Steelmaking Discussion

[wolf1000wolf]

How about this process? This is based off the Wootz Steel process.

1) Build a "Furnace" out of bricks, hard metal.
2) Craft a "Empty Clay Crucible" out of clay. The clay crucible has X space/weight in it.
3) Fill the clay crucible with wrought nuggets, branches, leaves/whatnot. Lets say wrought nuggets weigh 0.1kg each, branches weigh 0.02kg and leaves weigh 0.01kg each.
4) Seal the clay crucible with sand and clay.
5) Place the sealed clay crucible into the furnace and heat for N hours. Furnace holds up to 4-6 clay crucibles and is fueled by coal with its max temperature scaling with quality of Furnace and heating temperature scaling with quality of coal used.
6) Take out your clay crucible, cool them in a basin of water for N hours.
7) Smash the cooled clay crucible apart and get either slag, Z kg lump of cast iron, or Z kg lump of steel.
8) Work that lump on an anvil to turn it into bars/nuggets of steel depending on the weight. Lets just say 1 bar of steel = 1kg.

Whether you get wrought, cast iron or steel and what quality they come out would depend on an arcane formula that mimics whether you gave your mix the correct amount of carbon. This can be done by taking into account the amount of your wrought, the types of branches/leaves and the qualities of their Essence/Substance. How long you have to heat your clay crucibles depends on the quality of the steel you're making. How long you have to cool your crucibles depends on the quality of the steel and quality of the water.

Example:
Lets say Wrought Iron has a base Carbon % of 0.1%, scaling(in reverse) with quality of its Substance. I put in 20 nuggets of q20 wrought Iron, giving me (20*0.1*(sqrt(10/20))) = 1.41 units of Carbon.

Lets say Steel should have a Carbon % of between 1%-2%. That means my 20 nuggets of wrought needs between 20-40 units of Carbon in my Crucible for it to turn into a Lump of Steel.

Each branch gives 1 unit of Carbon, scaling with Essence. I put in 20 q20 branches, giving me (20*1*(sqrt(20/10)))= 28.28 units of Carbon for a total of 29.69 units of Carbon in my Lump. So far so good.

The amount of time and the temperature I have to leave the clay crucible in the Furnace depends on the quality of steel I'm making. Since I'm using all q20 mats, my clay crucible contains q20 steel mixture. I need to heat my Clay Crucible for at least 2 hours at a minimum of 1000 Heat units, scaling with Quality, therefore I need to heat my Clay Crucible at (1000*(sqrt(20/10)) = 1414 Heat units.

Say a q10 Furnace has a maximum Heat of 1500 scaling with quality and each tick (10mins) of heating goes up by 100 units of Heat, scaling with Vitality of the Coal. Since I only need a 1414 Heat temp, my q10 Furnace is enough to make my q20 steel. I somehow have q30 Coal though, leading to my Furnance heating up by (100*(sqrt(30/10)))= 173 Heat per tick, needing only 9 ticks to get to the desired temperature instead of 15 ticks at q10 coal.

Once my Furnace hits the desired Heat, the timer for the Clay Crucible starts counting down to 2 hours aka 12 ticks. Total amount of time I have to leave my Clay Crucible in the Furnace is thus 21 ticks (3 and half hours). Or I could have put the Clay Crucible into the Furnace for less time only after the Heat level is reached but I have no reason to with my current setup goals.

After 3 and half hours, I take out the "Heated Clay Crucible" (using a two handed Tongs) and put it in a basin of water for cooling. I need to cool my 1500 Heat Clay Crucible back to 0 Heat for me to smash it apart and get the Lump of Steel.

q10 Water cools at 100 units per 10 mins, thus I need to leave my Clay Crucible in there for 150 minutes using my q10 water.

Thus after another 2 and half hours, I take my "Cooled Clay Crucible" out, smash it at an anvil to get a "Lump of Steel 2kg". I can then work it at the anvil to turn them into 2 Bars of Steel q20. (My anvil/hammer are also q20, otherwise there would be a small effect on the quality of the final Steel Bar).

HUZZAH. HOW'S THAT?

Thoughts:

In my example, total time of heating/cooling = 6 hours. However, after taking out the "Heated Clay Crucible" and putting it in the water, I don't really have to take it out until I want to. Thus, the times that I need to actually be there in this scenario is once at the beginning, another time after 3 and half hours, and finally at the end when making the Steel Bar.

If I were a hermit with limited time, I could also shorten the amount of time the steel takes to heat by using higher quality Coal. If I don't care as much about time, I could use lower quality coal. Also, if I just want ANY quality steel, I could make a q10 mixture, which take less Heat , thus less time in the furnace.

I can't be super lazy and just wait for the Clay Crucible to cool down in the Furnace though as eventually the Furnace fuel will run out, the Heat levels will fall, and thus reset the progress of my Steel, thus I have to take the Clay Crucible out before Heat falls too much. However, if I fuel my Furnace continually, I can keep my Furnace's Heat stays above my required levels, thus making more batches of Steel without waiting for the initial heating time (9 ticks in my case).

With this process, low quality steel is fairly quick to make while higher quality steel will either take longer or require higher quality materials and/or Furnace.

Ideas:
Carbon content for different types of branches/leaves can vary? Might be more database work for our devs though, but would be interesting.

Quality of the Clay Crucible could affect lost of Carbon during heating process if quality is lower than mixture.

Temperature of the Furnace should take into account quality of its fuel, thus preventing fueling the Furnace with highq coal in the beginning to reach the desired Heat and then fueling with crap coal later.

If the devs want to make steel even HARDER or add a level of attrition, just have carbon quality of branches/leaves be in a Range rather than a set number. This will result in a perhaps unavoidable failures due to RNG, but that can be mitigated if you don't use up the full 2kg+ capcity of the Clay Crucible and only put in say 1kg worth of wrought nuggets and branches. The lower the amount of material, the less the possible variance.


Thoughts/critiques?

[Duane]

How about this process? This is based off the Wootz Steel process.

In my example, total time of heating/cooling = 6 hours. However, after taking out the "Heated Clay Crucible" and putting it in the water, I don't really have to take it out until I want to. Thus, the times that I need to actually be there in this scenario is once at the beginning, another time after 3 and half hours, and finally at the end when making the Steel Bar.

If I were a hermit with limited time, I could also shorten the amount of time the steel takes to heat by using higher quality Coal. If I don't care as much about time, I could use lower quality coal. Also, if I just want ANY quality steel, I could make a q10 mixture, which take less Heat , thus less time in the furnace.

With this process, low quality steel is fairly quick to make while higher quality steel will either take longer or require higher quality materials and/or Furnace.

Thoughts/critiques?

I really like all of this, because I definitely think:

• Steel should be more difficult to make
• Steel should take more active time to produce
• Farming should matter in steel production

The numbers are a little weird. I really like the idea of breaking the crucibles afterwards just because there's not a stage in the game - except curios nobody really uses - that clay is disposable in any sense. Making steel with nuggets of wrought hurts my head to think about - but it could definitely work.

[Amanda44]

as a hermit I have made sttel ONCE in the last 3 worlds now, reason being the 12 hour time frame, see I work 6 days a week, 10-14 hours AT work, not including travel time , so yeah, even re-arranging my sleep time didn't help, I actually had to wait until I took a vacation to make a batch. my recommended solution to that was to increase the fuel capacity to give me 24 hours till fuel ran out, but that suggestion went nowhere.

some folks would rather that players such as I just not have nice things since we cannot play games all day long.

This is my issue too, I have to wait until I have a few days off to even attempt to make steel and even then I have problems as with my career I can be needed even during time off. I would just like to have a fuel capacity increase too if we can't have a shorter time period for it to be ready, ideally I'd like a combination of both.
I make steel initially for the discovery and the crafts/builds it opens up and then only ever make it again for the walls.

I feel exactly the same way with silk making too, unless you have plenty of time to spend in game or a flexible schedule in rl, both are a complete nightmare to produce.
I don't agree that people with a life outside of gaming should be penalised quite so harshly.

[Jalpha]

I agree with Vigilance about trade. I think the real problem here is a fear some people have of interacting with others and probably also a shortage of products they may use to trade for steel.

[MocroGunz]

Steel is super fucking easy to do.
I have no clue why anyone is complaining. It's not like you're sitting there the hole 12 hrs constantly filling the crucible when it goes down a bit.

All you have to do is chop down a tree, and that should be enough to fuel the steel.
Then you just do it at a time where you can refill them without having to worry about it at all.

[Kaios]

Steel is super fucking easy to do.
I have no clue why anyone is complaining. It's not like you're sitting there the hole 12 hrs constantly filling the crucible when it goes down a bit.

All you have to do is chop down a tree, and that should be enough to fuel the steel.
Then you just do it at a time where you can refill them without having to worry about it at all.

that's actually part of the issue expressed in this thread, it requires no effort for those who have time but time is more valuable than effort.

[Robben_DuMarsch]

I like this idea.

[stya]

Most people out there can produce steel, if you can't you should trade for it. No big issue honestly in my opinion. If you are an hermit and want to constantly produce steel or hq steel without having to worry about time... Something is wrong with your playstyle. Like silk, steel needs some special care and a 'bit" of dedication.

[azrid]

-1
I think premium materials/items that not everyone can manage can be a very inspiring goal.
The current steel system just favors one type of play style. Making the process more flexible would be very easy without changing the actual system itself as people already mentioned increased fuel capacity. But I am not in favor of that. I think it should be made so hard that Hermits can only dream about that sweet shiny steel bar. Hard to craft things that you really want should push you into trading rather than to change the game to fit your specific play style.

[MagicManICT]

I'm going to say first off that I did not completely read through this, only skimmed it, and haven't read the commentary, so I might have missed a finer point, and may be duplicating a comment.

I didn't play before w3, but if I recall right, early steel production was done in such a way that quality was greatly affected by how well you kept the crucible at a "middle level" for X hours. It was scrapped for the current system because people weren't bothering with it because it complicated things too much. At least that's what I recall of reading discussions on the matter. I'll note that I have played other games where quality of metal production was based on a mini-game similar to this, but the mini-game took minutes to do, not hours, and you produced in smallish quantities (or large quantities in a few cases... I'm referring to A Tale in the Desert). This could work if done right, but over hours isn't doing it right. (I'll also note that real-world steel production before modern smelting processes took weeks, sometimes months, depending on method used.)

As a hermit, my biggest issue is just remembering to log on multiple times a day to fuel the crucibles. Screw that. I'd rather just trade for the steel I want than have to log in every 8-10 hours to drop a few coal in each crucible.