smithing job: the making of a sword

[sashok]

I want to spend time and explain to you my views on how swords should be made in PS.  Maybe you will find my ideas extreme, but let\'s at least find a compromise.

First, let\'s take a good old knife in real world.  What makes one knife better than another one?  It\'s durability and it\'s strenght.  All knives could be grinded to a sharp edge, but some knives last sharpened longer and are stronger against materials.  That\'s obvious.  Well, what is the process and what materials needed to make such a knife?
1.  metal
2. forging equiptment
3. making time and technique

I will not worry about the design or shape of the knife, just the process of making it.

Ok, enough with knives, let\'s go onto swords and right into the PS world.

1. Metals:
 I won\'t even go into metals, since I don\'t know what metals PS will have, but note, the better the metal, the stronger the sword, that\'s obvious.  Some metals are heavier than others, the best one would be the lightest but at the same time the strongest and most durable.  Metal could be mined or sold and processed, and that\'s another detail that I will not go into

2. Forging equipment:  
This could be tricky since you don\'t want to overwhelm the players, but at the same time give some challenge.   So the basic equipment needed would be.  
-Forge(obviously), needed to heat the metal.
-anvil, needed to beat the metal with a hammer lol
-grinder, needed to grind the metal and give it shape
-special hammer, for beating metal(could also be lethal against someone\'s head

The better the equipment, the better the sword.  This equipment cost money,  it wears out, but the better it is, the longer it takes to wear out.

3. Making of the sword:
Making swords in real life takes time.  There are certain techniques that only single people in the world new and some believe that since ancient times in Japan those tecniques secrets died with the smiths.  But this cannot be that extreme in PS haha.  To simplify this I propose that to make one sword(even with same metal) better than another, time and repetitive process is needed.

-melting
-banging: compression, change shape while in melted stage
-cooling

that\'s the 3 stages that could be repeated to make a better sword

I propose that all 3 things take 2 of real time. Where melting would take 60 minutes, banging/compression would take 20 minutes, and cooling would take 40 minutes.

these 3 steps could be repeated in order to make the strongest sword.  The more times you repeat, the more damage a sword makes, the less it weights, it actually gives you faster attack since it\'s lighter.
  Although there has to be a catch, since everyone could make uber swords like that.  Depending on your level of smithing you have a chance to destroy the metal by accident, so beginners would only limit themselves to one process because there\'s a great risk of loosing the metal(lol well something has to be done).  Plus there\'s a limit to how many times a process could be repeated.

The next to last step is grinding(giving shape), that also gives a change of destroying the metal, but not actually killing it, only you would have to start from beginning of 3 forging processes.

And last by not least, sharpening the knife.  Well, nothing can go wrong here I guess.  Now, you just need a handle and you all set.

Ok, let me hear some input.  Does that seem to extreme or not even close?

[Dalec]

It\'s an idea. However, I feel that it would be more interesting to spend more of your time hunting down the metals and searching for your supplies than waiting 2 hours to make a sword. That is just...boring. You can\'t argue that it would be exciting to sit and watch your screen for 2 hours while your sword is made. Metals should be rare and hard to come by, so that you spend more of your time trying to get them. That would also make the smithing class have something to do other than smithing.

[Deddarus]

thats unless theres a distinction between mining and smithing

eg a player may be a highly skilled smith but a very poor miner.. and may not want o mine, rather buy ore/ingots from a miner

here is an idea i posted elsewhere tied in with this 1(it was similar to start with)

stages to making a sword:

1. mine ore (done by miner) - skill of miner dictates type of ore available and yield

2. refine ore into ingits (done by miner or smith, whichever ppl think is more appropriate) - at this stage different ores could be mixed together to form alloys.  Each ore would have an optimum refining temperature plus its own properties (weight, strength, skill required to refine) - if the temperature is not good for the ore or the smiths skill is too low it will effect the quality - the properties of the alloy would be an average, lowered by any impurities

3. ingot is smithed into a sword blade (done by smith) - the properties of the ingot will dictate optimum smithing temperature, temperatures that are not optimum will produce a weaker blade - there is a chance to ruin the blade, in which case it can be smelted to return 50% of the quantity (different blade types will require different quantities of metal and different skill levels to smith)

4. ingot is smithed into a hilt (done by smith) - this is the same as for the balde, with a selection of hilts offering different levels of defense against parry, weight, grip etc

5. blade and hilt are combined (done by smith) - the skill of the smither and the skill required to work the metals of the pieces and the skill requirement dictated by the pieces themselves (intrictae/hard to make pieces will require more skill) would determine the strength of the join (weak joins means the sword splits into its sepperate pieces.. it can be re-combined, unless a piece is broken completely.. this would happen if the piece was made weak through steps 3 or 4 or the base metal was weak)

6. blade is sharpened (done by smith) - the blade needs to be sharpened but there is a chance of ruining it (dependent on metal/piece skill requirement and skill of smith) - during use the blade will gradually become more blunt and will need to be constantly resharpened throughout its use (at some point it will be un-sharpenable and therefore useless.. apart from smelting it down)... the rate at which the blade becomes blunt would depend on the strength of the base metal, the strength of the blade piece and the swordsmanship skill of the user)

ok.. im done.. and to be honest ive already forgotten what i wrote cos im drunk...

[sashok]

Good job Deddarus, your explanation is how it should be.  It would also be cool if the process was close to RL so that people would actually learn something

Dalec, I see your point, and I respect it.  I see where you coming from.  My way could get boring, but as Deddarus explained could make the process more challeging and fun.  I do agree with you that smith should be hunting for metals, learn something other than smithing, for example work with wood, leather, etc.
But I stress that making a sword will be a timing process for a smith with a chance of failure completely.  This would minimize the numbers of smiths and the amount of uber swords around.  I believe that everything in games has to be balanced.  There shouldn\'t be too few swords or too many around.  Especially good swords.

anyway, more ideas welcome about the sword making

[Ikarsik]

too realistic guys, especially the times. Weapons should be made by just throwing materials in a forge. Having to actually combine everything step by step over an hour would take away the whole point of having a game where both occasional players and hardcore players can both enjoy the game. I dont know about you but i would much prefer watching a sword slice through enemy after enemy instead of watching it heat up. Also i dont think the devs will have weapons with the same name but different stats. maybe later but not in the next release. Simple Algorithms can be used to determine the final stats of the weapon by taking the stats from the materials but remember each item has to have a name and you can just call weapons \"mace\" and \"big mace\" for only so long. after a while the names will already be used. And lets face it, those names are not very attractive. They need to have more character to them. They could be like \"soaring mace of the eagle\" or \"allmighty mallet of laanz\" or even a name without the weapon name in it. Having the weapon name in it gets boring and uncreative. You can do this for the low level stuff where there wont be many items anyway because all the items are planned to be for higher lvl characters (the ones that play more and are loyal to Planeshift) but you will actually get bored of these names and will want item names a bit more in tune with the RPG spirit. A name like \"Red Menace\" or \"Cold Death\" does not have the name of the weapon in it and so it makes it more like a unique weapon which will make players fell better about their weapons and ultimately make the game better to play.


i like blabbing on =P

[Syzerian]

id like to see it done like puzzle pirates where you order a sword and that shop has to have the supplies. then you get something like \'will be ready in 6 hours\'. if no one is working at the shop it will take the whole 6 hours but if some one working at the shop they have to do a mini game. their skill in the mini game effects how much less the customer has to wait to get their item. so then more people will go to the most active store so they get their item faster.

I propose that all 3 things take 2 of real time. Where melting would take 60 minutes, banging/compression would take 20 minutes, and cooling would take 40 minutes.

only 4 hours? even 8 hours is pretty short. there should be 3 mini games in this case. working for 5 minutes is equal to 1 hour of labour. how good you are at the mini game determines wether you provide expert, skilled or novice labour.

EDIT: forgot that every member in the store automatically provides 1 hour of labour for every hour they are online

[Ikarsik]

nonono lol still thinking realistic with the times. but Syzerian has a good. If it really will take this long it would be good to be able to make an order then go off and adventure then return the next day to find a nice shiny sword waiting for you.

but remember you would have to be ordering from the npcs. Employing members would be unreliable because members would simply refuse to work in a small blacksmith all day. People will not see this as having fun. Having fun in a game is very important.

Good idea because waiting for hours at a forge would be boring and you wouldnt be able to go off because then someone might take it out of the forge. The server could hide it from other users but having too many objects being hidden might lag the server.

ok im gonna take everquest for an example lol. When blacksmithing you could easily go on to reach lvl 250 blacksmithing in a day if there wernt any constraints. but there was an obvious constraint in the game that made it hard to get basic materials. This was availability. Just because you know where to get it dosnt mean you can. If you ran out of money you could no longer buy basic supplies. if the materials had to be gathered off a creatures body or off the ground or in a far away land from an npc you would have to go there and this would take time.

Once you acctually had the materials in everquest you could just go up to a forge and put the materials in and click make. there was a chance to suceed and fail at this forging which was governed by your skill at blacksmithing. if you succeed immeadietly after you had a nice sword waiting on your cursor.

So the only time consuming thing here was gathering. And gathering is much better than just waiting at a forge for an hour because you get to go places which is good because
   a: you get to see the sites and get a general idea of                                                                                 the area in which you play in
   b: you get to meet people and make friends along the way
   c: you may even find a rare item off a creature which you decided to kill along your way for some experience

So basically what im getting at is you should really think about what you would like to do. If you do not want to have to sit at the computer for an hour, waiting for a sword to be shaped then maybe you should write some stories about what you saw when you were out gathering materials and also where you went and who you met. planeshift really needs an ideas boost for settings. maybe you should actually make a sword at a workshop to see how cool it is but also how long it takes and how hard it is.

That is the real world. This is planeshift. To find out how hard it is to make a sword in planeshift try makeing one in a 3d modelling application

[sashok]

well what you guys don\'t realize that there\'s a profession in PS being a smith.  Obviously if you choose it, you gotta enjoy it... right???  I myself signed up to be a smith and I\'m trying to see what other smiths think.  

Ikarsik, you propose that anyone can be a smith at any given time...ok

Syzerian, you don\'t even want a smith as a profession?

Guys, you gotta realize that there will be other professions as well, PS doesn\'t revolve around smithing.
So this post goes out to people who chose to make weapons.  There has to be elements of a challege, fun, competition in this field, that\'s all.

[Syzerian]

i never said the smithers have to smith all day. 5mins for 1 hour of labour so 6 hours would be 30mins of work minus time for having other members helping.
and isnt ps going to be completly player run?
having a system like puzzle pirates has is a good way of having a healthy economic loop. fighters protect the miners who sell the ore to the smithers who sell the weapons to the fighters.
having an active shop will mean that everyone will want to come to your shop so their items are made faster, improving business giving you more money to buy more supplies off miners so your list of orders can be longer and blah blah blah so on and so on etc etc.

[Xanaroth]

i think the idea is good, but then there should also be NPC smithers or so, cause now the smithers have to do a lot, what would give them a lot of power, and you will keep bouncing up to the same wall with every smithing idea-->> can i trust this smith?? <<--

[Watcher]

Actually cooling doesn?t take long at all because they stick the sword in the cold water it steams then it relatively cool.

[Deddarus]

i skipped thru a lot of that

i dont believe that smithing (or most other crafts) should take a long time to do.... as has been stated no-one wants to sit idle in front of their PC for 2 hours watching their character repeatedly bang a bit of metal

the suggested system i posted above wouldnt require long idle times (dont think i made this clear)

basically... each stage would last as long as the animation for it (so sharpenening the blade would be a max 1min long anim of your character operating a grinding wheel)....

where the more realistic craft time comes in in this system is that it is broken down into a number of stages, each stage can fail and if it does there is a chance that the object or a piece of the object will be utterly destroyed but there is also a chance to salvage it..

thus an average skilled smith trying to work with the all-new super dooper alloy recently invented by the miner... lets call it \'Deddium\'... will probobly do this

1. get Deddium ingot from smith
2. set forge temperature
3. attempt to smith blade
4. discover forge is at poor temperature, blade is ruined
5. smelt blade back to ingot
6. set forge temperature
7. smith blade but tis a little weak due to low skill
8. attempt to smith hilt
9. mess up hilt cos it is too intricate
10. smelt hilt down to ingots
11. add some ingots due to waste in smelting
12. smith crappier hilt
13. combine blade and hilt
14. sharpen sword blade
15. break blade
16. smelt down blade
17. smith crappier blade cos intricate 1 was to weak due to low skill
18. attatch new blade to hilt
19. sharpen sword blade
20. sell sword
21. re-sharpen sword after swordsman has used it for a while
22. re-sharpen sword after swordsman has used it for a further while.... and break the blade
23. smelt the blade down
24. smith a new blade
25. atatch the new blade to the hilt
26. give sword back to swordsman
27. get given sword back in 2 pieces due to weak join
28. reattatch hilt to blade
etc
etc

thus a good sword will take a while to make whilst not causing the player to go take his dog for a walk while its happening

[Xanaroth]

i think this method is better, not to long time, yet broken etc so it stays realistic. And every1 could make it, yet smithers would have an advantage due to their high skill.

[Phinehas]

I think that last system is pretty good, but I think it should take 30 mins - 1 hour in rl to smith a sword depending on quality and what-not. I\'m basing this on the fact that, like someone already said, smithing is a job, if you chose to be a smith, you must enjoy it. This brings a little more realism to a game, because, unlike other games, say runes***e you wouldn\'t be able to have top levels in everything. In rl there weren\'t any super smithys, who were ultimate warriors and cooks and animal trainers and healers and etc. This would make you more dependent on others, you wouldn\'t really be able to do everything by yourself like you can in other games, and that would be more interesting, deciding what you want to be able to do and what you feel you can let others do.

[Xanaroth]

i would be thinking more like max. time is like X minutes, and that there would be a smithing formula behind it, so that people with high smithing would get a time bones of B minutes per lvl.