Recycling of old items in the training areas

[Jens Beyer]

I always wondered why the old military gear can not be reused, at least sometimes.

Technically, it would be easy, the trainer could simply drop out an item when the soldier advances, or he could even add it to the own store if it is a higher gear (this is done automatically).

But the problem would be that it would be either an unrealistic "reuse all old weapons" scenario, or some kind of randomness which I do not really like.

When thinking about the Destroy vs. Disassemble topic of buildings, I came to the conclusion that *recycling* of old weapons would be a good balance between throwing them away as it is now, and reusing all of them.
Let the trainer drop out all or parts of the iron/gold used to create the weapon as *ore*. It then has to go back to the smelter to be transformed back to iron/gold ingots.

Other way (which I would even like better) would be a new ware "scrap metal" (which to the user is always the same, internally it contains a defined amount of iron and gold), and either the smelter, or one or even all metal workshops/smiths can use the scrap to extract the iron/gold ore and have it go back to the smelter.

Think about the "Widelands goes environmental" implications ;-) after all, widelands players can learn something about recycling.

A lightweight way of the "recycling" would be simply dropping gold and iron ingots from training sites, just like it is with building disassembly.

I believe I would even be able to implement this.

[GunChleoc (gunchleoc)]

There is also a related forum discussion:

https://wl.widelands.org/forum/topic/1597/

[Jens Beyer (qcumber-some)]

Good find, thank you. I didn't notice this topic.

From what I gather from the Thread, I see that there seems to be some interest in this topic in one or the other way of implementation (even also the scrap metal variant), and the common thinking that if it is done, it should be done in a way that it enhances economy topics without enhancing warfare.

So the idea should be to implement *material* recycling and not *item* recycling, in a way that the training sites should put out ore or ingots or fabrics or something alike (scrap), and not complete helmets or weapons or armors; and that the manufacturing of items like weapons should not use other, more basic items like lesser weapons.

I think I will test around a bit with one tribe and also see if the AI makes something out of this, I believe the defense AI could really improve with such a feature. If I like what I see, I will put a branch up ;-)

[Albert Einstein (w-aaaaa)]

From thread:

> 1st problem perspective: Balancing.(...) And a recycling for spideryarn? Mhh...

I think that only metal should be recycled. If you use only iron to build a weapon, only "iron scrap" should go out of the upgrading building. The amount of gold/iron scrap should be less than needed to produce.
Second thing is that we don't need to recycle spideryarn, wood, cloth or anything like this- those materials are possible to get limitless.
My idea of this issue is that we can get some scrap metal (gold or iron) from training facility just to produce more weapons. That will be enough for most situations and maps.

> 2nd problem perspective: Prices. Reusing iron makes it available where map makers may have constrained it for a reason. (...)

Maybe I don't get the point here, but I don't see the problem of reusing iron. If the prices will be (f.e.) scrap ore = 50% of used to build, the map will contain the same amount of ores as before. And it will be balanced as befoere. Only "bigger economies" will gain more ingots.
Another problem can be coal: it can be get from mountains (cheap version), but also it is limitless resource from wood (expensive version). If you decide to make iron/gold from scrap, you should consider cost for that- much more expensive coal.

[Jens Beyer (qcumber-some)]

Regarding recycling of only iron/gold:

That would even increase the gap I see between Barbarians/Empire and Atlanteans.

Regarding the prices:

I guess you really don't see the problem I was talking about.
Of course, I do not really want to give 100% of iron used for a weapon/armor back. But nevertheless, let's see my (very simplified example): Every weapon costs 2 iron, when reused, I give scrap metal back in value of 1 iron.
The map has only 10 iron available. The soldier's attack can be upgraded 4 times, requiring new weapons at each time, and the economy settings are in a way that the weaponsmith creates each weapon once.
At the current state of trunk, the player could make 5 weapons (one of each), improving one soldier to the max attack.
At the recycling idea's state, the weaponsmith will make each weapon once, but when upgrading the soldier 2 levels, the economy has enough scrap metal to make another weapon! Let's say the weaponsmith creates a basic weapon. The economy has another basic soldier for free! But now, the first soldier gets promoted two levels again! And another weapon is made, say the second level weapon for the second soldier! And another upgrade of soldier 1 and an upgrade of soldier 2, and we have another weapon for soldier 2!
- summary: Instead of 5 weapons, we get 8 weapons out of 10 iron ore. That's a 60% increase. In many maps, this may just be ok, but there *may* be some maps where the creator restricted iron ore very strongly to prevent soldier's rush or encourage economy optimization because of less tools used from the toolsmith.

[Jens Beyer (qcumber-some)]

I just noticed that I did the ideal calculation wrong, in fact it is a 85% increase (instead of one level 5 soldier, you get one level 5, one level 4, and scrap metal in value of 1 ore.

[Jens Beyer (qcumber-some)]

...Sorry but the correct ideal is 50% increase, instead of 5 weapons I get 7 weapons and 1 scrap. But whichever result is true, it is at least a significant increase, which is (in my eyes) too strong for those restricted maps.

[Klaus Halfmann (klaus-halfmann)]

Moved to R21 for now, except for the frisians.
I think its included in the second scenario,
but well, they are marked as experimental.

[GunChleoc (gunchleoc)]

Migrated to https://github.com/widelands/widelands/issues/2032