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[darkflagrance]

'cause I got nothing else to use those useless metals on.

The three Bs: Bins, Barrels, and Buckets. Use wood for charcoal.

[kaijyuu]

I've got ~1500 bins, not a clue how many rock pots (10 years of nonstop making them before I turned it off), and about 200 buckets.

Studding's the last semi-useful thing I can use them for. Even though it's mostly studding my melt stockpile since that's closest to my forges. I get blacksmith skill, I guess.

[orius]

Generally people only use stone crafts when they need to get rid of stone.

Which is kind of like all the time, no?  I also crank out a supply of blocks for building constructions, because they're lighter than the rocks and take up less space in bins.  Rock pots are also one of my choices since the stuff's more abundant than wood or metal, and I always need them.

[Loud Whispers]

Generally people only use stone crafts when they need to get rid of stone.

Which is kind of like all the time, no?

I recently ran into a rock crisis, believe it or not

[nenjin]

Crafts do eat up stone, yeah. I'm mostly concerned with getting my main fortress level cleared out so I can layout some stockpiles for the 20-year plan, and that's what the crafters help accomplish in addition to supplying me trades. I find meals have too many inputs and have consequences (rotting, clutter), whereas when a craft shop slows down....I just need to wait until the caravans come and it gets cleaned out.

Meanwhile, I still need it for doors, blocks, and aaallllllllllllllll the fortress exterior construction. Having haulers take it to an atom smasher or magma seems like a waste of labor, considering all I need it for.

[Mr. Palau]

first of all, you guys and your necros. I admit that prepared meals are better than steel serrated discs over time, and perhaps early on depending on your embark and what you plan to do during the first year. I plan to mass produce steel weapons and armor for the militia that will be needed to save the fortress from the multitude of creatures that will invade the fortress thanks to masterwork mod.  And that without fortress defense turned on, not using traps though so that makes it much more of a challenge, if I used traps it would probably just be a gigantic hallway of menacing steel spikes. Need the upright spikes triggered by water repeater in order to kill those pesky trapavoid enemies. HOWEVER THAT DOES NOT MEAN ROCK CRAFTS ARE GOOD!!!!!!!11111111111111

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

I agree in the long term that exporting prepard meals would be the berst course of action but since I don't get a food industry setup (as in prepared food) large steel serrated discs will be my choice for the first year becasue you need a steel industry to survive the ork onslaught in Masterwork mod any way. 

Prepared meals are only an "exploit" if you think of them as a single serving of food, like a sandwich or pizza. What they actually represent in-game is a 2-month supply of food for 1 dwarf. So a stack of syrup roast [50] is actually an entire month's food for a fortress of 100 dwarfs!

When you look at it that way, of course a stack of food is worth a lot more than a stone mug...

that is actually a great way to think about it... and makes a lot of sense. just another argument to make prepared meals.

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.

yeah but that dwarf has to work an entire season to generate enough value to buy out a trade caravan whereas my proficient metals smith took less than a week in order to crank out 10 steel serrated discs to buy the entire first dwarven caravan ( not including crafts and trinkets, and other crap I didn't want). A cook could take even less time. you could make it out of iron  and it would only take the dwarf a month. (value of iron =10, staying with assumption that 10 steel serrated discs = trade caravan, 1 week of metals smith labor = 10 steel serrated discs, 3 weeks of metals smith labor = 30 iron serrated discs = trade caravan). And yeah if we had accurate economics then this would make you even more $$$$.

Crafts do eat up stone, yeah. I'm mostly concerned with getting my main fortress level cleared out so I can layout some stockpiles for the 20-year plan, and that's what the crafters help accomplish in addition to supplying me trades. I find meals have too many inputs and have consequences (rotting, clutter), whereas when a craft shop slows down....I just need to wait until the caravans come and it gets cleaned out.

Meanwhile, I still need it for doors, blocks, and aaallllllllllllllll the fortress exterior construction. Having haulers take it to an atom smasher or magma seems like a waste of labor, considering all I need it for.

 Wait doesn't that contradict the argument that people use stone trade goods to get rid of stone? Anyway if you need it so much for all those doors and blocks and I presume above ground fortress then why not make meals? You said you need to clear out the stockpiles but why not just use it to build stuff...?

[nenjin]

It builds everything, and fuels my crafts and my floors get clear at the same time I don't see what the issue is? There's more stone than I could ever possibly mine out or use, and it saves me from having to employ 10 garbage haulers just to clear stone.

yeah but that dwarf has to work an entire season to generate enough value to buy out a trade caravan whereas my proficient metals smith took less than a week in order to crank out 10 steel serrated discs to buy the entire first dwarven caravan ( not including crafts and trinkets, and other crap I didn't want).

Same goes for the caravans. Why would I want to buy all of their worthless crap, again? I'm only interested in their food 90% of the time.

I have no idea why you're getting all MUST TALK IN CAPS. How people play DF is about as subjective as their ideas about art. Last I checked the only one saying rocks are god is....you.

[darkflagrance]

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

I agree in the long term that exporting prepard meals would be the berst course of action but since I don't get a food industry setup (as in prepared food) large steel serrated discs will be my choice for the first year becasue you need a steel industry to survive the ork onslaught in Masterwork mod any way. 

When I play Fortress Defense, often the first industry I set up is prepared meals. Much later on, I sell totems and invader clothing with sewn images.

First off, you only need one weapon and armor smith to make all your weapons and armor. They can easily be the same person. If you use traps, that's a mechanic, but he only needs to be free for as long as it takes to set up the traps. If you have multiple weapon and armor smiths who all work, you are distributing experience over many individuals, decreasing the quality of produced items and wasting experience. Specializing arms and armor production frees up someone who specializes in food.

Second, you need someone to handle farming, and you can easily overproduce easy food like plump helmets. This makes it easy to have farming labor left over that can be used to grow cave wheat or quarry bushes; the latter produce extraordinarily large stacks of food, and it can still be eaten by your dwarves while also giving them happy thoughts.

Thirdly, even a few of the prepared meals (lavish meals of course) created by an absolute novice can buy out a caravan. No need to train someone up for ages to turn an excellent profit.

Fourthly, if you need all that steel to defend yourself, why are you selling it? If you have any non-masterwork steel items currently in use in a trap or by your militia, each additional bar of steel is best used trying to replace that item rather than being traded to the traders. At the same time, if you are being pushed to the margins to defend yourself against tough early invasions, then surely you would be better off employing the steel discs in weapon traps to guarantee survival or giving extra steel weapons to back-up militia in case your main squads perish?

[rex mortis]

Exactly as darkflagrance said: All militia needs masterwork steel arms and armour. It is always preferable to have spares around too. The next step is making hallways of death filled with masterwork steel serrated discs and menacing spikes in traps. Excess steel, if there ever is some, can be made into magma safe pumps, or absurdly expensive statues to boost room value. Finally, it is not proper to bury a dwarven warrior in anything less than a masterwork steel sarcophagus.

Consider that even a legendary+5 smith will make roughly 1 masterwork out of 4 produced items, the rest is recyclable garbage. And some of the steel is lost when melting. And I did not even get started with fuel yet. Magma is a cheap alternative, but magma sea is usually very deep and I dislike volcanoes.

[Maklak]

I've got ~1500 bins, not a clue how many rock pots (10 years of nonstop making them before I turned it off), and about 200 buckets.

Wow, and I thought my 5 21x21 furniture stockpiles were overkill.

Are metal bins and buckets much worse than wooden ones? I think metal cages are very heavy, and dwarfs slow down when hauling heavy items. I already switched to rock pots from barrels, but there wasn't much difference in weight. 

@ darkflagrance
I had only one weapon / armour smith, and that was a mistake. He just couldn't keep up with the demand. Plus I had 6 magma forges. I'm not saying, you should have 10 smiths, but training one or two additional armour or weapon smiths is no big deal. Just set up your main forges to minimum skill Legendary, give your newb a separate forge, and fill it's list with copper armour or weapons or bolts on repeat, so that manager won't put anything relevant there. Heck, you can even melt anything non-masterwork later to get some of that copper back. A weaponsmith 5 + armoursmith 5 is still good to embark with, especially if you're going to take materials for 20-30 bronze. I prefer to train migrants in either weapon or armour smiting, not both.

It is easier to buy food from caravans rather than grow it.

For me exceptional is good enough. A Legendary + 5 crafter will make only legendary and masterwork items, so accepting exceptional items means less melting and waste, and better efficiency.

[jellsprout]

Large, Serrated Discs are an excellent trade good, but not when made out of useful materials. Steel is too useful, takes up too many resources to make and uses a lot of dwarf power to make. It is better used for defending your fort, for which there is barely an alternative. If you happen to embark somewhere with large amounts of iron ore, coal and flux, go ahead and do whatever you want. But if you embark somewhere that lacks one or more of these, then steel suddenly becomes much more precious.
Metal Large, Serrated Discs are best made from silver or copper. These are far more common and far more useless, but still precious enough to buy out entire caravans with minimal effort.

A strategy I often implement is to train up my weaponsmith by making silver/copper discs. This way I won't waste any precious steel in low-quality equipment and I get high-value goods to trade away. Trading away your waste is nearly always better than building an entire industry specifically to produce trade goods, anyway.

[kaijyuu]

Copper and silver are extremely useful for bolts. Can never have too many of those.

Though yes, silver serrated disks are probably the best metal to use. Quite high value and silver's really friggin common.

[kotekzot]

When I play Fortress Defense, often the first industry I set up is prepared meals. Much later on, I sell totems and invader clothing with sewn images.

Are you me from another universe? That's exactly what I do.