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KunAlt

Lets Talk About Brass.

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Ok, first an introduction.

Some weeks ago, the major of our deed, tell me that she want to remplace the crude iron street lamps with street brass lamps, this model:

100px-Brass_lamp.jpg

We chit-chated a bit about the matter, and after some research found we need around 50-60 lamps, then I started to look for those lamps, in game and in forum, I was about to give up, because even wen we offer a good price, no one jump over our order, but then a guy in our server offered to take the job, so we come to an agreement about the price, the amount, and a reazonable time frame to fullfill the order.

To my surprise, a few days after, this person contact me again, and tell me he have to refrain our contract without complete it, so he give me 20 lamps, a good discount, and lots of apologies for not be able to acomplish the order.

The days passed and we yet lack of about 40 lamps, the original plan was to get only 40 ql lamps, so wen i turned the 40 BS decided to do the lamps by my self.

I go to the public mine and mine lots of copper, then a friend kindly grant me acces to his own zinc veins, and the things started to go on.

At first i was a bit concerned, because while brass and his cousin Bronze are pretty low level aloys used since the prehistory and a fairly common one in the middle age, in wurm seem like there are more like a super metal of the goods, maybe with some super utility or something like that, because if not i can´t see the reazon to make it more difficult to obtain than enriched uranium.

Its at least unreal, for not say stupid, to mix 1 kg of a refined metal with 1kg of another refined metal, and end with 0,10 kg of an allmost useless aloy. Can some one explain to me as if i where a 5 years old kid where are the other 1,9 kg of the mix? are our forges capables of such high temps to make some of the metal get vaporized?

While i know the fact that with very low metalurgy skill i can´t pretend to obtain high ql end product, at least be a bit more real and give me 2kg of Brass/Bronze out of 1Kg of zinc + 1 kg of copper, or at least 1,5-1,8, but 0,10 really?

Its Brass, (or Bronze) not gold or platinum cmon, its a low tech aloy that men knows allmost since he learn how to melt metals with fire.

But to make it more ridicoulous, in wurm brass is one of the most useless aloys, the only things you can do are lamps and pendulums, thats all, no armor, no weapons, no keys, no hinges, no padlocks, no nothing, only lamp heads (2 kind) a pendulum ball and anbother one thing i don´t remember rigth now.

But w8 the history doesn´t ends there, there is more griefing to the poor smither trying to make use of brass.

In the end after a lot of mining, and a lot of fustrating metalurgy, i´ve ended with a fair amount of brass lumps, and was lucky enough to get a 6,4kg lup of 37ql, so i used all the low ql one to make lamp heads, there was a bit of ligth in the end of the tunnel, because i see each lamp head use around 0,8 kg of lump, so i was pretty happy, cause i was thinking that even if not a breeze like iron ones, brass lamps aren´t a unreachable thing.

At the end i got 43 brass lamp heads, and in the end turned into 43 brass street lamps, even was lucky enough to obtain a hanfull of unfinished ones that go in the range of 14-25 wen finalised.

I empty my forge, put all 43 lamps there and my precious, my own, my shiny 37ql 6,4 kg lump, wahited until glowing hot, and the reality of wurm come over me, and crushed my dreams of 40ql lamps.

So in the first image, you can see there, a 25ql one (yeah), couple of 23ql, one allmost 22ql, a couple of 20ql, and a bunch of lower ones, but hey, if a full lamp only uses 0,8kg, while i will not be able to imp all the lamps to 40 or close, at least half or more...

wurm201210202107.th.jpg

Then, the first punch in my face (to be honest that fells more like a kick in my theet)

wurm2012102021071.th.jpg

Yes, as you see, a single imp to 25,72 from 25,26 (a measly 0,46) consumed 0,25kg of the my shiny lump, i was o.O this can´t be real, must be some kind of error, or graphick bug, or my client got the wrong decimal rounding... Yeah, you wish.

Oh! look, i got a 39ql one, and only cost me half of that lump....

wurm201210202115.th.jpg

The sade end, after the shiny was completely gone :(

wurm201210202133.th.jpg

Oh yeah, i got one at 39, 95 other at 37,32, and one downgraded from 23,18 to 23,07, and only at the cheap cost of 6,4kg ol brass lump.

Btw, for the ones that never did brass, this mean 64kg of copper + 64kg of zink, or a total amount of 2560 kg of ore, yes as you can read, a full large cart and a 1/4 of other of ores, just to improve 2 lamps from 25 to 39, and to degrade other, lets not forget that one.

Then imho, something is very wrong with that picture, and really need to be changed, idk, make the mixing yield more aloy or reduce the amount of aloy needed to improve the lamps, but please, do something because rigth now make things out of brass its a very frustrating and disapointing task, and while i´m not against the concept of the challenge, this one is too much, is not a challeng, but a grief.

So, i don´t know if developers read this threads, or if even care about the rants of a single player, but i will be more than pleased to read the opinion of others fellows wurmians chossing the ways of the anvil and the hammer, noobs like me, and ofcourse some of the BS monsters out there.

One last tought, i´m very aware of the fact the steel can be even worse, but at least steel have really nice uses, you can do all kind of armours, weapons and tools out of steel, each one having good advantages over his pour irons cousins, while in the other hand, brass has so restricted uses that make it allmos not worth all the trouble to work with.

Salu2.

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Get better metallurgy?

Get better reading skills?

I agree with the OP. Making brass and bronze, for the limited novelty items, should be less time consuming and not so much of a chore. There is simply nothing like grinding metallurgy in this game. It's simply the absolute worst skill to grind, and to handicap it with ridiculous consumption numbers for creation and imping is just making it a useless skill. Getting better metallurgy won't help the insane reduction of material during creation, nor will it help with the insane material consumption when improving items. I would hope a "community assistant" would either know this, or know enough not to act like a ###### to someone with a legitimate concern.

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IRL the yield of these types of alloys is fairly high, yes, but that is under modern industrial processes. When you think about the time period of Wurm, it is surprising we actually get so much useable alloy, because the purities would be terrible as would the manufacturing processes. Therefore, Better metallurgy = higher ql alloy resultant = more ql increase per imp = more bang for your buck, so to speak.

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IRL the yield of these types of alloys is fairly high, yes, but that is under modern industrial processes. When you think about the time period of Wurm, it is surprising we actually get so much useable alloy, because the purities would be terrible as would the manufacturing processes. Therefore, Better metallurgy = higher ql alloy resultant = more ql increase per imp = more bang for your buck, so to speak.

The Bronze and his cousin brass are an old friend with humanity, and 3000 years BC in asia people used bronze and brass to make all kind of stuff, and also in the pre 5000 BC China. Romans are one example of an empire using brass and copper in large amounts, to make a wide range of items from weapons to armor, so you are wrong, the amount of things found by archeologyst from ages well before your medieval period sugest a steady and reliable source of brass/bronze aloys.

While i´m not an expert in the subject i higly doubt that get better skill in metallurgie will yield a noticeable benefit to the current situation, but if you have evidence of this i will be more than happy to correct my current point of view.

And thanks to all for your time expended reading and your opinion, thats the objetive of the post, to get as many opinions as posibles about the subject.

Salu2.

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That's strange, you're supposed to get 0.80kg lump when you successfully mix two metals of 1kg vs 1kg the last I checked (or 0.40kg if they are lower than 1kg? I forget the value)

If nothing has changed then brass making might be bugged. It might be something to do with when resources become a bit more newbie friendly by not exploding then folks failed to do things.

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Oh and another thing, from how I understand your post you seem to lose the remainder 1.9kg of lump when you merge the two metals, this is most definately a bug, as previously you'd keep like 0.20 zinc and 0.20 copper when making a 0.80 kg brass lump.

Sorry for the double post I couldn't find the edit on here

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Only issue with brass/bronce i personally have is that it uses the 0.1 lump weight like gold/silver.

Should be a higher set, for example 0.4 which would result in a more logic mass of 0.8 lump after merging 1 copper with 1 zinc/tin

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That's strange, you're supposed to get 0.80kg lump when you successfully mix two metals of 1kg vs 1kg the last I checked (or 0.40kg if they are lower than 1kg? I forget the value)

Wiki says 1.00 + 1.00 = 0.10 kg (as the OP experienced)

Personally I consider brass and bronze to be created by the same devil-god that cursed us with chickens. There is no reason. There is only evil.

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Nah, this is just the standard "Rolf failed and couldn't be bothered to fix it".

Edited by Keldun

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While it is no real cure for the low amount of brass/bronze you obtain per successful creation action, it may easen the improving proces a little:

You can use the 0.10kg lumps of bronze/brass to improve the lamp with, instead of a combined lump of bigger size. As the lamp weighs 5kg, the amount of lump consumed is 0.25kg (5% of the item's weight). By not combining, you can work around it a bit, giving you 2.5 times more improving actions than if you would improve with 0.25kg pieces of lump per action.

I hope this helps a bit, it's how I manage to make a few brass lamps from time to time without getting the urge to just forfeit and go for iron street lamps.

Ps.

You can look at it this way. Although the brass street lamps are pretty tedious to make from scratch, it's more of an extra than a necessity; an item mainly used to add some decorative purposes aswell as a bit better lighting (if I recall correctly), compared to the more common iron street lamps.

-edit- fixed a typo

Edited by Raamkozijn
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Agreed - when working with any rare material, never combine your mats. Leaving them as separate items has two advantages.

1 - You can use the lowest QL for imp'ing, and save the high QL for when you need it.

2 - The "last bit" of the mat can be smaller than the amount normally used, and you still get an imp from it. (as per Raamkozijn' post above)

I'm aware this does not work for long-term storage, but if you obtain your mat's just before doing the work, this is a good strategy to follow.

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IRL the yield of these types of alloys is fairly high, yes, but that is under modern industrial processes. When you think about the time period of Wurm, it is surprising we actually get so much useable alloy, because the purities would be terrible as would the manufacturing processes. Therefore, Better metallurgy = higher ql alloy resultant = more ql increase per imp = more bang for your buck, so to speak.

In WURM we are in the steel age. That's s t e e l. Past the bronze age. Past the iron age. Into the steel age. I would say that is very far along wouldn't you?

In any event, when a dev makes something that is very common and easy to make in RL difficult in his game it's because they are fearful that particular thing will become more common than it should be and will be over used and make other things fairly useless. Don't see how that would apply to something that has such a limited use. But yes, it's badly gimped. Probably should be more easily made, more common and uses expanded. Forgot to say, good luck with that.

Notice I didn't mention models? :lol: :lol: :lol:

Edited by Sarcaticous

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Agreed on the raw material cost. I agreed on whim last week to make a huge bell for someone who said they were in urgent need of one (for pay ofc). I knew I had 100 tin lumps and more than that in copper in my BSB. I premused it would only take a tenth or so of my stocks to make a 6.3kg bronze bell. To my surprise I had to use 63 kg of my tin and copper each (plus fails). Eww... wasn't really worth it. I'm only glad you don't have to produce each 0.10 kg of alloy by itself....

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Agreed, 95% loss in creating brass (2KG source, .1KG result) is way over the top. There are two reasons for setting the return on investment in game, one is realism and the other is balance. Given that this is neither realistic nor particularly balancing it really should be changed.

Zinc is lost in the process, essentially brass is formed by zinc vapor reacting with the copper to form brass. A quick google assisted scan shows that in Roman times the zinc to copper ratio was about 20%. So a realistic process would be 1KG of copper + 1KG of zinc gives 1.2KG of brass. That's 12X the return in Wurm.

That seems to leave a lot of room between the current state and a pure realism state for Rolf to figure out how he wants to balance in terms of time/labor vs return. Something like .4KG or .6KG of brass for 1KG of copper and 1KG of zinc would probably be reasonable.

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Agreed, 95% loss in creating brass (2KG source, .1KG result) is way over the top. There are two reasons for setting the return on investment in game, one is realism and the other is balance. Given that this is neither realistic nor particularly balancing it really should be changed.

Zinc is lost in the process, essentially brass is formed by zinc vapor reacting with the copper to form brass. A quick google assisted scan shows that in Roman times the zinc to copper ratio was about 20%. So a realistic process would be 1KG of copper + 1KG of zinc gives 1.2KG of brass. That's 12X the return in Wurm.

That seems to leave a lot of room between the current state and a pure realism state for Rolf to figure out how he wants to balance in terms of time/labor vs return. Something like .4KG or .6KG of brass for 1KG of copper and 1KG of zinc would probably be reasonable.

Good to see some real numbers. I was going to look into it myself, more relating to bronze, because the game numbers are obviously wrong. The history is quite clear: people switched from bronze and brass to iron because iron is found in many places and doesn't require trade to get copper or tin or zinc. It was *not* because they lost 90+% of their metal in the alloying process. It also was not because weapons-grade bronze was softer than iron, it wasn't, but that is another issue.

Why should we be getting less than the real value, though? Even if we were allowed to make any metal item from bronze or brass, how would it hurt the game for us to get a realistic return? These metals aren't super powered. Brass lamps being brighter than iron is like cedar items decaying slower than pine. It's true, and if you bother to acquire the right material, you can get that benefit, but it is a minor effect. Even at a realistic return, gathering copper and zinc of sufficient quality, and suffering through quality and material loss due to metallurgy, more than pays the price of the benefit to the player. And as in the example, cedar, no one seems to mind that different woods can provide benefits. Why then it is a problem with metal?

I would prefer that these things be modeled to real values. I suspect the result would reflect real life. Many people will continue to use iron because it is easier to do so, and for most uses, iron is just fine. Those who take the time to do so, or those who happen to live near copper and not iron, will make non-iron items. And Wurm will continue.

- Teggs

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KunAlt, I think you have discovered why your brass lamp maker backstepped out of the deal. Yes, this excess useage of mats to create brass should be changed but will it be? Highly doubtful where there are many other aspects of the games functioning that also need to be changed and have not been. Just read through the forums in this section alone and you will see subjects crop up that have been a problem for a year or more and are in the same state of malfunction currently. I think the simple matter of it is that Rolf just has so many things to work on with the coding of the various aspects that a subject such as this is not given more than a wave of the hand to shoo away the fly from the *ones* face. Fun topic for discussion though, I suppose.

=Ayes=

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When the mass production changes went into affect metallurgy got changed. Seems they simplified the whole process to just use standard lump size as inputs and outputs. We went from, the old way, 0.3 kg copper + 1.0 kg of zinc results in 0.2 kg brass. To, the new way, 1.0 kg copper + 1.0 kg zinc = 0.1 kg brass.

If you improve with 0.1 kg lumps you'll use less material. An improve action will work with either but material consumed using a combined lump is significantly greater. For this reason I don't want the standard sizes of brass or bronze to be increased An output of 0.4 kg would be nice and keep lump standard size at 0.1kg.

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I take offense... the absolute worse skill to grind was lockpicking before Rolf started ninja-tweaking it and later completely reworked after massive abuse.

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Although I seldom vote for making things simpler in Wurm, I agree with OP. This is the reason I don't make brass lamps at all. Kaih's suggestion sounds fine to me.

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Im not much for hollering at Rolf about stuff even though somestimes i feel the need, This though I think is a good time to state IM in full agreement with the Op concerning the issue at hand.

It isnt like we can use brass lumps and fire them from catapults and do 5x damage to objects we hit.. Reminds me of when we used to make Imperial lamps and wallah u made it but where did the rest of the lump go.

Lets hope he still reads forums and either changes this now or in Wurm 1.0

Woosoo leave us feedback or somebody so were not just posting text for the fun of posting text.. Which im not.

Give us an answer to this concern please :wub: :wub:

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Only issue with brass/bronce i personally have is that it uses the 0.1 lump weight like gold/silver.

Should be a higher set, for example 0.4 which would result in a more logic mass of 0.8 lump after merging 1 copper with 1 zinc/tin

You don't get double anymore and that was removed with mass production changes. Its a fixed output of 0.1 kg based on the 1.0k g copper to 1.0 kg zinc input. Further, 10 kg copper and 10 kg zinc would be 1k of brass.

Instead of a 0.8 kg output, how about an even 1 kg?

Devs, and for goodness sake, make sure you increase the brass/bronze lump counts in bulk bins. Don't just increase the lump size like you did with onions and salt.

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