Guides/Metal Treatment

NOTE: You must have Tongs to remove anything from a Chemical Bath without dumping the acid.

Note: Chemical treatment values have changed drastically in T8; the base values for the metals are unchanged. The updated values appear below under Treatment Values.

The goal of metal treatment is to impart certain attributes to the metal placed in a chemical bath. For example, treating metal with cactus sap will increase its corrosion resistance, and will decrease its strength.

The closer a substance's values are to the current values of the metal being treated, the greater the effect it will have. For example, arsenic has a corrosion value of 72 (corrosion-proof). A metal whose corrosion value is 50 will respond much more quickly to arsenic than a metal whose corrosion value is 12. It will take much more arsenic to move the second metal's corrosion value. Treating metal efficiently will require using multiple substances with values close to the current value of the metal, rather than dumping tons of one substance into the tank.

Somebob's Example Recipes and Theory Behind Them

Note: This recipe is unlikely to work for your tank exactly as written due to varying k-values, but will help to explain some of the concepts behind treatment, and should be easily tweakable to work

For the first example, a relatively straightforward recipe will be used to make Hard Corrosion-Resistant Cobalt for the purposes of building a Steam Shovel.

Cobalt doesn't start all that far from where we hope to end up - Corrosion-Resistance can easily be imparted, but increasing the Strength is slightly trickier. The first ingredient that suggests itself is Salt. It has favorable values for both Corrosion and Strength. We'll only see a little movement in Corrosion from this ingredient, but the increase in Strength is key from this treatment.

10 seconds - the maximum amount of time you get for 1 deben of an ingredient - moves Corrosion bar as far as the ingredient is able to take it, but Strength still has a ways to go, so I need more than 10 seconds. Because in many instances there is little harm from letting a treatment go on slightly too long, and round numbers are easier to type, I treat it for another 10 seconds, which is perhaps a second or two more than strictly necessary - total 20 seconds of Salt.

At this point Strength is getting pretty close to where we want it to be, and Corrosion is on its way, too. The next ingredient of choice is Saltpeter - this again moves both Corrosion and Strength in the directions we want to go, though it will move Strength considerably more quickly. Saltpeter is quite cheap, so a total of 30 seconds was used to max out Strength, and leave Corrosion pretty near where we want to end

Next up, there's a variety of ingredients that will move Corrosion in the direction we need it to go - but none will move it as quickly as Cactus Sap, nor will any stop exactly at Corrosion Resistance. Cactus Sap also has a very *low* value for Strength - meaning that while it will try to move Strength in the wrong direction, the treatment value is simply too far away from the high value of what's in the tank for us to lose any Strength. A total of 10 seconds of Sap is sufficient to do the trick, leaving me with the Cobalt having the attributes Hard, Corrosion Resistant, and Purity of 8. Purity doesn't matter for this use, but does for several other uses of treated metal, so it's a good thing to make note of.

My complete recipe for Hard Corrosion-Resistant Conductive Cobalt is thus 20 seconds Salt, 30 seconds of Saltpeter and 10 seconds of Cactus Sap. As this is a relatively simple recipe, it likely will work in your tank with only minor tweaks.

The tongs metal example will be left as an exercise to the reader - one thing that will make it easier is to note that once a metal salt is added to a chemical bath, the chemical bath will remain set to that metal salt type untl the acid is emptied from the tank. So you only have to account for the effects of adding Salts of Gold *once* per filling of your Chemical Bath. And if you've borrowed a pair of tongs to start yourself off, you need never actually empty the acid bath! Changing salt types in the tank can be accomplished by adding N+1 deben of a new salt to the tank, where N is the debens of salt used to set the current metal salt type (check the wiki elsewhere, I'm only *mostly* sure it works like this)

Metal Attributes and Properties

Property	Very Low <=11.5	Low 11.5<X<=21	Very High >61
Tensility	Brittle		Ductile
Lustre	Tarnished		Shiny
Strength	Plastic		Hard
Corrosion	Stainless	Corrosion-Resistant	Corrosion-Prone
Conductivity	Insulative		Conductive
Toxicity	Nontoxic		Toxic
Plating			Plated

Note: Stainless will not suit a project that requires Corrosive-Resistant (T9: tried Stainless Insulative Nontoxic Purity 8 steel sheeting to create a Pig sty)

Treatment Values

T10 values -- Updated by Anien ( If someone wants to verify)

Treatment	Tens	Lustre	Stren	Corr	Cond	Tox	Purity	Plating
Arsenic	16	40	48	72	0	56	8 (2)	32
Cabbage Juice	8	24	32	56	64	16	40 (6)	48
Cactus Sap	24	64	8	16	32	72	56 (8)	0
Coal	48	56	0	40	72	24	16 (3)	8
Gravel	32	16	24	0	8	40	72 (10)	64
Lime	56	72	40	64	48	0	24 (4)	16
Potash	0	8	64	24	16	32	48 (7)	40
Salt	72	48	56	32	40	8	64 (9)	24
Saltpeter	64	32	72	8	24	48	0 (1)	56
Sulfur	40	0	16	48	56	64	32 (5)	72

Metal Salts Treatment Values

Purity value changes to 72 when the metal salts matches the metal being treated.

Treatment	Tens	Lustre	Stren	Corr	Cond	Tox	Purity	Plating
Salts of Aluminum	24	40	32	48	48	40	8	8
Salts of Antimony	24	40	32	48	48	40	8	8
Salts of Copper	24	40	32	48	48	40	8	8
Salts of Gold	24	40	32	48	48	40	8	8
Salts of Iron	24	40	32	48	48	40	8	8
Salts of Lead	24	40	32	48	48	40	8	8
Salts of Magnesium	24	40	32	48	48	40	8	8
Salts of Platinum	24	40	32	48	48	40	8	8
Salts of Silver	24	40	32	48	48	40	8	8
Salts of Tin	24	40	32	48	48	40	8	8
Salts of Zinc	24	40	32	48	48	40	8	8

Untreated Metal Values

Treatment	Tens	Lustre	Stren	Corr	Cond	Tox	Purity	Plating
Aluminum	21	36	36	22	28	29	54	4
Antimony	20	43	37	36	14	29	54	4
Brass	25	43	31	43	31	29	54	4
Bronze	25	40	35	43	31	29	54	4
Cobalt	24	43	43	36	61	29	54	4
Copper	28	43	44	58	32	36	54	4
Electrum	53	36	51	58	48	43	54	4
Gold	22	54	51	36	30	29	54	4
Iron	36	29	41	36	18	29	54	4
Lead	16	14	24	36	12	50	54	4
Magnesium	19	29	37	22	24	36	54	4
Metal Blue	37	43	52	61	59	29	54	4
Moon Steel	21	29	34	36	25	29	54	4
Nickel	16	36	30	36	16	36	54	4
Octec's Alloy	34	43	51	54	13	29	54	4
Pewter	19	36	29	36	13	43	54	4
Platinum	32	54	39	36	18	29	54	4
Silver	23	47	36	50	32	29	54	4
Steel	35	43	45	36	20	29	54	4
Sun Steel	18	58	39	36	27	29	54	4
Thoth's Metal	46	36	53	58	15	43	54	4
Tin	19	36	26	36	17	29	54	4
Water Metal	16	47	30	36	36	29	54	4
Zinc	25	22	40	29	22	29	54	4