Not so happy rant...

[Nick]

Ok, lets be frank. All these new changes to the game really suck. You cant do anything without steel now. With the new iron smelting process, people wont even be able ot make simple iron tools without getting the ingredients for steel! While Cantr may be trying to get towards a more realistic world, its really starting to suck. Have you noticed that you cant make ANY clothes without steel? This is going to make it real boring for the newbies. Trouble is all the staff are old time players like myself, and most of their characters have access to steel, so they dont notice how hard it makes it on new chars. Twiner needs steel, Spindle needs a planer which needs steel, clothes require cloth, which needs to be made with one of those I believe. Needles, unless you can get bone, need a file, whic needs steel. Soon, to make simple iron we will need salt, hide, iron, stone, limestone, coal, etc... its getting way too crazy!!!! Slow down with making the game realistic... if I wanted real life I would go outside and do something else. Lets keep the game fun, guys.

[Pirog]

I agree with you regarding the clothes.
People did wear clothes before iron was invented, believe it or not

But if you make iron and steel less important (many of the things that required iron/steel was around before the iron age) I'm for making it harder to produce.

Thus, making common tools easier to make without iron/steel, but make iron weapons/shields and other expensive stuff even more rare by making it harder to make iron and steel.

[rklenseth]

Wrong about the iron and the about the the clothing. Iron can be smelted without steel. You'll have to find that out yourself. There are also non-steel tools to make clothing. Once again you will have to find that out yourself.

[kroner]

I think it's good to make things harder to get. In fact I like to see big disparity between the rich and poor in cantr because it makes for a more interesting game. This complaint points I think to a different problem. Right now the old characters are wealthly and the new characters are poor from a material sense almost without exception. This is because material possesions just keep accumulating endlessly. This should really be changed. It sould take effort to stay wealthy. That way business savy will become the main factor in a characters wealth rather than age. The way to make this happen is item deterioration. (yeah, you knew I was gonna find a way to work that in) Item deterioration is our salvation! Yay!

[sammigurl61190]

But I agree--it's gotten to the point that it's not fun anymore. Okay, not as fun. It's nearly impossible to do anything to be more technologically advanced anymore.

[Solfius]

The clothing machines are outdated, a new approach to clothing has been put in since their creation 6 or more months ago, I am aware of the need for steel, and agree it shouldn't be there. I'm sorting it out.

Iron will still be able to be manufactured using the materials for steel, not too big a change (if anyone can supply detailed information on the processes for steel manufacturing, and iron refining, especially the differences I'd be grateful. Didn't someone mention they worked in the steel industry?)

[Nick]

Stop thinking about realism for a second, Chris. If the ingredients for iron and steel were the same thing, noone would ever have use for iron weapons, and that step of society would most likely be skipped completely. Rather retarded, and then we would have some people with sabres, and everyone else defending themselves with wooden or animal made shields. And RKL, at first glance, clothes dont require steel. But indirectly they do. Although some clothes, I believe the loincloth, can be made without steel. Sometimes.

[Solfius]

All my research has indicated the same ingredients, and a near similar process. It was not until I looked into the matter in detail that I discovered this, and so there must be another reason for the separate "iron age" prior to the use of steel. Unfortunately, I don't know it, but there must be something there that casued it.

People will not be able to jump straight from iron ore to steel, that is "rather retarded": inaccurate, and unbalancing.

Currently all clothes related machines require steel, and that will change. It is known issue, and is being sorted.

[Pirog]

Solfius>

That is great news!
Especially the hemp should be easier to make cloth from...people has used hemp for clothes for many thousands of years.

If you want to make a difference in fine and simple clothes, and make it a trade commodity, I dropped some suggestions in another topic.

[Solfius]

Yes, I have a few ideas for that myself, but the machines are a "relic" of past attempts at clothes, and need fine tuning, hence the steel

[quidit]

Solfius: Yes you are correct. For the most part the in game way of making steel is close enough for in game use.
I have not made steel in game yet but I think the ingredients are coal and iron, and for the most part those are a big part of it although magneseium is used also in some large quantities.

Also though the most important factor in making steel today is not the steel itself but the slag on top of the steel. We use the slag to trap and hold impurities from the steel, retain heat, and to coat the ladle as it drains into the caster. to make this slag we use large amounts of lime in our furnace and ladles after tap.
So I think if you are not using lime in game that may be a good addition to steel making in game.
There is so much more but I think for the most part making steel in game is fine and I do not know much about how we went from the iron age into the steel age, but I would imagine it had something to do with them figuring out that if you add carbon to molten iron it makes it much stronger and stiffer.

There is also many differnt grades of steel depending on the amount of carbon and other things you use in it, so that could be somthing you could change. Like say you want steel for a car so it needs to be strong and stiff so you would make a steel that has more carbon or coal(coke),
and visa versa if you wanted to make a more plyable steel like for wire or somthing.

[The Hunter]

Isn't it so that when Iron ore is smelted, the iron is very brittle? This due to very high amounts of carbon, sulfur and other imputities in the iron?
In thqat case it's very easy, make steel have the requirement that it should be purified. I've seen an alumina refiner ingame, why not add an iron ore refiner? Or maybe some sort of post smelter to make steel?

Oh, and isn't the name for simple, low quality iron "pig iron"?

[The Hunter]

Great link on iron production here.

http://www.ironsmelting.net/www/smelting/index.html

and on steel productio here:

http://www.weirton.com/products/prod/proda.html

The difference seems to be the use of limestone used for the slags, whereas in iron smelting slags are formed by the ore itself and the clay from the smelter, and the higher temperature needed for steel.

[Solfius]

That's a brilliant site on iron production. I don't think I've found anything that detailed before: cheers

[quidit]

Simplified, the main process is the reduction of ore, by carbon from the fuel, at a sufficient temperature. To achieve both an adequate temperature and an adequate yield of iron, the fuel/ore ratio needs to be high, at least 2:1, but more often much higher. At higher ratios, less iron will end up in the slag.
When the ore is in direct contact with solid carbon, the reduction might follow:


6Fe2O3 + C --> 4Fe3O4 + CO2

2Fe3O4 + C --> 6FeO + CO2

2FeO + C --> 2Fe (metal) + CO2

In theory, smelters can manipulate the CO-CO2 ratio in the furnace to influence the final result: below 1% of CO2 gasses in the furnace results in cast iron (which does liquefy during smelting, and therefore requires temperatures around 1500 oC), between 1 and 3% will result in steel, and above 3% will result in bloom iron. In practice, the result will be a very heterogeneous bloom with differing carbon contents7.

This is from your link and sorta what I stated earlier. The strength of the steel deppends very much on the amount of carbon introduced into it or removed from it.