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[GoblinCookie]

How often do most players use metalcrafters? I find myself using most of my non-weapons grade metal on furniture, which falls under the blacksmith skill. There's nothing I need to mass produce that isn't better suited to other materials. Just the occasional chain, instrument, or minecart.

Gold chests for the rooms of nobles.   

[AceSV]

Kind of off-topic, but theoretically, it would be simple to make the migrant skills match the percentage of skills gained in your player fortresses. 

I've never understood cheese maker reference .. because if any skill/profession is heavily overrepresented when I play it is fisher...

Wax Crafters.  Basically Peasants. 

How often do most players use metalcrafters? I find myself using most of my non-weapons grade metal on furniture, which falls under the blacksmith skill. There's nothing I need to mass produce that isn't better suited to other materials. Just the occasional chain, instrument, or minecart.

If I find a location with a lot of excess copper or lead, I'll make export crafts out of those materials, just to get rid of them. 


 - - -

Depending on how eccentric he wants this to be, currencies were not always coins.  Cowry shells and glass beads were also commonly used as currency.  People joked about wool, but Viking Age Iceland did in fact use "Homespun" along with heads of cattle as currency.  Vikings also used hack-silver, they would wear a bracelet made of silver and cut off a piece of it to trade for something.  In D&D's Dark Sun campaign setting, where metal is ultra scarce, ceramics and gems are used as currency.  Africa also used iron and brass to form many different shapes for currency. 

The modern notion of currency, that currency is backed by the power of the state, is a fairly modern concept (even younger than the USA is), and would be completely alien to most cultures around the 1399 tech cut-off.  An improperly minted coin would absolutely still have its intrinsic value.  I think the point of minting back then was more like a government certification that the coin was a particular weight of metal. 

[Miles_Umbrae]

How often do most players use metalcrafters? I find myself using most of my non-weapons grade metal on furniture, which falls under the blacksmith skill. There's nothing I need to mass produce that isn't better suited to other materials. Just the occasional chain, instrument, or minecart.

I've never understood cheese maker reference .. because if any skill/profession is heavily overrepresented when I play it is fisher...

Cheese makers require milk, which can only be harvested from a limited selection of animals once every 17 days. It's a particularly painful industry to set up.

I was tempted to say fish dissectors, but that's basically just a useless skill. More fisherdwarves could at least end up being useful in the future if the food surplus was nerfed. The problem right now is it's too effective.

I meant that out of say 20 migrants 5 are fisher-dwarves...

[Fleeting Frames]

Kind of off-topic, but theoretically, it would be simple to make the migrant skills match the percentage of skills gained in your player fortresses. 

Already implemented: it gives you professions you have lot of and little of in particular.

For instance, these days everyone who migrates into my fort is a novice swimmer.

[PlatinumSun]

I can see this as a skill. I wouldn't mind this being added in. Also they need to add in the ability to encrust coins with gems.

[Miles_Umbrae]

Those who complain about an exess of skills, would you be satisfied with a small number of primary skills and within those there are specialist skills?
I'm only asking to get an alternative from you people that would be acceptable.

[Fleeting Frames]

I like that idea, personally. A mason who became legendary through making rock blocks, thrones and tables shouldn't do as well making their first quern or floodgate. Better than a peasant, yes, but it's still their first attempt.

[Bumber]

How often do most players use metalcrafters? I find myself using most of my non-weapons grade metal on furniture, which falls under the blacksmith skill. There's nothing I need to mass produce that isn't better suited to other materials. Just the occasional chain, instrument, or minecart.

Gold chests for the rooms of nobles.   

Chests use blacksmithing.

[GoblinCookie]

Chests use blacksmithing.

Yes they do.

Depending on how eccentric he wants this to be, currencies were not always coins.  Cowry shells and glass beads were also commonly used as currency.  People joked about wool, but Viking Age Iceland did in fact use "Homespun" along with heads of cattle as currency.  Vikings also used hack-silver, they would wear a bracelet made of silver and cut off a piece of it to trade for something.  In D&D's Dark Sun campaign setting, where metal is ultra scarce, ceramics and gems are used as currency.  Africa also used iron and brass to form many different shapes for currency. 

The modern notion of currency, that currency is backed by the power of the state, is a fairly modern concept (even younger than the USA is), and would be completely alien to most cultures around the 1399 tech cut-off.  An improperly minted coin would absolutely still have its intrinsic value.  I think the point of minting back then was more like a government certification that the coin was a particular weight of metal. 

However does the very concept of currency have any meaning outside of the context of relatively modern times.  Is 'whatever random stuff I can carry' really currency, or is that more like the absence of currency.  Are we basically being anachronistic in using those terms at all?

[Miles_Umbrae]

However does the very concept of currency have any meaning outside of the context of relatively modern times.  Is 'whatever random stuff I can carry' really currency, or is that more like the absence of currency.  Are we basically being anachronistic in using those terms at all?

Currency is whatever society agrees upon is an acceptable substitute for the value it represents in goods or labor.

[GoblinCookie]

Currency is whatever society agrees upon is an acceptable substitute for the value it represents in goods or labor.

The presumption is that there is a numerical value without currency.  If we think about how we trade in DF, we basically ignore the numbers that tell us how much everything is worth and simply divide things into need/don't need, but the rest of world does much, which is to our advantage. 

The don't need things are our 'currency'.  Point was, are our pre-currency societies simply doing the same?

[AceSV]

EC's History of Money can shed some light on some of these questins:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-nZkP2b-4vo&list=PLmKXQuG1OdOyGI0ZyjgiqMQW9r03Fs60k

[Miles_Umbrae]

Currency is whatever society agrees upon is an acceptable substitute for the value it represents in goods or labor.

The presumption is that there is a numerical value without currency.  If we think about how we trade in DF, we basically ignore the numbers that tell us how much everything is worth and simply divide things into need/don't need, but the rest of world does much, which is to our advantage. 

The don't need things are our 'currency'.  Point was, are our pre-currency societies simply doing the same?

A barter-based economy devoid of currency is built on the agreement of the two individuals on the value of the goods/services offered to each other.

[GoblinCookie]

A barter-based economy devoid of currency is built on the agreement of the two individuals on the value of the goods/services offered to each other.

No it isn't.  A barter economy is based upon the fact that neither side actually needs what they are trading.  It is very much quantity of surplus junk I have VS quantity of surplus junk you have. 

The 'value' of the two sides surplus junk is always exactly the same.  If I have 10 surplus tables and you have 1 surplus chair, your chair is actually worth 10 tables. 

[spazyak]

I find fishworkers quite helpful early on, the sheer mass of clams they can bring in can carry a fort through its early years while farms are set up.