Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[bp1986]

One problem that has pagued nearly all of the forts that I have ever made... all this #$%@in' rock everywhere!

So, I propose a use to it, drag it to the smelter and attempt to extract trace metals from it. The process of extracting would involve looking at the raws and determining the naturally occuring metal types found in that type of rock and then giving 10% (maybe less... 5%, 1%?) of a bar of that metal and destroying said rock. Still uses the same (although slightly more) dwarf-hours for cleaning up stone, but very useful compaired to a quantum stockpile that you will never use.

Naturally, this process would require fuel, so working at a normal furnace would require 1 unit of fuel per rock smelted and just magma at a magma furnace. Still uses the furnace opperator job and should be the same time-per-skill as melting normal ore.

Designating should be similar to marking things for dumping, but not the same as melt down metal item. The reason for this, is that I would like these two actions (melt item and melt rock) to be different when jobbing a furnace, so when my little dudes are melting down rocks for little scraps of metal, but a goblin invasion happens and I end up with a bunch of goblin weapons/armour, I can disable the melt rock job on the furnaces and prioritise melting down the goblin stuff.

Super mode: Allow us to chuck a dead goblin (armour and all) into the furnace and attempt to melt the metal out of it! 

Even more super mode: Magma furnace trap... goblin triggers a tripwire and gets dropped into said furnace... out comes screams of agnony followed by metal bars!

(just don't forget to crank up the heat so they don't stink as bad!)

[Patchy]

You can extract trace metals from rock already with a little bit of modding. Just make a reaction that takes like 50 rocks or so and spits out 1 bar of metal. Or you could make the reaction take 1 rock but it has a mere 1 or 2% chance to output a bar.

As for dumping the goblins whole in a smelter... Just build a dodge trap over a pool of magma. Drain off magma after you've collected enough iron rich goblinite in it and there you go.

[sockless]

I think that all stone should be like this, so that when smelting hematite, you won't necessarily get iron, there's just a chance that you will get iron. This would solve some of the problem of having far too much or far too little metal on your map.

Gems should have a random chance of appearing when you mine a rock as well, instead of there being gem clusters. There could also be gem rich clusters though.

[Lav]

I think that all stone should be like this, so that when smelting hematite, you won't necessarily get iron, there's just a chance that you will get iron.

Not a good idea. There are many people who embark with an anvil, some malachite/hematite and bituminous coal and make everything they need on the spot. This suggestion kinda forces those people to savescum from the start.

[Dutchling]

It would also be way to random imo.
If I want 10 swords I order 10 ores to be smelted. I don't want that to not work.

[bp1986]

No, no... leave the ores as they are. That works great in my opinion. It's the normal rocks that I want a use for.

However, crushing (pre-mined) boulders with a chance of finding gems, I would like. That is ONLY if it destroys said boulder. Probably using the mining skill, a pick and about the same amount of time that said dwarf would take to mine a wall of the same material.

(or even just crush the boulder with no chance of finding anything... just to remove clutter)

[Elone]

I like this idea. Ideally, you'd be able to extract a random metal from an ore available in that layer stone. However, knowing a bit of coding myself, thats quite some writing unless hardcoded... I mention this because a guy mentioned "Make a reaction to output metal bars", and it caught my interest, but brought up a few questions.

Does it matter which rock? Preset or all?
What metal will be output? Preset or random?
I am a newbie to DF. And "just make a reaction" doesnt mean "just" to me because I dont quite understand them yet.

[bp1986]

I like this idea. Ideally, you'd be able to extract a random metal from an ore available in that layer stone. However, knowing a bit of coding myself, thats quite some writing unless hardcoded... I mention this because a guy mentioned "Make a reaction to output metal bars", and it caught my interest, but brought up a few questions.

Does it matter which rock? Preset or all?
What metal will be output? Preset or random?
I am a newbie to DF. And "just make a reaction" doesnt mean "just" to me because I dont quite understand them yet.

Yea, for making this work with raws and custom jobs to do what I want it to do (from my limited knowledge of raws) would take ALOT of work and still end up with a crappy interface.

I assume the interface would be something along the lines of a HUGE lists of potential jobs... one for each rock type... on a custom smelter. Granted, this would be very easy for me to write a simple little VB.net program that spits out the ten thousand lines of code or so... and the interface may be rather lame.

*wonders if it is possible for a job to reference another raw...*
(you know, one overall job of 'smelt rock'... furnace opperator brings the closest non-economic rock to the forge... the job seeks the information in the raw of the rock to find common metals... and the job then creates a small bit of common metal for that rock)
(and yes, I know that part belongs in the modding section... mostly a brainstorm here )

[alcohol_dependent]

I think that all stone should be like this, so that when smelting hematite, you won't necessarily get iron, there's just a chance that you will get iron. This would solve some of the problem of having far too much or far too little metal on your map.

Gems should have a random chance of appearing when you mine a rock as well, instead of there being gem clusters. There could also be gem rich clusters though.

Awesome to think about.

Not a good idea. There are many people who embark with an anvil, some malachite/hematite and bituminous coal and make everything they need on the spot. This suggestion kinda forces those people to savescum from the start.

Not really.. embark with copper/iron bars and coke instead. Adjust the values of stone and bars as necessary.

It would also be way to random imo.
If I want 10 swords I order 10 ores to be smelted. I don't want that to not work.

The orders could just be changed to "smelt 10 iron bars" and they'll smelt as much stone as necessary until the order is completed.

But yeah there are mods that do this.

[IT 000]

As somebody who has actually tried this through modding, even a 1% chance still yields a crazy amount of metal. Especially when the average fort has 30,000 stone, that's 300 metal bars statistically.

[Jeoshua]

Well that's why you make it do 20-30 rocks at a time and still only have a 1% chance of 4 different common metals (iron, copper, coal, and tin).  And even then only as boulders.  Can't make it too easy.

[IT 000]

You bring up a very valid point Jeoshua. Personally, I am not supporting a 'free metal' option. It takes a lot of Fun out of the game.