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Author Topic: Wood axe tool  (Read 1341 times)

gamildum

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Wood axe tool
« on: March 27, 2011, 09:28:57 am »

Wood axe tool, less expensive than a battle axe at embark. No levels of quality on finished product if produced in the fort. Wood axe's usefulness in combat very low. Battle axes would still be usable by woodcutters, but new woodcutters that arrive would bring a wood axe not a battle axe, and when picking up a tool, will preferentially select wood axe over battle axe. Training axes no longer usable for woodcutting.

As things are right now, a battle axe is rather on the expensive side at embark (with even a copper one being the second-most expensive item, if I recall correctly, in default embark). A training axe works for chopping down trees, but to me at least, the notion of swinging a piece of wood at a piece of wood to chop it down just seems silly.
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Askot Bokbondeler

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Re: Wood axe tool
« Reply #1 on: March 27, 2011, 09:32:10 am »

it is silly
you caqn mod those in reasonably enough, though, just make a smaller version of a battle axe, that makes it less effective and cheaper, but usable for woodcutting

gamildum

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Re: Wood axe tool
« Reply #2 on: March 27, 2011, 09:36:16 am »

Realize it's moddable, in fact I have done it myself, but still doesn't fix the training axe issue. Even simply making usability for woodcutting a new item tag would be quite helpful.

Edit: I assume with the way it is now it's just any item that uses the axe skill?
« Last Edit: March 27, 2011, 09:41:24 am by gamildum »
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NW_Kohaku

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Re: Wood axe tool
« Reply #3 on: March 27, 2011, 01:57:03 pm »

There is a large difference between a hatchet and a battleaxe, yes, but the reason that tools are generally consolidated is that the game already has a fairly large assortment of random knick-knacks to keep track of already, and weapon/tool axes (and multi-purpose tools in general) help to reduce clutter, even if it is in a fairly gamey way. 

It's the same deal as with one-size-fits-all clothing, which is also up here alot.  Clothing and armor that has to be tailor-made for individual dwarves makes the game much more difficult to manage because there's just more buttons to push in workshops, items to track in stockpiles, and so on.  There's an upwards limit to the number of distinct job types you can cram in the game (like the 16 different types of farmer), and we've already had a consolidation down to job categories...

Now, the wooden training axe being useful as a means of cutting down trees should stop (probably when items actually get damaged with use, and a wooden axe would break the axe faster than it breaks the tree), but single-purpose tools are something of a genie in a bottle - why have a specialty tool for one job and not another?  There was a recent thread on that, too.  If every job has a couple of special-purpose tools, you wind up with hundreds of new items. 
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