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[Battlecat]

So I finally got a fortress working.  I've managed to survive some ambushes, get an economy runnign and keep my dwarves from starving.  So in the meantime I've been happily excavating away at my mountains, full of sedimentary rock.  About 3 years in now and I have a massive quantity of ores.  Iron, Platinum, Gold, Copper, and many others, plus I've got flux everywhere.  But in all the time I've been excavating, the total quantity of fuel I've found is exactly zero.  No coal, no lignite, no magma that I've found to date, nothing at all. 

So I've got the challenge of trying to smelt metals with no appreciable quantities of fuel.  All that is left is wood plus anything I can get off the traders.  I've discovered that I have to be very restrained in smelting ores because wood is used for enough critical projects to be a problem between beds, bins and charcoal.  and I've been requesting mass amounts of wood and charcoal off the traders, plus I've been purchasing every metal bar they bring with them.  Of course, my poor metalcrafters have been demoted to haulers for the most part, but some things can't be helped.   

Granted it has been quite interesting.  I've got crafters mass producing stone products for trade,

Has anyone else had any interesting experiences on fuel limited maps? 

[Moron]

Are you actually managing to get significant amounts of fuel from the traders?

I had a similar situation and requested charcoal, bituminous coal and lignite from the caravan. Next year they turned up with one piece of bituminous coal, one lignite and no charcoal. They had wagons full of all the usual stuff though.

I also have a fortress I'm playing at the moment where I haven't found any iron ore and am trying to 'persuade' the caravans to bring me iron or steel bars, so far with similar levels of success. I am thinking of resorting to buying up anvils and low quality iron armor to melt down, but it seems like an expensive and roundabout way to get the metal.

[Quiller]

I've actually found a fair amount of fuel on my map, but it still winds up being the limiting factor, as it doesn't take too much steel production to burn through a whole bunch of coke bars.  (A lot of my coal was next to the stream, so I found myself digging into it during the winter, digging out the vein and then trying to get it all hauled out before the ice melts.)  It seems like it is really hard to have any kind of real metal industry without magma.

You sound like you are in a decent environment to find coal, though.  You might want to hold off on excavating more ore veins and concentrate on more extensive exploratory mining.

[Dwarf Fanatic]

What you do is to have 2 times more wood cutters than wood workers...

Let me rephraze that. 1.5 times more pure, no haul wood cutters. Half the wood workers pure wood storage!

With that I was prepared to build the Empire state building... then I forgot I have no sand for windows.

[Mephansteras]

I've found that simply requesting wood, coal, and charcoal all at %200 price works pretty well for getting fuel. I usually get a caravan loaded with wood, a good 10 or so coal chunks, and a few charcoal. Plus random junk I may or may not want. *shrug*

I wish I could request that caravans NOT bring stuff (I DON'T NEED CLOTH!). But I imagine that won't happen until the Caravan arc.

[Labbolino]

I also have a fortress I'm playing at the moment where I haven't found any iron ore and am trying to 'persuade' the caravans to bring me iron or steel bars, so far with similar levels of success. I am thinking of resorting to buying up anvils and low quality iron armor to melt down, but it seems like an expensive and roundabout way to get the metal.

Just wait for the first goblin ambushes. You will have plenty of iron weapons and armor to melt down then.

[Eita]

Don't you still need fuel to melt stuff down?

[Derakon]

Don't you still need fuel to melt stuff down?

You do, but a map with magma and no iron is often more viable than a map with iron and no magma. Case in point, after two small sieges I had over 80 iron bars.

[Jamuk]

I'm pretty sure that if they had magma there wouldn't be anything to talk about.  By fuel limited they likely mean that you actually NEED fuel, unlike on a magma map.

[BurnedToast]

maps with lots of trees are not so bad, really - you can just deforest the thing once a year and have plenty of wood, a few legendary wood burners, AND you piss off the elves as a bonus. Maps with no trees and no magma are annoying though, the traders don't bring nearly enough even if you don't melt the goblin iron garbage down.

I admit I gave up and cheated and added some magma in on my last no tree desert fortress. It was too painful watching the metal ore stack up and watching them bring nothing but a dozen logs and 2 lumps of charcoal per year. The final straw was when the human trade rep died and I didn't even get the logs anymore.

[Makrond]

I once removed the [FUEL] requirement for all types of smelting.

That was a fun day.

[Eita]

I once removed the [FUEL] requirement for all types of smelting.

That was a fun day.

How damn you?!

[Makrond]

Dwarf Fortress\raw\objects\reaction_standard.txt

You'll notice that the various reactions take place at smelters and most require fuel.

Just remove the [FUEL] tag/s, save the file, close, load up a save (doesn't require a new world) and go.

[Erk]

I set up a cheat reaction that creates coke. I generate coke by the standard means preferentially, but when that runs out I create it from nothing by magic. I just find it annoying to bicker with the caravans over coke availability; if I could order as much as I needed, I'd not need the cheat.

For my next big fortress I'm going to mod in a farmable plant that can be processed into fuel somehow. Same for wood.

[Eita]

Wood already can be turned into fuel.