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[Zac]

îton, one of my armorers, just came up with an artifact aluminum segmented breastplate.

First, you made a breastplate and not a single low boot. Good job îton.
Second, that wasn't the plan. I had explicitly forbiden all metal bars except for steel but after îton brought her steel bar to the workshop and was busy gathering other material for the decorations I allowed the other metals again so the rest of the metalcrafters guild would stop yelling at me about all their jobs being canceled. She took the opportunity to pull a fast one and took an aluminum bar (her favourite metal) to replace the steel bar that was already in the workshop and earmarked for her artifact. I didn't even know she could do that. Bad job îton. Good thing her favourite metal wasn't tin, I guess.

Third, and this one is for you, is it any good ? I mean it is good, the thing alone is worth more than all the kits of my main squad combined - and they aren't wearing the cheap stuff. But is it good as an armor ? From what I understand the "segmented" part just means it is extra fancy so the question is essentially does anybody knows how aluminum x3 compares to steel x2 ?

[Urist Mchateselves]

Unfortunately, aluminum is pretty terrible as an armor material. I don’t think artifact armor gives that big of a bonus compared to masterwork armor, so you aren’t really missing that much. You could probably put it on display in a noble’s room or a guildhall to easily increase room value. That’s really the only thing that artifacts are good for anyway, apart from artifact doors, floodgates and mechanisms.

[callisto8413]

Wait...she REPLACE the steel bar with the aluminum bar?   I think the dwarves are getting smarter.  Well, time to set my PCs on fire.

[Zac]

Wait...she REPLACE the steel bar with the aluminum bar?   I think the dwarves are getting smarter.  Well, time to set my PCs on fire.

I am afraid the situation is actually much worse. Since it was an armorsmithing mood I was pretty interested in her work so I watched her gather the materials and I checked the content of her workshop while she was working. I saw her take the aluminum bar after she had already gotten the steel bar first. I thought it was simply to add some decoration to her steel artifact and I was pretty happy with it since aluminum is as valuable as you'll get, short of you-know-what.

The point is; I'm confident she grabbed only one bar of aluminum and my bookkeeper agrees with me. I had just bought two bars from the dwarven caravan a few month prior, I saw two bars in my stock when I forbidden them, they were the only two bars of aluminum I had and the second is still in my stockpile.

But I wasn't wrong about her intentions, there is an aluminum decoration on that aluminum breastplate...



If I'm not mistaken she should have needed two bars to make both the breastplate and the decoration, yet she only used one. And she didn't use the steel bar either, it's still in the forge she used to make the artifact.
She did replace a steel bar with an aluminum bar, but not with one of mine. She willed an aluminum bar into existence, she materialised 25k dwarfbucks worth of metalsmithing out of thin air.

I have to admit the last fortress I played before this one was back when DF2014 was just called "the current one" and ravens were murder, so I'm a bit out of the loop when it comes to dwarfy behaviours. Is that something that is known to happen ?

[eerr]

One of the major penalties for new recruits is weight, usually the armor. So that aluminum plate is probably the second fastest thing a dwarf could train in.

if you outfit recruits with like, full steel plate right from the get-go, it takes years for them to get strong enough to train at a decent pace.
Copper, bronze, and iron is about as heavy as steel, so inferior materials won't save your dwarf any time.

Also, if I had aluminum plate, I would be slapping that on one of the leading dwarves. That's just how I roll. The dwarf will just have to work around it if it's bad.

All artifacts get a free decoration from the base material.

[Zac]

I didn't know about the free decoration. So she just replaced the bar then. It's still good to know about for the next important mood; let the guilds yell until they've started crafting it.

And yes, the aluminum plate at 5 weight vs 16 for a steel one seems pretty interesting. For now it is on my newest militia captain for testing. I did notice him train faster than the rest of his squad, I didn't know it was because of his breastplate. The plan was mainly to test Nunokisir in a few battle on a semi-expendable dwarf before I give it to someone important, see if it can deflect blows or if copper weapon run right throught it. I am hopeful about aluminium as armor-grade material, it's not like I'm asking it to stop an armor-piercing shell after all, the main risk I see is that it is so light that the dwarf wearing it will rush in melee ahead of his squadmates and end up being mulched alone by 15 goblins. That would generate plenty of data on the efficacity of the armor though.

[Saiko Kila]

The ability to train armor skill is more important IMO than any other benefits. The low-skill fighters move so slowly in steel (or any other metal) armor than they are often useless when it comes to defending more distant part of fortress or raids (though raids with clashes DO train armor skill too, and it's my favourite way to train it).

However, if I had an aluminium breastplate, I would assign it to my king, or some important official, so he wears it in the face of all visiting nobles.

As a side note, I suppose you know about the trick with forbidding the main construction material(s) after the work started? This will cause the artefact to be created of iron, so it's often better than the poorly-chosen alternative. But aluminium is very expensive and light, so I would go with that, instead of iron, for an artefact.

[zemaj]

I am pretty sure you can have a decoration of the base material without incurring an extra cost.  You have probably seen this on early artifacts... dwarf will only want 3 materials but artifact will have 4 (or more) decorations.


On the unexplained aluminum bar, if traders were in the depot while dwarf was gathering materials, dwarf may have nicked it from the caravan.  They typically won't do that, simply because they will grab whatever is closest, but preferences overide a lot of standard behavior.  Using burrows to control mood materials will prevent this... unless you paint the burrow over the depot.

[BodyGripper]

Sweet artifact!

Is it possible that you accidentally forbade the steel when you were unforbidding everything else?

[thefinn]

Wait...she REPLACE the steel bar with the aluminum bar?   I think the dwarves are getting smarter.  Well, time to set my PCs on fire.

I hate these dwarves sometimes...

[Mohreb el Yasim]

Wait...she REPLACE the steel bar with the aluminum bar?   I think the dwarves are getting smarter.  Well, time to set my PCs on fire.

I hate these dwarves sometimes...

Hey, hi really likes aluminum. If you were a dwarf you would understand. Creating is not always about efficiency.