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[Urist_McArathos]

Probably you can do the same with coins? They come in packs of 500 so it'll be faster to make significant adamantine stocks.

In theory, each coin would net .1 bars, for a grand total of 50 bars returned per stack of coins.  You would need the following to make this a highly useful exploit:

-A magma furnace used exclusively for melting.

-A skilled (preferably legendary) furnace operator who was given exclusive access to that smelter through the profile screen.

-A skilled enough broker to let macros automate the process of trading the coins back and forth.

I suggest a "proof of concept" run first, and if I get a trade caravan before you post your results here, I'll do it.  Separate out 10 coins from the stack, then melt each of them.  Check your stocks screen after; if you have gained one bar of metal, it worked.

[krenshala]

Does anyone know of a way to see what fractional bars the smelter has stored?  I know they are stored by the game until enough fractions are added in to give a full bar at which point it "magically" appears in smelter to be moved, but is there a way to see how much is there waiting for the rest of its "bar"?

[Urist_McArathos]

Not according to the wiki, hence the importance of limiting your melting operations to one smelter.

Also, if that smelter is destroyed, all fractional bars within are lost, so before you start melting make sure your metal industry is precisely where you want it.

[krenshala]

Oooh, I'd forgotten that part.  Darn, I guess I really should dig a bit deeper before I start my melting operations in future.

[MarcAFK]

Wouldn't it be faster to just shotgun stacks of coins using minecarts?
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Why has no one scienced this?
I imagine even a single stack of platinum coins would be pretty damn bad if it does split into 500 projectiles.

[Xenos]

Wouldn't it be faster to just shotgun stacks of coins using minecarts?
.......
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Why has no one scienced this?
I imagine even a single stack of platinum coins would be pretty damn bad if it does split into 500 projectiles.

Shotguns don't split stacks, you would have to manually split the coins and then load up your thousands of coins per cart for maximum shotgunning.

[MarcAFK]

Really? Damn i was sure i read somewhere that bolts were split by minecart collisions.
Still now i know you can split coins using traders it may allow some interesting minecart coin experiments.

[krenshala]

Wouldn't it be faster to just shotgun stacks of coins using minecarts?
.......
....
..
Why has no one scienced this?
I imagine even a single stack of platinum coins would be pretty damn bad if it does split into 500 projectiles.

Shotguns don't split stacks, you would have to manually split the coins and then load up your thousands of coins per cart for maximum shotgunning.

(From a Dwarven PoV) You make that sound like a bad thing?

We need a mechanical penny shooter to split these coin stacks, obviously.  Then we get double benefit: 1) individual coins are stored in minecarts ready to be shotgunned at incoming enemies, and 2) the contents of those minecarts are set to be melted down to acquire more metals.

If done right, it might be automated (maybe) with a certain percentage of newly minted bars getting turned into coins for further smeltage.

[Loud Whispers]

Really? Damn i was sure i read somewhere that bolts were split by minecart collisions.
Still now i know you can split coins using traders it may allow some interesting minecart coin experiments.

Pretty sure they were individual bolts

[Helgoland]

Aight, I tried trading coins, and:

I for one welcoome our new coin overlords.

Seriously, I now have five smelters melting down the ~700 coins I bothered to separate. With a yield of 50 bars per bar, you don't really have to worry about the maximum of 0.9 bars lost per smelter.
I also noticed twoo other advantages:

1. Coins are always produced at base quality, which is desirable because you want cheap coins to trade back  and forth.
2. Coins can be produced from any material. In my test run I used platinum and aluminum as well as adamantine.

Anyone wanna put this on the wiki?

[MarcAFK]

How long did it take to seperate those 700 coins? I just want to roughly work out how long it would take to fill a minecart shotgun entirely with seperated platinum coins.

[Helgoland]

I used an inefficient method; your best bet would be repeatedly splitting sttacks.

1. Trade 250 of 500 coins for some of the trader's stuff. The trader now has one stack with 250 coins.
2. Trade 125 coins and a prepared meal (or something else you need to get rid of) for 125 coins. The trader now has two stacks with 125 coins each.
3. Trade 63 coinsfrom one stack, 63 coins from the other stack and a prepared meal for 63 coins from one stack and 63 coins from the other stack. The trader now has two stacks with 63 coins and two stacks with 63 coin.

2⁹=512; that means you should be done after nine (or ten, because of the 62/63 situation) trades; each trade however needs its own macro.

[Saiko Kila]

I have so much need for melting that recently I've designated a fourth magma smelter just for melting acquired items. My furnace operators are fast, but every siege and every caravan brings hundreds of items, plus I melt the items made by trainees (or even legendary - legendary in his description doesn't mean he won't make a well-crafted items).

Apart from that, my marksdwarves train best when using metal bolts, and they use huge quantities of them: I have one forge which has making bolts on repeat, plus I makes some additional batches from time to time, and I buy and "reacquire" all bolts, no matter the price. And my bone carver also makes bolts on repeat. This means that I have many good weaponsmiths, and thus many masterwork bolts. I melt all single bolts except masterwork, though even these are finally broken during practice.

I said all that just to indicate that the original idea of using bolts for making metal wouldn't work at all for me and my setup, and I see no way to change it. The coins seem more appropriate - in .31.25 a full stack of coins was yielding 1.1 bars of metal, and it was using 1.0 bars of metal to make. I don't know about the return rate in current version ^{(I make only one stack of adamantine, steel, gold, silver and copper coins per year, as a kind of chronicle)} but making a stack of coins still require 1 bar only…

[Sutremaine]

How about using a universal macro to offer the stack to the traders one single coin at a time, and then destroying the trade depot to forcefully reclaim all the goods?

[Loud Whispers]

How about using a universal macro to offer the stack to the traders one single coin at a time, and then destroying the trade depot to forcefully reclaim all the goods?

...And switching to a new depot before dumping all of your finished goods/useless crap as offerings. Lovely. Very dishonest though.