Hi all,
I've got some ideas that I want to throw out there; some of them have relevant threads already, but I can't decide which the total sum would go best in, so I figured I'd put them all in one new thread. Hope I'm not cluttering things up too much. So, in general, I would love to see the workshop system expanded. Plenty of suggestions exist for how to make workshops individually better (making them furniture-designated rooms and other ideas). What I'd like to see is more interplay in the entire system, through the creation of more workshops and the ability to power more of them with water/wind wheels.
I'll start with the powered workshop idea. Pretty simple: I want to see as many workshops as possible be able to be hooked up to your power system, for increased efficiency and quality. Furnaces and asheries could benefit from powered billows; forges could also benefit from trip hammers. Screw presses could be powered, carpentry shops could have powered saws, leather shops would have trip hammers as well. Etc. and so on. I don't know if it would be easier to just create a powered version of each workshop (similar to querns/millstones), or if it would just make more sense to apply a bonus to those shops that have been hooked up to your power supply. Either way, I just want to see a use for all those waterwheels I enjoy running down my fortress. As a clarification, when I list the powered components (billows, trip hammers, etc.), I'm not calling for additional components to be used to build the workshops, just listing the real life use for power in such shops.
As far as more workshops, its pretty straightforward; I'd like to see the industrial process somewhat more realistic and requiring more steps. A good example is agriculture, particularly alcohol production. At the moment, everything's done in a still. And each applicable crop only produces one type of drink. I would add a new workshop, a brewery/fermentation shop. In this shop, you could produce wine and beer. To produce wine, you'd have to first press the applicable crop (plump helmets or the various berries) into their applicable juice (I suppose, in a pinch, your dwarves could drink the juice, but it shouldn't be any better than water; perhaps even give them an unhappy thought for wasting potential booze), and then the juice could be fermented into the relevant wine. The various grains could be fermented into beer without a press, but would need potable water added instead. If we wanted to add a little complexity, we could also have the initial product be 'green' beer/wine, which would need to rest and age for awhile to be proper for consumption (though, again, it could be consumed in a pinch, probably as appetizing as sewer brew currently). Perhaps it could be something like the inverse of the rotting system currently. Or just a task at the brewery (one task to brew green beer/wine, and another task to age them).
Meanwhile, proper spirits (whiskey, rum, vodka, brandy) would be produced at a still, which would now require fuel (more on that later) to operate and would process, instead of raw crops as is currently, the wine and beer you've already brewed (if the 'green' system is included, it would be these that you would distill, not the final product). As these products would have a higher alcohol content and require more work, they'd also, appropriately, have a much higher beverage value.
So, in short, the alcohol industry would be more realistic, more complex, and would allow for a greater variety of drinks (as every edible crop could have a fermented drink and a higher quality distilled drink). Other industries could similarly benefit (but who cares about them?).
In closing, the most important thing to take away from all my ideas is this: If the alcohol industry is expanded as I suggested, we can have the ultimate expression of everything that is dear to dwarves. We could build...
MAGMA STILLS.
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Topic: Industrial Expansion Suggestions (more alcohol!) (Read 3557 times)