Here is more of a preference question than a modding question;
I know a lot of mods use a simplified leather system, where you get rid of having "cat leather" and just have leather instead. Do people think that such a system might be relevant for other aspects of the game?
I am currently re-writing my plants system and was thinking about creating just three tiers of certain things (like alcohol). So instead of having "tequila, gin, cave beer, starapple wine, deep cordrial, crystal spirits, etc..." you would only have "alcohol, fine alcohol, and lavish alcohol" (names not necessarily finalized). You could do similar things for threads, flour, bread, sugar, spices, dyes, jams, syrups, pretty much anything really except for seeds. And since the game doesn't have any true distinguishing features (besides value) for these thing (i.e. a Dwarf doesn't need to drink 1 wine or 4 beers, just needs one unit of drink) you wouldn't lose anything.
Where this fails, of course, is in specialized poisons or affects from the drinks, but since those tend to be the exceptions, rather than the common, I figure you could cut down a great deal of unneeded materials (a simple test, for 100 plants I went from needing 280 USE_MATERIAL_TEMPLATE's to 40, a fairly substantial change).
What do people think? Worth while, or should I just stick with the standard system?