Realistically, if you take care of your old blade, it could carry well into the last period.
But if we base the availability on that, then in the early period, you've got a simple selection,
while in the last period you've just got weapon overkill.
I think that each period should have about an equal number of available weapons.
Also, I definitly like the idea of defining each period by a certain weapon type.
That serves my original intent with this mod quite nicely,
because I'd like the difference between weapons to be more than just graphical:
It should also make for different gameplay in each period, wherever possible.
So this sounds like a perfect way to accomplish that.
Sim or Bartolomeu or anyone, could you take Sim's file and list per period what weapons are available?
Not just when weapons appear, but also when they disappear again.
One weapon that lasts for two periods sounds about right to me.
I do think that the various nations' promotion blades can stay available in all periods.
These are intended to not be randomly encountered anyway; you must get those through promotion from a governor.
At the moment this doesn't work, but when we do the coding for this mod, we'll need to get that fixed too.
Also categorization of weapons per character type would help.
Eg. soldiers use these weapons, while jungle bandits use others.