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[PTTG??]

I've been toying with a mod to change the balance of metals and mining, with three goals: give more variety to tool metals, remove redundancy in the precious metals, and make fossil fuels a practical option- some of the most important mined minerals are coals. Here's the plan so far:

White Steel: Best non-adamant metal. Treated with Magnesium and Zinc.
Steel: DF regular Steel
Bismuth Bronze: Copper with tin and Bismuth. Sharper.
Bronze: Copper with Tin. Good as iron on balance.
Iron: DF regular Iron.
Copper: DF regular Copper
Tin: Much more abundant; useful.
Precious Metals:
Platinum: EXTREME rarity. It replaces aluminum; nothing against Aluminum, it just breaks the feel.
Gold: Gold will form in speckles of rock- gold-speckled rock has a low percentage of gold. Native gold exists only in small clusters.
Electrum: Native Electrum exists- I'm not sure whether to have it smelt into both bars or two of the one.
Silver: Much like gold, but more common.
White Gold: There is a "cheap" version of gold and silver for your roads or whatever.
Sterling Silver: Like White Gold.
Brass: Copper-zinc. Good for trinkets, instruments.
Fine Pewter: Leadless, requires more fuel.
Base Pewter: uses lead but less fuel. significant savings factoring in that you get more bars.
Economic Metals:
Pig Iron: DF standard PI
Bismuth: I was going to get rid of it, but it has some awesome properties- it's diamagnetic. I guess it should go, though.
Lead: present for a number of reasons- can here be used to make poor-quality projectiles. Also, used in glass.
Magnesium: Pure Magnesium for tools and to improve steel. Explodes in magma.
Zinc: needs to be in for brass.
nickel: cheapens out precious metals and is a by-product of nickeliron (basically native iron)

[Morlark]

Good stuff. I've been puttering about with changing the metals recently myself, so this is certainly very interesting.

[PTTG??]

So I made a spreadsheet and included a wide variety of values such as rarity, "shininess", economic use, and so on. I calculated the values for each metal and refined the names:

Code: [Select]

Metal Rarity Class Quality Value
Coal 0.5 0 1
Tin 1 2 50 2
Copper 1 2 60 2
Zinc 2 1 3
Base Pewter 2 3 4
Lead 2 1 20 3
Nickel 2 1 60 6
Fine Pewter 3 3 8
Pig Iron 3 1 8
Magnesium 2 1 80 8
Bronze 2 2 100 9
Brass 3 3 9
Nickel Silver 3 3 40 12
Iron 3 2 100 14
White Gold 4 3 40 20
Silver 4 3 50 24
Steel 4 2 120 27
Electrum 5 3 27
Gold 5 3 30
Fine Steel 6 2 150 40
Platinum 6 3 50
Rarity: Each level of rarity is roughly exponentially more rare than the last.

Class: 0: Fuel. 1: Economic. 2: Tool. 3: Precious.

Quality: The metal's % of weapon damage. No entry means no weapons. Lead can only be used for bolts.

Value: Cost in Crowns. This was calibrated so that gold is the same as before; it accounts for many of the metal's useful properties, but dwarves still like a steel floor over a silver one, because it's "economically" valuable.

Code: [Select]

Bars per Ore Clump:

Metal Rarity Poor Norm Native
Coal 0.5 0.7 2 10
Tin 1 0.5 1.5 8
Copper 1 0.5 1.5 8
Zinc 2 0 1 5
Lead 2 0 1 5
Nickel 2 0 1 5
Magnesium 2 0 1 5
Iron 3 0.1 1 4
Silver 4 0 0.5 4
Gold 5 0 0.25 4
Platinum 6 0 0 3
As you can see, the economic metals are kind of rare- however, only a few bars are required to produce a much greater amount of the end alloy. Tin and copper are both very common, and thus Bronze should be a good metal to use, as it is equal to iron in weapon quality. That said, Bronze requires more work to make useful. Iron can be used much more quickly. Steel is rare and has 120% the damage of iron. Fine Steel (that has been treated with zinc and magnesium) is 150%, and costs almost as much as Platnium, which now only forms in small clusters. Electrum costs exactly the same as Steel, making it a sensible trade metal.

All alloying requires finished bars, because most metals have several ores and it is clutter-y.

Oh, and there will be a way to use a metal- probably Magnez., to treat stone and turn most kinds or rock into magma-proof stone for mechanisms. Naturally, it will be difficult and expensive.

[Normandy]

Tin, in the real world, is actually quite rare, whist copper is found nearly everywhere.

[Deon]

Also your lead bolts will be 2,5 times weaker than cat bone bolts. Is it real?

[MuonDecay]

Also your lead bolts will be 2,5 times weaker than cat bone bolts. Is it real?

Sounds sensible.

Lead may be heavy, but it is incredibly soft. An arrow-sized shaft of lead could be bent in half by an average man using only 3 or 4 fingers of one hand.

Myself, I could probably tie a leaden arrow/bolt into a butterfly knot without straining myself, and I'm hardly the pinnacle of human strength.

Bone, on the other hand, is a stiff material that can also hold a sharper edge than a soft metal can.

[PTTG??]

Yeah, I was thinking lead bolts might be fun to use as ammo for trainees or something. I wonder if there would be a way to make lead bolts deal less critical damage.

I didn't realize how rare tin is- but so many reactions use it. That is the great thing about DF- it doesn't take place on earth. I think I'll have tin stay as it is; It's best for gameplay that way.

[Moron]

The inclusion of magnesium seems a bit too modern to fit into the DF world; as far as I know, magnesium was not isolated as a metal until the 1800s and practical extraction methods were not developed until the mid 20th century, involving electricity, vacuum and other high tech processes.

Still I agree it would be nice to have some kind of even better steel that is harder to make than ordinary steel

[Sean Mirrsen]

When I was looking for new materials, I deemed magnesium reasonably viable in DF.

I don't mean to devalue PTTG's work (though I probably do mean to promote mine:)), but isn't this mod more of a cost/balance change version of the Minerals mod's main content?

[PTTG??]

It's related, but while the Minerals Mod has the end effect of making more realistic ores and much more metals, I intend to change the gameplay, by doing such things as making coal a viable fuel source and making more of the standard metals available at once.

But to be honest, I actually was going to implement some of the mineral mod stuff- especially the Rock Crystal, because that fits right in to the plan. I hope you don't mind, I was going to mention it when I released it.

[Sean Mirrsen]

Not at all, my main focus is now Modbase. You can "pay tribute" by using that to create the mod. And I've done some gameplay tweaks myself, adding magnetite sand and compacted peat for nonstandard steelmaking locations.

[Moron]

I would say that manganese would be a more plausible metal for use in DF for making superior steel; it is actually used in some types of steel (unlike magnesium), and is also not quite so tricky to work with (magnesium will combust at a temperature lower than its melting point)

In fact, according to Wikipedia: "Manganese can be found in the iron ores used by the Spartans. Some speculate that the exceptional hardness of Spartan steels derives from the inadvertent production of an iron-manganese alloy."

[PTTG??]

OK, Manganese will replace Magnesium. I can hardly tell the difference anyway; and the Spartans thing has convinced me.
I decided that instead of naming each metal ore, such as Malachite, Hematite, and so on, I want to simply have names like "poor Iron ore" "good Iron ore" and "native Nickel-Iron", as these terms are easier to recognize.

[Derakon]

I rather like the different names for ore-bearing rock, and it's easy enough to 'k' over one of them to see what smelting it gets you. It doesn't take long to learn what each one is.

[PTTG??]

I finished it, and after testing it I decided that the whole idea is a write-off. If anyone's interested in it, let me know, but I don't think it's quality.