Print

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

[MantisMan]

Why do you atom smash old, slightly worn clothing?

I just keep them in a finished goods stockpile right next to my trade depot and use them as trading fodder. They still retain a surprising amount of their value just from the fabric type and whether there's any dye in it.

[Daris]

Because there winds up being so much of it?  And so many of the fort's ordinary activities produce enough byproducts that having sufficient trade goods is never a problem?

I can't speak for anyone else, but I have literally thousands of items awaiting trading, none of which involved specifically building items to trade.  They include:

- factory rejects of furniture
- the clay crafts I produced in order to train up legendary potters
- wax crafts, because what else can you do with wax
- totems and tooth and horn crafts, because ditto

The last thing I want to do is accumulate yet more trade goods.  Yeah, I could give clothing away to the traders, or give them ridiculously fat profits, but why not just destroy the stuff and save my dwarves hauling it to the depot for the same end result?

[MantisMan]

You can use horn to decorate items and add a bit more value.

You can also easily make legendary dining rooms with no quality chairs and tables.

How do you make your dining rooms and what do you do with your furniture?

I've just been using the same initial dining room with 20-40 seats in it, making tables and traction benches for my hospital, and building doors for expanding the dwarf bedrooms and separating the workshops on my workshop levels.

[4kn]

- the clay crafts I produced in order to train up legendary potters

why would you need legendary potters? except, well, yeah...

i also usualy sell whethered clothes in return of the most expensive things like steel wheelbarrows, steel ladders and stuff. at least those can be melt

[Daris]

You can also easily make legendary dining rooms with no quality chairs and tables.

I know that, but that doesn't mean I want to, or that there are no benefits to expending the effort/materials to create high-quality furniture.  My dining room gives my dwaves happy thoughts from admiring the furniture in it, not just by eating in a legendary room.

Plus, I just want to spoil them.

How do you make your dining rooms and what do you do with your furniture?

All the furniture used in the fortress, with the exception of a couple of doors, is of masterwork quality.  This means a lot of cast-offs are created.

However, I want to note that I've attempted to trade worn clothing in the past, and it is a massive pita and logistical nightmare to prep it for trading and get it into the depot when the time comes, because the items have to stay forbidden when they aren't in active trading status.  Even if I didn't have epic quantities of other goods I can trade, I wouldn't try to trade clothing again.  Ordering a barrel of prepared food to the depot is simpler by orders of magnitude.

[Daris]

- the clay crafts I produced in order to train up legendary potters

why would you need legendary potters? except, well, yeah...

I started importing kaolinite in order to make porcelain statues.  A masterwork porcelain statue is worth 3000, requires the expenditure of no metal, and kaolinite costs like 3 to buy.  Scattering these statues around the fort is a good source of happy thoughts for dwarves doing errands, and it also pleases my sensibilities, at the cost of nothing of value.

[Kneenibble]

I started importing kaolinite in order to make porcelain statues.  A masterwork porcelain statue is worth 3000, requires the expenditure of no metal, and kaolinite costs like 3 to buy.  Scattering these statues around the fort is a good source of happy thoughts for dwarves doing errands, and it also pleases my sensibilities, at the cost of nothing of value.

Pottery is one of those under-appreciated skills that I love getting a dwarf to master.  I just wish glazing levelled properly and was a bit more interesting.

[Chimerat]

I honestly never considered selling the used clothing because who would want it, but I certainly don't mind having my average hauling Dwarf taking time to move items to the Depot when the time comes. They do it for my Crafts anyway.

Though I can try to get a stockpile for the used clothing close to there.

(As for pottery and such, I ever tried that either. Sounds potentially profitable. )

[PatrikLundell]

Given the virtually non existent economy, profit is rather useless except for role playing purposes. I tend to palm off a couple of 100000 dwarfbucks' worth of worn clothing to the caravans in exchange for goods worth less than 1000 generally. It's mostly an alternative to magma garbage disposal.
Hauling clothing piece by piece to the trade depot will probably not work, since the caravan is likely to leave before the hauling is done. Thus, the only stockpiles containing bins are the ones for worn clothing and trade junk (horn/ivory) to get rid of some refuse. Once upon a time I also hauled cut gems, but nowadays I just cut gems to keep up with mood demands.

[Chimerat]

Given the virtually non existent economy, profit is rather useless except for role playing purposes.

Well, I sell items for needed supplies, but I've never gotten to a really huge Fortress yet.

And I believe profit might also increase the chances of being attacked?

[Sutremaine]

If I'm feeling fancy I have a stockpile linked exclusively to the clothier's / leatherworker's, accepting only high quality* items. All other clothing items go to a refuse stockpile.

Usually I put civilians into squads and give them a set of 'replace clothing' armour. They'll claim one set of clothing, and never wear it.

*Not necessarily high-value. A masterfully dyed red thread will produce a masterpiece sock even if the weaver and clothier are rubbish. One could filter by quality the output of the dyer and weaver, I think.

[PatrikLundell]

And I believe profit might also increase the chances of being attacked?]And I believe profit might also increase the chances of being attacked?

It's actually the other way around, i.e. the traders' profits can push you over the attack threshold. The "better" you trade the less their profits are (that effect is marginal, though), and the greater their profits are the larger their future caravans are (I suspect it's limited by the size of their civ as well, but that's speculation on my part).
If I remember correctly, the default settings for both generated wealth and export siege triggers are disabled, leaving only the population one (defaults to 80). I change all three of these to 1 (pop 20, don't know what the other values are) for all civs, which normally means the neighbors are allowed over for underwear donation by the second summer, but occasionally by the 1 year mark. Also note that black towers don't hesitate to greet their new neighbors by the first summer.
Oh, when one of the siege trigger thresholds is met the gobbos may come: you don't have to meet all three, so I guess setting wealth generation to the minimum and then mine a lot of gold and platinum immediately might pike their interest even earlier.

[Abaddon]

Why do you atom smash old, slightly worn clothing?

I just keep them in a finished goods stockpile right next to my trade depot and use them as trading fodder. They still retain a surprising amount of their value just from the fabric type and whether there's any dye in it.

I only use dyed cloth for clothes making so they're often worth a decent amount.

I do it because I don't like decorating worn clothing or having it clutter up stockpiles, my fortress is self sustaining so I don't trade with anyone anyway.