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[Andeerz]

T_T I KNOW!!!!  :C :C :C :C :C :C

[darkflagrance]

What about Questia? It looks to be available there, and you should be able to pirate read all 956 pages before the free trial runs out.

[Dwarfoloid]

Yeah, limited publication academic releases have a tendency to have nifty price tags. Even short books of much less specialist nature usually go for at least 30-50 euros in this part of the world. And I remember my near 1000 page book on Japanese cruiser development going for about 100 euro. Still, cheap compared to Dr. Williams book.

Anyway, I found an old paper by the same author about mail: http://www.themailresearchsociety.erikds.com/pdf_files/tmrs_pdf_6.pdf

The mail listed there seems to exist within a rather varied range as well, going from less than 100HV to near 600HV.

But but but perhaps the use of the term "mild steel like" should be clarified a bit... I am not familiar with any mild steel that is temper or quench harden-able.  Perhaps the term "spring steel" should be used instead, though it's an anachronistic term? 

I took the refrences to mild steel etc. out and replaced them with just rough carbon content figures. I also increased the carbon amounts a bit. I didn't mean those to be anything for the game (ie. for object descriptions), but more of visualizers for myself and others, for example you could easily reach those lower hardness levels by botching a quench. I think you can technically quench harden mild-steel but it would form too little martensite to be considered acceptable by modern standards. Ancients do seem to have quenched blades of rather mild carbon contents.

On the issue of armour, while a seperate quality mechanic might not be that neccessary for iron and steel, I think it would be needed for bronze and copper. I don't think work-hardening is practical, or even done, to those armours of those materials and that was the only ancient method of hardening them. So even if we assume that less copper heavy alloys are used for armour, they would still top lower than the edged weapons.

Question: Is it possible to have a race/culture consistently make use of different materials so that the elite soldiers use the better material and the regulars use something worse?

[Mephansteras]

Question: Is it possible to have a race/culture consistently make use of different materials so that the elite soldiers use the better material and the regulars use something worse?

Currently, no, that doesn't seem to happen. Higher-ups do get more decorated equipment, though, so there is some sort of code framework in place that maybe could be used for this. Certainly makes sense. Especially since you'd expect human civs to trade for good quality steel from the dwarves and that steel would probably end up being used for the armor and weapons of the higher-ups almost exclusively. There are certainly plenty of examples of that in our own history with the Damascus steel imports during the middle ages.

[SmileyMan]

Love this thread.

A lot of it is down to the quality of the metallurgy.  When blast furnaces came along in the 15th century, much better steel could be produced because the higher temperatures caused the slag (iron oxide) to react with the carbon to significantly improve the quality of the metal.

Maybe if metal bars could have a quality based on the skill of the smelter.

[creidieki]

Keep in mind that Interlibrary Loan exists.  You may be able to borrow a copy of the book from your local public library, and almost certainly can from a university library.

[Andeerz]

Maybe if metal bars could have a quality based on the skill of the smelter.

Or, depending on technology, dependent upon the quality of the ore mined.  This was according to a few sources I've read on the matter (like "Arms and Armour of the Medieval Knight", and "The Armourer and His Craft"), this is likely a huge factor in the ability of places to make arms and armour of better or worse quality than another place.  Knowledge of where to get good ore and, just as importantly, how to work that particular ore was very valuable throughout the medieval era before advanced knowledge of metallurgy.

ALSO, check out this link.  It has a legal copy of "The Armourer and His Craft" for free download. 

http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=subject%3A%22Armor+--+History%22

[marcusbjol]

Oh wow... ore with a "quality" associated with it?  And each different "quality" of ore would requires a slightly different process (skill)? 

Just imagining how to keep track of it all. 

[NW_Kohaku]

Having quality levels for materials of further processes would probably be a good idea long-term for DF. If we have a revision of the way that quality levels are handled, we can start doing things like having tool or workshop quality have an impact on the final output.  (Thus allowing us to want to make, for example, higher quality woodworking tools or workshops because getting the highest quality levels on your beds is almost impossible without them.)  The same thing could be passed through to final products by material quality.

Still, in more immediate and practical terms, the best way to handle that sort of different iron qualities is to simply start making several different kinds of the same types of ores - So you'd have, say, Magnetite_1, Magnetite_2, etc. in the raws, and let them be distributed through the world, and then have different kinds of iron than can be made from the smelting of those materials, with fluctuations in the material's strengths.  (Of course, you'd probably want to put in something more descriptive than "Magnetite_2" in-game, like saying that it has one kind of impurity or another.)

[Richards]

Looks like Toady used a few of Dwarfoloid's numbers for the new version.

http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/DF2010:Inorganic_metal.txt

What does this all translate to mean?

[Jiri Petru]

I'm as confused as Richards. Could someone please explain how the new material stats change combat? Is there a new balance between materials?

[Mephansteras]

Well, for one thing basic iron is now a bit more powerful than bronze, though not by much. Also, bludgeoning weapons are more effective than they were before.