How to fix Smithing

[Crim]

First, Remove it as a skill from the Player Character

Part 1 - Smelting down Weapons/Armor
Early Game
The generic/public Smith will now Smelt down all gear you give him, he will keep a large portion of the resources for himself, selling some of it to the town's economy.

This has ZERO cost for the player. He will literally take gear pieces, and provide the player immediately and for free a portion of the Metal from the result. The 'price' is the fact he's taking most of the resources.

There is a limit to how much he will take based on the size of his Smithy. More developed Smithy will be able to handle more, and it will be public information to the player how much of his current capacity is used up. As well as other NPCs will be using his capacity, so unless there's a shortage in town, it will probably be perpetually half full, and occasionally above that. His Capacity is based on the Town's Prosperity.

Mid Game
The player may buy a Workshop Blacksmith or build one in Player owned Keeps as a Keep Project.
Now the player owned Smith may be set to public or private. Public will increase the Towns capacity and processing speed, and earns the player some money. While Private gives the Town/Player exclusive capacity, but earns no money, maybe slightly better Metal ratio. Regardless of public or private, owning a Smith, will provide the player with significantly better metal ratios. Castle Blacksmiths providing the best ratio.

We can even implement ways to Improve your Smithy with
Capacity, which will be able to hold more gear to be broken down
More Workers, which will improve processing speeds
More Furnaces, which might increase metal ratios, etc etc


Part 2 - Crafting Weapons!
Now most Public Blacksmith have a Master Artisan. Each one will have different specializations, and a vast variety of different parts they can craft, and different skill at crafting different things. Now while Public Artisans will develop their skills over time, it will be painfully painfully slow.

Master Artisans will be able to craft the weapons/armors you request. You can do 2 types of Orders. Bulk or Mastercraft. self explanatory. Depending on your Order the Artisan will give you an amount of time and cost. Pay the $ and metal, come back and when he's done, and walla weapons!

Of course, your Private Smithy will be able to eventually upgrade with the ability to hire your own Master Artisans! Whose skills will be able to grow a lot faster. Not to mention be able to complete Orders for cheaper and faster. Not free, you need to pay your workers!


Part 3 - Specific Weapons!
Now players may want to make a really special weapon. A weapon that includes parts only 1 Artisan in the whole world has, as in you need 4 different Artisans to be able to craft it.

For that we have... Manuscripts! The player may request that an Artisan craft a Manuscript for a certain fee and time. These Manuscripts when given to a hired Master Artisan permanently teaches them a the specific weapon part. Even if you fire them later, they will retain the knowledge.

Doing this is actually the ONLY way to be able to craft high tier gear, as there will be NO Artisan that starts the game with the knowledge to fully craft any high tier gear.

Part 4 - Artisans
I don't think I need this block of text, but I wanted to make it clear. Artisans will have their own talent trees and skill trees and all that good stuff with skills that are unique to Artisans. A skill might be

Skilled Sword Smith - Mastercrafted Swords are 10% chance of being 10% better
Expeditious Spear Carver - Bulk Spear orders are 10% faster

If it's an NPC controlled shop, these will basically be randomly chosen... AI weights bias chosen!... If it's a player controlled shop, the player will have full control.

Maybe the player might seek out an old Vet and hope he already has the skills he needs. Maybe the player finds an up and coming rookie and carefully selects the skills. Who knows!

Yep I've typed too much
Discuss, let me know if any specific portion needs clarifications.

[TaleWorlds Community Team]

Thank you for your suggestions! They have been noted and forwarded to the development team.

[flyingscot1066]

This is an EXCELLENT suggestion. In addition, it could be implemented that just like requiring horses for promoting cavalry units, all units need some form of generic weapons/armor to promote, and those can be made in smithies via the Bulk orders.

[Crim]

Originally posted by flyingscot1066:

This is an EXCELLENT suggestion. In addition, it could be implemented that just like requiring horses for promoting cavalry units, all units need some form of generic weapons/armor to promote, and those can be made in smithies via the Bulk orders.

Yes! My hope is for there to be Custom Troops/Army as well
An undeveloped idea I posted in a different thread

Originally posted by Talamare:

It actually would be easy to program this

It would literally be equivalent to giving armor & weapons to a Companion and that being set as a template to copy onto units.

They could even set this as a Elite Guard and have each custom troop cost the cost of the gear you gave them.

or even better.....
Allow you to place the Armor/Weapon in a Castle Armoury and the Elite Guard unit will take their equipment from there.

Absolutely within reason

[Morkonan]

Originally posted by Talamare:

...Yep I've typed too much

How else can you communicate complex notions without giving them a voice? Don't worry about it - I type more than that while asleep... as evidenced by most of my posts. :)

Discuss, let me know if any specific portion needs clarifications.

Players will hate you.

Why?

With the current player-owned Workshop mechanics, a workshop the player had been trying to "grow" will get erased as soon as the fief is successfully besieged. That means that "slow" progression now represents a significant loss in player resources, time, focused effort, etc...

Not that I don't think there's merit in a system like this, just that it has to pay attention to failure points.

Workshops are supposed to get "Tiers." Perhaps if Blacksmithing was focused more on Workshops, these could play a role?

(PS: You could avoid some of that by associating some of the accrued resources the player levels up with their "Clan." Assigning a "Clan Blacksmith" perhaps? That would avoid the workshop destruction mechanic and a significant loss of player investment.)

A workshop that has a Tier constructed by the Player has a reduced chance of being "destroyed" in a successful siege.

A workshop that has an appropriate Crafting Tier (and, I do think they should expand that ability) will not be "lost." But, the player may have to reconstruct that addition. Also, experience/resources/etc may be reduced if the workshop is in a successful siege, but the chance that it they would be completely lost is low. ie: the workshop basically gets a flat percentage reduction in all current resources like experience/materials/workers/etc unless a horrible RNG happens. :))

I don't mind the concept at all. I think, though, that to keep TW from having to "invent" some other Perk to replace it, and you know they would since every attribute has three Perk trees, they'd need to switch it to a "Crafting" line. Then, they'd have to invent woodworking and armorcrafting, siegecrafting, leather... some other stuffs to justify it.

I don't know that they want to do that much work... Just being honest. :)

[Crim]

Originally posted by Morkonan:

Originally posted by Talamare:

...Yep I've typed too much

How else can you communicate complex notions without giving them a voice? Don't worry about it - I type more than that while asleep... as evidenced by most of my posts. :)

Discuss, let me know if any specific portion needs clarifications.

Players will hate you.

Why?

With the current player-owned Workshop mechanics, a workshop the player had been trying to "grow" will get erased as soon as the fief is successfully besieged. That means that "slow" progression now represents a significant loss in player resources, time, focused effort, etc...

Not that I don't think there's merit in a system like this, just that it has to pay attention to failure points.

Workshops are supposed to get "Tiers." Perhaps if Blacksmithing was focused more on Workshops, these could play a role?

(PS: You could avoid some of that by associating some of the accrued resources the player levels up with their "Clan." Assigning a "Clan Blacksmith" perhaps? That would avoid the workshop destruction mechanic and a significant loss of player investment.)

A workshop that has a Tier constructed by the Player has a reduced chance of being "destroyed" in a successful siege.

A workshop that has an appropriate Crafting Tier (and, I do think they should expand that ability) will not be "lost." But, the player may have to reconstruct that addition. Also, experience/resources/etc may be reduced if the workshop is in a successful siege, but the chance that it they would be completely lost is low. ie: the workshop basically gets a flat percentage reduction in all current resources like experience/materials/workers/etc unless a horrible RNG happens. :))

I don't mind the concept at all. I think, though, that to keep TW from having to "invent" some other Perk to replace it, and you know they would since every attribute has three Perk trees, they'd need to switch it to a "Crafting" line. Then, they'd have to invent woodworking and armorcrafting, siegecrafting, leather... some other stuffs to justify it.

I don't know that they want to do that much work... Just being honest. :)

I would just change it so that no workshops are destroyed during/after sieges. I would change this even without these change because its obnoxious and destroys the potential value of these buildings

As in "Pay 10,000- Earn 200 forever" needs time to earn back the money you put into it, if its destroyed by the frequent sieges this game has, workshops become garbage. Which is also the major reasons why Caravans are garbage. Too much risk for the rewards they offer. However, this is going a bit off thread.

It's true, this suggestion involves a LOT of new programming. Making an entire perk tree systems for Blacksmiths and refilling/recreating a Perk tree to replace Blacksmithining on characters.

How about Shield Mastery?

[Morkonan]

Originally posted by Talamare:

...
I would just change it so that no workshops are destroyed during/after sieges. I would change this even without these change because its obnoxious and destroys the potential value of these buildings

AFAIK, the intent is to make Workshops a significant investment, eventually. Players may not "Tier Up" all their workshops. It depends on how significant they make that mechanic. And, having workshops as "soft targets" that need to be protected makes the player invested in them a bit more as part of a significant "thing" in their gameplay. At least in the Early game.

In the late game, players could replace fifty workshops without much worry. It's more irritating to have to actually load up so many Town scenes than any "expense."

I think the development motivation there is to give the player a reason to want a Town to be successful before they progress to the point of actually being able to own their own fiefs. Though, i don't know how far they intend to go with that sort of early game risk/reward/motivation.

As in "Pay 10,000- Earn 200 forever" needs time to earn back the money you put into it, if its destroyed by the frequent sieges this game has, workshops become garbage. Which is also the major reasons why Caravans are garbage. Too much risk for the rewards they offer. However, this is going a bit off thread.

Without some more investment,,some more significance added, neither Workshops nor Caravans mean very much. The latter is just a waste of a Companion slot, IMO.

It's true, this suggestion involves a LOT of new programming. Making an entire perk tree systems for Blacksmiths and refilling/recreating a Perk tree to replace Blacksmithining on characters.

It's got to be done, though... The current system is just dumb. It's so very far outside of normal play activity that it's very difficult to "balance" it as a game mechanic.

It's like adding "crop dusting" to "Warband." That's no joke. So, how would you truly try to add a "Crop Dusting" mechanic to Warband with airplanes, crops, stuff to put in a cropdusting aricraft's tanks, the skills to fly it... etc?

Making a crop-dusting mechanic "work" is one thing, trying to balance it if there is a problem with it while attempting to use the rest of game's elements, that have nothing to do with crop-dusting, is... absurd.

So, yeah - It's got to change. I like your suggestion for this reason - You are not suggesting more "crop-dusting." You're suggesting incorporating an existing, workable, game mechanic that is already in the game and, in general, already "works."

You didn't demand that battlefield commanders apply for crop-dusting flight school in order to "fix" the current Blacksmithing mechanic. :)

How about Shield Mastery?

I'd be against stronger shields. I would not be against being able to craft good ones, though - Woodworking includes Shields and Bows right now, so the player could have access to that if TW made crafting a broader experience. (Crossbows, though... I don't understand what their deal is with those.)

[flyingscot1066]

Originally posted by Morkonan:

Originally posted by Talamare:

...

How about Shield Mastery?

I'd be against stronger shields. I would not be against being able to craft good ones, though - Woodworking includes Shields and Bows right now, so the player could have access to that if TW made crafting a broader experience. (Crossbows, though... I don't understand what their deal is with those.)

I think by Shield Mastery the reference was more for the use of shields, like we had in Warband, rather than the crafting thereof, if I'm reading your response right.

[Crim]

Originally posted by flyingscot1066:

I think by Shield Mastery the reference was more for the use of shields, like we had in Warband, rather than the crafting thereof, if I'm reading your response right.

Yeppers, Using Shields and considering how other Weapon Masteries are going, buffing Troops that use Shields

I know that currently one handed weapon tree has buffs to shields and shield troops, but idk, I know some people are really into shields... and it would fit the Endurance tree.

[Tyrant]

i really do like this form of smithing over the current.
it just feels wrong that the player is a smith, because it makes you wonder why you are not a fletcher or armorer too.

One thing i hope that the devs do is take a look at Anno Domini 1257 (the mod for warband)
the way it handles fiefs and recruitments is incredibly in depth.