I’ve said repeatedly, yes you do. The balance and properties that you want you know if you’ve used one for long enough - the rest you’d need fabrication - but it’s all stuff that fabrication will teach you.
True - to a point. Too much carbon and you’ve got brittle steel and there are some impurities that don’t get mitigated by this but Japan didn’t have those problems.
Because you make the same or better steel by being able to melt it totally - crucible steel. A smith today starts with a better steel (assuming they are making a real weapon not a decorative piece) and winds up with a very good, functional weapon.
In today’s society these better steels are commonplace. A medieval smith would be in heaven if they could access one of our junkyards.
The only option i see to have both parties satisfied, is making the manuals to tell you a recipe for the weapon it work with and having a medium Fab skill, it being a bit better than a makeshift version but still worse than a professional version (like the ones in the book of weaponsmith or historical armaments).
I agree that having the knowledge and skill of using a weapon gives you the basic feeling of how it should work when is well made, but it would take a lot of practice and knowledge to make a good one; like those pvc bows, easy to make, but try making a compound one, and you need a whole new level of knowledge and experience
Edit: there is still the most important issue of who is going to write the option for the manuals and make the PR.
Exactly. You can make better equipment without recipe if you already know about what it should be, but if its more complicated then a couple sliding pieces in complexity/ nuance then most of the inner-workings/composition is going to be guesswork not 'Ah it’ll need a X amount of ___ and assembled in Y fashion.
AT BEST you make several failed attempts before getting reasonably close in results.
Have you ever seen forged in iron, or similar shows? Even with all the fab skill necessary, the smiths frequently have basic concepts wrong, because they don’t know what dimensions work best for an unfamiliar weapon.
now slow down, I know what your thinking ‘because they are unfamiliar with the weapon’ BUT they have beyond sufficient knowledge in bladed weapon smiting specifically, and get it wrong, often believing their creation to be beyond sufficient until proven otherwise.
Having surface knowledge of the weapon, and then acquiring the necessary fab skill would not create the knowledge of the hidden components of the weapon.
Especially when you think of how this would be implemented, and the mostly broad strokes that would be reversed with this approach instead of fine tuned
I don’t believe fabrication is so all encompassing as you’re thinking. Home building is fabrication but would give you no insight on smithing or weapon crafting. Similarly, the finest smith in the world wouldn’t likely know anything about framing a house or laying a foundation. They’re both fabrication, so should all construction workers be considered samurais?
Smithing is a subset of a wider category. Just like baking is a subset of cooking. I consider myself a good cook and can make a mean etouffee, but my baking abilities suck quite frankly. I’ve used baked goods extensively throughout my entire lifetime, but couldn’t make a decent loaf of bread from scratch if my life depended on it.
You could be right about that - maybe fabrication is too broad a category. Maybe the skills need to be broken up like the combat skills are (melee being broad with cutting, bashing and piercing being subcategories).
However, in game, take a look at the books that give you the level of fabrication to make a sword (around 8). Admittedly glassblowing doesn’t cover much smithing, Swords of the Samurai should teach enough. Welding and Metallurgy should, too.
The skill to make these weapons is quite high, outside of having the recipes. Perhaps having them auto learn at 1 or 2 skill levels higher would be a thing? Without knowing how to handle them, i don’t know, though.
I could get behind that. Fabrication could be more like an overall mechanical aptitude, then subcategories to flush out various specialties just as you mentioned about melee, bashing, piercing etc.
kevin has mentioned a desire to break down the crafting categories into smaller subsets, it was one of the things I was alluding to when I mentioned
‘mostly broad strokes that would be reversed with this approach instead of fine tuned’
In real life, a licensed commercial pilot can learn about physics of airplane flight as an extra course, which is not required to pilot an airplane professionally.
There are many HEMA member with years of experience who still argue on the purpose of pommel.
There are life long tailors who don’t know how particular textile is made.
There a soldiers with life long experience who don’t know how 95% of the daily gear is made.
There is no inherit connection between having an experience of using a tool or a material and knowing how to make them.
Fabrication skill in the game is a general knowledge of manufacturing techniques and tools. This is why as you get further and further in training it, you need more sophisticated tools to create items.
But I do partially agree with your point. If you have a high fabrication skill and knowledge of some weapon or tool, you could be able to manufacture some version of it, granted you have access to materials and appropriate tools. What I mean by that, is you are not going to manufacture a classic katana using a forge and an anvil but could “cut and sharpen” one out of a piece of a tool grade steel, just as many commercial katanas are made today. The problem with this is that game severely lacks advanced tools like auto lathe, hydraulic press, precision metal cutters and etc. and previously allowed you to make something that requires professional factory equipment to be made using basic houshold tools. Some of such craftables are already removed and afaik someone was working on advanced manufacturing tools.
The only way for you right now to manufacture a proper sword, is by using “forge and anvil”, which does require specific instructions and manual, even if you know and have experience with individual required tools and techniques. There is no “experimental/exploratory” crafting in the game, so either you have a manual or you don’t. If I can auto-learn how to make a 17 century rapier after reading a book on fencing, then I should have no problem with manufacturing a full set of plate armor and any other 17 century weapon as manufacturing process and tools involved are rather similar. Which is obviously wrong, just from the game balance perspective.
This is precisely it. You aren’t making something that would fool a museum curator - you’re looking for something functional. My thought is that the recipe would auto learn at Fabrication 8 (the difficulty of making them) if and only if you have the martial art that uses that particular weapon as a default. The punch dagger example would not apply because that’s not the standard equipment for kickboxing. Medieval Swordsmanship you need, well, a sword to learn it.
True, then you probably need to have some sword for the training too. That could be made from a wood for example.
I don’t think such receipt for proper melee weapons will be added till we get advanced manufacturing tools. Many items where removed from crafting precisely for this reason.
But it’s a reason why forge and anvil are still useful even for non “in the woods” scenario.
Yes, absolutely. The 2bySword would be one such, but proper wasters would be the minimum I would think. Steel practicals and sharps (actual weapons) would be better but if you had one you have no need to forge one, really. Well, maybe if you have an authentic museum piece and don’t want to damage it survival be damned I could see it - and there are people like that.
In terms of the forge and anvil - swords are still made that way today. Most are not, true, but you can get them and as such would probably be the only way a survivor could make one… Unless they had a group, of course. Many more things become possible then.