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[Greiger]

Rope reeds and pig tails are infinitely renewable, can be made into cloth crafts, half a dozen pages worth fit in one bin, and both the weaver AND the clothiers skill matters, and can be dyed to increase the value even more.   I easily see single cloth crafts hit 250 dwarfbucks, and that's just the minimalist not worrying about making sure only masters do the work and without dyeing.  And I'm not entirely sure, but I think you get 3 crafts per plant.

Compared to that, exporting steel doesn't seem effective to me.

[Jimmy T. Malice]

Spamming rock crafts with a Legendary craftsdwarf gets you a much better value to effort ratio. Steel is too useful to sell off.

[Caldfir]

In my experience, the best and most renewable resource that can be produced is bags of flour.  It requires quite a bit of skilled labor, but the bags and contents become very valuable when produced by skilled dwarves, and stack in barrels so they are easy to store and transport. 

I do agree that serrated discs are good for training your weaponsmiths though, and that they are an excellent "backup" in case something awesome shows up in the caravan. 

In many forts, goblin clothes and weapons are my primary trade good, but frequently it is too risky to try to collect it.

[Kon]

The military takes a while to train (I don't use danger rooms). So, I don't want my fortress wealth going up a lot early on because it leads to earlier and more frequent ambushes and sieges. Serrated discs are great if you don't mind the increase to fortress wealth.

[Maklak]

I typically start with selling stone mugs, then move on to another trade good. To make rock mugs all I need is a craftdwarf's workshop, some rocks, which means simply digging down a few z-levels unless I have aquifer, a stockpile, and some bins. To make metals I need ore, fuel (or magma, but I don't embark on volcanoes, and it takes me a few years to go below caverns and set up magma forges, anvil, workshops and stockpiles and bins. Making metal items also involves more steps, than 'make rock mug R'. Oh, and I need to find and dig veins, and there is usually only a few thousand iron ore and coal each. This means metal is much more valuable to me, and I don't want to sell it. Glass production (also suitable for serrated discs) faces similar problems. Well, I can take some ore on embark, and make metal when I arrive, but that will be maybe 30 bars or something.

After rock mugs I usually switch to selling meals, because I have kitchens anyway, and I generally have overabundance of food. Goblinite and clothes are also good. I could make silver or copper serrated disks, for sale, but with 2 kitchens I don't have to.

TL;DR: Rock mugs are very easy to produce. Metal is valuable and needs some setting up to produce. It is easy to buy whatever I need from caravans anyway. After I have lots of roasts, I stop producing rock crafts altogether.

[Mr. Palau]

Greiger, looking over what you said I think youre right. in retrospect preparded meals or cloths crafts would be the most effeceint in terms of labour used and could be produced much faster. although I think the best would be meals, because that would eliminate quite a few middle men in the supply chain for cloth crafts (Farmer>Weaver>Clotheir (and possibly even dyer)) to just (Farmer>Cook) or (Butcher>Cook) and are also insanely valuabe. of course for the one type of prepared meal which I have long heard is the most valuabe, but have never tried to make for myself, dwarven syrup roasts, the supply chain is slightly longer (Farmer>Presser>Cook) and to be really efficent needs power. Also the argument to make meals is much more convincing then the argument to make stone crafts, because both are renewable (counting obsidian for stone), but to make stone crafts for trading I would need to setup an entire industry which wouldn't be nessercy other wise. I woulde eventually set up a cooking inustry however so to go one step further and use the excess meals as a trade good isn't a big leap.

[Loud Whispers]

Greiger, looking over what you said I think youre right. in retrospect preparded meals or cloths crafts would be the most effeceint in terms of labour used and could be produced much faster. although I think the best would be meals, because that would eliminate quite a few middle men in the supply chain for cloth crafts (Farmer>Weaver>Clotheir (and possibly even dyer)) to just (Farmer>Cook) or (Butcher>Cook) and are also insanely valuabe. of course for the one type of prepared meal which I have long heard is the most valuabe, but have never tried to make for myself, dwarven syrup roasts, the supply chain is slightly longer (Farmer>Presser>Cook) and to be really efficent needs power. Also the argument to make meals is much more convincing then the argument to make stone crafts, because both are renewable (counting obsidian for stone), but to make stone crafts for trading I would need to setup an entire industry which wouldn't be nessercy other wise. I woulde eventually set up a cooking inustry however so to go one step further and use the excess meals as a trade good isn't a big leap.

Farmer > Craftsdorf

And you're really complaining about unnecessary industry in Dwarf Fortress?

I see you haven't tried your mad pig tail revolution yet

I can make RED CLOAKS.

RED. CLOAKS.

[zzedar]

The key resource to be considered here is not materials but time. Let's assume you have no magma but do have bituminous coal. To make two steel serrated discs would require a total of ten jobs, or five per disc. If you used lignite, it would require fourteen jobs, or seven per disc. To make a rock craft requires one job, and to make a mug requires a third of a job. Granted, you'll probably want to add jewels to the stonecrafts, but the opportunity cost per job is much lower. There's really not much else you'd want your jeweler's workshops doing, whereas the smelters and forges could be contributing to the fortress directly.

[Maklak]

Jewels are for encrusting furniture, not trade goods.

[Trapezohedron]

Real dwarves keep steel, and throw away rocks and the occasional woodcraft to spite the elves.

Seriously, steel is an important resource. Why would people bother to melt metal goblinite if that wasn't the case?

[riffraffselbow]

Prepared meals are immensely valuable and infinite in supply. Steel is not. Therefore, I prefer prepared meals as a trade good.

This. I trade primarily in food because I'm a hoarder, and want to accumulate as much stuff as I can.

Also, trading away metals is a bad idea, unless you have a lot of trees; remember that you can make metal bins/barrels

[nenjin]

Simply put:

Discs - At least 2 dwarves. Requires Forge, Smelter, fuel. Materials must be mined, smelted then forged.

Stone Crafts - 1 dwarf required after a minimum of exploratory mining. Craftshop. Bam. Profit.

If trade values were weighted according to demand (which I'm sure at some point they will be), metals would reasonably be the most profitable industry despite all the inputs. However the value of things like stone, meals and other easily massed produced goods prevents that from happening. (Also the fact that there's very little do with wealth in fortress mode at this time.)

It'll be neat when we can actually utilize the economic output of our fortress from something other than subsistence.

[Urist_McArathos]

Simply put:

Discs - At least 2 dwarves. Requires Forge, Smelter, fuel. Materials must be mined, smelted then forged.

Stone Crafts - 1 dwarf required after a minimum of exploratory mining. Craftshop. Bam. Profit.

If trade values were weighted according to demand (which I'm sure at some point they will be), metals would reasonably be the most profitable industry despite all the inputs. However the value of things like stone, meals and other easily massed produced goods prevents that from happening. (Also the fact that there's very little do with wealth in fortress mode at this time.)

It'll be neat when we can actually utilize the economic output of our fortress from something other than subsistence.

^ This.  Toady intends to introduce supply and demand, and wear and tear of items, in the Caravan Arc at some point, which would make stone crafts that you churn out all day, every day, a thing of the past.  Eventually, even if your fortress sold the finest granite flutes and crowns in all the world, nobody would need any more and you'd have to scale it back until a few broke and brought demand up again.

[Naros]

Prepared meals are immensely valuable and infinite in supply. Steel is not. Therefore, I prefer prepared meals as a trade good.

The value of serrated discs and the value of prepared meals are far too high to not be a bug, so I don't sell either of them.

[Sus]

Two words: Goblin Christmas.
The typical siege leaves you with enough (large troll fur sock)s to buy any caravan three times over, especially if you have your jeveler pimp it out a bit. Besides, how much stuff do you really need from the caravans? Typically, for me, it's (seeds plus) wood and fuel. Guess what resource factors heavily into steel production? Ditto.

I mostly churn out rock crafts simply to get rid of all that non-economic stone laying about and cluttering the fort. Well, that and generated wealth. Then again, generated wealth will skyrocket if you sell the goblin crap to the elves for cloth and turn all of that into gem-encrusted socks and cloaks. Or, you know, simply churn out a ton of <<+pig tail fiber sock+>>s in addition to all the stone stuff.