In Terraria you had iron, but for a space age game that isn't enough. There should be a way to refine your iron into steel, for strength purposes.
that is a really good idea, but i wouldnt be surprised to see things stronger then steel. making steel might be complicated (like it is in dwarf fortress) and if you have metals that surpass steel but require less refining steel wont see as much use and the mechanic would be wasted. Unless the higher grade, more space age metals, also require multiple steps to refine.
Yes I would have thought they would of done that on terraria, but was surprised after a few hours and no steel. And as you said, it is a space stage game, so steel would be an almost need item. Yes there may be stronger and better stuff out there but that could be harder to aquire then what is need for mass prodution of steel. Fun Fact: The web of the Golden Orb Spider is as strong as steel wire of the same thickness.
I would have thought there would be stuff like titanium which could be better than steel and is more space agey in my opinion
There are stronger things you could just mine, but the point is that not much is made of iron anymore, it is refined into steel, which is easier to obtain
I think this would be an awesome addition, iron and carbon are incredibly common in the wide-galaxy so even if there are stronger materials that don't need as much refining steel could be a way to have reasonably strong materials with out using expensive metals such as titanium, tungsten, or platinum.
You could make it more interesting by allowing control of the percentages of iron and carbon you put into the steel, and altering the properties based on that, rather than just having one type of steel. Possibly also adding other materials to make stainless steel, etc...?
I like the idea of having a linear system of steel quality, but it should be based on skill of metal smelting, quality of materials, or how advance your equipment is, not some finicky system of carbon and steel balancing that the average person has no knowledge of. It not a simple thing of the more carbon the better I know that, so the complications would likely be more annoying than interesting. As far as stainless steel goes, that would entail that I would have to worry about my buildings or equipment rusting which I personally think is a bad idea. I hate shooting down your suggestions like this, especially since your a new member like me, but this is just me take on it. Sorry :/ .
I was more suggesting stainless steel due to the fact that it has different properties, like being harder and sharper, not for it's rustproof quality. Also, you would probably make Metal smelting skill affect the finished product, not the materials used to make it. Material quality could be represented through the fact that different ores, like Hematite or Magnetite, give random quantities of Iron in different ranges. How advanced your equipment is would also be a modifier to the equipment itself. I'm more thinking that different alloys have different effects on the weapon, so more hardness means the weapon, if it used cutting attacks, would be stronger, or if it had more weight it might be slower but hit harder in general plus bonus damage for bludgeoning weapons.
I can tell from your use of the minerals hematite and magnetite that you play Dwarf Fortress. I approve of your choice in games, my good sir! Anyway, smelting has nothing to do with the final product (that would be smithing), it has to do with the mixing of different ores to get the desired properties. So, if you are good at smelting, you will be able to get great materials that you can smith. Finally, stainless steel is neither harder nor sharper than normal steel, it simply has a oxidization resistant metal mixed in (usually nickel) in order to make it rust resistant. The only reason it's used so much in knives is because knives have to be able to take all kinds of abuse and can be used to cut just about anything, especially camping knives.
Huh, I thought it was stronger in some cases... Anyway, wouldn't smelting just improve the efficiency of how you gather the iron, meaning you get more? Assuming you use 100% (Approx) purity always as different purities would be a pain in the arse the work with, especially stacking. You could improve the strength of the material by rearranging the atoms inside of it, making it more like the ideal alloy structure (They can make steel strands that are able to hold cars up without breaking, and that's about 40% accuracy.) but it would be incredibly stupid the do that when smelting. Why would you need a really strong block of material? EDIT: Actually, wouldn't the Hardness/Sharpness of stainless steel depend on what it was alloyed with?
while i like your idea, i think it could be better rather then taking some of this and some of that and combining them and adding more or less of this etc. to get whatever metal so what you would do for example is say iron is easy to mine, there's good deposits of it on most planets:and sure there are better materials but they are harder to find and are in smaller amounts so you mine some iron,and once you've got enough for whatever you need, you can take any extra iron and combine it with another alloy/metal to create refined steel this steel is basically a tier higher then iron but also relatively easy to make if you take enough time to mine iron and whatever goes with it to make steel also this principle can be applied to other ores as well, mine this and that and smelt them together to make a more refined alloy and also steel could be used to make more equipment or building materials etc. whereas iron wouldn't be able to see what im getting at?
Yeah, I already had this idea, but mine was slightly different. Mine was that you have minimum and maximum values for the abilities of steel, and those vary depending on the ratio of iron to carbon that you use to make it. And applying this to all metals.
But here's the point I've been trying to make all along, adding more or less carbon to the steel making process doesn't linearly improve the steel. It's true more carbon will make the steel harder, but it gets more brittle as you do that and instead of giving a little bend when it hits something it will just shatter if it's to hard; the same goes for to little carbon, I will be extremely hard to break, but it will just bend every time it takes an impact and not be very good for anything. So, when your making steel, you have to balance the input metals to get the alloy with the properties you want for the job your going to use it for, at least in real life. In a game, custom making every type of steel (especially since steel is likely to be one of the most common building and crafting materials in the game due to it's relatively high strength and the commonness of iron and carbon in the wide-universe) would just take away from the whole experience, so a linear grading system based on your skill with alloying metals, not how much (relatively cheap) carbon you can put into the mix.
I going to assume you mean "duralumin". Well, that's actually a aluminum alloy (more specifically, aluminum, copper, manganese, and magnesium) so it's kinda random lol. Where did this come from? I don't know much about it's uses, but it has to be useful for something I guess; it's just that other than copper and aluminum the ingredients are kinda obscure, especially in most video games. As far as other alloys go though, I'm sure there will be other alloys, such as brass or bronze.
Speaking of rust... that would make an ok game mechanic to make steel more used because iron tools would degrade
I was just using it because it's a more complicated alloy. It was mainly used in aircraft, but not any more.