Consistent ore names - Wolframite vs Tungsten ore

[DarkMaster13]

At the moment, wolframite is an odd one out as far as metal ores go.  It's the only one that's using its mineral name instead of a descriptive name like copper ore.  This is somewhat confusing to players about exactly what it is and it isn't obvious that it can be refined into tungsten, especially when all other metals clearly say what you get out of them in their names.  If the name was 'Tungsten ore' or 'Tungstate' then it would be clear without having to mine or look up the resource that it's another metal ore and will have all the same uses and applications of them.  A player who's familiar with real life tungsten would also automatically know that it's an extremely high melting point metal.

...

Or we could go in the other direction and make all of the metal ores have proper mineral terms ala Dwarf Fortress!  Then we can have cool names for metal ores like Tetrahedrite (copper), Hematite/Magnetite (iron), and Bauxite (aluminum) in addition to Wolframite.  Gold is so nonreactive that it doesn't have ores and is usually in its native form.  So gold amalgam can stay as a semi-fantasy mineral.

Even better would be an option to choose between the two sets of names.  Probably with the descriptive names as the default.

[Sasza22]

4 hours ago, DarkMaster13 said:

So gold amalgam can stay as a semi-fantasy mineral.

Except gold amalgam is a thing that appear naturally. It`s not a compound but a mix of metals. Mercury and gold. Mercury actually used as a method of extracting gold from rocks.

As for wolframite i could agree for consistency sake to change it to tungsten ore. Especially since wolframite is apparently not a proper name as it`s a mix of 2 different tungsten ores.

[Ambaire]

5 hours ago, DarkMaster13 said:

Or we could go in the other direction and make all of the metal ores have proper mineral terms ala Dwarf Fortress!  Then we can have cool names for metal ores like Tetrahedrite (copper), Hematite/Magnetite (iron), and Bauxite (aluminum) in addition to Wolframite.  Gold is so nonreactive that it doesn't have ores and is usually in its native form.  So gold amalgam can stay as a semi-fantasy mineral.

Even better would be an option to choose between the two sets of names.  Probably with the descriptive names as the default.

This would be a fun idea. 

[Nebbie]

This confused me actually when I first stumbled on a huge vein of the stuff in an ice biome. I was like "the what now?". It only took me a few moments to realize it meant tungsten, but had I not realized that, I wouldn't've dug it out for a door material to seal off the volcano next to it. I was less than impressed when aluminum ore came in for forest instead of bauxite (which is a pretty cool name).

Ultimately, wolframite/tungsten feels like an afterthought in ONI. I'd expect tungsten to carry a high overheat modifier, but it's only +50 C, inferior to steel, which melts at a lower temperature, and so it's really only meant to be made into thermium. And many maps have no wolframite lying around. Gating things to space, which is ONI's "congrats you beat the survival content here's some awesome stuff to play with in victory", really isn't good in my book.

[DarkMaster13]

11 hours ago, Nebbie said:

This confused me actually when I first stumbled on a huge vein of the stuff in an ice biome. I was like "the what now?". It only took me a few moments to realize it meant tungsten, but had I not realized that, I wouldn't've dug it out for a door material to seal off the volcano next to it. I was less than impressed when aluminum ore came in for forest instead of bauxite (which is a pretty cool name).

Ultimately, wolframite/tungsten feels like an afterthought in ONI. I'd expect tungsten to carry a high overheat modifier, but it's only +50 C, inferior to steel, which melts at a lower temperature, and so it's really only meant to be made into thermium. And many maps have no wolframite lying around. Gating things to space, which is ONI's "congrats you beat the survival content here's some awesome stuff to play with in victory", really isn't good in my book.

The one use I've found for tungsten is to use it to make wires in very hot applications, like around rockets.  The other metals melt, destroying the wires.

[Sasza22]

19 minutes ago, DarkMaster13 said:

The one use I've found for tungsten is to use it to make wires in very hot applications, like around rockets.  The other metals melt, destroying the wires.

That`s the main use for it. Other metals eventually heat up beyond melting point in space. I heard people complaining that even thermium eventually melts.

If not for thermium tungsten is also pretty good for heat exchange with magma or meatl volcanoes that can go up to 2600^oC melting most other materials.