I've seen several suggestions to smithing going around since EA launch, but some things that I'd like modified I haven't seen yet. So here we are...
There are two straightforward ways of changing the situation - you can modify the way the stamina is replenished, or you can modify the way the stamina is spent. Replenishment can be allowed during march with, maybe, lower rate than in the city - I think I already saw that in some mods. The spending of stamina can be adjusted by a flat bonus from Smithing perk, like a lot of other perks affect the related stats.
If you're thinking of a more major overhaul, you could also replace the stamina altogether with some notion of "tiredness". It would have the "steady state" value for the activity (resting = 0% tired, marching = 20% tired, sieging = 30% tired etc), and the actual tiredness score that would converge to the current steady state every game tick with certain rate.
Then, say, if you're injured, this steady state can also be increased by half the missing health (i.e. +50% when you have no health, +25% when you're 50% healthy, etc). And certain actions would change the tiredness level immediately - say, a battle/championship would up it by +20%.
Let's illustrate it with an example: imagine that you've been marching long enough (and converged to your 20% tiredness level), but right before entering the city you caught a band of looters (+20% immediate tiredness) and dropped the health down to 50% (+25% tiredness steady state). This means that immediately after the battle your tiredness has reached 40% but your flatrate is now 20%+25%=45%. So, while marching you will get even more tired, but as soon as you get to the city, your steady state will change to 0% + 25% from the injury, and you'll start resting (and healing)
This could also be tied to some skills/perks (maybe in athletic, medicine, weapon skills, etc) that affect steady state and/or rate of change. There could also be activities that affect it - say, paying for visiting a bathhouse in the city to immediately reduce the tiredness
So, for smithing activities you can have immediate tiredness costs similar to current stamina costs. But again, this could be reduced by the base smithing skill value. Unlike stamina, the tiredness can also be connected to the smithing outcome itself - you can use it as a multiplier on forging difficulty (i.e. an 80% tired person would need a smithing skill of 1.8x the normal value), as a multiplier on needed materials, as a damper (1 - tiredness) on smithing XP, etc
The tiredness value can also then be used in the rest of the game - from how well you communicate (in the charming-related checks) to how fast you move on foot or your weapon damage.
I would propose to reward the most for making weapons of your smithing skill rating. This can be adjusted by introducing the term
and then use it to calculate a damping factor on XP gain
For example, if L is set to 0.001, then you will get only 20% of the XP if the weapon you craft is either 40 easier or 40 harder than your current smithing skill:
My reasoning for this is the following: if you're a decent smith, making very easy recipes is not going to help you improve your skill much. And if you're trying to make something way beyond your skill level, you will also not learn much, because at that point you don't understand anything about what you're doing. So, there's a sweet-spot right at the limit of your abilities, which makes you learn the fastest.
Because there's already an exponential growth of XP needed to advance to higher levels, you can also be more generous in the base XP gains for forging weapons - this additional damping factor will keep people smithing the "right" recipes for their skill.
I would again emphasize the need to tie together the smithing with the rest of the game - people were already making suggestions about interacting with ironmongers in towns, making them share their recipes with you would be an easy option.
Learning the "correct" parts from the weapons you dismantle is also something that lies on the surface. Maybe this can also be tied together with the yield - the more components you already know, the higher the chance that you will extract all the metal from dismantling. And the less components you know, the higher the chance you'll learn them from smelting (at the cost of "wasting" more materials by dismantling them).
where X_i are the characteristics you got, X_imax are the best theoretical values for given weapon type and C_i are the weighting factors (say, damage is worth ~3 times more than weapon reach, or something like that)
What I'd propose is again a more "explainable" approach: the price should be based on
And once more, it would be great if trading forged weapons would be somehow linked to the rest of the game - for example, selling "common" swords would count towards trading XP, or if in the towns/castles you own you could offload weapons to equip your militia?
Basically, a common theme in my suggestions is improving the "explainability" of the mechanics related to smithing, and incorporate it more into the base game. Hopefully it at least gives some food for thought
Stamina
This is the obvious one - locking stamina replenishment to staying in cities is not fun. You're basically asking the player to stop playing and do the most boring thing possible (sit there and do nothing). This is hardly a good gamedesign decision, especially in a sandbox game.There are two straightforward ways of changing the situation - you can modify the way the stamina is replenished, or you can modify the way the stamina is spent. Replenishment can be allowed during march with, maybe, lower rate than in the city - I think I already saw that in some mods. The spending of stamina can be adjusted by a flat bonus from Smithing perk, like a lot of other perks affect the related stats.
If you're thinking of a more major overhaul, you could also replace the stamina altogether with some notion of "tiredness". It would have the "steady state" value for the activity (resting = 0% tired, marching = 20% tired, sieging = 30% tired etc), and the actual tiredness score that would converge to the current steady state every game tick with certain rate.
Then, say, if you're injured, this steady state can also be increased by half the missing health (i.e. +50% when you have no health, +25% when you're 50% healthy, etc). And certain actions would change the tiredness level immediately - say, a battle/championship would up it by +20%.
Let's illustrate it with an example: imagine that you've been marching long enough (and converged to your 20% tiredness level), but right before entering the city you caught a band of looters (+20% immediate tiredness) and dropped the health down to 50% (+25% tiredness steady state). This means that immediately after the battle your tiredness has reached 40% but your flatrate is now 20%+25%=45%. So, while marching you will get even more tired, but as soon as you get to the city, your steady state will change to 0% + 25% from the injury, and you'll start resting (and healing)
This could also be tied to some skills/perks (maybe in athletic, medicine, weapon skills, etc) that affect steady state and/or rate of change. There could also be activities that affect it - say, paying for visiting a bathhouse in the city to immediately reduce the tiredness
So, for smithing activities you can have immediate tiredness costs similar to current stamina costs. But again, this could be reduced by the base smithing skill value. Unlike stamina, the tiredness can also be connected to the smithing outcome itself - you can use it as a multiplier on forging difficulty (i.e. an 80% tired person would need a smithing skill of 1.8x the normal value), as a multiplier on needed materials, as a damper (1 - tiredness) on smithing XP, etc
The tiredness value can also then be used in the rest of the game - from how well you communicate (in the charming-related checks) to how fast you move on foot or your weapon damage.
Smithing XP
This is another aspect that might be improved, in my view. From what I gathered, you have a fixed value of XP for smelting/refining, and a value of XP for crafting a weapon that only depends on the weapon's difficulty. So, when you get a new character with smithing = 1 and make him create tier-5 sword with max length, he'll get powerleveled in one go. And this both makes little sense gameplay-wise as well as "realism"-wise.I would propose to reward the most for making weapons of your smithing skill rating. This can be adjusted by introducing the term
Code:
C = |weapon_difficulty - smithing_skill|
Code:
damping_factor = exp[-L*C^2]
My reasoning for this is the following: if you're a decent smith, making very easy recipes is not going to help you improve your skill much. And if you're trying to make something way beyond your skill level, you will also not learn much, because at that point you don't understand anything about what you're doing. So, there's a sweet-spot right at the limit of your abilities, which makes you learn the fastest.
Because there's already an exponential growth of XP needed to advance to higher levels, you can also be more generous in the base XP gains for forging weapons - this additional damping factor will keep people smithing the "right" recipes for their skill.
Smithing Recipes
Another part that's a bit too random to be enjoyable is the way you obtain recipe pieces. I think you've definitely put some safeguards in place to not gain too many recipes from mass-breaking a bunch of rusty pitchforks, but I feel that in the latest patches the game is way too stingy with giving new recipes.I would again emphasize the need to tie together the smithing with the rest of the game - people were already making suggestions about interacting with ironmongers in towns, making them share their recipes with you would be an easy option.
Learning the "correct" parts from the weapons you dismantle is also something that lies on the surface. Maybe this can also be tied together with the yield - the more components you already know, the higher the chance that you will extract all the metal from dismantling. And the less components you know, the higher the chance you'll learn them from smelting (at the cost of "wasting" more materials by dismantling them).
Trading forged weapons
The current price, derived purely from weapon damage, is very exploitable and makes little sense. Some people (like ItalianSpartacus, for example) propose to calculate the price based on several relevant characteristics as follows
Code:
price = C_1 * X_1/X_1max + ... + C_n * X_n/X_nmax
What I'd propose is again a more "explainable" approach: the price should be based on
- the raw materials used for its production (BOM costs?)
- crafting quality
- "ubiquity", how similar is the weapon looking to the weapons already existing in the game
And once more, it would be great if trading forged weapons would be somehow linked to the rest of the game - for example, selling "common" swords would count towards trading XP, or if in the towns/castles you own you could offload weapons to equip your militia?
Basically, a common theme in my suggestions is improving the "explainability" of the mechanics related to smithing, and incorporate it more into the base game. Hopefully it at least gives some food for thought