Is it just me or does the value of items differ widely between what a stall considers them worth and what they are worth in trading. I haven't looked through all of them or anything but woods value is 3, but I can trade 10(30 value) wood for 500(300 value) gold coins? the value increases by 10x, and theres a chance to get higher quality coins too. 20(40 value) meat can be traded for 500(300 value) coins too, which you can then use to buy ~150 meat from a trader.
yeah... they weren't balanced with the internal values. Its something that has bothered me in the past, this issue has many problems.
1. If you set the amount of the objects to the value of 500 coins... some of those items will require more than a normal dwarf would get around to carrying for any particular job.
2. If you set the amount of coins received to the value of the objects the issue becomes that you have to restructure a lot of other "in-game" stuff. Then players would just cheat it by melting the small stacks of coins for bigger returns than what a full 500gc stack returns (A major issue).
3. To get rid of the improvements you must get rid of the skill gains for accomplishing the task, which is one of the main reasons for the shops in the first place along with item reduction.
I'm working on a new mod pack... and one of the concepts I have considered for this. So here goes:
1. is unsolvable as you can't make dwarfs take a shit ton of items for a reaction so instead we fix number 2 and 3.
2 and 3. we remove the 500gcs all together. and shift to value 1 objects to replace them(call them whatever bank notes). This gets away from the gold coins -> trader cheats. Even though the reactions to create them may cause them to be improved, the effect is minimal as their initial value isn't as large... we then set the amount of bank notes received to appropriate gc values, now here is were it gets interesting. these bank notes may be worth things like 10gc or 100gc as necessary for selling the goods at market at appropriate value... you adjust items as necessary to hit the mark. Now then these notes will be targeted by reactions at different locations (such as the shops or a bank/stockpile building). These new target reactions will be automatic and compile these notes into larger "bills" until they hit 500gc. These automatic reactions will not have skills set to them so they wont give improvements to the compiled notes. Notes of 500gc or bigger ("we would have more reactions to choose to combine them into bigger and bigger notes.... to reduce the item counts, even further... still no skill) can be converted into 500 gold coin stacks, with no improvements for use at trade depots. additionally adding in coin turn ins to return them to bank notes so that you can store coins you make either from these reactions or the forge yourself.
The net benefit is that you still get to use shops like these, but you wont get the improved coins that are worth more than the stuff you turn in and the value of the stuff turned in isn't compromised while reducing items. In other words you get all the benefits of having these shops without turning it into a cheat.
