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[Billy Jack]

I brought up the topic of leather values in the «☼MASTERWORK-DF - Studded With Patches☼» - Unofficial release thread (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=133174.msg4856279#msg4856279) but decided to open a new thread in order not to bog down that thread with some potential back and forth discussion.

Here's the first two posts regarding it.

I've been goofing around with the leather values to try and come up with a more reasonable progression of values.  Here's what I have.

name	value
leather	15
fur	15
suede	5
tough leather	20
studded leather	25
lamellar leather	55
chitinplate	30
rigid chitinplate	60
shellplate	30
rigid shellplate	60
scaleplate	30
rigid scaleplate	60
nether leather	75
dragon scale	75

Its tough when some of the materials end up being metal grade.

Let me know what you think.

I've been goofing around with the leather values to try and come up with a more reasonable progression of values.  Here's what I have.

Hmm, let's see how these compare to their metal equivalents. From the manual:

Leather = Leather
Tough Leather = Copper
Studded Leather = Scaleplate = Shellplate = Chitinplate = Bronze
Lamellar Leather = Rigid Chitin¹ = Rigid Scale² = Iron
Rigid Shellplate = Iron++
Nether leather³ = Dragon scale = Steel

¹ Rigid Chitin is iron grade, but very light, and so should be worth more
² Rigid Scale is iron grade, but fireproof, and so should be worth a tiny bit more.
³ Nether leather has a fixed temp, making it slightly more valuable than dragon scale.

Copper has a material value of 2, and when made into bars would be worth 2×5 = 10. However I believe it requires only a *single* piece of leather to make armour (which would require 3 bars), giving tough leather an equivalent value of 30. However it also takes a single piece to make a leather helm (would would only require 1 bar). So I like your in-between value of 20.

If we're using metal equivalent material value × 10 to figure out the leather equivalent, then this would put studded leather, scaleplate, shellplate and chitinplate at 40 (based on bronze = 4)
Lamellar, rigid chitin, and rigid scaleplate would be 80 (based on iron = 8 ). Rigid chitin and scaleplate may be worth more, since they're light and fireproof respectively. I value lightness over fireproof, so perhaps 90 for rigid scale, 100 for rigid chitin.

Rigid Shellplate would be worth 120 if we model it on the value of rusty steel (12). However given that rusty steel is apparently 80% as good as regular steel, it may be undervalued in the raws. Giving Rigid Scaleplate a value of 160 would put it mid-way between iron and steel in value. (The manual notes it's heavy, but I don't know if it's heavier than its metal counterparts)

Nether leather and dragon scale are apparently steel grade, light, and cool. They should be worth *at least* 240 (based upon steel), but probably more since they're both light *and* fixed-temp, so I'd suggest 360.

Of course, all of these values are great in terms of figuring out how much it's worth compared to metal bars, but there's also the question of whether we'll see crazily-expensive items once crafted. Socks have a x6 multiplier, so normally a 'metal' sock would be worth just slightly more than a bar of the same material. However if leather gets multiplied the same way, then a dragonscale sock would be worth 1800☼, whereas a steel sock only 144. 'Armor' has a multiplier of 21, so a 'steel armor' would be 504, but a dragonscale armor 6300. That's high, but since dragonscale is about 1/5th the weight of steel, it doesn't feel unreasonable. This does put masterwork dragonscale armour into artefact-level value ranges, but a masterwork dragonscale armour sure *sounds* like an artefact to me!

One could argue the values I've suggested could be halved, but I wouldn't be inclined to make them much lower than that.

Just as an aside, I would *love* to rename 'Rigid Shellplate' to 'Hardened Shellplate', so all the 'rigid' items have the same qualities. One could even put forward an argument to rename 'lamellar leather' to 'rigid leather'.

TL;DR: The new leathers should be worth a lot more.

[Meph]

I am fine with this. Even simplifying lamellar (removing it) and just keep 2 upgrades for leather would be fine.

It would make it easier to trade though... there are so many ways to get leather.

[Mictlantecuhtli]

I agree with this topic of discussion. The ++ leathers always seemed a bit undervalued for me, considering how strong some of the better ones are.

To compensate for increased value perhaps make the reactions need another bit of reagent? I forget exactly how the leather creation raws work [I dont mess with leather actually] but I'm sure there's room to make a special -dragon scale preparation- reaction with properly expensive-ish materials needed [thread, iron, gems, etc?], especially as an exceptional Dragon scale armor would be worth a whole caravan's worth of useful goods.

Nether leather with fixed temperature should be incredibly expensive to make but properly worth making into armor.

TLDR; Special regents for dragonscale/nether leather would be good to keep people from just pumping the stuff out, if the values are increased in line with suggestions here.

Assuming there isn't already dedicated reactions. If so, just tack some more reagents that are difficult to mass produce in line with the increase in Dwarfbux value.

[Meph]

Netherbark leather can only be made after you entered the third cavern and cut the wood. You can refine the wood into the leather, or start farming it yourself. Judging from how difficult the third cavern is, I dont think many people brave them just for the netherwood.

Dragonscale only comes from killing dragons and rare archeology finds. Its rare enough, people cant produce it themselves.

[grubert]

Dragonscale only comes from killing dragons and rare archeology finds. Its rare enough, people cant produce it themselves.

 

An easy way to get it is via the Trade Depot, with patience you can set up a limitless supply.

[Billy Jack]

The values that the game uses is 5 x [MATERIAL_VALUE:??]

The Tanner uses progressions of:
   1 Leather (MatVal 3) = 3 Suede (MatVal 1)  <- MATERIAL_VALUE:1 is the lowest we can have so Suede has to be the starting point.
   1 Leather + 1 Oil (chance of being retained) = 1 Tough Leather (MatVal 4)
   1 Tough + 1 (studdly material) = 1 Studded Leather (MatVal 5)
   2 Studded + 1 Thread = 2 Lamellar (MatVal 11)  <- I always thought that you only got 1 Lamellar out of it, but the reaction says otherwise.

   2 Chitin/Shell/Scale (MatVal 6) = 1 Rigid Chitin/Shell/Scale (MatVal 12)

Nether (MatVal 15) is farmable early on if you want to breach the 3rd cavern.
Dragon Scales (MatVal 15) are rare and should be valued and maybe we don't consider its material qualities vs. its value since it is so rare.

In my current fork of Studded with Patches (Creatures_Mats branch), I've assigned the above values, and removed any multipliers associated to the CREATURE:ANIMAL_XXXX that they reside in. I've also changed the name of the actual materials to be what they are and not rely on the concatenation of the Creature + Material. (So some of the values are different then what you will currently see in a game.) (I've also broken the creature_masterwork.txt file into some creature_fake_xxx.txt files to categorize the creatures as mats, crates, other.  The death of all but one of the BLUEPRINT creatures is also included.)

I don't disagree with anything Urist is saying, but I just think it is not appropriate to be able to produce such high valued armor before the first caravan arrives.

Another thing to consider would be to change the type of armors that can be made from them to max out the armor value at 2 and possibly change the other armor factors. This would make the armors good to start out with, but not a replacement for the true iron or steel armors. (I've never made anything from the Chitin/Shell/Scale varieties and always made the Rigids instead).

Thoughts??

Edit:  LOL.  What was meant to be the second post ends up being the 6th.  Damn kids.  I'm off to make appetizers for Christmas and look forward to reading the discussion later tonight.

[Urist McTeellox]

The values that the game uses is 5 x [MATERIAL_VALUE:??]

Oh! I had no idea! That's EXACTLY what we want, because metal bars are worth 5 times their material value. So we want to divide all my previous suggested values by five, giving us the follow values which are based purely upon the utility of using leather to construct armor:

Tough Leather = 4 (twice that of copper)
Studded / Scaleplate / Shellplate / Chitinplate = 8 (twice that of bronze)
Lamellar = 16 (twice that of iron)
Rigid Scale = 18 (twice that of iron, + bonus for fireproof)
Rigid Chitin = 20 (twice that of iron, + bonus for being so light)
Rigid Shellplate = 32 (twice the average of iron + steel)
Dragon Scale / Nether Lether = 72 (twice that of steel, + 50% for being light and cool)

For those just joining the discussion, the "twice the value of [base material]" is based upon leather armour items only taking a single piece to craft, whereas metal takes 1-3 bars per piece. Consequently, it takes about twice as many bars to craft a full set of armour than the equivalent pieces from leather.

I think it is not appropriate to be able to produce such high valued armor before the first caravan arrives.

I agree, although I don't think the solution is to nerf the leather values too much, since with artificially cheap leather we can bring tons of it on embark and have everyone clad in rigid shellplate, jumping straight to iron+ levels of protection. I know that in my forts I already buy all the leather every caravan brings, because it's cheap to buy and a pain to produce. However now with the suggested values I've got above, a suit of leather armour would be worth about the same from the equivalent suit made from an equivalent metal, rather than the inflated prices in my original suggestion.

I think the solution to players potentially cranking out lots of high-value leather items is to either nerf the properties of leather itself (to justify making it less valuable), make the exotic leathers harder to obtain (eg: only available through butchering non-domestic animals), or make the higher level reactions more expensive to run (possibly requiring souls, or other rare ingredients).

One possible starting point would be to only have it possible to improve each leather only once, giving us:

* Suede (tier 0, clothing strength)
* Leather (tier 1, vanilla strength)
* Shellplate / Chitinplate / Scaleplate / Leatherplate (tier 2, copper strength)
* Enchanted (Shell/Scale/Chitin/nether)plate (tier 3, iron/bronze strength)
* Dragonscale, Runic netherplate (tier 4, steel strength, fireproof)
* Imbued Dragonscale (tier 5, adamantium strength, fireproof)

This means that rare leathers (which I propose would be from non-domestic animals only) are exciting, because they can be enchanted up to iron/bronze level armour, whereas regular (domestic) leather is not suitable for enchanting. This system also gives us standard names (I've always found the existing names much too confusing).  Anything which is "-plate" is tier 2, anything "enchanted" is tier 3, and 'runic' is tier 4. Under this system freshly produced nether leather starts at "enchanted" (and presumably has an appropriately thematic reaction to justify that).

Moving from "leather" to "leatherplate" requires oil and studs. Going fom "-plate" to "enchanted -plate" requires a soul from one of the Great Races. Going from 'enchanted' to 'runic' requires something even more rare, and 'imbued dragonscale' would require at least a megabeast soul to create.

Under this system, copper equivalents are pretty easy to create or come by, iron/bronze can be produced once a fort is involved in active warfare, and steel and beyond requires extensive planning and great victories.

I'm also in favour of combining shell/scale/chitin into a single 'exotic leather' type, which would simplify stockpile management, gameplay, documentation, and OCD tendencies.

   2 Studded + 1 Thread = 2 Lamellar (MatVal 11)  <- I always thought that you only got 1 Lamellar out of it, but the reaction says otherwise.

This sounds like a bug rather than a feature.

Another thing to consider would be to change the type of armors that can be made from them to max out the armor value at 2 and possibly change the other armor factors. This would make the armors good to start out with, but not a replacement for the true iron or steel armors. (I've never made anything from the Chitin/Shell/Scale varieties and always made the Rigids instead).

It would be lovely see some !SCIENCE! on what difference the armour value actually makes, the current wiki suggests that it's no longer used by the game (which uses material properties like sheer strength), and instead is a placeholder to represent leather (1), chain (2), or shaped/plate (3).

I don't mind leathers being as strong as iron or steel, but only if such leather is at least as hard to obtain as iron or steel.

~ T

[Meph]

Lamellar is not a material, its a kind of armor. Its like iron chainmail. Iron is the material, chainmail is the armor type. Lamellar is just small plates of leather next to each other, linked with thread. In theory its just an extra workstep, to cut it into pieces and sow it together again. Thats why you dont lose any leather while doing so. But again, I would rather remove/replace it.

[Urist McTeellox]

Lamellar is not a material, its a kind of armor. Its like iron chainmail. Iron is the material, chainmail is the armor type. Lamellar is just small plates of leather next to each other, linked with thread. In theory its just an extra workstep, to cut it into pieces and sow it together again. Thats why you dont lose any leather while doing so. But again, I would rather remove/replace it.

Fun fact! Lamellar can also refer to a "lamellar structure", which consists of multiple layers. It's obviously what my dwarves have been making, because they keep creating lamellar leather waterskins, and they hold booze just fine. It's also what those orcs have been making, since they have reactions to 'laminate leather' with shell, wood, and horn.

Actual lamellar-style armour got removed a month ago.



~T