Titanium and other metals

Between changes to the prayer system, I've made a Pull Request to add titanium, but it needs your help before we can incorporate it!

I need someone to sanity check / peer review a couple of values to make sure they're reasonable and to add it to each of the metally object as a generation possibility (like the two-handed sword).

This was done to address the biiiig gulf between meteoric steel (int 15) and adamant (int 40). Titanium currently sits at int 25, but there's no reason we can't add another metal between the existing ones.

I'll get on this when I get home. I'll add it to the script files and upload them here so others can live-test too, if someone else doesn't get to it before me.
Also, Titanium should either be extremely rust resistant or rust proof.

I'm all for adding more materials, even side-grades for the current ones just to add a little bit more variety.

I'm unsure about adding 'Titanium' to the materials. Though I agree there should be a new iron alloy material with an int requirement of around 25. My reasoning is that there is certainly a material distinctly missing from the iron alloys between meteoric steel and adamant, and that it would be unusual for meteoric steel to suddenly harden into a material invulnerable to rust, only to harden again into adamant which can rust again.
In the past, 'damascus steel' was added to some of the variants, and I think this material would be suitably placed between meteoric steel and adamant.
The only snag is 'damascus' refers to a place not above Valpurus, so we might like to describe it with another place name like Irinox, or Bazaria, or somewhere else?
The stats for titanium appear okay for use in an iron alloy type material.

I want to know what the resident blacksmith thinks.

Maybe not the right thread but I think materials should have more secondary properties like the resist rust mentioned above. It always bothered me that material progression was linear and the game just became an arms race to get to the best material as fast as possible. i think adding in bonuses or features to some weaker materials and some penalties to the uber materials would make it more interesting later in the game. You end game armor would not nescasarrily be optimized by having the most exclusive materials, but by having the most most balanced combination of AC and bonus effects.

Fejoa, I think titanium should definitely be in, but maybe not in the iron/steel/adamant line. Maybe Bronze shouldn't harden into iron but rather to a new line of rustproof metals which are weaker than equivalent rustable alloys? Of course, as far as putting a rustproof metal into the steel line, there is real life stainless steel...

I really don't like damascus steel as stronger than meteoric. The meteoric implies that it's somehow better than mere earthly materials. How about something like:

Pig iron (something worse than iron that can rust) -> Iron -> Steel -> Dwarven/Irinox/Foo Steel -> Meteoric Steel -> Adamant
and also
Lead -> Copper -> Bronze -> Djinn Brass -> Titanium (probably missing at least 1 level here)

Sorry I didn't do this when I got home like I said I would, I got a killer headache and thought I was going to die so I went straight to bed instead.
You can download the script files to implement Titanium here since apparently I can't attach zip files even though it says I can. Just drop them in the Script folder of the newest build of IVAN and you're ready to go.

Titanium has been added as a material for every item that could have been spawned made of meteoric steel. The chance for titanium is 15 in general (meteoric steel is 25) but I used smaller numbers when the meteoric steel chance was also low.



Thankfully IVAN already has variable rust resistance, you can add "RustModifier = X" to change how quickly or slowly that material rusts when exposed to corrosive liquids.

I also think having other more interesting materials rather than a linear path would be nice, problem is you'd only be able to use them if you had a SoCM or the item spawned with that material to begin with. I had ideas like a material that had a lower rust chance but also a lower AV. We kinda already have that but you're railroaded to choosing either cloth armor or metal armor.

I'd also like to see the stone materials used for certain items, perhaps unique ones that can only be made of stone? Stone armor should be extremely strong, but also very, very heavy - so heavy you wouldn't normally be able to use it. We'd need to make a new armor type because the current body armor gives next to no AV when it's made of stone, even though it's still very heavy.





Well I was just under the assumption that meteoric steel is just much more pure than earth steel, since the iron from meteorites IRL tends to be of very high quality. I agree that Damascus Steel wouldn't make sense for being stronger than meteoric for that same reason.

I'd be willing to add something like heavy_plate, but the danger is someone SoCMs it into arcanite or what have you and they end up with crazy good armor. Not sure how to do it and make sure it only works for crappy materials like stone. I could override the normal armor calculations to make it so the heavier the material, the more AV it provides, but then we'd probably want to have a magical explanation like "Granite Armor of Atlas +2" rather than "Granite Heavy Plate Mail +2".

4zb4, do you have a github account? I can incorporate your script files (thanks very much!!) but I'd rather you get credit for making the changes. If you can, just open a PR against my `add_titanium` branch.

I think you can add a flag or something that prevents people from changing the material of certain items, Lampshade was going to do something like that for the Dragon Cuirass in LIVAN.

I just went and added my own take on stone armor as a proof-of-concept. Here's a screenshot of an obscenely heavy limestone plate mail:


I just added it in via script editing:

    Config STONE_MAIL;
  {
    StrengthModifier = 600;
    DefaultSize = 75;
    DefaultMainVolume = 22000;
    BitmapPos = 16, 128;
    Possibility = 50;
    NameSingular = "stone mail";
    FlexibleNameSingular = "armor";
    MainMaterialConfig = { 5, LIME_STONE, OBSIDIAN, MARBLE, BASALT, JASPER; }
    MaterialConfigChances = { 5, 500, 250, 200, 100, 50; }
    InElasticityPenaltyModifier = 40;
    EnchantmentPlusChance = 2;
    TorsoArmorBitmapPos = 32, 416;
    ArmArmorBitmapPos = 80, 416;
    AthleteArmArmorBitmapPos = 80, 448;
    LegArmorBitmapPos = 16, 416;
  }

The idea here is that stone armor is its own thing, and very rarely found. It has a very high strength modifier to compensate for the fact that stone materials aren't actually that strong, and to counteract that I've added an obscene main material density to make them extremely heavy. With a little extra testing and tweaking, and the addition of something to stop people changing their materials I think we could make this work.
Currently I think the main material density is still a little too low - I'd want it to overload most characters.
I'd be happy to make my own sprites for it too if everyone likes the idea.

I do have a github account, I'll go add the titanium scripts to your branch.

EDIT: Or I would if I had any idea what I am doing, which I don't.
Apparently your fork of IVAN doesn't have BLACK_LEATHER too, so my Titanium additions to the latest downloadable version are defined in define.dat as solid 68.

EDIT 2: I THINK I finally managed to figure out how a pull request works. I may have a github account, but that doesn't mean I know what I'm doing.
Note that I only put in item.dat which is where the spawn chances are, since you already have define.dat and materials.dat modified.

Try Wootz. It's way better than Damascus steel and I would say kicks meteoric steel's ass too. As stated, iron found in meteorites is rather pure - way better than anyone could get their hands on before modern refining methods anyway. (Today you can get insanely pure iron by burning some thermite in your backyard, but that's beside the point.) But it's iron - you need to add about 1 % of carbon to make it a good steel, and preferrably some other trace elements too if you know what you are doing (and no one really did before the 20th century). To properly dissolve and distribute the trace elements evenly you need to heat the mix up to the melting point of iron. Making a good batch of steel is really hard, for some of the trace elements (like carbon, which is the defining element in steels) are measured in grams per kilo or even less. And it's not just the measuring part, as inpurities tend to be absorbed from the surroundings when things get hot like within the furnace. Some on purpose, and others not so much. Some of the most harmful elements for steel are really common in the materials all around us, like phosphorus, and it is nearly impossible to eliminate contamination outside of a lab. And this is what makes wootz such a marvel - instead of eliminating all the impurities in the steel, the strength of wootz lies in it's structure. While the high carbon content would make contemporary steels too brittlle for use, most of the excess carbon in wootz is stored in the carbides it contains. This kind of micro structure creates an interesting combination of softer and harder structures within the steel, making it both tough and extremely hard. Absolutely perfect for, say, a sword.

Today I learned about really cool metal alloys.

Also on the topic of strong metals, there's no reason why we can't have some kind of magically hardened metal in there somewhere. A few NPCs state that Attnam has been experimenting with magical weaponry (that resulted in the mutant animals we see) so we could potentially have a magically tainted steel or other kind of metal that has been re-purposed for weapon smithing that only exists as a byproduct of the Attnamese magic tests.
That would be a good excuse for a metal that doesn't rust, and is also very strong.

Hell it doesn't even need to be metal. Since the magical experiments mutated animals, it could just be wood from a magically tainted tree - we already have mutant plants but they're made of fiber, not wood.
That would make for a very interesting quarterstaff material, or provide an alternative and still viable material for armors/shields if you had a SoCM.

There's the resident Blacksmith

I concede that it would be good to expand the copper material chain, and to that end, titanium should find its place in there as a high-end technical material, along with Djinn brass as you suggest. It is good to separate the iron alloys out from that material branch.
I noticed the proposed titanium material is quite similar to mithril, but of course, mithril belongs in a separate line of noble materials. It is nice for players to have the option of hardening to a superior material without needing to change material lines.

In light of Erno's teachings, can I suggest the following iron alloy material chain: pig iron -> iron -> steel -> meteoric steel -> wootz steel -> adamant ?

That ferrous line looks great to me, although it'd be nice to still put one more somewhere between meteoric and adamant, since that gulf is so vast.

Perhaps Mithril could move to the end of the copper->titanium branch, and have an analogous role to adamant. We could then flesh out the "magical material" branch with something like this (inspired by Exalted):
Magical Metal:
Jade -> Starmetal -> Moonsilver -> Arcanite -> Orichalcum -> Octiron. (or swap the last two)

Lighter / technical metal: (Gets lighter and a bit stronger as you progress)
Lead -> Copper -> Bronze -> Djinn Brass [less dense than real brass, somewhat stronger than bronze] -> Titanium [nerf it a bit compared to what I had] -> Mithril [boost it some relative to today & raise INT]

This has the advantage of all of the trees having 6 materials. Might have to think of a reason why the magical branch isn't the only one worth having. Perhaps while the materials are better (light and strong) than the others in their branch, the Int requirements are about 5 points higher than the quality would suggest, so that they're only useful for really high int characters who would be at the top of the other chains.

The wiki almost needs a diagram to show how materials are related.

This has been sitting for a while, and I sure could use less crazy powerful "magical" materials for Atavus to give to you. Does anyone have an objection to just adding these materials as I wrote them above? If so, could you give me an alternative list? I just want to keep moving on my work and I need materials in place to make it better...

No objections here.
It's super easy to change names and stats once they're in if need be anyway so I see no reason not to go ahead with the changes.

You mean the series of materials proposed in this post?:


Yeah ok. So to summarize, the material trees presently go like this:

(Sulphur -> )Tin -> Copper -> Bronze -> Iron -> Steel -> Meteoric Steel -> Adamant // Sulphur doesn't seem to occur naturally in IVAN, hence ()

Arcanite -> Mithril -> Octiron

Lead -> Adamant

Silver -> Sapphire -> Diamond
Gold -> Ruby -> Diamond

Illithium
Valpurium

And the proposed trees are:

Magical: Jade -> Starmetal -> Moonsilver -> Arcanite -> Orichalcum -> Octiron //maybe use Aurichalcum, to differ slightly from other fantasy elements? Pity it's hard to spell.

Technical: (Sulphur -> )Tin -> Copper -> Bronze -> Djinn Brass -> Titanium -> Mithril

Ferrous: pig iron -> iron -> steel -> meteoric steel -> wootz steel -> adamant

Noble: Illithium, Valpurium

I don't see why not. In addition, I would do something like:

Lead -> Gold

Yup, they can be placeholders to begin with, though I feel like it's more or less complete for now. In the lists above, I feel like Mithril for example doesn't really have a fixed place yet. It's kind of magic but also quite useful and valuable. Maybe it could be a noble metal, like illithium, valpurium?

Eventually we could invent some personalities for these materials so they can be more easily distinguished. Magic materials would need truly magical properties. There is definitely an alchemy system to be conceptualized. It could be that some of the materials could be melted together to make hybrid ones, or to reach other materials on other branches?

Does anyone have any changes they would like to make to the names/order of materials?

I'd probably go:

Magical: Jade -> Starmetal -> Moonsilver -> Arcanite -> Mithril -> Octiron

Technical: (Sulphur -> )Tin -> Copper -> Bronze -> Djinn Brass -> Aurichalcum -> Titanium //since some historical sources suggest Orichalcum was a type of copper alloy

EDIT: gee, fancy colors

Is there another name for Wootz steel? I know it's real, but if I hadn't read about it here, I would think it sounds kind of silly (like 1337 or something)

Probably a variety of local names and such, but I haven't heard of any.

What about ukku steel?

Yeah I'd say just pick one of the alternatives from the wiki article.

Aww, there's nothing wrong with the word wootz. It's just the spelling that's a little unorthodox! =P

To be honest, I'm not opposed to wootz.

I'm with Capistro in that I think it sounds fairly ridiculous. I'd prefer some fictional metal, like galvorn. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Middle-earth_objects#G...

I agree that the name 'wootz' is ridiculous. If it has to be 'something steel' then I'd say 'dwarven steel' (although meteoric steel sounds stronger than dwarven steel… so maybe not. Or just put it between steel and meteoric steel).

But regarding stones, I'd love to have Malachite in IVAN, since I think IVAN doesn't have any green material yet (besides vomit).