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Old 03-21-2012, 10:43 PM   #1
Flyndaran
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Default Bronze armor vs. iron question(s)

If bronze costs around 4 times iron, but the labor is the same, then why should the armor have a +3 CF as well?
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Old 03-21-2012, 11:00 PM   #2
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Default Re: Bronze armor vs. iron question(s)

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Originally Posted by Flyndaran View Post
If bronze costs around 4 times iron, but the labor is the same, then why should the armor have a +3 CF as well?
Because GURPS is not a complete economic model.

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Old 03-21-2012, 11:02 PM   #3
Flyndaran
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Default Re: Bronze armor vs. iron question(s)

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Because GURPS is not a complete economic model.

Bill Stoddard
So it's just a disagreement between LT 3 and every other gurps product? At least that's an answer.
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Old 03-21-2012, 11:05 PM   #4
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Default Re: Bronze armor vs. iron question(s)

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Originally Posted by Flyndaran View Post
So it's just a disagreement between LT 3 and every other gurps product? At least that's an answer.
CF for materials in general don't make sense. Additive CFs also frequently don't make sense.
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Old 03-21-2012, 11:16 PM   #5
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Default Re: Bronze armor vs. iron question(s)

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So it's just a disagreement between LT 3 and every other gurps product? At least that's an answer.
Could you spell out this disagreement? As far as I know, the CF system only appears outside the Basic Set, and a price for bronze and for bronze armour only appears in the Low Tech companions.

GURPS doesn't have a realistic economic model; it has simple rules to let a busy GM answer "what weapons can I buy?" and "how much money does my day job leave me for adventuring?" Just a comprehensive, gamable, game-balanced model for armour prices would be the work of several PhD dissertations.
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Old 03-21-2012, 11:52 PM   #6
Flyndaran
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Default Re: Bronze armor vs. iron question(s)

Bronze materials cost 4 times iron using the example prices of tin and copper in LTC 3, but most of the price of bronze items is labor which wouldn't change based on material. That means bronze items should be no where near 4 times the price of iron as used in other book(s).
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Old 03-22-2012, 12:22 AM   #7
Peter Knutsen
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Default Re: Bronze armor vs. iron question(s)

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Originally Posted by Flyndaran View Post
Bronze materials cost 4 times iron using the example prices of tin and copper in LTC 3, but most of the price of bronze items is labor which wouldn't change based on material. That means bronze items should be no where near 4 times the price of iron as used in other book(s).
Unless I've misunderstood something, bronze is also cast, while anything made out of iron or steel requires a strong (and skilled) dude to stand there and bang away at it with a hammer for hours and hours and hours. And more hours. So there's a labour cost element that seems to favour bronze, even if iron is much cheaper in terms of materials.
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Old 03-22-2012, 07:11 AM   #8
Turhan's Bey Company
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Default Re: Bronze armor vs. iron question(s)

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Originally Posted by Flyndaran View Post
Bronze materials cost 4 times iron using the example prices of tin and copper in LTC 3
(Emphasis mine)

If you're talking about the paragraph on LTC3 p. 22 before the raw material table, that's what those prices are: an example. They're not canonical costs. They simply illustrate how supply and demand can make prices in an individual setting vary from the costs in the table. However, they don't necessarily reflect actual historical prices from any place or time other than the one cited. For the core book, we had to pick a single number to characterize the cost difference between bronze and ferrous items across all of time and space. Our suggested value for that is CF +3; I vaguely recall that that reflects a real quality difference between bronze and very early iron, though I could be misremembering. Now, that doesn't reflect actual historical values for many places and times, but neither do other GURPS prices. It's the price we pay (pardon the expression) for having a single $ price which applies universally.

What LTC3 gives you is the building blocks for doing it yourself, if you're so inclined, instead of using the "default" +3 CF. The LTC3 material prices are based on labor (which PCs can provide) and provide ahistorcal best-case scenarios in terms of availability of materials. They're a baseline from which you can extrapolate for campaign settings where things are different. Maybe copper and tin are, unlike on our planet, remarkably plentiful and are available at the listed prices in the table. Maybe they're vanishingly rare and cost $hundreds per pound. In either case, you can figure out the "default" materials and labor costs for an item by using the base prices of assumed materials (any weapon or armor, for example, is going to be based on iron), then plug in your own materials costs to get a final price which is appropriate for your world. Will that match the default +3 CF? Probably not. Indeed, almost certainly not. But it isn't supposed to, because if you go that route, it's supposed to be for your world, not some universal abstraction.
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Old 03-22-2012, 05:35 AM   #9
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Default Re: Bronze armor vs. iron question(s)

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Originally Posted by Flyndaran View Post
If bronze costs around 4 times iron, but the labor is the same, then why should the armor have a +3 CF as well?
If the materials for making bronze armour is 4x the cost of the materials for making iron armour then why should it not have a +3 CF?
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Old 03-22-2012, 05:49 AM   #10
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Default Re: Bronze armor vs. iron question(s)

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If the materials for making bronze armour is 4x the cost of the materials for making iron armour then why should it not have a +3 CF?
LTC 3 says that cost of labor is not only more than zero, but significant for things like weapons and armor.
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