POLL: Smithing system overhaul

[Alenovic]

I'm curious what you people think about It. I love history and never in my life have I encountered or read upon a noblemen or Lord who became a blacksmith, for very obvious reasons, but not going into that. However there was one guy in the movie kingdom of Heaven if i'm not mistaken but that's not an accurate medieval source.

Currently I read upon 2 recurring things.

People who want to be a roaming blacksmith (most of them like smithing own gear only don't realize that medieval smiths needed days/weeks/ months sometimes to just finish 1 piece, at the same time blacksmith masters needed 10-20-30 years of experience before they became a master, shortly after they would die because their lungs stopped working) Simoultaniously these people don't like the idea of the current stamina (which is a sort of mechanic which needs time to be wasted or passed in order for you to smith again. I believe the idea behind this is to act like a mechanic to reflect the time needed to even smelt or craft a simple sword. Mostly people that want to play blacksmith want to singlehandedly make 10-12 swords per day, but in real life medieval times real cheap swords (which break and dent very easily) already took 1-2 days to make with an good smithy workshop towns without an blacksmith workshop is just impossible to smith anything. It's not that you can light a campfire and start smithing and smelting.

Other people would like to see a real smith master NPC in specific towns (or only towns with Iron access or a smithy), which reflects real world aspects.Where knights and lords would order gear from the renowned and Well-known master and then sit back and wait for their order to finish. In this case the smith NPC can give you a quest to gather the needed material and money and comeback then he starts working, better gear takes X amount of money X amount of time X amount of materials. Like simple swords are done within a day, while decorated high tier weapons take a month or so..

Some want a combination:

Like to hear from you

 

[Grendlewalt]

I personally could do away completely with the smithing skill. I just don't find it fun at all in its current state. Why cant you make armour or ranged weapons?
In its place I'd like to see a different skill.

One idea would be an 'armourer' skill.

- Speak to a smith in a town to unlock the skill. You can 'order' tier upgrades for your troops from the smith and they will gradually accumulate over time. As upgrades are produced skill exp for the smith increases.
-You can order upgrades with gold, but donating ore and items gives a production boost

- Increasing skill increases the rate at which upgrades are produced.

- Skill unlocks could include tier upgrades, being able to have town smiths make you special armour/weapons, grindstones to make bladed weapons more effective, being able to fix broken items (which would be implemented into the game)

- Troop exp would therefore only go to increasing their stats.

I guess this type of thing would require a pretty big overhaul of the game so isn't going to happen, but the old system for upgrading troops needs a bit of an enhancement imo.
Paying 100g to give your troop a full set of T5 armour is a bit op atm.
Something like this could also provide a much needed gold sink late game.

 

[anarhil]

Right now the buffs are not working on crafted weapons. Also you can't make a unique sword. You see your unique swords in markets, even the ones you smelt still appear on markets.

 

[Dankz]

I voted a combination. Not everyone is going to play a character that is a good Smith, so a NPC that's gives you a quest to gather mats and then in a few days or week w.e you come back and he has crafted it. And if you do plan on going deep in smithing removing the stamina requirement and making it pass time is a great idea on how to rework the current system

 

[Alenovic]

I voted a combination. Not everyone is going to play a character that is a good Smith, so a NPC that's gives you a quest to gather mats and then in a few days or week w.e you come back and he has crafted it. And if you do plan on going deep in smithing removing the stamp requirement and making it pass time is a great idea on how to rework the current system

Actually if a month passes in game and somehow AI lords are not very aggressive. It would be a great mechanic to let years pass by as a smith... Then perhaps you could see your sons grow up.

However, as long as the stability and snowballing isn't fixed.. creating a high tier decorated weapon which takes a month or longer to finish could very well mean that your faction just lost 2 towns and 3 castles...

- Troop exp would therefore only go to increasing their stats.

I guess this type of thing would require a pretty big overhaul of the game so isn't going to happen, but the old system for upgrading troops needs a bit of an enhancement imo.
Paying 100g to give your troop a full set of T5 armour is a bit op atm.
Something like this could also provide a much needed gold sink late game.

I can see the reasoning behind, only in a lot of medieval societies household were saving up money to buy gear for their sons so they could join the army, because the army usually paid the highest wages and was a fairly reliable employer.

Knights had their own earnings, as they came from well-off families and had perhaps own workshops and different incomes. They usually bought their own gear or inherited the gear from the family. So the lord they joined the army off only had to pay their wages. A knight usually earned like 10x or more the wage of a common soldier. For example few sources mention that an average archer needed 130 days of wages to pay its gear. So an archer would get its total investment back if he somehow survived for longer than 130 days.. The did not have cost except the tavern and additional services they indulged themselves with after the initial investment.

For a soldier, the life of a soldier was just an carreer path, they would try to climb the ladder, smart soldiers would save their earnings to buy better gear and eventually become a knight. Becoming a knight wasn't always just gifted and paid for by the king...

However at the same time there are also a lot of sources which show how kings or lords ordered a lot of weapons and armors in order to equip their soldiers with. However it is not known whether this armor was given to merchants to be sold (in order to make a profit perhaps? or break-even) to willing volunteers or redistributed freely to conscripts.

 

[Grendlewalt]

Actually if a month passes in game and somehow AI lords are not very aggressive. It would be a great mechanic to let years pass by as a smith... Then perhaps you could see your sons grow up.

However, as long as the stability and snowballing isn't fixed.. creating a high tier decorated weapon which takes a month or longer to finish could very well mean that your faction just lost 2 towns and 3 castles...



I can see the reasoning behind, only in a lot of medieval societies household were saving up money to buy gear for their sons so they could join the army, because the army usually paid the highest wages and was a fairly reliable employer.

Knights had their own earnings, as they came from well-off families and had perhaps own workshops and different incomes. They usually bought their own gear or inherited the gear from the family. So the lord they joined the army off only had to pay their wages. A knight usually earned like 10x or more the wage of a common soldier. For example few sources mention that an average archer needed 130 days of wages to pay its gear. So an archer would get its total investment back if he somehow survived for longer than 130 days.. The did not have cost except the tavern and additional services they indulged themselves with after the initial investment.

For a soldier, the life of a soldier was just an carreer path, they would try to climb the ladder, smart soldiers would save their earnings to buy better gear and eventually become a knight. Becoming a knight wasn't always just gifted and paid for by the king...

However at the same time there are also a lot of sources which show how kings or lords ordered a lot of weapons and armors in order to equip their soldiers with. However it is not known whether this armour was given to merchants to be sold (in order to make a profit perhaps? or break-even) to willing volunteers or redistributed freely to conscripts.

Nice! Interesting stuff. Maybe then you could have a system whereby the soldiers gradually increase their gear over time to simulate the fact that they want to move up in the army.

However, if you want well geared troops quickly you can also use the smithing skill to make this happen quicker, buy at the cost of your own gold/materieals.

You then get the choice of what kind of leader you want to be. A higher level of immersion and complexity in the game.

 

[Negative]

Actually if a month passes in game and somehow AI lords are not very aggressive. It would be a great mechanic to let years pass by as a smith... Then perhaps you could see your sons grow up.

However, as long as the stability and snowballing isn't fixed.. creating a high tier decorated weapon which takes a month or longer to finish could very well mean that your faction just lost 2 towns and 3 castles...



I can see the reasoning behind, only in a lot of medieval societies household were saving up money to buy gear for their sons so they could join the army, because the army usually paid the highest wages and was a fairly reliable employer.

Knights had their own earnings, as they came from well-off families and had perhaps own workshops and different incomes. They usually bought their own gear or inherited the gear from the family. So the lord they joined the army off only had to pay their wages. A knight usually earned like 10x or more the wage of a common soldier. For example few sources mention that an average archer needed 130 days of wages to pay its gear. So an archer would get its total investment back if he somehow survived for longer than 130 days.. The did not have cost except the tavern and additional services they indulged themselves with after the initial investment.

For a soldier, the life of a soldier was just an carreer path, they would try to climb the ladder, smart soldiers would save their earnings to buy better gear and eventually become a knight. Becoming a knight wasn't always just gifted and paid for by the king...

However at the same time there are also a lot of sources which show how kings or lords ordered a lot of weapons and armors in order to equip their soldiers with. However it is not known whether this armor was given to merchants to be sold (in order to make a profit perhaps? or break-even) to willing volunteers or redistributed freely to conscripts.

Well about payment for knights one needs to discuss at what time and quite a few more specifics. As far as i remember in Dellbruecks work on military history they got jack**** if they had to serve because of their obligation to serve. But that servitude was limited for a certain amount of time. But again frankish laws basically wrote that people had to offer a certain amount of services without payment as 'taxes'. Which one could buy off by actually paying.
A lot of the frankish feudal system was at the beginning tied towards how much 'fiefdom' is needd to supply a number of mounted, armored cavallery. And at least from Dellbrueck in that time they didn't even count troops on foot in this obligations, but just 'lances' which were meant to include at least a certain amount of people on foot (helping with horses, supplies, but also fighting).

But that's what i remember reading about the time around the 9th century - which naturally differs quite a lot to times around the 12.th or 15.th century.

 

[Belazarius]

Endurance is fine. Just make it regen when we travel on the world map too. Maybe at a much lower rate than waiting/camping.

 

[vadeN]

Should just replace the stamina with a fee for using the smithy instead, not passing time at all.

 

[zwien]

Too grindy. Better to do away with the stamina bar. Not very rewarding either as it's more lucrative to be fighting and capturing. The coin from smelting is only useful early game.

 

[darksoulshin]

this is a copy and paste of a comment that I wrote in a thread dedicated to the same topic:

A tip to improve forging:
MAKE IT ACTIVE.
There is the hot iron that from molten has been put in a "mold" in which to solidify to have a certain "rough" shape that needs to be refined, therefore this still hot raw shape is put on the incidine and you literally have to beat it with a hammer blacksmith equipped.
Using the attack from above (and maybe in person)
The shape is refined based on where you hit it.
You can put the iron to heat and then beat it back.
with the view choose to move the target along the iron and with the left mouse prepare the arm to hit the hot iron.
The longer you hold the button, the stronger the blow will be.
So you have to hit the metal along its entire length with a certain amount of force and strokes to refine the shape.
The difficulty of the process depends on how smooth the skill smithing is.
Any weapon can always be refined and improved with this process.
Therefore one cannot irreparably fail.
You can even make crooked weapons, but you can reshape them.
Clearly the system must be adapted to any type of craftabile weapon / armor
The point is that YOU ARE REALLY the one making the weapon and you feel it yours.
It's not just a "press the button and the weapon sticking out"

This is just an example.
I would like it even more complex and particular, but I will stop here.

 

[Demoulius]

Suggested the npc smith in a different thread myself. But I like for the player to have the option to do the smithing himself.

They just need to make it....Less slow and less of a chore.

 

[Matsetes]

I would totally like the fact that you can recover smithy stamina with time, I think it's a bug or a crappy mechanic to recover it only by resting. If I travel as a merchant for a week why would I be still without stamina? Just adding that will really improve the life of smith/trader players. You are forced to travel cause you constantly need cheap hardwood, so why not add the recover of the stamina?