It would likely also depend on the ore. For example, working with native aluminum would be far more practical than trying to process bauxite. But conversely, finding native aluminum would be a lot more hassle.
yes ot’s possible, but if we add it to the game people will take that as a signal that it’s a normal part of the game and a reasonable thing to do, I’d rather just not have it present at all than mislead people like that. Again, it’s edging far into industry rather than scavenging and survival.
Ah. As in no to processing ore specifically, or to any involved metal mining in general, native metals included?
Mining for native metals would be similarly pointless due to scarcity, if you find a source indicating that an individual with hand tools would be capable of harvesting enough native metals in modern New England to bother with, please post it.
An incredibly brief search indicates that native metals generally do not appear in nature in usable amounts.
A notable counter-example is copper deposits in the far northern midwest, but of course those deposits are now mined out, and large-scale mining operations are now required to extract more.
Additionally, even when metals do appear in native form, they still require processing, usually up to an including smelting, putting them in the same category as ores for our purposes.
Hmm. Understandable then. Since that would be the only instance in which it’s feasible for a lone player character to acquire raw metal, that would likely mean the idea as a whole can’t be taken very far.
[quote=“Kevin Granade, post:44, topic:10811”]Mining for native metals would be similarly pointless due to scarcity, if you find a source indicating that an individual with hand tools would be capable of harvesting enough native metals in modern New England to bother with, please post it.
An incredibly brief search indicates that native metals generally do not appear in nature in usable amounts.
A notable counter-example is copper deposits in the far northern midwest, but of course those deposits are now mined out, and large-scale mining operations are now required to extract more.
Additionally, even when metals do appear in native form, they still require processing, usually up to an including smelting, putting them in the same category as ores for our purposes.[/quote]
I think the relative scarcity and immense time and resource drain mining would demand would be more than enough of a deterrent. Scrapping will always be preferable. However, I do strongly believe in the purely woodland survival aspect of this game.
Also, last I checked, there’s much less triffids in New England than there is native metals. I do think we have some room for fiction for the sake of gameplay.
This is an awful lot of work to propose to other people just because you’ve arbitrarily decided that banging on an abandoned car to get scrap metal violates your personal sense of le pure woodland survival. Just saying.
“If someone wants to make it a mod then great but otherwise eh” seems like a perfectly reasonable response.
Hmm. Adding meteor impacts as an additional map special could be one of those “fudge reality a bit due to cataclysm wonkiness” ideas that would be valid.
Making the underground have more native metal available doesn’t sound like a logical cataclysm event, so that would be a rather silly excuse for a concession to gameplay. But that did, as I just mention, give me the idea of a plausible reason to add an additional source of metal that technically isn’t dependent on man-made sources.
In a mod, sure. For the main game we actively do not want this feature, so fudging is uncalled for.
Hmm. If I had any idea how one adds map specials in a mod…
Actually that as part of a general “more random-encounter style map specials” mod would be interesting.