RFC: Metal spiraling

[shubla]

Go here: https://discord.gg/ZS5s23
Talk for like two seconds with anyone in there. About all your problems

Or maybe come and join #haven on Synirc?
http://irc.lc/synirc/haven/hearthling

[DDDsDD999]

Smelt cast iron -> make into bloom -> character with bad metalworking skills tries to get a +10% crit on cast iron -> go to step 1 with these bars again

Repeat until you have enough bars above the quality of your current anvil/hammer to remake them. Ore quality becomes less important the moral you spiral the bars and the higher quality your anvil/hammer are.
.

[ChildhoodObesity]

tbh i think this mechanic is v good for the game...

[Ozzy123]

I hope you guys won't entirely remove the mechanic, would be nice if higher Q ore would be more rewarding as using q10 cast iron bars to get q5000 wrought bars kinda sucks but overall the mechanic is actually good.

[Puc26]

I think that one of the solutions may be the introduction of tool wear. This will increase the value of the manufactured product and at the same time slow down the process of rapid increase in the quality of metals. At present, a lot of work and iron was needed to conquer the quality of metal. In a moment when 1 smith hammer can be used only - for example - 100 times, the process of obtaining a higher quality slows down. It will also allow lower quality items to retain any value, and high-quality tools will not cost so much

[Ardennesss]

In this Thread : Sprucecaps who are unaware of the monumental scale spiraling is done on, comment on how spiraling is done.

Spiraling is fine, the only way you're going to fix it is to ban custom clients. The mechanics behind how it works are not the problem, it's the scale.

[jorb]

overall the mechanic is actually good.

That is my impression as well. I have enjoyed that cast iron has a price on the market.

would be nice if higher Q ore would be more rewarding

Indeed.

[wonder-ass]

it took 2 years to get to the crazy quality were at today, spiraling isnt broken its quite fun actually. whats broken is that nobody can compete with people that spiraled the first as they will always be ahead of q unless you get some godly rng 10% pulls.

[SaltyCrate]

First, as was noted before the +10% random quality roll is the entire point and enabler of this whole process. (Are you sure that it is actually +10%? Wiki says that it is 10% chance for 20% increase in quality and this is also what I recall from memory, but maybe both wiki and my memory are outdated.)

You already have a pretty good solution for your second problem, so this leave us with the first one. But here is the thing: while it is true that metal spiraling exagerrates it, even without spiraling at all the fact that "qualities of metal (or iron, at least) seem to depend mainly on the equipment used, rather than the ore" is still very true simply by virtue of relatively long crafting chain. Let's take Chainmail Shirt for simple crafting example: applying wiki formulas to the whole process we get that ore quality are factored with the coefficient of 162 / 1024 or 0.158 in the quality of final product (other coefficients are: smelter - 81/1024, coal - 81/1024, anvil - 400/1024, hammer - 300/1024). So will even removing spiraling entirely solve the problem you want to solve?

That is not to say that there couldn't be other problems found with metal spiraling itself. Depends on what one want in the end, really. I think either of your solutions seems works for removing metal spiraling. Another possible and maybe simpler solution which came to mind is to halve the percentage value of possible quality increase. From what I recall of participating in spiraling process, qualities of finery forge and coal lag behind quality of metal, and thus already apply softcap at creating blooms part. But the current potential quality increase when forging the bloom outvalues this softcap. Which would not necessarily be the case with the numbers changed.

Let's say we have q1000 anvil, q1000 hammer, q100 cast iron and q500 average of finery forge and coal. Here is comparative process of quality increase with the +20% modifier:
1. cast iron -> bloom: q100 (no change, since average of finery forge and coal only softcaps)
bloom - > cast iron: q493.7 (simply by the formula, assuming no crit in quality)
2. cast iron -> bloom: q493.7 (still the same)
bloom - > cast iron: q715.2 (still assuming no crit)
3. cast iron -> bloom: q607,6 (softcap applies)
bloom - > cast iron: q935,1 assuming the crit (q779.2 with no crit)
4. cast iron -> bloom: q717,5
bloom - > cast iron: q1009,4 assuming the crit (q841.2 with no crit)
Which is already an increase of quality compared to anvil and hammer. Usually at least one more step is made for more significant increase at the cost of cast iron bars, but I will omit it.

Now let's see what will happen with +10% modifier:
Steps 1 and 2 are the same.
3. cast iron -> bloom: q607,6 (also the same)
bloom - > cast iron: q857,1 assuming the crit (q779.2 with no crit)
4. cast iron -> bloom: q678,5
bloom - > cast iron: q901,4 assuming the crit (q819.2 with no crit)
5. cast iron -> bloom: q700,5
bloom - > cast iron: q914,4 assuming the crit (q831.2 with no crit)
And it marginally increases afterwards, but at a very slow rate, reaching equilibrium before q1000.
In this scenario simple reducing of percentage high roll from +20% to +10% allows avoiding infinite spiraling of metal. Obviously, it depends on how far qualities of finery forge and coal actually lag behind. However I feel that the gap in qualities in this scenario is somewhat realitistic, if not smaller than it usually is.

[Pupsi]

As a miner i hate spiraling, its so boring but necessary. I would love to see more extremely rare high q nodes (both for ores/coal) instead of spiraling (at least i would be able to trade my goods without autism called spiraling). Gold was too common in previous worlds - i think it should be more rare. or maybe more mine levels with higher q but with much greater requirement on strength and tools.
I would also like to see that a pickaxe, a hammer, and other tools have fatigue - so to speak, as in real life - iron has the ability to scratch, so that you would have to update the tool all the time. You could have option to repair but with decreasing of quality