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[Calenth]

There are a lot of aspects of this game that I think need more player control.

1) crafting. There need to be toggles you can set to mark specific materials for only specific tasks. For example, there needs to be a way to flag Bauxite for use in mechanisms only; there needs to be a way to tell your stonecrafter to only use Obsidian (or to not use Obsidian, if you're saving it for swords). You can sortof kludge around this with stockpiles but it's awkward, inconvenient, and unreliable.

As a sub-issue here, I'd like a toggle I could set to "use best available materials for artifacts." I'd like to be able to save my platinum bars and dragon bones for awesome artifacts, and not have everything just be Orthoclase Earring, Decorated with bands of  Rhesus Macaque Bone.

2) It'd be nice if you could set a skill level for doing engravings. I only want legendary engravers doing engravings, not my army of floor-smoothers. As it is I have to turn each one off manually . . .

3) Army. There needs to be a more precise level of control over the military. Specifically:
  a) You need to be able to set dwarves to use the best quality weapons available when on duty and the worst quality weapons available when sparring.  Again, you can kludge around this with stockpiles but it's incredibly awkward.
  b) Fortress Guard and Royal Guard. The only purpose these serve is as a retirement group for your cripples, and the reason is that players have no control over dwarves in these groups. That's not a good thing. Maybe make dwarves in these groups have priority for the best gear, or have extra happy thoughts, but don't take control of these dwarves away from players. If nothing else, I really like to maintain careful control over who's sparring when, due to danger of spinal injuries, and the royal guard can screw that up, well, royally.
c) this may be a bug -- i think it's derived from patrolling and last remaining orders -- but i've had a real problem at times getting dwarves to NOT charge the goblin seige solo and instead obeying the "dwarves stay inside' orders.

4) More of an interface issue, but i'd really like a better way to scroll through and select items for melting, dumping, etc. It'd be really nice if I could quickly select, say, all non-masterwork armor for melting, or all narrow armor, without having to scroll through 1,000 pig tail socks in the process.
On a similar note I'd like to be able to turn off job cancellations in shops (just wait till they finish smelting the bars, dammit).

[Derakon]

A lot of these things have been suggested before, so I'm only going to address one: artifacts. I don't think you should have any control over what goes into an artifact; in fact, I think that dwarves should even use items that are forbidden in artifacts. They aren't going to compromise their vision just because a different choice of material would appeal to the masses more. This is art, man.

That said, I think that dwarves also shouldn't necessarily pick the closest available matching item of the kind they're looking for. E.g. if the dwarf wants a rock, he should look at all the available rocks on the map, pick a type, and then pick the closest rock of that type. As it is, any artifact that uses rock tends to end up using the type that makes your top layer unless you arrange otherwise.

[Calenth]

Re: compromising vision --

That's actually part of why I think there should be such a toggle. This thing is so important to the lil dude that he goes insane if it's made wrong -- but he just grabs whatever's closest? He has all this fancy obsidian stone lying there, and he goes for the Phyllite? Steel bars, and he goes for the pig iron? I think a user option like that makes sense from a roleplay perspective. If no toggle, then perhaps an algorithm to make artifact crafters prefer more valuable materials generally.

I would agree that dwarves should ignore "forbid" orders on artifacts, except that sometimes I have to use forbid to keep dwarves from doing suicidal things, like trying to grab the stone right below my waterwheel complex, but I do see your argument there.

[Alenth Eneil]

I think that the statement aboit artifacts being "art" has an effect here.  Rather than using the closest, or the highest-valued material, they should try and use a material that they "want to use."  These should all be things that you have on-hand or can get.  Possible exception being that if you are in a place with no wood they should still be able to try and demand it, maybe destroying barrels should be possible to appease such demands when necessary.  Also, any stone you have STRUCK should be in the list for them to chose from, even if you have not mined out any of it, but there should be clues to tell you which one he wants in that case.

The weapons ideas would be useful, as is the sorting for crafting/melting/et cetera.

I think that with the engravings/smoothing, the skills should be separated to where engraving gives smoothing experience, but not vice versa.  It doesn't really make sense to me that they are one and the same.

[Derakon]

This thing is so important to the lil dude that he goes insane if it's made wrong -- but he just grabs whatever's closest? He has all this fancy obsidian stone lying there, and he goes for the Phyllite? Steel bars, and he goes for the pig iron?

My point was that the item that the dwarf wants to use is not necessarily the "best" item available. Maybe he needs the color, or heft, that only copper can provide. Or maybe he's making a statement about the steel industry. This is art; it's about aesthetics (and we certainly don't understand dwarven aesthetics!), not about trying to make something as expensive as possible.

And on the one hand, I understand not wanting dwarves to run off suicidally to grab the item they want, and on the other hand, the only way I managed to get that piece of wood near the zombie carp on one of my maps was when a dwarf went moody (every other dwarf ran away from the carp, even though they were stuck in the river by the force of the water's flow). Generally I don't think it'll be much of a problem; most of the items that get forbidden are products that aren't used as raw materials for artifacts (e.g. socks). Granted this would be an issue if your dwarf decided that he needed antman bones, which were only available in the cave on your map...

And yes, the dwarf should poll the accessible types and "flavors" (rock is a type, phyyllite is a flavor) of raw materials, and then pick the closest one that matches the type he wants. Or not the closest one. Pick one at random, because he's just that picky.