Weapons
espically swords

First off, swords are not illegal in withmore right?

considering that firearms are, you would think that the variety of weapons avaliable in withmore would be slightly more diverse.  Even in modern times america where most states allow carrying a firearm with a permit (which I guess withmore does too) swords have their own niche market in which skilled swordsmiths are highly sought after.  in a world where swords are the first legal line of defense (not to mention probibaly the most effective barring firearms) you would think that they would be even more highly sought after, and therefore there would be more people making them.  I think that since anybody can carry a sword/knife that smiths who can construct a variety of edged weapons would be insanely popular, similar to tailors you could have stock metals avaliable, and in the right conditions(eg with a forge and tools) people could construct various weapons.  I don't think something of this nature would be extremely hard to code, and at the very least I think we should see a greater variety of swords hit the market.  modern day rapiers, two handed claymores, and so on.  Introducing a smith type of career would not only make more interesting weapon types it would give some people employment, and definately promote many kinds of rp. the more talented the smith the better the weapons he or she creates.  

mono edged technology should probibaly be avaliable in 2088 too.

monofilament whips ooh!! regular whips too, which would have a chance of ensnareing a charcter's limb, renedring them incapicated, or at least tripping, or disarming them

polearms?? could be devistating in the right hands, though next to worthless to the untrained, or unskilled hand.

which leads me to teaching combat, charcters should be able to teach martial arts, brawling, or any skill for that matter, raising the student's skill GRADUALLY up to the level the teacher possesses.  or maybe a slightly lower level at the teacher's discression (most would not want to teach everything they know) this would not lend itself to open-ended abuse.  and the teacher could control how much the student learns. and if a PC is used to teach then people couldn't really abuse the system in any ways that I could see.  

oh, and for god's sake fix the ambidexterus skill (don't adress that I KNOW...IT'S ON "THE LIST")

B. As far as I know, players never have / never will dictate what matters get addressed first. Asked for input? Of course--but there's a difference.

No it's not. There really is a list, and it really is huge. Just because you've never seen it dosn't mean it dosn't exist.

B) Wrong. Players, in my opinion, -should- dictate what is put into play first. But their direct posts about it should not. (I'll explain.)

Actually Legba is right. Dead on in fact. Players do not and never will dictate anything. Nither will their 'needs'. What get's worked on is dictated by the coders interest, direction, and abilities. Their direction usually happens to coinside with what's presently needed in the game, but there CAN and WILL be a disconnect at times. That's just the nature of the beast. If there was a way to ensure that player need resulted in code being written, we would have implemented it years ago. But you can't change human nature.

As for smithing: Just how many hand forges do you think there would be on red? Wouldn't any weapons of any quality be mass-produced by machines in factories?

It's perfectly plausable that you might work for a corperation which produces weapons (ZMI for instance), but the likelyhood of a player smelting any quanity of metal in their cube is pretty low.

Now, wrapping a shaft in duct tape is one thing, or combining a lighter with some spraypaint to make a hand-held flamethrower is something that has been discussed in the past, but the effort required for a system like that far outweighs any benifit which might be gained.  Better to just have a large divirsity of weapons avalible, with proper balence.

Which leads me to diversity: We won't have diversity of weapons (read new weapons) until the present crop is finished (It's on the list, and progress is being made in that direction).

Mono-edged technology is avalible in 2088. Just because you've never seen it dosn't mean it dosn't exist.

And finally teaching: Your welcome to RP teaching someone martial arts... it's been done before with great results. But there will never be the ability for one person to permanantly increase another persons skill, simply because it's too easy to abuse.

The minute you open up something like that, we'll have two people (not you, but some twink) who will sit in a cube all day long, each raising a skill, while teaching it to the other. No amount of code will help that situtation.

Plus the point of the game is not to sit around pressing a button to raise your skill. This is why skills arn't raised through practice. And why there arn't gyms and martial arts dojos with automated trainers. If these places existed, they would be to support RP ONLY... so likeminded muscle heads could go RP pumping iron in the weight room. To replace the gap left by the lack of these types of things, we have Cyberware (which is on the list).

As an aside I coded a very complex smithing system for Muddy Waters... but MW allready had tons of mines where you could mine for metals, and a large player base to support the resulting trade. It never made it out of Beta for two reasons: First of all, it was too difficult to balence between skill required, time required to make a weapon, failure rate, and resulting weapon's ability. Secondly it was BORING to have to be logged in for ANY amount of time doing nothing but working on a weapon. About as boring as working at SHI. Maybe worse.

-Kevlar

(Edited by Kevlar at 1:59 pm on Nov. 10, 2003)

However, the reason the metal is 'folded over on itself' (a process called annealing) so many times is to arange the molecules of the metal in flat layers, one molecule deep. Thus the edge can be sharpened with amazing consistency because the molecules are all literally arranged in the ideal form for making the edge as sharp as possible.

This process of folding can DEFINATELY be automated, and done faster (if not better) by a machine. Usually this is only done once, maybe twice for a knife or sword, and is a required to make the metal hold an edge. �For a 'real' katana, this process is repeated as many as 500 times, and sometimes more... which requires SEVERAL YEARS of a smiths life to accomplish.

I'de have to argue that in the year 2088, machines could produce a better weapon than any hand tools could, no matter how great the smith. With laser accuracy, hydrolic pressure, tollerence for environmental conditions that would be death for humans, a work ethic that never quits, virually unlimited funding and research, and guidence by a master-smith, a dedicated machine's gonna win every time I'm afraid.

Not to mention the advances in metallurgy, and more importantly chemistry and composite materials that would have happened in the past 85 years. The best sword wouldn't be made out of metal... at least not the metal that a smith would use today.

-Kevlar

(Edited by Kevlar at 4:52 pm on Nov. 11, 2003)

oh yeah and the 'folding' technique is dated, though still effective. with modern technology normally forged swords can be just as high of a quality as folded ones, though since most people still assume otherwise (and because it is a much more lengthly process)  the folded swords can still demand a higher price.