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[Mephansteras]

Well, importing rough gems and rock will make more sense once you have mining outposts. All part of the County and Caravan arcs, I think. They wouldn't be responsible for doing anything with the rough gems or ore, just mining it out and sending off to the refining towns.

Also, in vanilla DF the only civ that can send you stone is your own dwarf civ, which does make a bit of sense. You're just another outpost within the kingdom, after all.

Later on it might make sense in the Caravan Arc for civs to not only see what they have available to trade, but also to decide what is appropriate to send off to trade.

[Footkerchief]

and for some reason they like theirs uncut...

Maybe they're European?

[Granite26]

That's more a flaw in the value added determinations...  Raw gems should be more expensive, and the cutting process shouldn't add quite so much value.  Rather, raw gems should be worth exactly the same as no modifier cut gems (not that gems have modifiers yet, but still).

But your forgetting that by selling you the raw gems they are forgoing on Large Gems I think... (unless Miners do that)

Gem cutters produce large gems when they roll high enough on there cutting roll.

Valuing the uncut gems at the same price as the lowest quality cut gems does compensate for the possibility of higher things because you are losing the possibility but also adding the value of the labour.  (OK, so 100 ticks of a low skill dwarf isn't really valuable, but there you have it.)

Value additives should be comiserate (sp?) with the rarity of the skill (which is directly tied to it's usefulness and economies of scale) and the time that skill is occupied (time taken to produce).

I could go on....

[Neonivek]

Another problem I guess is that NORMALLY Gem Cutting is an expencive profession to get into as the tools are usually made out of expencive gemstones and Alchemically produced acids (and bases).

In Dwarf Fortress however all that is pretty much out...

[Granite26]

Another problem I guess is that NORMALLY Gem Cutting is an expencive profession to get into as the tools are usually made out of expencive gemstones and Alchemically produced acids (and bases).

Nice....

So, (in our perfect world) you'd be ABLE to cut the gems yourself from the get go, but it would actually be more profitable to sell the raw materials than to produce all the acids and whatnot yourself?

Put the gemstones at the ridiculously valuable high end of a long economic production tree?  I like.

Maybe something like the old Capitalism game where you could do whatever you want, but each thing produced at most a 10% profit margin.  (Gems would be valuable because the raw materials are valuable AND ALSO there's a lot of 10% value added processes involved.)

Some of this is very post industrial revolution though...

[Draco18s]

Or we could cook soap.

That adds, like, what, 1000%?

;P

[Granite26]

it's more a hollistic thing than just gems, I'll admit that

[Mephansteras]

A lot of this will make more sense once sites become specialized. Historically, most places only did what their local resources let them. So if a place had all the resources to make the necessary gem-working acids and whatnot, then they'd be a logical place to ship raw gems to for cutting.

Or a place that had lots of copper might import tin and make bronze. Not so much the other way around, since in reality copper makes up 90% of bronze. We already see this a bit with player fortresses really only doing steel if they have iron and flux in the same place. Some players import lots of flux or iron to make up for it, but it's expensive and really only feasible because the game's economics are whacked out right now.

[Overdose]

I think i'd rather make a deal by exporting some raw gems to a really good jeweler in another fort then try to have it made my poorly skilled locals. Gems themselves don't really serve a function in DF other then looking pretty (it's not like dwarves are making lasers or diamond toothed saw blades), so i could see them shipping raw gems to a really good crafter so there's a better quality product for those nobles that want that stuff.

Of course, all the training jewelers that put out crappy products would be the poor mans choice for having pretty things, but i doubt a noble would agree based on it's quality.

[Neonivek]

Don't expect too much specialisation... Fortresses in their Mountainhome counterparts are basically underground cities.