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[Scout1]

Long story short, I've been !!science!!'ing to try and turn gizzard stones (which are functionally cut stone) back into their stone/ore counterparts, minus the cut part.

Tried: Melting them with lava. Although they'll transform back to "limonite", "Marble", "native copper", etc. (the stone names), they will not, functionally, be stones/ores. They seem to be considered contaminants, as they'll be cleaned away by idle dwarves, and can become "laced with water".

Of note, I also managed to produce (exactly once) a "pool of molten native aluminum" though it disappeared when the magma it was resting on evaporated.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

http://imagizer.imageshack.com/img923/1743/k1cxEf.png

Tried: Cave-ins on said contaminants. They are destroyed, indicating they do not register as stones/ores by the game. (Stones/ores are pushed aside)

Tried: Decorating metal objects with the stones, then melting them. This does not produce any metals aside from the melted object.

Tried: Injecting water at various parts of the melting process. If encased in obsidian, the melting objects are destroyed. Otherwise, the melting objects are just pushed around by water flow as if they were lightweight objects.

It would be terribly useful if this were possible, as it would provide an unlimited source of copper, iron, flux (so steel as well), and various rare and valuable metals. However I'm just not sure how the material science is working in-game... either there is a fundamental problem when molten materials are naturally cooling back to ambient temperature, or melted materials are specifically coded not to turn back into solids, but if so that is not apparent in the raws.

Any suggestions are welcome.

[Dunamisdeos]

Newly-mined raw ore and stone are actually in a category called "boulders". They lose that status once worked, and cannot be restored.

[PatrikLundell]

And you can't use blocks to extract metal either, unfortunately.

[Dunamisdeos]

You should check dis out.

http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Melt_item

The DF wiki is on par with the goddam library of congress in terms of comprehensive knowledge.

[Fleeting Frames]

Related bit I've tried and failed - producing magma if there's no magma on map (could be used to make thinner maps and still have magma furnaces).

However, magma x5 or even magma[833] (melted malachite boulders, stack size increased via gui/gm-editor) in minecart will not turn into 2/7 magma when flung out against the wall.

[kingsableye]

Seems Toady didn't code in a framework to handle material conversions in the natural world state (only through reactions). Well, besides ice and water/obsidian and magma. But then again, a melted ice boulder is just a puddle, not a 1/7 water tile (wonder if the puddle can be laced with water  )

[Melting Sky]

Outside of those items you can melt via the smelter, there is no way to recover metal in any usable manner from a manufactured object. In other words you can take a copper goblet and melt it down via the smelter and get usable copper from it, but if you manage to melt the same copper goblet on the floor somewhere via dragon fire etc. the resulting melted puddle can't be collected and used for making new items.

[GhostDwemer]

OP is trying to melt and freeze raw materials, this thread has nothing to do with melt designation.

From what I understand, here is the OP's thought process: I can melt ice, get 7 water, and refreeze that into 7 different ice tiles, making unlimited water. Why not try this with other meltable materials?

Well, it won't work because other meltable materials don't form flows. It's just not going to work like the OP wants it to, even if things do refreeze. It's good dwarven science but it was just never going to work.

[wierd]

No. Not like that, no.

What he could do, if he does not mind genning a new world, is mod in a reaction to take a random "anything", as long as it is inorganic, get its base material, destroy the original item, and return a suitable raw material item.

Eg, "cut crystal glass gem"->" raw crystal glass", or "8 stone blocks"->" one stone boulder", etc.

This would need a reaction for every suitable kind of raw material product, and would need names like "recycle igneous rock end product" or "recycle glass item", and would need to be done at a workshop.

Does not belong here in fortress mode discussion though. Belongs in modding subforum.

[Dunamisdeos]

I think it's implied that the solution would have to work using in-game mechanics.