Dismantle?

[Armaddict]

How about a crafting skill that attempts to break down a product into the materials it took to make it?  It will rarely if ever give -all- of them, of course, since they're actually cut or molded a lot of the time.  But pulling out gems and whatnot.  Yea or nay?

[creepyguy]

try salvage

[Armaddict]

Durr.  Re-tard-ed.  Thanks.

[Synthesis]

From my experience, salvage is very limited, in that it will only generate objects that are pre-selected for a very broad category of material types.

That doesn't seem like what the OP had in mind.

[Armaddict]

Well.  The idea came from wanting an alternative to use on useful items instead of 'junk'.  So...while not -exactly- what I wanted...it works.

[spawnloser]

Salvage is PERFECT for a few sub-classes, and a few classes providing useful/usable materials.  For the rest, it is generally useless, unfortunately.  I wouldn't mind these pieces being somewhat more useful at least.

[Qzzrbl]

>in
You are carrying:
A bigass bone greatsword bigger than you are covered in jewels and metal lining the blade.

>salvage bigass
You begin salvaging.

You break apart a bigass bone greatsword bigger than you are covered in jewels and metal lining the blade and produce a useful piece.

>in
You are carrying:
A thin sliver of bone.

[MeTekillot]

>in
You are carrying:
A bigass bone greatsword bigger than you are covered in jewels and metal lining the blade.

>salvage bigass
You begin salvaging.

You break apart a bigass bone greatsword bigger than you are covered in jewels and metal lining the blade and produce a useful piece.

>in
You are carrying:
A thin sliver of bone.

craft sliver
You don't think you could make anything.

[Dan]

>in
You are carrying:
A bigass bone greatsword bigger than you are covered in jewels and metal lining the blade.

>salvage bigass
You begin salvaging.

You break apart a bigass bone greatsword bigger than you are covered in jewels and metal lining the blade and produce a useful piece.

>in
You are carrying:
A thin sliver of bone.

craft sliver
You don't think you could make anything.

junk sliver
You haven't picked enough cotton yet, friend.

[Qzzrbl]

>in
You are carrying:
A bigass bone greatsword bigger than you are covered in jewels and metal lining the blade.

>salvage bigass
You begin salvaging.

You break apart a bigass bone greatsword bigger than you are covered in jewels and metal lining the blade and produce a useful piece.

>in
You are carrying:
A thin sliver of bone.

craft sliver
You don't think you could make anything.

junk sliver
You haven't picked enough cotton yet, friend.

ROFL!

Anyhow, back to the topic, I think a separate "dismantle" skill or somesuch would be a nifty addition..... Take stuff apart with a little more care than salvage (which I've come to assume amounts to beating the object repeatedly on the nearest hard object) and get more intact pieces and whatnot.

[creepyguy]

Or maybe just have salvage return more/better objects based on either existing skills or a new one. Such as if you have the relevant crafting skill for the object, you'd better understand it and be able to salvage it more precisely.
I think though the reason that this isn't already so is to avoid craft twink abuse where someone could repeatedly craft an item, salvage it and then recraft it using the same materials over and over.

[Synthesis]

This wouldn't really work well, for more complicated things.

The way the code seems to work is thusly:  each object has a "material type" field.  That field seems to contain only one string, e.g. "obsidian" "herb" "wood" "cloth" "leather".  Every object in the game has this field already.

Thus, it was simple to implement a command like salvage, where all you did was match what looks like the weight of the object (heavier = more "bits" of whatever) to its material type, and each material type was given a new object that would be the result of salvage.

Here is how it could get interesting:

For items that have crafting recipes, a "dismantle" command could reference not the "item type" field of the object being dismantled, but instead look at the item type fields of all the components that went into crafting it, then return "junk" objects for each of -those- objects.

For example, a sword that is crafted from a gem item-type object, an obsidian item-type object, and a bone item-type object would return the polished gem, a shard of obsidian, and a shard of bone when "dismantled," whereas currently salvaging it would probably only return a shard of obsidian.  You wouldn't have to change anything for the thousands of objects that exist in game already...all you have to do is write a bit of code that references strings that already exist, and perhaps another bit of code that recognizes things like gemstones and metal that wouldn't be destroyed by the crafting process (although admittedly this could return some weird things like...dismantling a spiraling gemstone earring could yield the original unmodified gemstone...this would actually be quite bad, because then people could craft an earring, dismantle it, ad infinitum until they finally abjectly failed at the craft...but I digress).

This scheme would only work for items that have crafting recipes linked to them, though.

[AmandaGreathouse]

This wouldn't really work well, for more complicated things.

The way the code seems to work is thusly:  each object has a "material type" field.  That field seems to contain only one string, e.g. "obsidian" "herb" "wood" "cloth" "leather".  Every object in the game has this field already.

Thus, it was simple to implement a command like salvage, where all you did was match what looks like the weight of the object (heavier = more "bits" of whatever) to its material type, and each material type was given a new object that would be the result of salvage.

Here is how it could get interesting:

For items that have crafting recipes, a "dismantle" command could reference not the "item type" field of the object being dismantled, but instead look at the item type fields of all the components that went into crafting it, then return "junk" objects for each of -those- objects.

For example, a sword that is crafted from a gem item-type object, an obsidian item-type object, and a bone item-type object would return the polished gem, a shard of obsidian, and a shard of bone when "dismantled," whereas currently salvaging it would probably only return a shard of obsidian.  You wouldn't have to change anything for the thousands of objects that exist in game already...all you have to do is write a bit of code that references strings that already exist, and perhaps another bit of code that recognizes things like gemstones and metal that wouldn't be destroyed by the crafting process (although admittedly this could return some weird things like...dismantling a spiraling gemstone earring could yield the original unmodified gemstone...this would actually be quite bad, because then people could craft an earring, dismantle it, ad infinitum until they finally abjectly failed at the craft...but I digress).

This scheme would only work for items that have crafting recipes linked to them, though.

I like it. Not only does it make sense (more so than salvage in a general fashion), but it also doesn't require shit tons of extra input on the part of the staff for a large and rather brilliant addition. Plus, that last part sounds like a good excuse for more players to kick in recipes for currently uncraftable items to me.

[Praetorian]

This wouldn't really work well, for more complicated things.

The way the code seems to work is thusly:  each object has a "material type" field.  That field seems to contain only one string, e.g. "obsidian" "herb" "wood" "cloth" "leather".  Every object in the game has this field already.

Thus, it was simple to implement a command like salvage, where all you did was match what looks like the weight of the object (heavier = more "bits" of whatever) to its material type, and each material type was given a new object that would be the result of salvage.

Here is how it could get interesting:

For items that have crafting recipes, a "dismantle" command could reference not the "item type" field of the object being dismantled, but instead look at the item type fields of all the components that went into crafting it, then return "junk" objects for each of -those- objects.

For example, a sword that is crafted from a gem item-type object, an obsidian item-type object, and a bone item-type object would return the polished gem, a shard of obsidian, and a shard of bone when "dismantled," whereas currently salvaging it would probably only return a shard of obsidian.  You wouldn't have to change anything for the thousands of objects that exist in game already...all you have to do is write a bit of code that references strings that already exist, and perhaps another bit of code that recognizes things like gemstones and metal that wouldn't be destroyed by the crafting process (although admittedly this could return some weird things like...dismantling a spiraling gemstone earring could yield the original unmodified gemstone...this would actually be quite bad, because then people could craft an earring, dismantle it, ad infinitum until they finally abjectly failed at the craft...but I digress).

This scheme would only work for items that have crafting recipes linked to them, though.

I like it. Not only does it make sense (more so than salvage in a general fashion), but it also doesn't require shit tons of extra input on the part of the staff for a large and rather brilliant addition. Plus, that last part sounds like a good excuse for more players to kick in recipes for currently uncraftable items to me.

As cool at this addition would be, it makes absolutely NO sense for most items in the game.  Lets say you dismantle an polished topaz.  Would you really get an unpolished topaz?  What happened to all the polishing?  Dismantling a loaf of bread to get a sack of flour?  Dismantling an arrow to get a long branch back?  Too much of the crafting process involves virtual refining of raw resources with alot of excess scrap (trimmed leather, stone filings, bone and wood shavings, etc etc).  Not to mention some craftings take several steps, and it would be jarring:

The stocky, bulbous-nosed stumpy asks the fat, flatulating half-elf, in steinalese:
"What happened to that nice little spice pipe you used to always be puffing on?"

As he hefts a heavy agafari log off the ground, the fat, flatulating half-elf says, in steinalese:
"Decided I didn't want it no more, broke it down to make something else."

I'd say something like dismantling would be best applied toward Arm 2.0 where the dismantle recipes could be integrated into the crafting system in a logical fashion.

[Synthesis]

This wouldn't really work well, for more complicated things.

The way the code seems to work is thusly:  each object has a "material type" field.  That field seems to contain only one string, e.g. "obsidian" "herb" "wood" "cloth" "leather".  Every object in the game has this field already.

Thus, it was simple to implement a command like salvage, where all you did was match what looks like the weight of the object (heavier = more "bits" of whatever) to its material type, and each material type was given a new object that would be the result of salvage.

Here is how it could get interesting:

For items that have crafting recipes, a "dismantle" command could reference not the "item type" field of the object being dismantled, but instead look at the item type fields of all the components that went into crafting it, then return "junk" objects for each of -those- objects.

For example, a sword that is crafted from a gem item-type object, an obsidian item-type object, and a bone item-type object would return the polished gem, a shard of obsidian, and a shard of bone when "dismantled," whereas currently salvaging it would probably only return a shard of obsidian.  You wouldn't have to change anything for the thousands of objects that exist in game already...all you have to do is write a bit of code that references strings that already exist, and perhaps another bit of code that recognizes things like gemstones and metal that wouldn't be destroyed by the crafting process (although admittedly this could return some weird things like...dismantling a spiraling gemstone earring could yield the original unmodified gemstone...this would actually be quite bad, because then people could craft an earring, dismantle it, ad infinitum until they finally abjectly failed at the craft...but I digress).

This scheme would only work for items that have crafting recipes linked to them, though.

I like it. Not only does it make sense (more so than salvage in a general fashion), but it also doesn't require shit tons of extra input on the part of the staff for a large and rather brilliant addition. Plus, that last part sounds like a good excuse for more players to kick in recipes for currently uncraftable items to me.

As cool at this addition would be, it makes absolutely NO sense for most items in the game.  Lets say you dismantle an polished topaz.  Would you really get an unpolished topaz?  What happened to all the polishing?  Dismantling a loaf of bread to get a sack of flour?  Dismantling an arrow to get a long branch back?  Too much of the crafting process involves virtual refining of raw resources with alot of excess scrap (trimmed leather, stone filings, bone and wood shavings, etc etc).  Not to mention some craftings take several steps, and it would be jarring:

The stocky, bulbous-nosed stumpy asks the fat, flatulating half-elf, in steinalese:
"What happened to that nice little spice pipe you used to always be puffing on?"

As he hefts a heavy agafari log off the ground, the fat, flatulating half-elf says, in steinalese:
"Decided I didn't want it no more, broke it down to make something else."

I'd say something like dismantling would be best applied toward Arm 2.0 where the dismantle recipes could be integrated into the crafting system in a logical fashion.

You obviously didn't read my entire post.  The vast majority of things would return the current "salvage" results, but instead of getting only "a jagged shard of obsidian" for your long, obsidian-headed spear, you would get "a jagged shard of obsidian" and "a splintering piece of wood."  You would not get "an obsidian spearhead" and "a long wooden pole," from which the spear was crafted.  (Even though this would make perfect sense in this case, it would not make sense generally.)

The aside about gems was just that:  an aside, intended to address the fact that there isn't (so far as I know) any "salvage" result for gemstones.  And really, the example I provided showed why that aside wouldn't work.  Thus, I assumed that most people would reasonably dismiss said aside, since even I readily admit that it wouldn't be feasible.  That is, it doesn't need arguing against, because it is patently a bad idea.

[smcdonald]

I think salvage can already produce several different things at the same time.  It only depends on what item or list of items it has been set to produce.  The admins have in the past asked for more suggestions on what products should be salvaged.  Seems to me that if you think things aren't producing the right stuff with salvage, you should put in a suggestion.

[spawnloser]

Salvage only returns one object type, though it can return multiples of that one object.