[Suggestion] The amount of iron it takes...

217 votes

The amount of iron it takes to make Steel, 3:1 I find excessive. Coal is not that easy to find, so it makes Steel an absolute luxury. But the about of steel it takes to make some items - is so unrealistic. Do you have any idea how big an Iron or Steel ingot is in real life? The amount of things you can do with 1 ingot is considerable. It does not take 26 ingots (or whatever it is) to make a stove for example.. that is 26x3 iron ingots. Its so far out of balance its not funny.

With how hard it is to find materials (unless you 'cheat' and use the cave finder), most of the tech tree things are going to be skipped and never used. What is the point.

You make it so possible to build awesome buildings, yet the costs to do so, is just silly.

This game needs a huge amount of balancing.

Done Balance Suggested by: Terry (11 Oct, '21) • Upvoted: 05 Aug, '23 • Comments: 24

Comments: 24

26 Sep, '21
Skwiggily Merged
While I understand the gap between steel and iron should be rewarding to achieve, I can already foresee in every new session "Okay, time to run around into every cave to get enough iron." "Okay time to Iron grind". I already predict it tiring a lot of people out of playing if a large portion of the survival is mining endlessly for iron every time.
27 Sep, '21
Pach Merged
Currently, the ratio is 6 iron ore, or 3 iron bars to make 1 steel bloom, which becomes 1 steel bar.

It takes about 1.6 tons of iron to make 1 ton of steel, so this is about twice the ratio it should be. Could solve this by doubling how many steel bars we get: either 2 blooms out of the recipe, or 2 steel bars from one steel bloom.
27 Sep, '21
Elissa - Producer Admin Merged
"[SUG] Reduce iron to steel ratio closer to real life" (suggested by Pach on 2021-09-27), including upvotes (1) and comments (0), was merged into this suggestion.
27 Sep, '21
Jeff Merged
in all honestly it should be a 1:1 ratio as the only thing you are doing is adding carbon to the iron to make it into steel. and you can then turn that mild steel into a high carbon steel for blade making. mild steel itself can be used for crude blades that wont hold and edge for long. maybe change the iron over to mild steel and make the steel high carbon steel? this would be much more realistic and make many people happy.
28 Sep, '21
Skwiggily Merged
I think lessening the grind for ores in a game where we would be doing it in every session outweighs upholding scientific accuracy to that degree, but that isn't for me to decide. All I can say is that I would be burnt out of wanting to keep doing prospects if this level of grinding is required every time. Hopefully ways to speed up or circumvent some mining/grinding can be added to the stuff you can take down in missions aka rewards that are very helpful.
29 Sep, '21
Mantauk Merged
Agreed that there should be tiers of steel. Could use charcoal instead of coal to make softer steel and coal to make hard steel. If you made a knife out of softer steel it would do less damage but also not break as fast. Hard steel would do more damage but is more brittle and could break more easily. Maybe with a chance to snap if the item quality drops too low.
29 Sep, '21
Norbu Merged
I agree. What breaks the balance imho is that a stone structures require too much iron and the excessive costs of steel.
Once stone structure would use more stone + max 1 iron and the steel costs would be halfed (3 or 4 iron + 1 coal instead of 6 iron + 1 coal), the balance between running out of resources and the need to find new caves would be way better.
11 Oct, '21
Sigil
Yeah just about everything worth while building takes Iron or Steel which means you have to spend more time mining than doing anything else.
Either lower the Iron requirements across the board or provide the means to carry / transport more ores easier and faster. Specifically when do vehicles drop? :)
11 Oct, '21
Bob Sovers
One iron ingot per rifle bullet is also VERY unbalanced!
11 Oct, '21
Natrash
I died with the rifle and the shootgun...because of lack of ammo. 1 iron per bullet is way too much.
Could be 1 iron / 1 powder / 1 copper (rifle case) => 10 bullets at least

Same for the shoootgun. blueprint is unbalanced for 1 ammo.
11 Oct, '21
Pach
... probably needs merged with this upvote:

https://icarus.featureupvote.com/suggestions/218751/suggestion-steel-bloom-should-take-4-iron-ore

the real life ratio is about 1.6 tons of iron to make 1 ton of steel, or close to 3:2, which is half the ratio we have now.

And I completely agree with Sigil and Natrash: the amount of time spent grinding mining iron ore is going to be a huge turnoff (it's already turning ME off, and I really like the game otherwise...) because of how tedious it is. Ratios need to be adjusted massively on almost everything.
12 Oct, '21
Stormfury
The numbers are absolutely wonky. Why on earth would you EVER craft a fire extinguisher for 20 steel when you can craft 200ish walls, ceilings and floors out of stone and not have to worry about fire at all? It feels to me like the tech items are tossed in as 'cool idea' without much consideration for actual cost or accessibility.
12 Oct, '21
Timmy Carbine
I completely agree, the amount of ore required to do anything is absolutely insane. *wanna upgrade to a stone base?, well you'll need to farm up an absurd amount of iron!*
13 Oct, '21
Sou7ution Merged
You really need to balance the recipes with iron. You need for everything Iron, for example for Stonebuildings? You only farm Iron if you want to craft many things. This is insane. If you play with 7 People, you only build tools for everyone and the Iron is gone. So please balance the recipes. Its quite too expensive. For example why do I need 20 Fur for a Bedroll?? This is insane and not realistic!
14 Oct, '21
Elissa - Producer Admin
"Iron balance" (suggested by Sou7ution on 2021-10-13), including upvotes (1) and comments (0), was merged into this suggestion.
08 Nov, '21
Nidavellir
I second this. And it really applies to all metals. However, I don't think it should just be made easier. For instance, maybe all caves shouldn't have metal, so that once you find a cave with ore, you find a lot in one place - a veritable "iron mine".

Would be cool if ores were more scarce and influenced player choices more - as it stands you can just go and get more ore, its just a grind, rather than luck/skill at finding ores of usable metals.

As a quick fix - maybe reduce ore availability by 60% and usage by 90%?
15 Dec, '21
Nyala
I absolutely agree with this thread. Not only is the iron to steel ratio off, but if we look at the amounts of iron/steel needed to craft certain things, it doesn't really make any sense anymore.
The example of Bob Sovers is already very good. 1 Iron ingot (200g) for one rifle bullet (10g) is unreasonable.
Another one would be the Bolt Action Rifle itself. Roughly 10kg in materials (1.5kg wood, 8kg(!) steel, leather, steel screws, and epoxy) are used to create a 1kg rifle. And those are only two examples.
There really needs to be a huge balance readjustment for an improved QOL in this game, or people will very quickly tire of the insane grind that will have to happen in most sessions to get anywhere.
19 Dec, '21
W2D2
I've personally (as a solo) not seen acquiring steel as a problem. Most mines have one coal and iron. It's pretty doable to get it. Love the steel axe and pick.

I however do find some of the steel and iron items completely not worth the effort. Like 8 iron for a light that doesn't even illuminate properly.

Ask yourself what the gain is and how much effort it is. If something has a great tactical advantage like an oxygen bottle or gun people will happily mine for it.
03 Mar, '22
NytSong
Yeah, I'm not sure how one bullet takes an entire ingot. It's way crazy! Maybe make it like screws where one ingot makes multiple shell casings and then one casing per unit of gun powder or however you want it.
07 Aug, '22
Shockwave
Agreed x100. The nails needed for Stone walls is absurd. Iron is our limiting factor to make stone walls. I don't' know how much and iron ingot is supposed to be but 10 nails doesn't seem like much (100 steel screws but only 10 nails from iron or copper???)

25 iron ingots for a gas can (biofuel).. 25? for a thin walled metal can? The iron/steel costs always seem way too high for everything. I'm sure it extends to all metals in the future too (I hear tell of copper/gold insanity) but my group has already noticed the wacky iron costs for everything.

I don't ever seem to have a coal issue for making steel though but then we're not doing much T4 items yet.
21 Oct, '22
Eve
Only slightly agree. Make some Iron alluvial to add some happenstance collection, and drop the steel cost down to 2:1.
Most recipes seem fair, but costs are limiting use of anything but the essentials. Iron arrows/boltss - hahahah not a chance!
01 Nov, '22
Sabre070 - Designer Admin
"[Suggestion] Steel Bloom should take 4 iron ore" (suggested by Skwiggily on 2021-09-26), including upvotes (57) and comments (6), was merged into this suggestion.
31 Mar, '23
George
In most every missions, I find no need to spend allot of time trying to product steel because of amount of iron needed and most iron weapons can just about get you through any mission. Add the fact that you have to go through an intensive work bench building process to get to the point of making a stove to smelt it. I find this counter productive when you are on a timed mission and why waste all that time gathering iron and building benches just to get to steel. Iron tools are cheap and cheaply repaired, so amount of grind and work to step up to steel brings very little benefit because of amount of time and resources to achieve and use it.
09 Aug, '23
Sabre070 - Designer Admin
There is a gameplay balance between the iron and steel ratio, iron is pretty abundant and steel is more advanced tech wise, so having a larger step is important. We recently shifted steel smelting availability down to T2, to allow you to get more of a headstart and more reason to use steel tools (vs skipping straight to platinum) so feel it's in a good place currently.