Hey, saw your thread and the devlog note, congrats about that. 
My views upon modding do differ from the simulation point of view though. I treat DF as a strategy game, ignoring (most) realism. I try to keep realistic things in, yes, but if they dont fit a nice game balancing, then they will get scrapped. The opposite is true for unrealistic things, if they do work nicely as a game mechanic, I put them in.
But your imput would greatly help me setting up an idea for the glass industry. Since the glass forge already does what the carpenter does, only with glass, the only things left are:
Weapons, Ammo, Armor, Shields, Mechanisms, Querns, Millstones, Crafts/Toys.
Also a new form of glass would be nice. Clear, Crystal, Green... and ? Volcanic Glass, can only be made with magma access ? Does this sound about right, because of the high temperatures needed ? If you could just give me some RL-ideas to work with, that would be great. I am also very biased because of Morrowind and Oblivion, with their weird green glass armor and weapons. And the Amber ones from Shivering Isles. Anyway, I digress.
Thanks, I had lots of help & encouragement from Bohandes, NW_Kohaku and others.
Well, I mostly know about RL glass used for windows. We just cut & temper it. Oh, and there's laminated glass, but dwarves don't know how to make that. And I'm not sure why they'd want safety glass, anyhow. I guess they could learn to temper glass, but that just makes it safer when it breaks (tiny pieces, not big, sharp, nasty shards), so I don't see an in-game use.
I'm sure you can make toys, containers and the like out of glass. Possibly weapons, as well. When glass breaks, especially tempered glass, there are a lot of pointy little pieces that leave behind painful slivers if you're not careful. But that only gives rise to irritation, not damage. Volcanic glass is just called obsidian, which you're already familiar with. We do have other kinds, but I doubt you want to know about the various silver coatings that tint windows for insulation. Oh, you can also make patterened glass that's hard to see through (obscure, rain, etc.) not that it helps dwarves any. Actually annealing glass is pretty cool: it comes out on a bed of molten tin, which dwarves would probably love to watch. But it seems like they have glassblowers shape everything, and that process is only used to make big, flat sheets.
If you want to weaponize it, drop it on someone. That would be seriously dangerous. I can imagine it making pretty nasty projectiles, too, having dodged pieces of trim being thrown into the dumpster. Depending on how careful you were with it and the force it was launched with, glass bolts are not inconceivable. Just don't let them break while you're using them.... There's a good reason why we require eye protection. Glass + wood should be able to make swords just like the obsidian ones, given that the RL weapon they're based on is a stick with obsidian shards sticking out (and obsidian == volcanic glass). I can't imagine glass used as armor or shields, except encrusted glass "gems" as decoration. Querns? Millstones? No way. No mechanisms either. Any little scratch creates a weak point where glass will break if enough force is applied. If I picture a mechanism as a gear or something, it would probably snap off whenever something got jammed.
But you're right, Oblivion and Skyrim and such have weird magical glass stuff. They also have weird forging recipes that make it look like they let some random hobo decide on the recipes
So, if you want to give glass some quasi-realistic ability, have people who get attacked with it have some weird syndrome that causes intermittent pain. Glass slivers suck.
Author
Topic: Masterwork DF Suggestions (Guild-System Discussion continues here) (Read 35915 times)