Problems with short rope recipe & weights of its components.

[procrustesmethod]

Describe the bug

The "from_cloth" recipe for short rope takes 30 rags or 30 leather patches or 30 felt patches or 5 tanned hides. Found in json/recipes/recipe_others.json
I originally had an issue with just the short rope recipe & its required components. Some algebra:

30 rags = 1 short rope
--> 30*80 thread = 6 long strings
--> 2400 thread = 36 short strings
--> 2400 thread = 1800 thread.
Contradiction.

Weight of rag: 0.18 lb
Weight of short rope: 0.48 lb
0.18*30 = 5.4 lb != 0.48 lb

However, a recipe like this is reasonable. See:
Make rope from fabric scraps : https://youtu.be/IAY805uM3H8

It should be possible to make a rope from these components in-game. However the recipe is flawed due to the imbalance of weights & component requirements (when you consider that a rag is just 80 thread, and a short rope is just 1800 thread, each sewn together in a different way.)

You could tweak this recipe so it produces byproducts (thread or short string, or cotton scraps.) However the issues of weight would still apply, and I think that less than 25% of the components should go to waste (i.e. 600 of 2400 thread that 30 rags constitute.) I will not focus on byproducts, since it would be trivial to implement, while there are other non-trivial problems with this recipe.
To fix this recipe, we should change the components required, along with the weight of those components.
I focus on rags, but using leather & felt patches, as well as tanned hides, creates issues.

Steps To Reproduce

1. Unlock all recipes via debug.
2. Spawn all components listed to verify the weights and volumes above.
3. Open the crafting menu and verify the auto-learned short rope recipe.

Expected behavior

This will not exactly be concise, as there are underlying issues with tailoring & weights of resources that need work for this recipe to be reasonable.

One needs to consider conservation of weight and volume, along with equivalences of components (i.e. 80 thread = 1 rag), and crafting/disassembly times, to formulate a recipe with reasonable behavior.

Considerations:

1. The recipe should take less rags (22.5 rags = 1800 thread). This would mean amount in = amount out, solving the issue of equivalence.

The crafting time of 7 minutes isn't super unreasonable as well: see the video linked above. (It probably should be doubled or tripled though.)

I also don't think volume is a major issue. The "bundle of rags" recipe implies that rags are loosely packed in a container, and should take up a lot more volume than thread. You could make the case that it is an issue however, but I won't focus on that.

However, the issue of weight remains.

(50*36) thread = 1800 thread = 3.96 lbs.
1 short rope = 0.48 lbs.
22.5 rags = 4.05 lbs.

These weights should be the same, and not differ by an order of magnitude.

2. Base the weights of all rope, and rags, on the weight of thread.

50 thread = 0.11 lbs.
1 rag = 80 thread ~= 0.18 lbs.
50 thread = 1 short string = 0.11 lbs
6 short string = 1 long string = 0.66 lbs.
6 long string = 1 short rope = 3.96 lbs.
5 short rope = 1 long rope = 23.76 lbs.

I think this is the right course of action, but pretty silly. To take a point of reference, a long rope = a seatbelt. AFAIK seatbelts don't weight 24 pounds. Thus,

3. Rebalance the weight of thread. I'm not gonna focus on this, it should just be made to be reasonable. But this also creates issues.
   Suppose a seatbelt weighs 5lbs. Then

9000 thread = 5lbs
--> 50 thread = 0.027 lbs
--> 1 rag = 0.0416lbs
--> 1 towel = (5 rags) + (7 thread) = 0.212lbs.

But a towel obviously doesn't weight that much!

Proposed solution:

rebalance the weight of thread (3), make rags disassemble into much more thread (say, 3x or 4x as much) and scale weight of rags & rope accordingly (2).

Making rag disassembly produce more thread means that rags weigh more. Then the weight of a towel, or hat, etc. would make more sense.

Then, with the recipe, make sure (x rags required)*(num of thread from 1 rag) = (num of thread in 1 short rope). (1)

Screenshots

N/A

Versions and configuration

• OS: Linux Mint
• Game Version: 0.E-1219-gf47f2ee
• Graphics version: Tiles
• Ingame language: English
• Mods loaded: none

Additional context

Side Note on other components:

I think tanned hide & leather and felt patches need work as well, if included in this recipe. I focused on rags, because the final product disassembles into thread, and rags disassemble into thread.
The issue with leather/felt is that they can be transmuted into thread via this recipe. (Notwithstanding issues with weight.)
Kevlar & Nomex thread have already been implemented -- perhaps leather thread could be added? Then you could have separate recipes for leather and felt/yarn ropes, similar to that for cordage ropes.

[Zireael07]

You have a point, but IIRC rags disassemble into so little thread because so much of them is left completely useless in the process.

[procrustesmethod]

That's fair, I was thinking the game might be abstracting that. However weight would still be an issue -- right now it simulates 25% of threads in a rag going to waste (using the rope-rag algebra I gave at the top.) Even with this the weights are significantly off. Also, the game doesn't abstract waste from disassembling ropes -- their volumes & weights are consistent -- so the RHS of the equation is still correct.

Also I was wrong about my point with the seatbelts! Apologies - I thought long rope was used, but a 5-point harness takes long rope and a seatbelt takes short rope.

Anyways, you could probably re-do my algebra, with waste from rag disassembly in mind, and it certainly wouldn't be as drastic as I outlined it to be, but would still have issues with conservation of mass.

[raithwind]

A very well thought out proposal, but if I was to work on this would you also want items constructed from or can disassemble into ropes/threads to also be re-weighted?

I think that this can all be achieved through a LOT of JSON work.