BRONZE: The Iron Alternative

[NetherSpawn]

Go bronze!

A comment: why does a wood shield block less damage than an iron shield? It's much bigger! 500g of a lighter substance than iron, versus 300g of iron, the wood shield is bigger. In reality it would block more, if anything, unless it broke.
The thing is, in reality, that wood shield isn't going to stand up long against iron (or probably bronze) weapons. Wood breaks and soon your shield will be pretty useless. But in Cantr, deterioration doesn't work like that, and you don't hit each other so frequently in a fight. Plus you could just switch to a new wooden shield. Since iron shields cost more in Cantr, they have to be more functional. The same applies to iron and bronze.
When an iron blade hits a bronze blade or shield or armor, the bronze can be cut straight through, much like Damascus or Japanese steel swords against cast iron. That's the main reason why people switched to iron equipment. If you use bronze against iron, you lose. Cantr has to represent this distinction somehow, and the way things are set up it can't do it very realistically, so there's the good damage and blocked damage differentials.

In a nutshell, iron weapons and armor would have to be better than bronze to work in Cantr. Bronze is just as sharp only on the first hit.

To make bronze worthwhile, I say cut the coal requirement. Bronze smelting could require wood instead.
To make bronze really cool, what if you could smelt bronze in a firepit? I'm not sure whether this is accurate or not, but the reason people used bronze instead of iron (bronze is actually much harder to get the components of in reality) is that they couldn't get hot enough fires to smelt iron properly. Probably either coal (instead of wood) or the use of a bellows was what fixed that problem. Coal burns much hotter, and bellows cause much hotter flames.


Anyway, I think bronze should be smeltable in a small firepit using wood, less efficiently but that's beside the point.

[Nick]

I'd agree with him on this. But instead of not having any coal to smelt the bronze, I'd suggest a wood alternative. Considering it is the lower grade metal and all.

If steel/iron will still beat out bronze, I think It'd be a good idea. Otherwise, you'll just have people hoarding the copper/tin reserves, and it will be the same as it was with hematite.

[TatteredShoeLace]

I know it was said in another post but its relevant here. How about the addition of other iron ores? Hematite isn't the only one. That could help out alittle, especially if you live in the Olip Region and want some of Crag's hematite. It's all ours!

[Nick]

Unless I'm mistaken, all the reserves that were once iron are now hematite.
This change did not affect the availability of iron reserves, in a way.
Adding new ores would mean placing them in new locations; making iron easier to get.
Maybe not a good idea.

[Solfius]

My quick research suggests bronze can be smelted using a wood or charcoal flame (and also presumably coal as it burns hotter than the other two).

Copper and tin ore would also be needed.


As for iron reserves, some reserves could be degraded into other types of ore, in a mysterious cantr way, or new islands could have a mix of ores, so older islands in effect become iron rich areas (hematite is the foremost iron ore with the highest concentration of iron, all other ores are inferior in terms or iron to ore ratio)

[Appleide]

Yay for bronze, but is no one going to implement this?

[Solfius]

You'd have to poke the resources department

[Spectrus_Wolfus]

it is being worked on but at present it seems only one of us is doing it and he has othe things (namely a newborn in the house) chewing his time but i'm getting there

[Solfius]

Glad to hear it Spectrus. I haven't seen many staffers recently, except Revenael, and even less of them mentioning what they are doing. Especially the higher echeleons of the PrD, GAC, etc

[Revanael]

/me pokes his head in.

I exist, yes.

I'm currently... Idling?

[kroner]

you don't count

[Spectrus_Wolfus]

Glad to hear it Spectrus. I haven't seen many staffers recently, except Revenael, and even less of them mentioning what they are doing. Especially the higher echeleons of the PrD, GAC, etc

that's ok we are still about but i beleive with end of term type things and the such it's slowing down a lot of work by some people. i started this before the server went slow and getting the info i needed off the server was a pain to say the least.then when the server got fixed my missus had a kid so times very transient commodity with me at present but when i have a spare 5 minutes i do a bit more