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[Pootis]

I'd like a mod that re-structures alcohol production to increase authenticity and difficulty, requiring fresh water and fuel as additional inputs. This would mean defining a difference between a brewery and a true distillery, turning this vital aspect of the dwarven economy into a more nuanced industry.
Fruit-derived drinks (wines) would be produced at a brewery identically to the current system. Simple grain alcohol (Beer, ale) would require water as an additional reagent, as well as a heat source (with wood, charcoal or coke being usable). A distillery would turn brewed alcohol into stronger distilled spirits, requiring fire safe materials for construction and fuel for operation. It's true, however, that common practice is to brew alcohol meant for direct distilling in the still itself, so the still workshop could either combine brewery and still functionality, or simply take brewed alcohol as a feedstock, or some combination of both. Perhaps it may be best to have only one workshop, that can both brew and distill. Production of whiskey would be: grain + water + fuel -> beer; beer + fuel -> whiskey.
 Produced spirits (proper rum, whiskey, vodka, etc) could be useful as a high-value trade good, medical disinfectant, and be highly flammable, if that's possible. In addition to being more pleasing to your dwarves. While we're at it we may as well make cooking require fuel (again, wood, charcoal or coke should be suitable). Would make fortresses depend much more on access to both fresh water and reliable fuel.

I know very little of modding for DF, so my questions are: How feasible is this as a mod, and is there already anything out there similar to this?
Would this be as simple as coming up with a few new reactions?
Would it be possible to have fermentation take an amount of time (days to weeks), instead of the current situation where it's done as soon as your brewer slaps the ingredients together?


Hope this post makes sense.

[Putnam]

Requiring water and fuel are both possible, but water will not be taken from wells or other water sources, so there's really no way to actually get water without just pretending that it's there. Flammability is possible, but making it a disinfectant is not. High-value trade goods are obviously possible. Cooking cannot require fuel. Reactions cannot be made to take time except through weird multi-step reactions.

[Hugo_The_Dwarf]

If you dig into my old Mod Regeneration (probably still in my sig) I had a brewing system in that you could peek at if you want to try your hand at your own (I'm sure I named them all accordingly)

like Putnam said the use of "water" is just magically, if you wanted water as an reagent you'd need to place it in a container, however the problem is so far vanilla will use buckets for this, and would require an insane amount of micro managing to get the buckets you need by tricking the AI.

And there is no way a REACTION can just take water laying around and use it as a reagent, it would more or less just magically fill containers with water. So the only explanation is that plants retain alot of water and that is used, or implied as Putnam said. If you really want water to be something used why not make a new PLANT that is basically a water retainer (cactus) and it is used as the "water" part.

In regeneration I think I made the booze that plants made a really low product and might have tied a syndrome in it to make it "bad" so making a brewery and producing proper booze was in order.

[Pootis]

Cooking cannot require fuel.

Elaborate?

[Putnam]

Cooking is hardcoded in its entirety.

[Trainzack]

If you are going to make distilling require fuel, you should also probably have magma  distilleries as well.

[Pootis]

Cooking is hardcoded in its entirety.

Perhaps this should be in the suggestion forum, then.

[Putnam]

Cooking is likely to be rawified in the release after next.

[milo christiansen]

About reactions that take time: I have made (and have tested) a pottery system where the pottery is shaped in a custom workshop, the DFHack is used to make them dry through several stages until they are hard. The air dry pottery can then be glazed (with special "damp glaze") and then fired (which also fires the glaze, and in the case of, eg, statues, the art image as well).

Making a similar system for aging alcohol would be trivial on the DFHack side, but you would need to add extra materials to all brewable plants.

(If you want to see the system in action (or just see how it works), download Rubble and activate the "User/DFHack/Pottery" addon.)

[Enepttastic]

Glanced in the thread and had an idea to handle the water requirement:
Make it require a below-ground water source akin to how magma forges work.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Sideview(Assuming a 3x3 workshop):

Code: [Select]

z  0: DdD
z -1: WWWLegend:
D - Distillery tile on floor
d - Distillery tile over channel/hole
W - Water-filled space

Potential bonus if one can also make the workshop evaporate(or otherwise remove) 1 unit of water for every (few) reactions
I'll admit I've zilch modding experience so don't know if it's even possible.

[milo christiansen]

That can be done for adjacent water via DFHack (I have a workshop that does that), but not with vanilla DF or with the water under the workshop.

I may end up making an advanced brewing system one of these days, but don't hold your breath...

[Zarathustra30]

The way I solved the water problem was to make a "water trough" building (made out of a minecart filled with water (I had an additional "finishing" reaction)) and then had it automatically fill "water buckets" which are new tools that are just like buckets, but only for water. They are made out of buckets.

Pros: no micromanaging! raws only!
Cons: endless water and the implementation is clunky.