Cotton sheets from plant fibres and other low tech crafts

[stelscarrot]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

When starting for fun run on deserted island I found out that in new version it is impossible to make most clothes without cotton plants. With #71411 rags no more, and sinew and plant fibres are no longer viable way to make cotton sheets. Also, slightly unrelated to cotton, but still the lowtech problem - even if it is available, there is no way to get fabric cutting instrument required to most crafts without anvil.
It is problems that probably fixed in Innawood, and is really problematic for scenarios that you should enable it anyways, so it is more of a question should this really be brought back in general.

Solution you would like.

Bring back at least plant fiber to craft, as there are hemp and cattail. Cottonwood boll in description says that it is not possible to make clothes from it, so it could be moved to cordage pieces craft if considered unfit to make thin threads. And I am unsure if anyone really bothered to try and make sinew clothes, and how it would behave if made into one, so unless there are specialists it could be left as is.
The fabric cutting is harder, as all historical scissors I found require the blade smithing exactly, not mentioning metal, so I have no idea what to do there. Quora tells about hot knifes, but if we are talking about primitive technology available on the island - it would be hot stone knife, not sure if it would behave any different.

Describe alternatives you have considered.

The cotton clothes that could be woven or sewn without fabric cutting required. At least some for warmth, like arm warmers and really crude boots, gloves and socks.
The plant fiber issue alternatively could be only solved with another branch of clothes, which possible, yet suboptimal. Or make fiber sheet item that only could be used in some recipes as alternative, but not all.

Additional context

No response

[worm-girl]

We're probably giving out way, way too much sinew as it is. There's not a lot of usable sinew in any animal. You can get a bit of cordage out of something big like a deer, but getting enough to make fabric would require killing a crap ton of the things. I've also not been able to find any evidence that anyone anywhere has ever woven cloth from sinew.

Making cloth out of plant fiber is really difficult. The likeliest source of cloth in an innawood type run would probably be barkcloth imo, which was sometimes made by Northeastern indigenous people like the Iroquois. You can see a video series with some people making it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1wFRzp05qk

It takes an enormous amount of labor, knowhow, and most importantly, a good supply of mulberry or elm trees. Both grow in New England, but this wouldn't help most island starts as there just wouldn't be enough raw material. It also runs into the problem where if you were able to make it, it would imply that you had a level of industry going that would render it obsolete.

The Innawood mod has fibercloth, which can be made from plants. This is a somewhat unrealistic gameplay concession which is why it's not in mainline.

[Consoleable]

I think a big problem is the hard requirement for "fabric cutting 1", when the lowest tech thing that does this is Shears, which are not trivial to make. I'm not trying to dismiss how useful scissors are for working with fabric, but people have been making clothes long before scissors existed. There should be intermediate fabric shaping prior to shears. I would advocate for removing fabric cutting as a requirement for some "primitive clothing" recipes, and just assuming that the player is tearing the medium and resewing it or leaving it ragged, or that knives should get "fabric cutting 1" and we boost scissors and the like to "fabric cutting 2" and have more clothes recipes require "fabric cutting 2", and then similarly bumping up kevlar shears and w/e recipes were fabric cutting 2 up to 3.

Right now, loincloths cannot be made without an anvil, even if a player has knives and thread and awls and such. I know some loincloths can be like elaborate aprons and might want scissors, but since this item is also supposed to represent primitive loincloths, it would be nice if they were easier to make. This is only an example though. We might also consider adding sarongs as a completely fabric cutting-less wearable as well.

[Consoleable]

Also, it would be nice if more innawoods recipes(minus those which merely support the conceit of innawoods) were ported to main game, to support some of the more challenging and remote start scenarios in the base game, and to support the verisimilitude of cdda crafting.

[stelscarrot]

This is a somewhat unrealistic gameplay concession

And what about hemp? It is present in game, sorta. Also, as I understood it, plant fibers is not just any plant fiber but with specific qualities, as there are a lot of plants, that could be made chemically or mechanically treated to become somewhat of a fiber by see, with varying results. Yet there are only dogbane, cannabis, cattail, several types of aliens and miniscule amount in stalks of burdock, common selfheal, fireweed and thistle.
There are videos on hemp, both industrial and low tech that sell it or make it for local community, and there are work linked in wikipedia on cattail fabric, but it is locked behind paywall or university access, so I can't read it, to tell the degree of usability.

[stelscarrot]

or leaving it ragged

My thoughts exactly when I slept on it.
Edit: no, I mainly thought about crumpled, not ragged. Language barrier. I meant - if you can't cut - just sew it inside. A little bit of discomfort, but working.
Fabric cutting for the knifes though sounds not that useful. Should rock chopper with cutting 2 have fabric cutting? Or makeshift knife that made by hammering steel chunk? It either way bounces back to how it is now. Maybe some crude bladesmithing recipe for primitive scissors with rock forge and rock anvil is a way, but I have no idea how that works, and what else could be required. For instance, something to hold it, that still requires anvil 3.

[Consoleable]

or leaving it ragged

My thoughts exactly when I slept on it. Edit: no, I mainly thought about crumpled, not ragged. Language barrier. I meant - if you can't cut - just sew it inside. A little bit of discomfort, but working. Fabric cutting for the knifes though sounds not that useful. Should rock chopper with cutting 2 have fabric cutting? Or makeshift knife that made by hammering steel chunk? It either way bounces back to how it is now. Maybe some crude bladesmithing recipe for primitive scissors with rock forge and rock anvil is a way, but I have no idea how that works, and what else could be required. For instance, something to hold it, that still requires anvil 3.

i disagree, i think this is thinking about it too much like a game, and potentially too much in terms of innawoods or similar progression. if the stone chopper or this makeshift knife can do it why not a copper knife, a bronze knife, a carving knife, etc?
you shouldn't have to craft an inferior object to do something just because its one of the early steps in some meta progression.
It would be weird for a character that skipped the stone chopper to say to themselves "I cant make scissors, and all i have is my copper knife. I need a loincloth, so i better make an inferior crude stone blade to use"
maybe some simple clothing recipes should have just "cutting" rather than "fabric cutting", since they already have cutting as a requirement, and both knives and scissors provide that. That would be consistent across whatever tool the player might have.

[stelscarrot]

I meant that stone knife and knife made out of chunk of steel by simple hammering with a rock isn't really viable tools to cut fabric, and they should NOT be a way to cut fabric in precise way. So the current distribution of fabric cutting have a lot of knifes already, they just can't be made without anvil 2 and 3, and even with artistic liberties it can't be bent to even more cruder tools. So the progression I meant - a way to make a scissors that require anvil 1 and forge (if that realistic), and there would be no need to go back to them if you skipped straight to anvil as I am not advocating to remove fabric cutting from what it have now.

Edit: copper knife is somewhere in the middle there - it is being made with fire. But once again - not my expertise how realistic current recipe is, and how effective it would be in fabric cutting. It should be better than just hammered steel chunk tho, for sure.

[github-actions]

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