Print

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

[Kishmond]

I've never quite known how they get these complicated engravings on something as thin as a bow. Or an amulet with half a dozen pictures on it.

[LegacyCWAL]

Well, isn't bauxite pretty much it when it comes to mining aluminum? And don't you need electrolysis or something crazy to extract the stuff? (I guess its time for wikipedia....).

Pretty much, yeah.  You can get aluminum out of bauxite if you have electricity, which DF doesn't.  That leaves the only source as "regular" aluminum, which is seriously fucking rare.

tl;dr version: DF has it right.

[JoshuaFH]

I've never quite known how they get these complicated engravings on something as thin as a bow. Or an amulet with half a dozen pictures on it.

Ever see that grain of rice with the bible written on it?

[MuonDecay]

I made a mod that allows you to artificially make aluminum, like they do in movies! real life.

Well, isn't bauxite pretty much it when it comes to mining aluminum? And don't you need electrolysis or something crazy to extract the stuff? (I guess its time for wikipedia....).

Yes, the process consumes comparatively enormous amounts of electricity by ore processing standards. To this day it's still considerably expensive to refine aluminum and requires very specialized equipment.

There's a reason that metallic aluminium has such a high value in DF. At the time, refining it from the ore would have been so technologically advanced an achievement that it might as well have been bloody magic.

[G-Flex]

Napoleon, for these reasons, was actually VERY interested in aluminum. It was so goddamn rare, but also had interesting utilitarian uses, so he was obsessed over finding the stuff and finding out what he could do with it.

[JoshuaFH]

What COULD you do with aluminum in those days that other metals couldn't do?

[Flaede]

What COULD you do with aluminum in those days that other metals couldn't do?

Make things that are sturdy, but that you can lift easily?

[Org]

I just made a toy hammer, which has bands of Larch and Adamantine, and red Zircons. Worth 388800.
Thats the most ive ever made, and Im only in my third year. Also I have a question, sorry about it being off topic but how do yoy get the engraver to engrave?

[Cheshire Cat]

press d for designate, then s and designate sections of rough floor/walls for smoothing. they have to be stone, not sand or clay.

after they are smooth you press d again then e and designate an area for engaving. better skilled engravers do better engravings, and only engravings above a certain level will show events. poor quality ones just show clouds and waves and triangles and things.

note you cannot engrave constructed walls.

remember to check the dwarf fort wiki for this stuff, its mostly pretty good. the engraving article is here - http://www.dwarffortresswiki.net/index.php/Engraving it also tells you how to enable engravings to show the full history in dwarf fort mode.

[MuonDecay]

What COULD you do with aluminum in those days that other metals couldn't do?

Make things that are sturdy, but that you can lift easily?

As well as things which are weatherproof.

Aluminium does react very readily with oxygen, but when it does, it forms a durable layer of oxide around the metal which prevents further corrosion very well. It is effectively stainless.

[G-Flex]

What COULD you do with aluminum in those days that other metals couldn't do?

Make things that are sturdy, but that you can lift easily?

Bingo.

There was no other metal at the time approaching the strength-to-weight ratio of aluminum.

For instance, copper is about 3.3 times as heavy.

[anomaly]

as far as i know, aluminum was nothing more than an expensive novelty to nobility up until the last 100 years.

[sneakey pete]

Yeah. problem was that aluminum isn't really good for use a blade, its too ductile, and while its strength to weight ratio is high, its also very light: you'd need a greater volume for an equivalent amount of strength of steel (still true today)

[G-Flex]

as far as i know, aluminum was nothing more than an expensive novelty to nobility up until the last 100 years.

Well yeah, due to rarity. You won't exactly be making utilitarian goods out of something that's far more valuable than gold.

[Cheshire Cat]

oooh, i just got an artifact mechanism which i forced my engineer to make out of raw adamantium. it has images of the goblin gozru werecircle striking down the giant eagle diamondblame, another picture of my adamantium axe, and of a bunch of other boring pictures of mayors being elected. most of the decorations are in sasquatch leather and bones.

what this means is that i now have a well in my main dining room made with one adamantium block, a raw adamantium mechanism, an adamantium bucket decorated with yellow diamond (hooray epic value multiplication!) and a somewhat anticlimactic artifact pig tail rope. its a pity i hadn't found the adamantium yet, as perhaps i may have been able to force the clothes maker to make a woven adamantium thread rope. or is that made by a metalsmith?

regardless, this epic well is just in time, as I'm considering breaching the HFS and will need all the happy thoughts i can get to mitigate the coming slaughter. hooray for a solid adamantium well! i have to find out if i can encrust blocks with gems and leather and things to make it even more silly!