Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[NomeQueEuLembro]

Hey, guys. I don't know if I can make requests or not, but I hope I can.

That's it: To have metal you need to get ore, right? Well, but to mine ore you need a pickaxe. But to make a pickaxe you need metal again.

Well, in nature it's possible to find metallic alloys above-ground. Those are called "native metals" (otherwise how would we build the first pick?). Yet, in Dwarf Fortress we all know every civilization's first pickaxe come from Armok. Because of that I want to ask if anyone could make a mod that would allow for above-ground metals (not too much, like 10 bars/map tops) that don't need a pickaxe to be gathered. Alternatively one could add-in meteors for that purpose (I don't think that this is possible, tough)

On the other side, I don't know where the first Anvil come from. If it's from Armok or from the Stork I guess there's not much the mod can do.

Thanks in advance!

[smakemupagus]

You're more than welcome to post requests, but unless your idea captures someone's interest, you're more likely to get advice on how to do it yourself. 

In this case, your request kind of runs up against the bounds of what is or is not possible by modding.  I don't know of any way to have boulders of limonite (or anything) laying around on the surface.  But, you could have some kind of sluice or panning operation than has a low probability to produce native metals from some sand or clay.  You could have a creature lay metal eggs, or plants that can be processed to metal.  But all these are an infinite, if slow, source, so i guess they don't meet your 10 bar per map parameter.

[StagnantSoul]

A plant that has a 1% chance of giving metal is doable, right? Or a tree (don't know if those have raws) with bark of iron could work.

[Featheredragon]

Maybe have a type of ground that has a small amount of chance to give an ore. Like clay soils give clay (Maybe gravel?). Or a building that when place by a river like a waterwheel, has a chance of giving small gems or ore. The sluice could scan a limited area near it for ore and gems and have a small chance of giving them, or just have a reaction with a small chance of giving gems and tetrahydrite or casserite. Or you could get gravel out of a type of soil and put that through the sluice building. There are many possibilities.

[Eric Blank]

I think feathereddragon has the right idea: use custom reactions to sift clay or sand (after collecting them) for small quantities of copper ores. Not unrealistic, in the sense that metal ores are subject to erosion just as any other stone and thus will end up deposited in soil. Probably not in huge concentrations most of the time.

You wouldn't be able to limit the total quantity of metals available from the surface via this method, but it would be a very inefficient/slow way to go about acquiring them assuming the reaction produces a lump of ore only rarely, so it would become pointless for the player to continue to use it after making a pick unless there were no other metal sources on the map at all.

[StagnantSoul]

It's a small boost, properly applied, quite helpful. Have ten of those mills running side by side, and pump out flecks of iron, copper, and tin.

[Bogus]

i would rather go for a steady rate of input and low yields, like 5 bags of sand for a bar of iron, which is painfully slow, but at least realiable.

[Sagus]

DF already have native metals. Many ores that you find are already pure, after all ("Native metal" just refers to the metal occurring in its metallic form (and sometimes as an alloy, although I mostly hear the term "native" being used for the former) in nature. It doesn't mean it's above-ground).

Anyway, the idea of a workshop to sift through sand to find specs of metal could be interesting. I think it should be restricted to copper, silver, gold and platinum (which, as wikipedia will tell you, are the only metals that occur in native form in large quantities), and the chances of finding any should be pretty low (cooper would have a 10% chance, silver 7%, gold 4%, platinum 1%), so mining for metals in the early game wouldn't be entirely discarded.

[Dirst]

Remember that even if you find some metal lying around on the surface, you still need an anvil to forge it into a pick.

A better solution would be to mod in a pick tool made of bone (the real ones were antler, but that's too specific for DF) that works very slowly.  These required a lot more time and effort because the miner had to find the rock's fractures and work them without breaking the tool.

Problem is, I don't think you can make a pick that is slower than a standard metal pick.  DFHack might be able to slow down a miner who has equipped such a bone pick, but if I recall correctly DFHack can't do things conditional on the current activity.  That means the miner will be slow to walk, etc. when holding the bone pick.

[Bogus]

DF already have native metals. Many ores that you find are already pure, after all ("Native metal" just refers to the metal occurring in its metallic form (and sometimes as an alloy, although I mostly hear the term "native" being used for the former) in nature. It doesn't mean it's above-ground).

Anyway, the idea of a workshop to sift through sand to find specs of metal could be interesting. I think it should be restricted to copper, silver, gold and platinum (which, as wikipedia will tell you, are the only metals that occur in native form in large quantities), and the chances of finding any should be pretty low (cooper would have a 10% chance, silver 7%, gold 4%, platinum 1%), so mining for metals in the early game wouldn't be entirely discarded.

iron is also contained in a number of soil types in the form of oxides, such as black sand, which contains magnetite, and if im not mistaken, red sand containing hematite. possibly others. historically this has been done, so it would make a lot of sense.

[GavJ]

otherwise how would we build the first pick?

As mentioned, antler. Or harder rocks. Or fire. Or wood soaked in water to wedge rock apart. Etc. etc.
First anvil can be a tree stump, or lots of other things. Though really you don't even need an anvil for the earliest copper tools. They actually worked them more often with hard, smooth, handheld stones to fine out shapes. For bronze you would want an anvil but don't need a proper one right at the start.

People were mining (flint veins) deep underground in Europe thousands of years before anybody figured out anything about metalworking.

That said, on topic, native nuggets would be pretty nifty.  I do like the sand sifting idea too.

[Vattic]

If the goal is to have a pickaxe's worth of metal available at the start then you have to be careful with sifting. If you make it so you can get the bars quickly it could become the main source of metals. If you make it too slow it could take ages to get enough to be useful at the start. One solution would be to have it so sifting gradually returns less.

[GavJ]

The map can just store a list of tiles that have been sifted already. Wouldn't take up hardly any space (zero at first). Whenever you designate a zone (or if the dwarves choose on their own), it picks an as-yet-unsifted tile, sifts it (length of time of one job) and has, like, a 1/10 chance or something of getting a bar-quantity nugget (or decrease time per sift but also lower the chances if that ends up being too much metal total). It does not let you sift the same tile twice. Sooner or later you will start running out of appropriate soil tiles.

[Putnam]

I think feathereddragon has the right idea: use custom reactions to sift clay or sand (after collecting them) for small quantities of copper ores. Not unrealistic, in the sense that metal ores are subject to erosion just as any other stone and thus will end up deposited in soil. Probably not in huge concentrations most of the time.

You wouldn't be able to limit the total quantity of metals available from the surface via this method, but it would be a very inefficient/slow way to go about acquiring them assuming the reaction produces a lump of ore only rarely, so it would become pointless for the player to continue to use it after making a pick unless there were no other metal sources on the map at all.

I use this in the SCP mod to get rare earth minerals from certain soils.

[NomeQueEuLembro]

Ouch, you guys are smart! The problem is I still didn't learn how to do modding, so I don't know how to do any of those stuff haha.
(I'm planning on learning, but I'm quite out of time lately!)

Bone/Antler picks sounds cool, but I think it's not needed. Since if we could have iron bars from sand/clay and make a small forge with a stone I'd be okay.

It could be done in an all-in-one workshop that would sift the sand/clay and build basic tools. No need for two workshops since when you gather enough resources you can build a decent forge.

Now, random idea: since v0.40.14 is out today and we have collectable fruits maybe it's possible to use it to make meteors. (Maybe something like a Mysterious Tree whose fruit is named "meteor" or something) that could also bring metals (but would have to be melted first)