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[AlanL]

I just switched the values for iron and bronze in the raws. It seems the drawbacks of bronze have little effect with the games current system. Resharpening and reforging have little impact because weapons seldom ever get damaged in DF.

[qalnor]

Well high quality iron is steel. Roman steel exists, but I don't believe it was ever created intentionally. It is better than bronze, but again, I don't really think that we ever produced it intentionally.

[Sean Mirrsen]

Can I be the voice of common sense here? Let's pretend we're discussing it all to put it into a game, because if we could do that, it would be much simpler.

In this game, to make iron, you need: a smelter/magma smelter, and a piece of one of the three widely available ores.

To make bronze, you need the same smelter, and pieces of both tin and copper ores, that you have to find in the same area. You do get two bars for that, but the required ores are usually harder to find, and you need them both.

As such, taking into account the higher difficulty of bronze making, and the fact that there is at least SOME evidence that bronze may be stronger than iron, I think it should be made so. Bronze can be initially better, but get less advanced with increasing item quality than iron, because iron can be made into a material almost resembling steel with proper crafting, while bronze is always bronze, and only additional materials in its alloying alter its quality. Then, a masterwork iron item will be better than a masterwork bronze one, keeping the generally known progression of copper->bronze->iron, but slightly breaking it with lower quality items.

[PaperKrane]

I'm talking about the things in coelocanth and dio82's posts, particularly case hardening. I've got books at my place on the subject that are going to be better than most of the stuff I'll have to wade through on the internet, but I'm not going to be back there until after thanksgiving week. Heres just a 30 sec search I did:

Iron

Dio82 seems to know more than me, he'd probably be better to ask.

Edit: Oh wow, 3 pepole posted just while I was typing this lol. In response to Sean, I like the idea of the workers skill translating to the type of process used but wouldn't that mean that the first bronze would not be the high tin alloy, or would that be the high end of copper? I'm honestly not sure how the quality modifier for each material is coded. I always thought it was the same for all metals.

In response to zara, the wiki doesn't take into account things such as case hardening, which is what makes iron a better alternative than high tin bronze.

[ November 23, 2007: Message edited by: PaperKrane ]

[PaperKrane]

Sorry for the dbl post, guess I don't know how to edit right lol

[ November 23, 2007: Message edited by: PaperKrane ]

[Zaratustra]

I kind of split the differences halfway and made a tentative mod here. Feel free to add suggestions as more hard info comes around.

[Sean Mirrsen]

In case of bronze, no matter how you hammer it, you will get the same material as long as you're using the right material combination. In case of iron, differently worked iron gains different properties. So, let's say a novice metalworker makes a bronze sword, and an iron sword. Since it is impossible (or, rather, improbable) to alter the bronze alloy through forging, the first item qualities will rely on the softness and tensile strength of the bronze, yielding a very nice sword. But iron forged by unskilled hands will remain iron, and can possibly gain worse qualities, so a low quality iron sword will be worse than a low quality bronze sword. However, when forged by a master smith, iron can gain an enormous amount of strength through forging, while bronze will not go beyond its initial properties, and a well-crafted iron sword will be on par, or better than a well-crafted bronze sword.

Quality modifiers are hardcoded, but as we're in Suggestions, it seems right to suggest something like that to be added to the raws.

[ November 23, 2007: Message edited by: Sean Mirrsen ]

[Angela Christine]

Because steel is the best iron.  Iron already has two levels of quality, iron and steel.  If steel is high quality iron, then iron must be low quality iron.    :p