For most workshops, I find the material ingredients to be far too simple. I'd like to modify them all to be more along the lines of the Forge, or Dyer's shop, and require multiple (3-6) components to construct, ie:
Kitchen: 3 stone/logs/bars/, carving knife/fork, large pot, 2 jugs, table, chest
To take it one step further, I'd some of these components to be new items I would add, i.e.:
Carpenter's Shop: 3 stone/logs/bars/, wood saws, carpentry hammer, lathe
Jeweler's workshop: 3 stone/logs/bars/ , monocle, calipers, jeweler's saws, lapidary
Mason's workshop: 3 stone/logs/bars, Stone mallet, chisel set
With this sort of setup, one will either need to embark with tools they'll need to construct workshops they need immediately, or manufacture them en sito in a tiered fashion :
Tier 0: rock hammers, bone saws, stone knifes, etc would be "tier 0" tools that could be assembled from hunting and gathering tasks.
Tier 1 shops (kilns, furnaces, tanners, butcher, fishery) could be assembled using tier 0 tools, which in turn could produce tier 1 tools: ceramic jugs and pots, anvils, needles, sinew
At this stage, tier 2 shops could be built: (kitchen, leatherworkers, carpenter, ashery, masons forge,) that produce more advanced tier 2 tools and components like spinning wheels, looms, tables, chests, chisels, augers, saws, shears, pliers, barrels, buckets, bins...
Those tier 2 components would be needed to build more advanced and complex tier 3 shops that require well crafted tools ( mechanics, millstone/quern, craftdwaft workshop, clothiers, still, farmers shop, loom, dyers shop
Finally, the highest tier 4 shops would require the products of possibly all tiers beneath to be built (bowyers, screw press, siege workshop, jewelers shop, soapers
I'm sure some of the dependancies and ordering will need to be swapped around for the sake of realism and balance, but I hope you get the idea.
The game as is lets you show up in the woods, chop down a tree, and construct complicated workshops that fabricate fancy jewelry and machines. It's too easy I think.
Basically, I want to make it feel like more of a struggle to start out with stone age technology (if you choose to be so unprepared at embark), and progress through bronze age, iron age... up to a crude industrial capability in a series of evolving stages. I want to feel like building the first forge is a milestone for your fort, and feel accomplished when I manage to finally build that much needed craftsdwarf shop so we can finally start turning a profit, and smile when I at last have achieved the capability to work with those valuable gems I've been digging up. When I can finally build that mechanics shop, I'll have harnessed the technology which, like magic, can link levers and pressure plates to do all sorts of wonderful things unimaginable to your 7 original settlers, who arrived in rags with spears and rocks.
So....
1. how can I change the materials required for building each workshop?
2. How can I add new items to the game (suppose that they'd all fall into the "tools" category)?
3. How can I add reactions to different workshops to create those new tools?
4. Any other input or comments?