts myself, even though I have a vague recollection of saying something similar to what I wrote up above before.  Now we've got a newer thread, I thought I might as well say something relevant while it was at the forefront of people's consciousness.)))



[1] Unless it's now named?  I could imagine (for a very low chance) a named sword being improved even into Artefact status.  And either that artefacts can be damaged, or all kinds of other analogues about "The sword that was broken is now mended", and thus becoming more famed than it was originally, and other LOTR-ish clichés.

[jpvlsmv]

I did search what I thought were reasonable keywords, such as wear, or tattered, but didn't see anything particularly apropos, as well as reviewing the discussion subjects in this suggestions thread going back a couple of years.

Of course, nothing new is ever discussed on the internet, but sometimes it's hard to find.

I've been playing DF since the early '40 versions, and ran into my first fellow-DFer IRL last night.  !!Fun!!

--Joe

[jpvlsmv]

It should also be possible to repair a broken item - doing so shouldn't require any more metal but should reduce the item's quality, unless it's been named/is an artifact, at any rate.

I don't really see what repairing an item would add to the game.  You don't bother to have your clothier repair a threadbare XXPig Tail SockXX, you have it make a new one, and palm the old one off on some unsuspecting caravan or magma pool.

--Joe

[Waparius]

I don't really see what repairing an item would add to the game.  You don't bother to have your clothier repair a threadbare XXPig Tail SockXX, you have it make a new one, and palm the old one off on some unsuspecting caravan or magma pool.

Do rags tatter all the way to nothing right now? Not sure of it.

But either way while XXPig Tail SockXXs are presently easy to replace, when it's a XX<<*Steel Short Sword*>>XX that needs fixing, or even a XX*Cave Spider Silk Sock*XX it becomes a little different, and this isn't accounting for when improved farming and economics come in. If your fort's not in the right spot for pigtail farming, say, or it otherwise gets trickier to spam away with your cloth or cheese roast industry.