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[SixOfSpades]

Smelters currently have the "Melt a Metal Object" order, which is paired with the "Melt" designation, applicable to any metal object in your fortress: If both the "Melt" designation and the "Melt a Metal Object" are in effect, the specific object will be taken to the specific smelter and reduced to its constituent metal.

I propose a similar pairing: A "Copy" designation, which can be applied to any movable object in the fort, and a "Copy Item" work order, which can be placed at a wide variety of workshops: Mason's, Carpenter's, Forge, Bowyer's, Clothier's, Craftsdwarf's, Leatherworker's, etc. If a workshop has such an order active, and an item (of the appropriate type & material) designated to be copied exists, the item will be taken to the workshop and the dwarf will attempt to re-create it. If the basic construction is of one material but requires decorations of a different material (e.g., a stone table studded with nickel and gems), the completion of the first stage will automatically trigger a "Copy Item" job at the nearest workshop appropriate for the next stage. Due to the additional constraints of having to try to produce an exact copy, the skill level of the worker(s) making the duplicate takes a penalty, though not a major one. Workers may easily fail to match the original in quality, although they cannot exceed it: A Legendary Stonecrafter working to copy a +dolomite figurine+ will never create a *dolomite figurine*.

This would be useful for:
Flavor: Suppose you've got a masterwork door, engraved with the symbol of your civilization and the symbol of your local government. Wouldn't you want its twin, to make a matched pair of double doors as the main entry to your fort, or dining hall, or throne room? Hell, make copies of this door for every "official" room in the fort!
Sharing: A statue made in honor of the dwarf Rigoth Stakudmorul's mortal wounding of the goblin Bax Greedflouted also bears an image of the masterwork roast created by the dwarf Obok Limulkol. Maybe both dwarves would like to have a copy of this fine artwork.
Assimilating other cultures: Suppose the elves, humans, goblins, or necromancers bring in items that are foreign to your nation, but you might find worthwhile--items like scimitars, or headscarves, or masks. Such items could be copied, and after enough copies are made, they could be permanently added to the regular production menu at the appropriate workshops.

Due to its being applicable to so many different workshops, the "Copy Item" order cannot be issued from the Manager's window. More specific variants, like "Copy Leather Craft" and "Copy Metal Furniture" might be considered.

Artifacts can be copied, but the re-creation will not be of artifact quality, nor will it have a name. It will, however, have the added description of "This is a copy of [name], the artifact [thing] created by the dwarf [name] in the [season] of [year] in the fortress of [name]."

I realize that a similar suggestion, the ability to pre-select the decorations on an object, has already been posted, and that this suggestion has an advantage that mine does not: The ability to control the specific engravings on walls & floors. But mine has the advantage of dwarves learning to incorporate technologies unique to other cultures. Implementing both suggestions seems extraneous, but perhaps a feasible combination exists.

[Skullsploder]

...
Assimilating other cultures: Suppose the elves, humans, goblins, or necromancers bring in items that are foreign to your nation, but you might find worthwhile--items like scimitars, or headscarves, or masks. Such items could be copied, and after enough copies are made, they could be permanently added to the regular production menu at the appropriate workshops.
...

This. Please this. WHY SHOULDN'T MY DWARVES BE ABLE TO MAKE THEIR OWN HIGH BOOTS DESPITE DROWNING IN CRAPPY COPPER GOBLIN HIGH BOOTS?

Overall I really like this suggestion, I've often wanted to have a matching set of items like statues, and I've especially wanted to be able to to copy artifact helmets and such to give to my militia captains, so that they can have fancier hats than the common soldiery, but really the section above is the thing which makes it most worth implementing. That could even tie into a tech system later on: instead of dwarves being struck by inpiration or something, the worldgen could distribute technologies such that no civ has them all but they are all posessed by at least one civ, and you can in your fort assimilate goods brought by traders or invaders to learn them for your civilisation.

[SixOfSpades]

Another thought: Because artifacts are sometimes made of materials that would ordinarily be inappropriate, like milk quartz toy hammers and nickel silver beds, copying those particular artifacts several times could possibly open up the ability to regularly order those types of items, made of those same non-standard materials--all of your Jewelers would be able to make gem toys, and your Blacksmiths metal beds. This would be less easy to implement than the "assimilate foreign item" I described above, however: Once you've copied enough goblin-make copper high boots, the game merely needs to set the flag that marks high boots as being Native to your culture. But for things like bone furniture to be "unlocked", Toady would have to add hidden reactions that make nearly every type of workshop able to produce nearly every type of item there is. Granted, I want to make beds out of stone or metal just as much as the next guy, but I think we can all agree that Toady has much better things to do.
[EDIT:] Withdrawn. While some artifacts made of illegal materials (e.g., platinum warhammers) are only minor deviations from the norm, perfectly understandable, and possibly even quite useful, other such items are, to put it bluntly, quite ridiculous. I once had a Gem Cutter fashion an entire bed out of a single claro opal. Other tales, such as a Bone Carver making a spear out of the bones of one herring, abound. I would rather not encourage this. More along this line in my next post. [/EDIT]

As far as appropriating items from other cultures goes, I wouldn't want to carry the dynamic beyond one or two steps. I want to be able to copy items that I got from somebody else, and I want other nations to sometimes bring me items that they copied from somebody else. But if it goes much beyond that, if everybody's unique technologies are spread across the globe willy-nilly, then everyone winds up the same and the whole idea (and flavor) of culture goes out the window.

[GavJ]

what's wrong with quartz toy hammers and silver nickel beds?

Really, the game should ideally let you make pretty much anything out of anything. The only reason not to have that is that performance usually doesn't depend on material and a lot of things can't break, so sometimes it would make it too easy.

But that's a bandaid due to lack of other features, not an ideal situation. If we are in the suggestions forum anyway, we should be open to considering other features that would make something work, even if they don't exist yet.

The main things you need to make it fair to build out of anything are:
* more levels of building destroyer that can progressively smash tougher stuff
* Buildings being flammable
* weapons breaking (and armor)

[WertyMiniBot]

So what gav is saying is that the game should allow things to be made out of any material, and leave it to you to have the common sense to choose a good material for your weapon?

[GavJ]

So what gav is saying is that the game should allow things to be made out of any material, and leave it to you to have the common sense to choose a good material for your weapon?

It can give suggestions (put good stuff at the top of the list, maybe color coding, whatever)... but yes.

However, prior to that, the game needs to actually make gold hammers bend and break almost instantly instead of being amazingly awesome like they would be currently, etc.

[Putnam]

It is kind of odd how you can't make weapons out of brass despite brass certainly being better than, say, copper.

[smjjames]

Another thought: Because artifacts are sometimes made of materials that would ordinarily be inappropriate, like milk quartz toy hammers and nickel silver beds, copying those particular artifacts several times could possibly open up the ability to regularly order those types of items, made of those same non-standard materials--all of your Jewelers would be able to make gem toys, and your Blacksmiths metal beds. This would be less easy to implement than the "assimilate foreign item" I described above, however: Once you've copied enough goblin-make copper high boots, the game merely needs to set the flag that marks high boots as being Native to your culture. But for things like bone furniture to be "unlocked", Toady would have to add hidden reactions that make nearly every type of workshop able to produce nearly every type of item there is. Granted, I want to make beds out of stone or metal just as much as the next guy, but I think we can all agree that Toady has much better things to do.

There would also be the danger of taking away the uniqueness of the artifacts.

[SixOfSpades]

what's wrong with quartz toy hammers and silver nickel beds? Really, the game should ideally let you make pretty much anything out of anything.

Within reason, of course, but yes, generally I agree. But I've reversed my position on copying items made of inappropriate materials: If you have an artifact, say, dog leather short sword, you can go ahead & designate it to be Copied. But if you then tell your Leather Works to "Copy Item", you will get:
Monom Atiramaud, Leatherworker cancels Copy Item: No valid leather item to copy.
because short swords can't be made out of leather. You'll get a similar message if you try a Forge instead.

I've changed my mind because the problem would be best resolved by expanding/revising the list of "viable" materials for each item, and forcing all items, including artifacts, to follow that list. To go by the way I described above, building whatever crazy shit you want as long as you've got an artifact to pave the way for you first, would be asking Toady to do a lot of work for the sake of little to no real benefit--and that "benefit" would more than likely be nonsensical anyway. Yes, I'm sure that many of us would, at one time or another, like to run a roleplay fort where just about everything is made out of bones. Or ice. Or soap. Or whatever. But those reactions (if desired) can easily be added by mods, thus sparing the player the pain of having to wait for an "illegal" artifact to unlock a hidden reaction so he can begin his roleplay, and more importantly sparing Toady the headache of having to code the game to keep checking to see if the hidden reaction has been unlocked.

Yes, this means that getting an artifact platinum warhammer doesn't open up the ability to make tons of platinum blunt weapons. But, IMO, that's an option that should be available by default--because, as I said, the list of viable materials for each type of item really should be revised & expanded . . . which is a discussion for a different thread (of which I'm sure there are already dozens).

As for how many copies of a foreign item you'd need to make before your dwarves understood the item type well enough to craft it on your own, I was thinking [ # of originals / 100 ]. (Copies of an item cannot be copied.) So if your fort is awash in, say, goblinmake copper high boots, you need only duplicate 10 of them (the minimum) before you can work them out of steel. But if your knowledge of silver masks is limited to a single example brought in by a human trader, your dwarves would need to study it 100 times before they fully understood which aspects of the item were important to its functionality (as opposed to being merely artistic), well enough to start making their own improvements to the design.

There would also be the danger of taking away the uniqueness of the artifacts.

Ummm . . . since the whole point is copying items, it's safe to assume that whoever uses this work order does not regard making (those specific) artifacts less unique as being a "danger". Besides, since each copy of an artifact clearly states that it's a reproduction, and gives the artifact full credit, the original work would actually become more like an honored progenitor than some forgotten cousin.

[WJLIII3]

[snip]

There would also be the danger of taking away the uniqueness of the artifacts.

I dunno, the zillion images I've seen of the Mona Lisa have decreased the value of the Mona Lisa not at all, in my eyes.