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[Ops Fox]

What do you think dwarf fortress metal industry will look like in the future both moded and unmoded?

Personally I find metals and their alloys to be fascinating subjects and setting up my metal industry is my second favorite activity in dwarf fortress after killing goblins. So I like to think about what dwarf fortresses metal industry will look a few development arcs down the road, this is mostly my random musings on those possibilities.

currently the metal industry is ruled by whether or not something can be weaponized, because there is a better alternative for *almost* everything common item that can be made of metal. I can see this changing significantly when the toady one starts to implement wear on various materials, like mechanisms and other machinery. Then a major aspect of the metal industry would be producing wear resistance materials for use in mechanisms.

Another major use for the metal industry when it gets implements would be piping to move water and magma around without the need for lag inducing stack pumps. I would imagine more abundant metals like, oh say lead, will probably end up getting used for most of a forts water piping. For magma piping I can see nickle, which is unusually common in the dwarf multiverse, being the preferred metal.

Other metals I could see coming into play are cobalt, which could serve in the same role as nickle as magma piping on embarks where nickle is scarce. It would also be a useful for any magma related jobs like nickle acting as a acceptable replacement. When you look at it and its derivative products use in the wear resistant machinery though it is rapidly out shown by nickels wider range of cheaper alloys.

Tungsten has an immediate use in the current version of the game as a border-line melt proof material, with a melting point of 16160 U. I actually belief that melting point makes tungsten resistant to even dragon fire, so cages and doors for dragon training rooms. Tungsten would also serve as a useful material in the production of tungsten-carbide ceramics as not quite alternative to clay. The biggest difference between regular clay and tungsten carbide is tungsten's absurd weight, which makes it more suitable to things that wont be moved around to much. On the topic of tungsten weight that is the deciding factor in its use as weapons and armor, while it is extremely hard it is absurdly heavy. weighing close to 2.5 times the weight of iron for not quite the hardness of steel, it would only be able to serve effectively as a warhammer or mace.

mercury which we should be able to get from cinnabar will be useful in combination with gold or silver to geld stuff everything in gold or silver. Basically the dwarfs will mix mercury and their precious metal of choice together and turn it into a paste, apply this paste to the boring object in question, add heat and presto you have mercury poisoning and a gold gelded lead statue.

[SimRobert2001]

I think the immediate future would be to adjust the cost of alloys, as well as work on their demand. As it sands noe, its useless to create rose gold, as it rach bar is worth the same amount of dwarfbucks as all of it components. In addition, there is no difference between a brass item, and a silver one except for value.Id love to see hardness brought into play, so you could create gold jewlery, but not pure gold furniture, as pure gold is very soft and malleable.

[penguinofhonor]

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[Zarathustra30]

I'm just excited about the knowledge system, and it's possibility of affecting reactions. Toady mentioned sphere-style tags for knowledge, but doesn't want to implement them because of the adverse affects on technologically-backwards civilizations. I fully expect something like this to be implemented once there is a method to order research.

Depending on how research works, the limiting factor on metals may not be material availability, but the technological ability of your citizens. I pity the people who embark with dwarves of average intelligence.

[SimRobert2001]

I think the immediate future would be to adjust the cost of alloys, as well as work on their demand. As it sands noe, its useless to create rose gold, as it rach bar is worth the same amount of dwarfbucks as all of it components.

Come on, don't be that hard on rose gold. It's often the easiest way to get fuchsia furniture, and that's an important part of any fort.

For the cosmetic metals like rose gold and electrum and pewter, I'm looking forward to when DF has some sort of market system that can price materials based on supply and demand. It'll be even cooler when knowledge and books start affecting what recipes are available and some of these metals are only produced by the few people that know how to make them.

Imagine a world where only one dwarven civilization produces rose gold and it's become very valuable in elf and human circles. You could find a huge gold deposit in this world and make more money off it by importing copper and converting it to rose gold. Once there's some level of intrigue in the game, you could have to deal with other civilizations trying to find out your secret recipe.

True. but for all the work you go through, its only value is its color. Some thing like lay pewter is REALLY useless.

[mndfreeze]

My big issue is what was already stated in various ways, there is just no real use for 90% of the metals out there except for color on furniture, which is nice, but not that important really.

I would like to see far more uses for them beyond weapons and armor, in a way that matters.  If coloration is going to be the only main difference then I'd at least like there to be more variation on the tileset possibilites for them in the graphics packs.  So not only does a rose gold throne have that red color, but perhaps it looks specifically different then a steel throne or a stone throne..

Otherwise, I generally dont use the majority of my metals, even though I always always always end up settingn up a MASSSIVE metal working area, it ends up being mostly steel production, and sometimes one other high value metal if I dont have enough steel to do all my furniture or whatever non-weapons and armor stuff I want.

[Dirst]

Items are gilded with gold.  Creatures could be gelded with something made of gold, but it's still not going to make them feel any better about it.

Right now materials are either magma safe or not, since solids are solid right up until they hit their melting point.  The game already has specific heat, but it would need some more information to represent metal getting ductile when hot or soil getting hard when cold.  For the materials experts out there, do the response functions tend to be well-behaved, or would it be better to list material properties at a number of temperatures?  Those can be applied to any actual temperature through interpolation.

On the topic of magma-safe, right now everything based on the stone template has a liquid state called magma, but actual liquid rock all seems to be the same hard-coded material INORGANIC:NONE.  It will be interesting when the game eventually has different kinds of magma, or at least magmas of different temperatures and viscosities.

[Ops Fox]

I did not mention this in the op because at the time I lost my reference and did not want to post something I only vaguely remembered but I found my reference. Brass is currently a cosmetic metal that fortunately includes a very large increase in value, but if wear on machinery components was made a thing brass would serve as a great metal for gears because of its low friction.

Items are gilded with gold.  Creatures could be gelded with something made of gold, but it's still not going to make them feel any better about it.

Right now materials are either magma safe or not, since solids are solid right up until they hit their melting point.  The game already has specific heat, but it would need some more information to represent metal getting ductile when hot or soil getting hard when cold.  For the materials experts out there, do the response functions tend to be well-behaved, or would it be better to list material properties at a number of temperatures?  Those can be applied to any actual temperature through interpolation.

On the topic of magma-safe, right now everything based on the stone template has a liquid state called magma, but actual liquid rock all seems to be the same hard-coded material INORGANIC:NONE.  It will be interesting when the game eventually has different kinds of magma, or at least magmas of different temperatures and viscosities.

Just noticed that mistake, oops.Yes I meant gilded, as in dissolving the silver or gold in a solvent of mercury to create a paste that can be applied to what ever you want silver or gold. Mercury would also have use in dwarven thermometers, maybe as part of  a machinery update such as open the flood gate if the outside temperature exceeds 10080U and drain the murky pools before they evaporate.

Having different types of magma with different temperatures and viscosity will be interesting and it might require players to use different magma-safe materials depending on how hot the magma actually is.

My big issue is what was already stated in various ways, there is just no real use for 90% of the metals out there except for color on furniture, which is nice, but not that important really.

I would like to see far more uses for them beyond weapons and armor, in a way that matters.  If coloration is going to be the only main difference then I'd at least like there to be more variation on the tileset possibilites for them in the graphics packs.  So not only does a rose gold throne have that red color, but perhaps it looks specifically different then a steel throne or a stone throne..

Otherwise, I generally dont use the majority of my metals, even though I always always always end up settingn up a MASSSIVE metal working area, it ends up being mostly steel production, and sometimes one other high value metal if I dont have enough steel to do all my furniture or whatever non-weapons and armor stuff I want.

I think a machinery update will include an overhaul of metals as a whole from the industry to their exact properties, so hopefully there will be a use for 90% of those other metals. I could see Dwarven forges pumping out a much wider variety of utility metals to meet vary demands on pipe sections and gears, while maximizing resource utilization. As for the different values of cosmetic metals like rose gold I think metals would benefit from their final price taking into account the effort that went into them and the rarity of the component pieces. An update to their value might come along with an economy or caravan update, most likely the economy update.

I'm just excited about the knowledge system, and it's possibility of affecting reactions. Toady mentioned sphere-style tags for knowledge, but doesn't want to implement them because of the adverse affects on technologically-backwards civilizations. I fully expect something like this to be implemented once there is a method to order research.

Depending on how research works, the limiting factor on metals may not be material availability, but the technological ability of your citizens. I pity the people who embark with dwarves of average intelligence.

The knowledge system will be a great feature once it is integrated with your ability to produce things in fortress mode. Imagine going to an embark filled to the brim with every type of metal imaginable and finding out your civilization does not even have the technology to alloy bronze. Prompting the player to build a create library and lock the doorencourage their scholars and smelters to discover the secrets of steel, bronze, and brass. Then once their fort is mature and  rediscovered the foundations of dwarven society, they start to mass producing alloys to such an extent that your civilization drives back the goblin and elven invaders who have been pounding down you civilization for centuries.

[BoredVirulence]

...Tungsten has an immediate use in the current version of the game as a border-line melt proof material, with a melting point of 16160 U. I actually belief that melting point makes tungsten resistant to even dragon fire...

Nope, dragonfire is 50000 °U.

[vjmdhzgr]

...Tungsten has an immediate use in the current version of the game as a border-line melt proof material, with a melting point of 16160 U. I actually belief that melting point makes tungsten resistant to even dragon fire...

Nope, dragonfire is 50000 °U.

In other words significantly hotter than the surface of the sun. Not nearly as hot as the core, but still the surface of the sun is really hot.

[Ops Fox]

Well then, dragon fire is quite toasty is it not.

Dirst mentioned that magma could possibly be broken up into actual molten version of various rocks with different temperatures, densities and viscosity would impact the metal industry quite a bit. For instance the top of the magma sea could be the least dense material and sit right at 12000 U so when working with that top layer the player only needs to use the standard magma safe stuff now. If the player messes with the magma to much and changes the magma seas composition or they decides they want to make use of hotter magma further down they may have to be more selective in what materials they use.

This would mean when we finally get pipes the player may want to pipe up some molten native platinum which has sank to the bottom of the magma sea due to its weight. Sitting on top of that layer of molten native platinum though is a layer of molten periclase(melting point 15040), so if the player wanted their platinum they could lower a tungsten pipe down through the magma sea and through the really hot periclase and vacuum up their molten ore.

Another use for the piping method would be to pump molten periclase up it self and use it to burn fire imps and magma crabs, whose resistance caps out at 15,000 U.

[Putnam]

I was about to say that viscosity isn't in the game yet, but turns out that that's about as wrong as saying that the game doesn't have the speed of sound of materials yet. Dynamic Viscosity is also called Lamé's second parameter, μ. In solids, μ is usually referred to as the Shear Modulus, or G. The shear modulus of a material can be calculated from DF terms using (SHEAR_YIELD/10)/(SHEAR_STRAIN_AT_YIELD). So that's a thing.

(For the curious, the speed of sound is equal to sqrt(K/p), where K is bulk modulus and p is density; K can be calculated with (COMPRESSIVE_YIELD/10)/(COMPRESSIVE_STRAIN_AT_YIELD) and density is already listed in the game's files)

[GiglameshDespair]

...Tungsten has an immediate use in the current version of the game as a border-line melt proof material, with a melting point of 16160 U. I actually belief that melting point makes tungsten resistant to even dragon fire...

Nope, dragonfire is 50000 °U.

In other words significantly hotter than the surface of the sun. Not nearly as hot as the core, but still the surface of the sun is really hot.

Good thing I've got my wooden shield to block it! Otherwise, man, that could have been dangerous.

[BoredVirulence]

...Tungsten has an immediate use in the current version of the game as a border-line melt proof material, with a melting point of 16160 U. I actually belief that melting point makes tungsten resistant to even dragon fire...

Nope, dragonfire is 50000 °U.

In other words significantly hotter than the surface of the sun. Not nearly as hot as the core, but still the surface of the sun is really hot.

To be fair, the surface of the sun is unusually cool. Lightning is hotter.
Surface of the sun ~ 10300 F
Temperature of lightning ~ 89500 F

Maybe dragonfire is really some sort of heavy electric discharge causing the atmosphere to turn to plasma? Maybe the dragon has a distant relative with the electric eel!

[mndfreeze]

Good thing I've got my wooden shield to block it! Otherwise, man, that could have been dangerous.

hahaha I gave some epic lulz in my very quiet work place because of this comment.  Its right in line with exactly what went through my head the very first time I read about shields and how they work when I first started playing.  I happened to have my first dragon hit my fort, cuasing me to check the wiki on related things and read that nice little fact about shields. haha