[Mats Persson]

Originally Posted by Zutha

Hello,

My pals and me generally do a lot of weapon testing and crafting.
We've tested Incisium/Cuprum/Bron and Steel weapons.

Hi, first of all are you absolutely sure that your skills in Basic Metals and Cuprum Lore are the same as Dental Lore and Incisium Lore? I ask because that will definitely affect all the attributes listed below.

1. Why does an incisium 2h Great Blade weight 4 times less?

It shouldn't. The density of Incisium is 2,47 times less than Cuprum, so either you have different skill values for the materials, or there is a bug.

2. Why does an incisium 2h Great Blade have twice the durability?

Because the hardness of Incisium is greater than Cuprum, which is very important for a weapon, although the general durability of Cuprum is greater than that of Incisium, which can be seen when using it for other purposes. The calculations are not optimal though, please read on.

The materials are not exactly equal to their real-life counterparts. However the real-life equivalent of Emalj would be Enamel. And Incisium is one step better. But anyway, real life Emalj has a Mohs hardness of 5 and real-life Copper has a Mohs hardness of 3. This means that Enamel is roughly 5 times as "hard" as Copper (as the scale is not linear), and that it can actually scratch Copper but not vice versa. (Yes, teeth are hard.) Now, although accurate within itself Mohs hardness is not really used in solid mechanics, but I find it rather amusing to take it into account in some equations in the game since the method of comparing materials by scratching is very old; it both fits the theme of the game, and it makes it more flexible as I want the organic materials to actually be useful.

On the other hand, although Enamel is harder, it is also much less flexible, and therefore more brittle. You can also compare the Young's modulus of Enamel which is ~83 GPa to Copper at ~120 GPa. And this poses a problem.

4. Why does both weapons loss exactly the same amount of durability per hit/perfect block etc....

And here comes the problem. To represent "brittleness" we used a second "durability" value, or ratio. This value basically said how much durability loss would occur if there was a durability loss. A Cuprum blade should gradually loose durability and get worse. An Incisium blade shouldn't loose durability very often, but once it did, it would lose a lot or break immediately.

This second "durability" value unfortunately had to be removed due to cost-issues (calculations as well as parameter storage and traffic), not to mention it also became problematic in the crafting system (the advanced one).

So instead we are now representing this with only one durability value, and it certainly has its weaknesses. It also means that although the attributes of the various materials have been adjusted, they are still off. In the case of Durability for weapons, you could definitely argue that it should depend more on the average durability of the materials and less on their hardness.

I do make adjustments over time, but please remember that this is often something of a catch 22 situation; I could spend time on re-balancing lets say Durability (which also would affect for instance hardness), but doing that when I know the whole Durability system will change within a few updates means it's not always a good choice; re-balancing often causes imbalance in other areas. And as we're working on updating systems or features which will change the overall balance, it's sometimes better to postpone the imbalanced issues that are not critical - otherwise we risk causing even more imbalance, which in turn need to be adjusted, even though the whole thing will be obsolete anyway when the updated system is in place (which in turn needs to be balanced).

Adding to the balance issues (on another level) is the fact that you don't have to process organic materials yet; once you need to put about the same time, skills and effort in processing them as you do with the minerals and metals, things will be a bit different. Not necessarily more "realistic", but a lot more balanced regarding supply/demand/difficulty/cost.

3. Why does an incisium 2h Great Blade have only 2 less damage?

Because it's both harder and sharper then Cuprum, while its weight is less. If you've read the above, this should be balanced out by a different kind of durability, and the need to process the material.

Isn't incisium... well.... teeth?

Yes, it's a kind of tooth material. Very hard. That needs to be properly processed in the near future

On a side note, why does a cuprum weapon do more dmg than a Bron? Being us Cuprum is Copper... and Bron is .. well Bronze.....

Again, the various attributes of the materials are used to decide this. Bron is a tiny bit heavier than Cuprum, much more generally durable, slightly harder, but it's not possible to make it nearly as sharp as Cuprum. A Bron blade should last longer, while a Cuprum blade, although sharp in the beginning, will soon get dull.

Any chance of a logical explanation

Thanks.

I did my best. It's both about changing and updating systems, as well as properties you sometimes don't think about.