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[AceSV]

So a new version of Dwarf Fortress will mean a new version of Furry Fortress.  Although, I mostly want to keep things simple, I was wondering about adding different, realistic types of iron and steel.  For example,

Wrought Iron - The basic kind of iron known in medieval Europe
Cast Iron - More brittle but easier to work.  Post-medieval in Europe, but known in China since ancient times. 
Pattern Weld - A pretty looking, but primitive steel
Crucible Steel - Wootz, Damascus style steel
Folded Steel & Tamahagane - Katana steel, also known in Korea and China. 
Blast Steel - Steel produced in a blast furnace, possibly a different workshop than a smelter.  Again, Post-medieval in Europe, but not in Asia. 
Flux Steel - To my knowledge, using flux stone is a modern thing and results in a different type of steel. 
Alchemic Steel - Could be a fantasy steel, however, steels like Indian wootz are found to have helpful impurities in them like vanadium which improve the quality of the blade. 
Cold Iron - Classic fantasy material which is deadly to magical creatures.  Not sure how that would work in DF though. 
Nickel Steel - Steel with nickel added.  Nickel is added to modern steels, but never just nickel, it is always part of chrome steel or cobalt steel.  Chrome and Cobalt require electricity to smelt. 
Neutron Steel - Since FuFo3 has Neutronium. 

But if I added stuff like that, what would be the point?  What stops the player from just making the best kinds of steel?  What strategic advantage is there to making a low-grade steel like Pattern Weld or Cast Iron instead of Wootz or Blast Steel?  I need some ideas. 

Seems to me that Cast Iron might be pointless, since you can't cast metals in Dwarf fortress.  Best I can think of is some kind of custom workshop that allows you to make metal items without an anvil, but I'm not going to try and rewrite the Forge.  Might be used as a precursor to Blast Steel.  Maybe you can get a higher yield of Cast Iron from iron ores, but it's not suitable for weapons production. 

Pattern Welding I think is accomplished by just combining irons with different carbon content, just iron, no special ingredients. 

In Furry Fortress, Crucible Steel uses clay and clear glass, while Flux Steel uses flux stone, but they result in the same metal. 

Katana Steel, to my knowledge is a very refined version of pattern welding (although I've had katana nuts tell me it's not at all related to western pattern welding) but I know the folding is laborious and the process takes a long time and clay is involved.  So maybe you start with Wrought Iron and Pig Iron to make Pattern Steel, then you continue to fold the Pattern Steel and use some clay to make Folded Steel. 

Blast Steel would require a Blast Furnace, which could be a separate workshop from the normal Smelter.  There's a diagram of an ancient Chinese blast furnace that uses a water-wheel to power the bellows, so it could be a workshop that requires Power.  There's probably more involved, but I'd need to research it. 


Any thoughts on the subject would be appreciated. 

[Grimlocke]

More metallurgy in mods? I am predictably all for it!

There are a few duplicate materials in there, particularly cast iron and 'blast iron'. Blast furnaces output cast iron, or in some configurations pig iron which is just more impure cast iron. Pig iron could be used as cast iron though, so the difference in name is more to denote their purpose. Crucible steel and wootz are also mostly the same thing, wootz is just crucible steel specifically from Indo-Persia and parts of Central Asia. You could still make wootz a more laborious and expensive to make crucible steel, have it require some exotic plant stuff or something. The exact recipe was lost and the qualities may also have been down to rare ore inclusions.

Blast furnaces existed in Europe since the 13th, possibly 12th century. They didn't fully replace the lower-tech bloomeries until quite recently but they did exist, and some like the Swedish and Swiss who had plenty of high-grade ore to work with built sizeable steel industries well before 1500. Oddly enough, cast iron didn't come into use around this period. Blast furnaces don't work too well without flux, so likely it was used as well, though I can't find confirmation for that offhand.

Chinese blast furnaces had an addition known as a puddling furnace, which is just a big pond which was filled with furnace output and stirred as it cooled. This had the convenient effect clearing out most impurity from the iron. I use this type of furnace in my own mod, since ancient Chinese metallurgy and Dwarves seemed to go together well enough.

Nickel steel is stainless steel, which actually did occur in ancient history in the form of meteoric iron. It makes for fairly poor weapons and armor though.

Pattern welding was usually done with iron AND steel. Doing it with only iron would be a bit pointless, since it would all have the same hardness anyway. Steel was made by case hardening (baking a chunk of iron along with coal dust for a really long time), that was than hammered into sheet and pattern-welded in with iron. They also often imported better quality steel to use for the edge of a weapon, which was forge-welded into a 'spine' of pattern-welded steel.

'Katana steel' is not an actual material, at least not any more than 'sandwich matter' in that katanas are not made from a homogeneous steel. The 'folding' that is often described as some sort of Eastern sorcery is actually a purifying process that was also done on iron and steel in the west. Its not the same pattern welding, since the goal of folding is to keep on folding and hammering impure steel to get a more homogeneous, less dirty steel whereas with pattern welding you separate layers of iron and steel. The actual construction of katanas differed through time, but the general idea was to make a steel sandwich with a really hard but brittle steel in the middle for the edge, and softer steel on the spine. This is NOT what your seeing as that characteristic wavy line along the edge, that is the differential hardening where they cover the spine of the blade in clay and leave the edge bare before quenching it, which again results in a harder edge and more resilient spine.

... That's all I got, hope that was useful or at least interesting!

[AceSV]

There are a few duplicate materials in there, particularly cast iron and 'blast iron'. Blast furnaces output cast iron, or in some configurations pig iron which is just more impure cast iron.

Right, so cast iron is iron, blast steel is steel. 

Nickel steel is stainless steel, which actually did occur in ancient history in the form of meteoric iron. It makes for fairly poor weapons and armor though.

Stainless steel I think has to have chromium in it, and chromium is the metal that makes stainless steel less good at cutting.  I've always heard that Fe-Ni meteorite metal wouldn't be as good for swords as plain steel, but I could never find numbers on iron-nickel-carbon alloys specifically. 

Pattern welding was usually done with iron AND steel.

I guess I meant iron and pig iron.  I've always it as "mixing iron with various levels of carbon". 

'Katana steel' is not an actual material, ...

I was going to call it laminated steel, since that's what I thought it was called, but I looked it up and read that folded steel and pattern welding are both laminated steels. 

... That's all I got, hope that was useful or at least interesting!

Indeed it has been, thank you.  It's always kind of a pain to research stuff like this, nice to have it all in one place. 

[AceSV]

So actually, a point about using limestone flux, I can never find any explanations of medieval steel-making that claim that limestone or flux stones were consumed in the various medieval steel-making processes.  Even in the Industrial Era Bessemer Process, dolomite was used in the furnace lining to lower the acidity for phosphorus high iron ores, but not used as is depicted in vanilla Dwarf Fortress.  I have heard of glass flux and bone flux, but never lime or limestone for pre-modern steel making. 

So if we're assuming that 1400s dwarves just know these things out of a different metallurgical history, there's another similar type of steel, manganese steel.  If you had a furnace capable of melting iron, you could have added pyrolusite (which was used in ancient/medieval glass making) to make manganese steel, which is harder but no more brittle and reduces impurities. 

EDIT:
So doing some more reading just now, it seems like maybe the idea of going straight from iron ore to wrought iron is maybe not correct.  Blast furnace produces cast iron/pig iron for ore and a bloomery produces a bloom, which are then turned into wrought iron later.  So maybe that's how I'll do it. 

I'm also thinking that the bloomery and blast furnace might be separate from the smelter, so you just can't produce any sort of iron at the smelter, and you have the choice to go straight for a water powered blast furnace or an unpowered bloomery. 

[Aranador]

Your point about 'what is the point' of many different iron/steel alloys is something I always keep in mind when planning this sort of thing.  DF already has tons of bloat that don't necessarily add anything fun or interesting to the game.  In vanilla DF, you have Iron, Pig Iron, and Steel.  They all serve distinct, useful game purposes.  Iron is the metal against which all others are measured, the baseline yardstick.  It is generally abundant, and serves its purpose very well.  Steel is better in almost every way, but steel is slower and more complicated to acquire.  By all means, a player will certainly aim to upgrade everything to steel, given time, but time is an acceptable cost.  Pig Iron's role is simply to assist in making the steel process time-costly.

So - any new metal you add, has to fit into the game in a way that has some utility (else there is no point to it's existence) and has an appropriate cost for its utility - measured in time or resources.

Fortunately, DF is a fantasy game, and you can hand wave your way through a few reactions without needing too much sense.  Or if you are striving for super realism, you need only remind yourself that iron and steel is what they had, and the game already does them with sufficient fidelity than you would just be faffing about if you tried to add or change it.

Anyway - in my current rewrite of the MLP mod, I have carefully introduced four new metals, all dependent on the fact that it is a world of magical ponies who do alchemy.  Each of these magical metals serves a specific design purpose, and each of them has a specific requirement to make them, which limits their ability to be mass produced.

Firstly - their purpose.  The way I designed the mod, you can only use the metals to make certain specific, exotic weapons.  Now a player could make a bunch, melt them down, and gain access to ingots to turn into what ever, but the in game reactions basically do not let you make the metals themselves directly.  So the purpose is specific, rare weapon types.

One metal is light and sharp.  It still isn't adamantine, but it is used to produce a katana style sword that is significantly better than normal swords.

Two other metals are slight variations on this, mostly to be more suitable for the spear and scythe weapons they are intended for.  I could have used the same metal, but in order to make it less easy for mass production, I made three metals each with different input requirements.

The final metal is basically a very heavy steel, intended for use in a mace type weapon.  Of all the new stuff, it is probably the easiest to mass produce, and conversely it is the least OP of them.  None the less, the weight of the weapon makes it deadly.

So - a metal that is sharper, a metal that is heavier, a metal that is lighter, a metal that is tougher - lots of ways you can distinguish a new metal.  For my mod, I just needed a few extra weapon metals for my 'hero' weapons, as otherwise I was happy for steel to be the top dog.  Spoilers are still better, but ponies don't go there (player preference)

The second part is the difficulty or rarity of the metal.  In my case, I made each metal start with a bar of steel, and then require a bunch of other uncommon things - pyrolusite and cinnabar are common for them all (cinnabar is my go to 'alchemy' 'fuel') and then things like ilmenite, rutile, pitchblende, chromite and other minor cluster stones as seemed appropriate.  On a map where you can mine 1000's of iron ores, you can probably mine dozens of these.

The reaction produces a special weapon blank tool.  The tool isn't in the entity list, so you cant just buy them or make them out of lead or anything - nor can you go and forge that into the weapon/armour of your choice (although a player might decided to mass produce and melt them, if they really felt the need to get a bar of special metal)

Then you have the weapon reaction itself, which requires a couple of special tools and reagents.  The tools are re-usable at least, but you'll need a gemstone of the right type for your grind stone. (well - not for the mace weapon) so again, the end product is made a little more difficult to produce.  Finally, these weapon reactions include decorations built in (you don't go making unadorned hero weapons) which is still more stuff you need to provide.

Thus we add 'cost' to our metals.  Here the cost is rare materials, and that the end product requires special tools and more materials.

But the new metals have a place, they have value, and they do not supplant existing materials.  You still want steel for your armour.  You still want iron for your mass produced militia equipment.  But now, your favourite unit can sport a hero weapon, and be all cool.


TLDR - make sure your new material serves a purpose that promotes fun, and doesn't just supplant an existing game element totally.

[AceSV]

So what you're describing actually sounds a lot like the fantasy metals that Furry Fortress has, pyrochalcum(sharp), aerochalcum(light), geochalcum(heavy), hydrochalcum(valuable), dracometal(balanced, rare) and neutronium(comically dense).  There's also ironwood, an underground wood with the properties of iron, and bladebough, underground wood with the sharpness of obsidian. 

My reason for including all of these things was that I was frustrated with steel-making in vanilla.  It's such a rare thing to have iron ore and flux stone in the same place, and it's so hard to import them.  (which is also why Furry Fortress adds the crucible steel reaction with clay and clear glass, since you can reliably import those)  (It also gives the world a more fantasy feel) 

I guess what I want is to allow you to make the game's strongest metal anywhere in the world (or in more places), but I still want there to be some challenge in making it, a sense of accomplishment upon producing it, better than just, "yay, I picked the right map".  And to some extent, you should be free to pick a method that works best for you.  Maybe you like coming up with powered Blast Furnaces, maybe you prefer the quiet zen of repeatedly folding Laminated Steel. 



So, okay, as of right now, I'm thinking I make it so that iron ore cannot be processed at the smelter.  You can build either a bloomery, or a blast furnace, which requires power.  Bloomery produces blooms, which can be worked into wrought iron or pig iron (presumably at the same workshop, maybe at the forge, as this should require an anvil).  Wrought iron + pig iron OR wrought iron + wrought iron + carbon = Pattern Weld, further work on the Pattern Weld will become Folded Steel or Laminated Steel.  Blast Furnaces will produce cast iron/pig iron, which can be decarburized (stirred?) into wrought iron, or mixed into Blast Steel or combined with flux stone into Flux Steel. 

Crucible steel should also be worked in, not sure if it should be done at the bloomery or the blast furnace.  It would probably work like current Furry Fortress crucible steel, clay + clear glass + carbon + iron = crucible steel.  Wootz could be an improved type of crucible steel, maybe from a specific ore, or from adding a certain mineral.  Or, to keep a medieval European perspective, Wootz could be made for non-playable civs and can only be imported, not natively produced. 

So,
Useless Tier = Cast Iron/Pig Iron, Bloom
Tier 1 = Wrought Iron
Tier 2 = Pattern Weld
Tier 3 = Laminated Steel, Blast Steel, Crucible Steel
Tier 4 = Flux Steel, Wootz

Also, I probably want to update some of my other fantasy metals to work within this system.  I might have you produce Nickel in the same way as Iron, as I think that's how it works. 

If anyone wants to pick over my full list of FuFo metals, here it is

Paktong = copper + nickel (50/50 cupronickel)
Bulletta = lead + antimony (bullet metal, harder than lead, heavier than antimony)
White Gold = gold + nickel
Antimonial Bronze = copper + antimony (actually probably would use arsenical bronze)
Doubloonium = gold + antimony (allegedly creates a purer gold, or would harden gold, a bit dubious) 
Novachalcum = pyrochalcum + aerochalcum + geochalcum + hydrochalcum

Possibly,
Nickel Steel = nickel + steel
Mangan Steel = pyrolusite + steel

Pyrolith (ore) -> Pyrochalcum (metal)  (sharp)
Hydrolith (ore) -> Hydrochalcum (metal)  (valuable, can be made into clothing)
Aerolith (ore) -> Aerochalcum (metal)  (lightweight)
Geolith (ore) -> Geochalcum (metal) (heavy, blunt)
Dragon Fossil (ore) -> Dracometal (metal)  (bone-like, very light, but tough as metal) 
Neutronium Ore (ore) -> Neutronium (~metal)  (as dense as slade, supposed to be very rare, but caravans will shower you with it) 

In one of the previous versions, you could use pyrochalcum + pig iron + flux + carbon = Blaze Steel, and so on for the other 3, but eventually, I found this tedious.

An idea that I never got around to was that Neutronium will bond with tetravalent elements, i.e. carbon and silicon, so Neutronium + steel = Neutron steel, Neutronium + Diamond = Neutron Crystal, Neutronium + Graphite = Neutron Paper, Neutronium + sand = Neutron Glass.  My original desire was that when Neutronium ore is smelted into Neutronium metal it "explodes", rapidly lowering in density as it mixes with available impurities. 

I definitely want to make Neutronium only available through custom workshops, although I'm not sure if that would make it more abundant via caravans. 

[Grimlocke]

There are a few duplicate materials in there, particularly cast iron and 'blast iron'. Blast furnaces output cast iron, or in some configurations pig iron which is just more impure cast iron.

Right, so cast iron is iron, blast steel is steel. 

Both are pig iron, or cast iron. In any case iron with a very high carbon content which needs to be 'fined' into wrought iron. The blast furnace I use in my mod has an added puddling furnace that does the fining, in order to balance out the need for flux with much higher productivity.

So actually, a point about using limestone flux, I can never find any explanations of medieval steel-making that claim that limestone or flux stones were consumed in the various medieval steel-making processes.  Even in the Industrial Era Bessemer Process, dolomite was used in the furnace lining to lower the acidity for phosphorus high iron ores, but not used as is depicted in vanilla Dwarf Fortress.  I have heard of glass flux and bone flux, but never lime or limestone for pre-modern steel making. 

So if we're assuming that 1400s dwarves just know these things out of a different metallurgical history, there's another similar type of steel, manganese steel.  If you had a furnace capable of melting iron, you could have added pyrolusite (which was used in ancient/medieval glass making) to make manganese steel, which is harder but no more brittle and reduces impurities. 

Accurate information of medieval metallurgy is... sparse. There seems to have been a tendency to keep trade secrets. I will look into this a bit more once I have time.

Manganese smelting is definitely not medieval tech, using the ore in glass in this case is more similar to the use of cinnabar in glass and dyes as I don't think they could actually turn manganese into its metallic form. Some types of modern 'supersteels' are also much harder to work with traditional forges. Of course, its a fantasy game and compared to rainbow horse metal its still sensible enough.

TLDR - make sure your new material serves a purpose that promotes fun, and doesn't just supplant an existing game element totally.

This. I'm generally not a huge fan of fantasy metals, but this would be a good way to do them.

[AceSV]

There are a few duplicate materials in there, particularly cast iron and 'blast iron'. Blast furnaces output cast iron, or in some configurations pig iron which is just more impure cast iron.

Right, so cast iron is iron, blast steel is steel. 

Both are pig iron, or cast iron. In any case iron with a very high carbon content which needs to be 'fined' into wrought iron. The blast furnace I use in my mod has an added puddling furnace that does the fining, in order to balance out the need for flux with much higher productivity.

Well, I mean, I want balance between gameplay as realism.  I think if the player has gone to the trouble of making a water powered blast furnace, they shouldn't need to make the extra finery hearth or puddling furnace too.  It sounds like the process of making high-carbon iron in a blast furnace makes a more high quality product than a high-carbon bloom, so I just want to use the term "blast steel" to denote steel that has been made in this way.  (so actually, in that case, wrought iron from a blast furnace should also be higher quality that wrought iron from a bloomery, right?  tier 2 bar iron?)  When I make the workshop, I will try to make some way to imply that the blast furnace workshop has a puddling area or finery hearth attached. 

[Grimlocke]

Yeah, fair points, I got around it by integrating the blast and puddling furnace into one building. Transferring molten iron between workshops also wasn't going to work well.

Making differing grades of iron/steel is perfectly realistic, although historically the quality was more down to the quality of the ore and how well fining was done.

[AceSV]

The ideal thing would be to have quality levels for the iron/steel bars, but I don't know if that would be do-able, or if that would break the game in some way. 

[Grimlocke]

I have been pondering an expanded quality and metal production system using item-quality and some DFhackery to make end-product quality determined by every step of the production process, from ore quality, smelting quality, fining quality, forging quality and quenching quality.

Basically each of those steps would have a chance to add +1, -1 or 0 quality levels to the previous product step, so it could go from -high-grade ore-, to +iron bars+, to *steel bars*, to =unquenched steel plate armor=, to (masterwork) steel plate armor. I also want to change the last step's material depending on the quality so that I can have some more control about what item quality does and doesn't do.
The beauty to this would be that each steps quality would be visible without having to check item details or having to make a whole array of materials for each possible item/quality combination.


I still need to figure out how to actually implement any of that with DFhack, and figure out how to give bars an itemquality (they can't have one in vanilla), how to deal with reagents with varying quality and how to give the player control over which quality reagents are used where.

[SeiggrainHart]

Not sure if this is applicable for what you have in mind, but how I deal with it in my mod is that the better metals requires the previous ones. For instance, instead of just making Damascus Steel (A steel on par with Adamantite), they have to make several steps worth of metals. Each one is viable on there own, but their main purpose is to get the next step.
I set it up this way, as I wanted people to be thinking of forging Damascus Steel around the same time they're thinking of breaching into !FUN!.

[Amostubal]

I have been pondering an expanded quality and metal production system using item-quality and some DFhackery to make end-product quality determined by every step of the production process, from ore quality, smelting quality, fining quality, forging quality and quenching quality.

Basically each of those steps would have a chance to add +1, -1 or 0 quality levels to the previous product step, so it could go from -high-grade ore-, to +iron bars+, to *steel bars*, to =unquenched steel plate armor=, to (masterwork) steel plate armor. I also want to change the last step's material depending on the quality so that I can have some more control about what item quality does and doesn't do.
The beauty to this would be that each steps quality would be visible without having to check item details or having to make a whole array of materials for each possible item/quality combination.

interesting concept... the biggest issue is keeping track of it through the system.

I still need to figure out how to actually implement any of that with DFhack, and figure out how to give bars an itemquality (they can't have one in vanilla), how to deal with reagents with varying quality and how to give the player control over which quality reagents are used where.

Yeah which means you will have to "make" an item like TOOL_BAR to replace bars then use that to store itemqualiity as you move through the process....

the real issue is the "does it make sense?"  How would you base this on the skill rating of the worker?  Then you are going to need eventful plugin...

basically:

Code: [Select]

local utils=require 'utils'

JobList = JobList or utils.invert ({
  'ORE_QUALITY',
  'SMELT_QUALITY',
  'REFINING_QUALITY',
  'FORGING_QUALITY',
  'QUENCHING_QUALITY'
})


jobCheck = require('plugins.eventful')
jobCheck.enableEvent(jobCheck.eventType.JOB_COMPLETED,1)
jobCheck.onJobCompleted.metallurgyWork = function(job)
  if JobList[job.reaction_name] then --You have found a registered reaction, now lets 
    if job.reaction_name ==  'ORE_QUALITY' then
.
.   do work here
.
.
    elseif job.reaction_name ==  'SMELT_QUALITY' then
.
.   do work here
.
.
    elseif job.reaction_name ==  'REFINING_QUALITY' then
.
.   do work here
.
.
    elseif job.reaction_name ==  'FORGING_QUALITY' then
.
.   do work here
.
.
    elseif job.reaction_name ==  'QUENCHING_QUALITY' then
.
.   do work here
.
.
    end
  end
end

[Grimlocke]

Keeping track of the item quality can be done through the existing itemquality mechanic, the tricky part would be incrementing item quality rather than itemquality that gets reset with each reaction, and basing that increment on worker skill, process quality and material quality.

What I'm hoping to achieve with all this is making it so that labour skill and material quality actually becomes relevant throughout the entire production chain, rather than the eventual quality only being based on a skill roll of the last production step. It should give some incentive towards building higher-tech furnaces, rather than spamming a few bloomery furnaces with peasant workers.

Also, thanks for the template script, I'm still pretty new to lua scripting and mostly trying to piece together how it works from other people's work so don't expect me to have this finished any time soon.

[Amostubal]

Keeping track of the item quality can be done through the existing itemquality mechanic, the tricky part would be incrementing item quality rather than itemquality that gets reset with each reaction, and basing that increment on worker skill, process quality and material quality.

Doable to a point.  I can show you how to grab the worker's stats and the item stats.   Not a big issue. Process quality?  Not sure your meaning there.

What I'm hoping to achieve with all this is making it so that labour skill and material quality actually becomes relevant throughout the entire production chain, rather than the eventual quality only being based on a skill roll of the last production step. It should give some incentive towards building higher-tech furnaces, rather than spamming a few bloomery furnaces with peasant workers.

 yep i can show you how to mod skills and force players to say upgrade the caste of a character as they reach higher levels...   the current pack im working on is going to require use of guild castes to limit workers from activating high level buildings and push them into utilizing caste systems and manage their workers for efficiency.

Also, thanks for the template script, I'm still pretty new to lua scripting and mostly trying to piece together how it works from other people's work so don't expect me to have this finished any time soon.

Not a problem you have me on discord, just ask, i enjoy helping people with dfhack. i really like playing with scripts.