Posted By Halvgrim at

• Are metal weapons inherently better than stone age weapons, or will the tribal weapons be balanced?

This is going to be very hard to definitively answer as there are many factors involved. Availability of metal ores, ability to smelt it into a usable quality, and then forge it into products is not possible everywhere. Ore is not in all areas. Fuel to smelt and forge is also not available everywhere. Those two issues can mean stone is a better choice.

• Can a warrior from a stone age culture gain an advantage by using an imported metal weapon?

Possible and it has happened IRL. A Macuahuitl going up against a steel long sword is not going to survive. The long sword will break it. Of course if the sword doesn’t parry the Macuahuitl that person may die very fast.

• Can warriors from a stone age society use metal weapons effectively without having to retrain their skills?

Not instantly but the skills should be useful and easily adapted. Just like any other person trained in one style learning another style of martial arts. Switching from a long sword to a rapier is challenging but should be easier than learning the rapier without any sword experience.

• Can you make a fortune by exporting metal items to a stone age culture, or do stone age NPCs prefer to use their traditional stone tools?

Certainly. Although you might make more selling pots, pans, cutlery, axes, and shovels. Historically I kind of think that was the case IRL.

• Should we expect stone tools to be a technological dead end, or can a stone age toolmakers also invent new methods to improve their craft?

I don’t see it as a dead end. IRL people just stopped developing it because they switched to metal. That doesn’t mean it couldn't have been developed further. The best scalpel blades are stone, so why not? Research is all that it takes. Working with stone is a serious skill that takes a large amount of time and effort. There are many different types of stone with many different qualities.

While the supposition in his thread is pretty strong the official answers are.

We don’t know yet.

We can guess metal is better, we can guess it confers a bonus but something to keep in mind. SBS has repeatedly said player skill trumps most everything else in combat. A single blow from an axe on an unprotected head for instance is instant incapacitation. Pretty sure a heavy stone axe would crush a skull just as easily as a metal one.

We know that weapon skills have styles and you can string various “moves” together as a combat chain. A parry followed by a thrust really doesn’t take into account the material of the weapon only the style. (Rapier versus katana). One could guess that weight of the material would affect combat skills more than being able to use a bone sword over an iron one. Heavier weapons taking more stamina per swing ect.

As for making money moving ore or finished metal weapons. Most players from other mmos will naturally assume metal is better so in the beginning I will say you will be able to make money doing this. But I doubt it’s due to the system and would bet it’s more on player bias than anything.

Posted By Halvgrim at

• Are metal weapons inherently better than stone age weapons, or will the tribal weapons be balanced?

I would stake my first spark on it. Yes.

SBS has been very clear about their desire and intention to create geopolitical dynamics around biomes, and resource availability is clearly a function of biomes. So if every tribe is essentially self reliant and no resource in any particular biome is inherently better or worse (ie it's all "balanced"), then there's no impetus for geopolitics. No need for alliances, trade agreements or wars.

• Can a warrior from a stone age culture gain an advantage by using an imported metal weapon?

It would logically follow that, yes, depending on the weapon and whatever advantages different materials provide (ie weight, durability, etc).

• Can warriors from a stone age society use metal weapons effectively without having to retrain their skills?

We don't know how extensive the skill system will be. I have my doubts that materials will impact proficiency, but it's possible.

It's also possible that what we'll see is tribes just starting the game with knowledge of the materials in their own biomes, and recipes or techniques they possess will involve those materials only. It won't prohibit them from effectively using weapons of different materials if they happen across them, or eventually learning to create the same weapons with different materials if they can find someone to teach them the recipe.

• Should we expect stone tools to be a technological dead end, or can a stone age toolmakers also invent new methods to improve their craft?

I think you can expect your stone age weapons to wind up in a museum some day. ;)

Skill is still only half the battle and I would argue that the materials used both in weapons and armor and their quality should certainly factor in on any fight. You can have all the skill in the world but if you dont have thr training, or strength to wield the weapon you are using you might as well be trying to kill them with a pillow.

And sure weapons like stone swords, axes, ect double as both cutting and crushing weapons until they break. Even just picking up a rock and throwing it or using a sling at someone's 3 layered fully armored head should daze, stun, and depending on the force of the impact inc someone.

But the rate of decay on durability is a huge factor is you are going after someone with a bone, wood, metal, or stone weapon vs each material type.

And seeing as stone age weapons went out of use in leiu of metal weapons and armor it should be safe to assume that desipite any people that once used those stone age weapons that it is easier and more efficent to make them out of metal and have both solid offense and defense capabilities.

With practically no real knowledge of Geology or Metallurgy, except some physical and chemical properties, the only thing I have thought of, is that there are both metals and stone types that exhibit different properties such as hardness, softness, brittleness, malleability, ductility etc

Based on this and this alone, I would think it would be relative depending on types being compared. Pure metals are typcially soft or brittle I believe so may actually be worse than stone in the absence of knowledge in metallurgy to create alloys.

Alloys on the other hand, may be superior, if the correct elemental metals are combined in appropriate concentrations.

Stone such as granite or marble may be quite useful as they are hard, compared to soapstone or slate which will break easily.

Just my musings, not sure if they are of any benefit or not

Stone age, bronze, and iron age. They all don't make sense when it pertains to CoE. Sure some tribes may seem like they have lesser technology. Which may be true. However also plainly false. They just solve their problems differently. It's not like Hrothi are going to be 100 years technologically advanced. It wouldn't make any damn sense when it comes to the people living on the same continent.

People aren't going to be more productive in one tribe vs. another tribe. Remember to'resk coats their weapons and other metals with gold. To prevent oxidation. Is that more technologically advanced. It depends on how it's done.

People keep thinking that this game is going to mirror our history which it doesn't. This game is a low fantasy game, in a different world. Else they would call Elyria, earth. This isn't a retelling of civilization, the sandbox MMORPG. Don't think of each tribes weapons, tools, and other things as a comparison to real life compare them to each other in the game.

Everything they've released so far points to the game being this way. Not a recreation of our history. One tribe may have more contraptions. "kypiq" Another may be better at being part of the courtier life. They each have their advantages and disadvantages. But don't expect combat effectiveness or the amount or quality of produced goods to be that much different from one tribe to the next. They each make different things. They'll likely all end up about the same in terms of balance.

This is certainly what drives me nuts in some discussions I've had, People keep comparing this game to our world. Which does have some merit. That doesn't necessitate what it's actually going to be like. I have seen many fantasy worlds where primitive weapons and their user are the most feared group of people in the world. And I've seen it go the other way. Think of it more of aesthetic and solving the same problem differently. I bet you, the less refined metal weapons of the drass are going to be complained that they are OP compared to the fine metal work of the hrothi and neran taught weapon artisans.

If you have read The Book of Five Rings by Miyamoto Musashi, you might have noticed that the author does not claim to use steel swords in his duels. Instead, he claimed to fashions bokken (plural) from wood found at the site of each duel. Reports are that he lived long enough to defeat each challenger using this method, and that he died peacefully after completing the book.

So the skill of a practitioner can indeed trump the material from which a weapon is made. To one with preeminent skill, the strength of the superior material can be rendered ineffective. A superbly crafted steel sword that fails to hit its target is less effective than a crude club that succeeds in doing so.

@Gungho

This is the main problem with this game.

I love how the devs hide behind fantasy only when it suits them while making pretty much everything else a near mirror image of our world history.

Yet when you ask for fantasy there is no shortage of people who will tell you it is "low fantasy" like Game of Thrones, and then turn around to give you earth based statistics, weapon/armors, and realworld examples of how it all works.

And still when you ask for realism people will come out of the woodwork to say that this is a fantasy game and to adjust your expectations because this game is not based on our world, its Elyria and turn around and justify it with fantasy because its not based on earth, its Elyria...lol?

You cant have your fantasy and eat it too. That line has been shifted, blurred, bent, and broken.

At first I was mad that the game was not more fantasy based as I adjusted to their vision. Then I was fine with it when crafting was fun little mini games and the fantasy was restrained to almost non fantasy levels. But now that things are getting real it really is starting to call a lot of these fantasy elements into question when you bring up the inferiority or unequality of the tribes. Sure they have their fantasy quirks and biomes but now that things are more realistic in general and people still want their fantasy to remain unchanged.

Everyone wants this to be like a game of Age of Empires where all the tribes start perfectly equal from different time periods and tech levels, but there is a reason that those cultures did not survive. Its called knowledge and technology. Its the reason why stone age neandertals are not ruling our world right now. They lacked knowledge and technology and the ability to adapt. Plain and simple.

Really what it all boils down to is how much $$,$$$ you shelled out to buy a higher starting tech level for yourself and your kingdom. Beyond that there is nothing that any tribe or biome can do to stop you. Despite the tribal quirks like the Dras and their obsession with poison and backteria, as soon as an EP powerhouse researches medicines, antidotes, ect years ahead of others your only trump card is moot at they steamroll you with superior everything no matter who you are or where you are.

Posted By WarlanderLichbane at 10:43 AM - Mon Jun 18 2018

Everyone wants this to be like a game of Age of Empires where all the tribes start perfectly equal from different time periods and tech levels, but there is a reason that those cultures did not survive. Its called knowledge and technology. Its the reason why stone age neandertals are not ruling our world right now. They lacked knowledge and technology and the ability to adapt. Plain and simple.

In fairness, not everyone thinks that way. I don't, and I'm pretty certain SBS doesn't. To paraphrase from the various things they've said, their primary design goal is to create enough imbalance within the game to drive engagement of some kind between the tribes. This will manifest as either diplomacy or war.

So will metal weapons be inferior to stone? Historically, obviously since nobody uses stone weapons anymore, even though you could cite specific situations in which that may not be true. But in CoE, I think it's going to be less about fidelity to the real world and more about what best drives conflicts and stories.

Does this mean stone is worthless? No. Unless you're planning to build a castle out of metal. ;)

Really what it all boils down to is how much $$,$$$ you shelled out to buy a higher starting tech level for yourself and your kingdom. Beyond that there is nothing that any tribe or biome can do to stop you. Despite the tribal quirks like the Dras and their obsession with poison and backteria, as soon as an EP powerhouse researches medicines, antidotes, ect years ahead of others your only trump card is moot at they steamroll you with superior everything no matter who you are or where you are.

FWIW, the research system isn't an instant unlock mechanism. They are not building advanced technology into the game that players can unlock through research. They are using player research (ie interests) to determine what to add to the game after launch. And so it will take them time to review, assess and implement those things.

@WarlanderLichbane

Not sure where the hostility is coming from but from the concept back in 2015 the game concept hasn’t changed that much.

Low fantasy refers to the creatures and such in the world. No roaming dragons, or wizard schools teach magic to bend the world to the will of immortal Elves. No great kingdom of bearded dwarves who reproduce through spores or whatnot. Just the world populated by Mann using the tools they have available to survive.

Fantasy low or high has zero to do with realism insofar as technology or the usefulness of bone versus metal.

The devs pull from earth for items like chickens and cattle, swords and bows because... where else should they pull from? They have stated they use the real world as a starting point and from there pick and choose what is fun and drop what isn’t.

Items will have weight, different materials weigh different amounts and thus take more or less stamina inducing different levels of fatigue. They won’t be the same as earth because progress would mirror earth and if you know where a journey ends what’s the fun in following someone else’s trail?

You cannot buy better technology. Bone, leather, iron, and alloys will be used by the respective tribes where it would make sense. Hunters and climbers like the forest tribes aren’t likely to utilize full iron plate with massive 2 handed broad swords. Wouldn’t work in the biome. So we have bone, and leather which would be readily available given the aboundance of animals in their area.

So again not sure where the hostility is coming from. Perhaps a better explanation would help? If it’s from the responses of other folks unless it is cited with quotes from SBS be aware it is likely best guess at this point.

Posted By WarlanderLichbane at 11:43 AM - Mon Jun 18 2018

I love how the devs hide behind fantasy only when it suits them while making pretty much everything else a near mirror image of our world history.

Yet when you ask for fantasy there is no shortage of people who will tell you it is "low fantasy" like Game of Thrones, and then turn around to give you earth based statistics, weapon/armors, and realworld examples of how it all works.

And still when you ask for realism people will come out of the woodwork to say that this is a fantasy game and to adjust your expectations because this game is not based on our world, its Elyria and turn around and justify it with fantasy because its not based on earth, its Elyria...lol?

You cant have your fantasy and eat it too. That line has been shifted, blurred, bent, and broken.

There appears to be a fundamental difference between "realistic" and "historic" that you don't seem to fully grasp.

Stone weapons are not really much less deadly than metal ones, if any. Advantages of metal are in ease of production, and durability. But there may be highly durable stones in Elyria. Most likely I think the difference will come down to cost and weight which are totally reasonable as a tribal variance.

This is for weapons. For tools I'd say metal tools seem like they have an advantage from everything we know in the real world, durability, maintainability, lightness. But again there may be materials we do not have in the real world.

I'll throw into the mix that a culture's methods of warfare and smaller-scale combat would, in theory, have grown around their weapons' strengths and weaknesses, accommodating rather than ignoring them. A Dras, for example, is probably a lot more likely to kill an invading Hrothi without ever actually crossing blades with them. Our Dras's stone sword might crack, chip or shatter if struck by iron; he knows this. So instead of engaging head to head, he covers himself in mud, readies his blowgun, and settles in somewhere hard to see/reach to wait. If he's discovered, he doesn't engage; he runs. He might lure his attacker into water, or territory occupied by poisonous or predatory creatures. The sword's not his primary weapon against an opponent with superior equipment, just the one that works against the threats he knows and deals with more regularly.

This is not to say Dras won't be using metal weapons shortly after launch (if cirucmstances allow for easy proliferation, they will be), but that the culture and circumstances they come from will likely dictate the conventional/historical approach to combat for each tribe. The introduction of metal weapons will change the way the Dras (or any other pre-iron age culture) wage war when it happens, of course. But a people assaulted by (or attacking) iron-bearing soldiers will learn pretty quickly that their odds of survival are better if they don't meet the threat head-on.