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[qalnor]

It's not really as simple as the wikipedia article makes it out to be. Bronze is superior to Iron, but the wikipedia article incorrectly labels bronze as actually being harder:

'Bronze is stronger (harder)[2] than wrought iron, but'

It's pretty atrocious that they actually cited, when it is pretty horribly untrue. Iron is about 14 times as hard as bronze in absolute terms.

Anyhow, I don't know enough to say how it should be translated into the game, but I do like the idea of making tradeoffs and I'm completely in favor of bronze being statistically better.

[MindSnap]

quote:Originally posted by coelocanth:
<STRONG>It would be fair to give iron a lower base quality, but higher quality modifier.</STRONG>

I like this idea: bronze is slighty softer, and so would be hard to to extremely fine work with it. In contrast, irons brittleness(sp?) would mean that novices would have a harder time.

Offshoot idea: some materials have higher or lower quality caps, such as lead having a low maximum or adamantine having a high minimum (was this in in the last version?)

[dio82]

Have any of you guys EVER had to work with materials?

Any Bronze is soft easily malleable shit. Somewhat harder than aluminium. Nowhere even close to Steel which is in a completely different league.

Being soft and malleable is nice if you want to build something from it, but utterly useless for weapon use. Bronze swords are so soft that they'll be useless after a single strike against any harder material (eg. case hardned iron armor or other iron based swords).

Let's compare some values:

Bronze alloys:
Tensile strength: 550-650 MPa
0.2% proof: 250-270 MPa
Hardness HB 140-150

Brass: pretty much the same

White cast iron:
Tensile strength: 340-480 MPa
0.2% proof: 200-280 MPa
Hardness HB 220

Grey cast iron:
Tensile strength: 450 - 700 MPa
0.2% proof: 300 - 530 MPa
HB: 220 - 310

Tensile strength is pretty meaningless in practice. Proof strength is much more important as failure criterion.

So what do we see?
Grey cast iron is superior in every aspect to Bronzes.
White cast iron has a wider range for proof strength, it is both below AND above that of brass. It's hardness is SIGNIFICANTLY better. Armour made from this would be quite impervious to Brass cutting weapons.
The biggest benefit, though, is not really displayed in the numbers. Bronze is Bronze. There is little room for variation. Cast iron, on the other hand, can be case hardened and tempered to yield vastly differing material properties in different locations of the same piece.

THAT is the reason why for example camshafts are made from iron and not brass.

Another note:
Case hardening via carburization and nitriding as well as tempering was somewhat known in the middle ages. IMHO it would be no huge stretch of imagination if Dwarfs could develop a rudimentary knowledge of this. This could be implemented via skills. The range of attributes for iron products would be HUGE based on skills. A legendary weaponsmith would probably produce case hardened tempered wrought iron / steel swords with amazing attributes compared to brass.

Brass on the other had has very little room for skills affecting attributes.

[Zurai]

quote:Originally posted by dio82:
<STRONG>Have any of you guys EVER had to work with materials?</STRONG>

Have you ever tried to work with ancient materials? Or just read any histories? Of all the histories I've read, one hundred percent of them have stated that bronze weapons and armor were better than iron ones. Oh, sure, modern iron is better. Bronze was so much better that the only reason iron was used at all is because bronze became impossible to make with the collapse of the tin trade.

[Abyssal Squid]

Not to mention that there are loads of different bronze alloys, all with different properties, and of course the alloys used in modern trinketmaking are going to be soft and malleable and otherwise suited to making trinkets rather than weapons.

[Seryntas]

Tangentially, isn't brass too malleable to make good weapons and armor?  I don't actually know how metals work, so someone can hopefully explain to me.  I know from experience that the alloy of brass used to make high-quality instruments is malleable enough to be dented by looking at it funny, though, although I do know that "brass" can refer to many different alloys.

[PaperKrane]

Lets use the major source of the article for this discussion instead of the wiki itself.

Here are a few quotes:

"wrought iron is considerably stronger than copper and early (unintentionally alloyed) bronze."

"... wrought iron, even in its softest condition, has about the same hardness as hardened copper and early bronze. When wrought iron is cold or warm worked ... making it considerably superior to copper and early bronze."

"It is much more difficult to manufacture high-tin bronzes since three, separate, melting procedures are required."

And finally, as we can see by the time line, the period in which Bronze was sufficiently alloyed to be stronger than wrought iron lasted only 500 years before the advent of early steels.

In my opinion, there are many classifications of even a single metal. The DF iron should represent iron of a higher quality than wrought, as any race with such advanced metallurgy would know of these relatively simple procedures. Meaning that unless we're going to make all the different types of each metal, bronze should only be an alternative when lacking iron. But thats just me.
http://www.llnl.gov/tid/lof/documents/pdf/238547.pdf

[Zurai]

Hardness isn't the be-all, end-all of weapon and armor making. Otherwise, diamond weapons and armor would be king - and in reality, such an item would be completely worthless because it would shatter on the first strike. Obviously, the material cannot be too soft - gold and silver and lead are unsuitable for weapons and armor as well - but the fact that bronze is softer than iron has little bearing on whether it makes superior weapons and armor.

EDIT: You'll also note that, in the exact same document, it shows that non-early era bronze is functionally the same hardness as wrought iron. Most of the article is also talking about steel rather than iron, which has no bearing on the discussion at hand; no one's arguing that bronze is better than steel.

[ November 22, 2007: Message edited by: Zurai ]

[Angela Christine]

To account for the various qualities of bronze and iron, why not make them equally[/] good in terms of the damage and armor values?  

Then deciding what you want to use would be based on what ores you have available, weight, what metals you can easily trade for, and aesthetics.  If you have iron, iron may be easier.  But if you only have a little iron, you might want to save it for steel and use bronze in the meantime.  If your fuel supply is extremely limited, bronze might be more fuel efficient than iron or steel.

[PaperKrane]

quote:Originally posted by Zurai:
<STRONG> it shows that non-early era bronze is functionally the same hardness as wrought iron. Most of the article is also talking about steel rather than iron, which has no bearing on the discussion at hand; no one's arguing that bronze is better than steel.
[ November 22, 2007: Message edited by: Zurai ]</STRONG>

It says the 10% tin bronze is better, but that is the high end of bronze, wrought iron is the low end of iron, even steel is essentially iron with a higher carbon content. Theres a whole range of the metals, why would we use the best bronze and not the best iron?

[0x517A5D]

quote:Originally posted by PaperKrane:
<STRONG>In my opinion, there are many classifications of even a single metal. The DF iron should represent iron of a higher quality than wrought, as any race with such advanced metallurgy would know of these relatively simple procedures.</STRONG>

I've thought about this long and hard, and I disagree.  Despite being the guy who proposed no-carbon maraging steel.

The dwarves are at the knowledge level & technology level of alchemy.  Their alchemists likely focus more on metals & ore than our historical alchemists (with their focus on acids & minding the philosopher's stone).  So they know quite a bit about metals, yes.  Lots of lore.

As an example, they know enough to smelt zinc.  Smelting zinc in a furnace requires a vapor-cooling (distillation) recovery system because the boiling point of the metal is so close to the reaction temperature of the deoxidation reactions.

They know that certain techniques work, and others that don't work.  They almost certainly can make pure forms of the strong acids, and know how to use them on ores.  They can do a lot.  Hell, they probably can do flame spectroscopy, at least the parts that can be judged by eye.

But they don't know why.  They don't have the fundamental framework that lets them classify chemical reactions, reason about them, and invent specific techniques to carry out the desired reactions with a minimum of side-reactions.  They don't have X-ray crystallograpy, mass spectrometry, or any sort of chromatography.  They don't have any type of electrochemical analysis (nor electric or thermoelectric metal refining).  And they definately don't have nuclear magnetic resonance.

So no.  They are at the level of trial-and-error, and smelter techniques that work on ore from one mine but not that from another mine.  Their metal quality varies.  Even their carefully-made steel is barely what we would call mild steel, much less tool steel.  That pair of pliers in your garage, manufactured in China along with ten million others?  Beyond their capability.

Well, this turned into more of a rant than I intended.  I'll wind it up here.

0x517A5D

[Zurai]

quote:Originally posted by PaperKrane:
<STRONG>It says the 10% tin bronze is better, but that is the high end of bronze, wrought iron is the low end of iron, even steel is essentially iron with a higher carbon content. Theres a whole range of the metals, why would we use the best bronze and not the best iron?</STRONG>

Because the paper doesn't list any facts for the best iron. And, again, you ignored the entire main point of my post in favor of picking at my edit. Here it is again:

Hardness is not the end-all be-all of alloy properties. A metal that is softer can still be superior for weapon and armor construction. In fact, it frequently IS superior. Harder metals are far more likely to be brittle or inflexible, both of which are at least as important as hardness. Steel is so incredible because it's very hard AND it's not at all brittle AND when forged right it's incredibly flexible. You can bend a well-forged sword nearly a foot out of line and it'll snap right back into position. Try doing that with most wrought iron and either it won't snap back or it'll break.

[PaperKrane]

quote:Originally posted by Zurai:
<STRONG>

Because the paper doesn't list any facts for the best iron. And, again, you ignored the entire main point of my post in favor of picking at my edit. Here it is again: </STRONG>

I understand that, I'm not claiming it is, wrought iron is only used in ceremonial weapons and such. The bronze in DF is certainly high tin, but I'm not talking about wrought iron VS. bronze, or making stuff out of pig iron. Just because the wiki source doesn't have  more information doesn't mean we can't use better sources.

I just can't understand why we would have bronze represent high quality bronze, but have the  opposite be true for iron.

[Zurai]

quote:Originally posted by PaperKrane:
<STRONG>I just can't understand why we would have bronze represent high quality bronze, but have the  opposite be true for iron.</STRONG>

Find me a source that shows that high medieval quality iron is dramatically better for weapons and armor than high weapons grade bronze. Every source I've encountered has stated that bronze was superior and only the lack of tin precipitated the Iron Age.

[Zaratustra]

In reality iron and bronze weapons have about the same degree of hardness and bronze weapons in fact are superior in the fact that they don’t rust. However, bronze is a composite metal and the raw metals are relatively difficult to find in large quantities, whereas iron is relatively abundant in nature.

During the Iron Age, the best tools and weapons were made from steel, which is an alloy consisting mostly of iron, with a carbon content between 0.02% and 1.7% by weight. Steel weapons and tools were superior to bronze weapons and tools. But steel was difficult to produce with the methods available at the time, and most of the metal produced in the Iron Age was wrought iron. Wrought iron is weaker than bronze, but people switched anyway. Iron is much cheaper than bronze, since it is much more common than copper and tin, which are the ingredients of bronze. Additionally it is easier to resharpen an iron tool, whereas bronze needs reforging.

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

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