Salem

Gunpowder consists of three base components – sulfur, charcoal and salpetre. Charcoal already exists, making acquiring sulfur and salpetre the new parts here.

Sulfur

Sulfur occurs naturally in sulfate minerals. While iron isn't one of these (please correct me if I'm wrong), the lack of any alternative metal or use of sulfate metals currently, leads me to feel that this should be acquirable either through foraging rock biomes, chipping stone, lime, ore and granite boulders, or as a random by-product from smelting iron ore. The actual yield rate from chipping boulders or smelting is up to balance, so I won't start considering that.

Sulfur should yield in unstackable units, like regular stone.

Salpetre

Aside from imports from the east (and later South America), historically salpetre was refined through using urine and dung in regular earth and leaving it there for a good while, shielded from rain. Instead of «farming» the refining agents, the english crown assigned a special worker role which, by royal decree, was given the allowance to tear up areas where the agents had been given time to work naturally, such as stables, outhouses and churches. Yes, churches. For some reason a lot of urine gathered at churches – I suppose the sermons were rather long.

For in game refining of salpetre, I suggest four main sources – outhouses, salpetre fields. foraging and chuches.

Outhouses would be relatively easy to make, would work somewhat like compost bins, but would be dependant on character or livestock input to produce salpetre. Urine or dung, character- or animal-produced, would go into the outhouse, filling a meter much like biodegradable compost in compost bins, which would then result in materializing harvestable units of salpetre every x time at the cost of x meter progression per period, again, akin to how the compost bin works.

Containers would exist, allowing to move urine and dung to an outhouse. I imagine a pottery-based night pot, as well as a metal one. One of the differences could be in the containment volume. Another could that while it should be a world-placed object, the metal one should be equippable in a hand while the pottery one would be carried above the head. Right-clicking on an outhouse or salpetre field with the night pot would empty it into the receptable.

Another option would be the salpetre field. These would function in the same basic way as the outhouse in input, but would differ in speed and output. The fields would be slower to create salpetre, but up to x% of the total field fill at a time could hay or compost. This would make it more economic, as in less need for dung and urine, but also slower than the outhouse method. Unlike the outhouse, direct input of character-based urine and dung would be impossible, forcing the player to rely on night pots for this. Also, unlike the outhouse, which can be progressively harvested, the salpetre field would have a «maturization date» like regular agricultural fields, meaning one would have to wait for the field to finish before harvesting. This should take 3 days, and be unaffected by speeding up or slowing down through fertiliziation.

The third option is the chuch. Until the church gets an actual use aside from being a (currently unbuildable) building, I'm thinking salpetre would accumulate naturally over time in the building, which could be harvested from the preacher's podium inside the building, whenever. Doing this, however, would require the podium to be rebuilt, to symbolize that the harvester just tore up the church floor to get the good earth beneath.

The church would accumulate salpetre over time dependant on the size of claim it would be on. Personal claims would count for half/quarter (or something) than that of a town claim. The accumulation in a church should be relatively slow, and the price for the podium relatively high, to balance for the potential of making huge claims and the fact that it's a passive gain. I would avoid linking the gain to the ammount of villagers / active villagers / attendees in the church, as that would just encourage alt / bot spamming.

The foragable source should be along the animal tracks, representing the character stumbling upon an area where salpetre had naturally refined over the years.

Acquiring urine and dung.

So far, we have only two actual sources of dung – turkey coop turkey poop, and Crown Manure. In addition, I suggest a third source – the character. Eating and drinking should make the character produce urine and dung, which would then be possible to deposit in a fitting night pot or outhouse. The manure should be storable in a barrel, for trade and transportation of large quantities.

Urine and dung would build up in the character as food is eaten and drinks drunk. When a character would eat food, wether or not in gluttony mode, a purity roll would be made, and the point score of the total (or total divided by two? Divided by more? Balance issue, again) would be applied to a «manure meter». I'm thinking this would be visualized either as a progressive bar below the humours, or just an increase of percentage on your character as you're eating. Anyhow, the maximum of your character's «manure meter» would be the total of its humours.

At any point, the character could go to a fitting receptable (night pot or outhouse) and relieve itself of its excess of «manure meter» progression. Each point of humour would return 0.01 litres of manure, meaning for a new character, 100% «manure meter» would be 0.2 litres of manure, while a character with 25 in all humours could fit 1 litre of manure before having to unload. One litre, also, should be the containment maximum of a night pot.

The character should also be able to exceed its «manure meter» limit, adding up to 200% in extra manure before using a proper receptable. Doing this, however, should slow the character movement speed down to that of the character walk during Foraging at any point where the character would have above 100% of fill in the «manure meter». Also, the character should have an adorable waddle-animation.

Also, the character should be able to unleash their inner rage and empty their «manure meter» at any point, giving no return. Preferably with a fittingly dignified animation and sound effect.

Manure to salpetre conversion rates

I imagine salpetre would be measured in litres, as powder. Finding «one unit» of foragable salpetre should equal 0.10 litres, and it would stack up to 0.50 litres, as is with other types of powder. Outhouses would use 1 litre of manure to produce 0.10 litres of salpetre every 4 hours.

To prepare a salpetre field, one would need 1 litre of manure and ten units of hay and / or humus. After 3 days of rest time, the field is harvestable, resulting in 0.50 litres of salpetre. The fields would thus be 5 times more effective, manure-wise, but would also use slightly more than three times the ammount of time to get the same ammount.

Of course, actual numbers should always be a balance issue.

Actual recipes

I imagine something along these lines:

Outhouse: 20x any plank, 4x nails, 10x hay. Only buildable outside. Takes 2x2 tiles.

Clay nightpot: 6x clay, 1x brick. Moved out of the kiln as a liftable item, placed at a 0.5x0.5 tile. Same burn time as clay pots. Can contain 75centilitres of urine and dung.

Iron nightpot: 2x iron bars, 1x wooden block. Built on the ground as a world object covering a 0.5x0.5 tile, but is auto-equipped to a free hand when right-clicked and option «Pick up» is selected. Otherwise functions as the clay nightpot. Can contain 100 centilitres (1 litre) of urine and dung.

Salpetre field: 4 humus, 4 sticks, 1x leather or any cloth. Takes a 4x4 tile size, same as regular fields.
As explanation, the sticks and leather / cloth would be to keep the field dry, which is important to the refinement process.

Church: No idea. Around the price of a town house / brick townhouse, possibly?

Church podium: 10x planed boards, 4x nails, 4x dry boards.

One unit of gunpowder (required for firing one shot with your firearm):
The optimal combination for gunpowder is 75% salpetre, 10% sulfur and 15% charcoal, but maybe the mix type should be decidable by the player, with different factors added to the gun used on? Taking a jump from reality here, we could say that salpetre would decide damage, sulfur shot range and charcoal firing speed? Anyhow, digression aside.

1 shot ammunition: 0.25litres salpetre, 3 charcoal, 2 sulfur. Created at a gunsmith's bench.

Iron bullet: 1x iron bar results in 5x iron bullets. Created at an anvil.

1 gunshot: 1 shot ammunition, 1 iron bullet. Created at a gunsmith's bench.

Gunsmith's bench: 4x iron bar, 6x planed boards, 4x oiled boards, 4x nails. Built in the world. Covers a 2x1 tile area. Liftable.

Final thoughts.

There should of course be curiosities attached to this, both created (such as fireworks) and random (such as «happy explosions», akin to curious fires). Also, there should be weapon crafting recipes for a gunsmith's bench, but for now I've just focused on the gunpowder creation part.

In addtition, if player-side mixing of ammunition is wanted, some method of turning charcoal and sulfur into powder to make portioning easier would probably be needed.

Also, buying gunpowder from the stalls in Boston is an unlikely alternative. During the 1400s and 1500s, all salpetre was claimed by the crown as a matter of state defense (and the refusal to allowing your land to be harvested a crime against the crown) - common people and crazy religious pilgrims would get none through official channels. That said, if there's ever any black market stalls, that might be a different issue.

Sorry to say to long didn't read but its the truth. Devs already have this planned "soon"

The older players like to **** on ideas they think they've already had. Good ideas.

rodrigoq wrote:The older players like to **** on ideas they think they've already had. Good ideas.

No actually the devs have talked about this quite a bit.

Yes, Dallane is completely right, and this is one of the things in the forefront of the devs' mind, I'm sure.

That said, that's also the perfect reason for bringing it up. I'm not saying I've got a revolutionary new idea that eclipses whatever they have planned, but since it's in their focus, suggesting about exactly this makes more sense than if it was currently irrelevant or unimportant.

If a 25 bile char produces 1 litre of manure, a 250 bile char would make 10 litres of manure in one go? Would it be diminishing returns? Would I need an outhouse, or could I just use mother nature if I wasnt interested in collecting "it".

dageir wrote:If a 25 bile char produces 1 litre of manure, a 250 bile char would make 10 litres of manure in one go? Would it be diminishing returns? Would I need an outhouse, or could I just use mother nature if I wasnt interested in collecting "it".

I feel there should be some sort of diminishing returns, yes. The question, however, is how severe they should be. On the overall, I feel the process of procuring salpetre through refinement should stay relevant throughout the end game, and so one character with high humours should not be able to "over-produce" and make the production of salpetre a non-issue due to the ease and availability, but how much actual salpetre would be neccessary to "stay relevant" per x time, is of course up to balance and therefore very hard to put an exact number on. That said, the point is that while a well-fed, high-humour character with plentiful intake of food should contribute more to the salpetre production of the town (or himself, if he is a hermit), a relatively new character should still be able to contribute a non-insignificant ammount - although, not enough to make rolling alts for production of manure being more effective, food-wise, than using well-fed, high-humour characters.

Still though, I don't want high-humour characters to completely eclipse the contribution of weaker foods and lower-humour characters. I suppose dividing the "manure meter" limit on a factor based on the total character humours would be a way of causing somewhat diminishing gains through character growth. Math's hardly my strenght, though, and I'm sure loftar and jorb would be far better than me at figuring out a proper formula and application of it in-game.

Your character could relieve itself whenever and anywhere, but that would waste any progress in the "manure meter" without any chance of reaping materials for refining salpetre. To actually use the "manure meter" to assist production of salpetre, one would have to relieve the character in an outhouse for direct application, or a night pot to use with an outhouse or salpetre field.

[/quote]Your character could relieve itself whenever and anywhere, but that would waste any progress in the "manure meter" without any chance of reaping materials for refining salpetre. To actually use the "manure meter" to assist production of salpetre, one would have to relieve the character in an outhouse for direct application, or a night pot to use with an outhouse or salpetre field.[/quote]

If this gets implemented, Boston would become a cesspool. I can visualize the animations.

Sulfur was collected raw from mines. Only until recently has sulfur been extracted from other means (from crude oil and natural gas). Saltpeter (after reading up on it), was processed in a similar method, but the ones listed on Wikipedia had more to do with gathering it from livestock pens, bedding, or from guano (turkeys). I could see this being added in over the human element. (Was previously a suggestion on that.)

As far as Dallane's comments, sure, the devs have mentioned something along the lines with firearms and such (requiring ammunition), but there really hasn't been a lot of discussion about it nor has there been any discussion on mechanics of it, something they generally keep to themselves until implemented (and then they still keep it to themselves and let us try and figure it out.).

Salpetre was mined from Chilean, Indian and Peruvian mines, correct, but that didn't really blossom up untill the 18th century and out. During this game's time period, import from India was really limited, and the English crown didn't get much from south american territorries. That's why I focused on manure-related production of salpetre, as this was one of the primary methods of refining the mineral during this stage of history.

As for mining sulfur - yes, it was mined. I mentioned it being primarily found in sulfate minerals, however, and not really knowing wether iron was one or not. I felt, at the time of writing the suggestion, that adding another type of ore just for sulfur would be a bit wasteful, and as thus suggested it being a by-product or foragable rather than something directly mined, such as iron ore. I'm in no way an expert in mineralogy, but I would imagine sulfur isn't dug out by the chunk, but rather is a by-product of mining sulfate minerals - as thus, I feel the "by-product" route would be closest tied to reality.

Edit: I suppose one way to do it, is that when the player mines for metal ore in a mine, there'd be a chance for him to pull out a sulfate mineral boulder instead of the regular iron ore boulder, which could be chipped x times for sulfur chunks. This might be an interesting way of making mining more varied, but it would also make sulfur collection / ore collection more random. Or, at least, add the randomness to larger one-shot quantities, as a boulder neccessarily would contain more than the chance of a regular ore chunk in a smelter, and as thus, would have to be relatively more rare. With sulfate mineral boulders, I can imagine a player going from nothing to excesses to nothing rather than having a smooth flow of low-quantity sulfur through the smelting / foraging process.