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[Sowelu]

It seems very silly to me that you can start with logs, get to your site, and promptly make barrels out of them...and by the time your miners have done enough work to make the rest of your guys useful, your four-to-six other dabbling dwarves have made like ten barrels at least for a sizable profit on the starting costs.

Why would the Mountainhomes send you along with the very dregs of their weapons, armor, furniture, etc?  I mean sure maybe they expect they'll never see it again, or that they need the good stuff at home...but it seems like starting with equipment should give you GOOD equipment that it takes a while to catch up to.

Sure, you already kind of get that with your expensive steel axe, but not with picks or armor.  I find it way too useful to start with a pile of leather and craft armor right at the start...if the Mountainhomes could give you more than no-quality leather armor, it would take a tiny bit of the wind out of those sails.

I propose that all starting goods that can have quality, start out as +quality+.  If I go through the hassle of starting with crossbows instead of a pile of wood, I want good crossbows, and surely the Mountainhomes can provide!  If I shell out a ridiculous sum for steel armor, it should be good steel armor.  Heck it should even be viable to start with +beds+, even if we can't right now.

Issues...Well, either this increases the cost of goods (which I'm against, points are limited enough already) or it gives you stuff that's way too easy to trade off to the first caravan (which is a bad idea).  I'm not sure how to handle that...unless prices are fiddled with a little, such that +quality+ now costs the same as no-quality for good with quality, while seeds, ore, etc stay the same.

Seriously.  If you order gold ore from a caravan, and then make it into a no-quality piccolo, nobody should be very impressed.  They should be all, "what am I going to do with that, melt it?  We totally could have done better", especially if they're dwarves.

In my mind, no-quality shouldn't be the baseline, it should be "worse than average".  And if none of these suggestions appeal at all, then at least consider something like .quality. for things created by dabbling dwarves (and not novices), which are noticably worse than no-quality.  I'm tired of my dabbling dwarves producing goods that are just as powerful as stuff the Mountainhomes send!

[Foa]

You can re-melt the instrument and then re-craft it into something better.

Dwarves are naturals, and can do basic quality anythings, it just takes time.

Ah, the cream always gets the bigger loads, why waste it, minimalist.

And why do you think it is too easy to make crafts at the start?
Just start with nothing but a fisher, a farmer, and miners, and a trader, and a carpenter, then work your way to a civ without the 'easy get go' you bitch about.

Dude, dwarves are, epic, they can carry deathly amounts of things without slowing, they can use large weapons, and are just so damn good a fighting.

[Sowelu]

My main beef is that there's very little point in getting finished goods from the Mountainhomes at first, because you can make stuff that's just as good as soon as you get the industry up and running (which often means 'make one building').  No-quality goods are what I expect from an outpost that's just getting started...not from the Mountainhomes.

If the Mountainhomes could give you better things to start out with than you can make at first, then there's a very real sense of accomplishment...at first, their stuff is better than what you can make, but soon, you're really challenging their craftsdwarfship.

[Pilsu]

Some premade +stuff+ would be nice to have, yeah. Bedrolls mostly

I don't much care for untrained dwarves being able to do everything

[SirHoneyBadger]

If I could, I'd send my dwarfs out nekkid, with nought but a pointy stick.

[Capntastic]

Historically, colonists didn't tend to exactly have luxurious living accomidations.   I can imagine it being doubly rough for dwarves.

[Draco18s]

Historically, colonists didn't tend to exactly have luxurious living accomidations.   I can imagine it being doubly rough for dwarves.

Yes, but did one unskilled colonist look at another and go "hey you, we need more barrels, make some" and get fully functional barrels?

[CobaltKobold]

I think the point is, your settlers are poor schmucks. Why get things that are 3x as 'aluable for the same price? (Your starting points are ☼, after all)- and complaints about "unskilled" making the good stuff- well, they DON'T. The expedition purse paid for more-skilled workers being brought along to make them, after all.

(Perhaps guild regs are stopping you from taking away the good stuff. Perhaps they don't want the unparalelled craftsdwarfship falling into other hands with these measly 7-dwarf expeditions.)

[Draco18s]

I think the point is, your settlers are poor schmucks. Why get things that are 3x as 'aluable for the same price? (Your starting points are ☼, after all)- and complaints about "unskilled" making the good stuff- well, they DON'T.

So for 90☼ I can get 30 logs, which I can turn into 29 barrels (not -barrels- even) or I can spend that 90☼ on 9 empty barrels.

Would you rather have 29 barrels or 9?

[bjlong]

A big way to balance out crafting is by introducing crafting failures. It should work out that if you try to make 29 barrels as an unskilled dwarf, then you'll only get around 7 or 8 useable barrels. This would make skills even more valuable.

Of course, this means that the immigrants should be more skilled, but that's another topic.

[CobaltKobold]

I think the point is, your settlers are poor schmucks. Why get things that are 3x as 'aluable for the same price? (Your starting points are ☼, after all)- and complaints about "unskilled" making the good stuff- well, they DON'T.

So for 90☼ I can get 30 logs, which I can turn into 29 barrels (not -barrels- even) or I can spend that 90☼ on 9 empty barrels.

Would you rather have 29 barrels or 9?

Would you rather wait for X dwarf-days for them to be constructed (and, as you note, ha'e a startup-cost for workshop), or not? You turn dwarf/playtime into money. For normal dwarfs, time in'ol'es a bit of food and drink upkeep, a nonob'ious element of time cost- other things include nebulous "protection from critters", and whate'ers needed to keep them sane.

At least in the case of weaponry/picks, the timecost of making better things can become important enough that trying to make your party weaponry will crumble your fort when bringing the weapons pre-constructed would ha'e sa'ed them, particularly if you're trying to turn {2 logs, 5 bit. coal, 4 limestone, 4 hematite} into {2 steel axes, 2 steel picks} of quality.

Analogously: You ha'e 7 dwarfs. You can turn them into arbitrarily many dwarfs with time(barring single-sex embark parties, using more food and drink gi'en the large amount of dwarf-time required). Should you be able to take arbitrarily many dwarfs along on embark for free(since the first 7 are free, why not more?) therefore?

You can bring along seeds on embark. You can turn these into arbitrarily many seeds and plants gi'en time (and some non-freezing soil, and again dwarftime). Should you be able to take 200 seeds for 1☼? And X plump helmets/quarry bushes/etc?

If you embark with an an'il, three iron ore, four charcoal, and a stone for the workshop (only a starting cost), you can make another an'il. Should an'ils cost 1115☼(1000+24*3+10*4+3)? Or 112☼ since you can make an'ils beyond that without making more forges? Or 87☼/84☼ since you can just make a wood-furnace, burn wood to charcoal, deconstruct and then make your forge? This in'ol'ed case of making an an'il is rather demonstrati'e of how you get to pay less and less for more and more dwarf-time in'ol'ed.

To far absurdity: You bring along an expeditionary force composed of 7 dwarfs and some goods to a landscape. Gi'en time (and without spending a single ☼ in buying things, just dwarf-time, once you ha'e a pick, an'il and axe you can in theory do anything map-possible with enough time), you can turn this into a large fortress, megaconstructions, which is a Mountainhome. Should you be able to take megaconstructions or the King with you on embark for free, as you seem to be indicating that results of dwarf-time/playtime should not cost anything more in ☼ than their components at embark?

Why should results of dwarf-time and skill cost nothing more than without?

(Other notes: And depending on 'ariety of cheap meats and whatnot, I can get up to 45 barrels with food for 90☼ without spending dwarftime. I hear this is on the "to-fix" list. Perhaps additionally making it that you need to buy another wagon once you hit the 15000Г limit?)

As for crafting failures, these're dwarfs. "The craftmanship of the dwarfs is unparalleled," as humans say. Perhaps rising material-efficiency with skill (Unskilled dabblers take a lot more wood to make item A because they don't know what's essential, and legendaries take a lot less because they know that what those of medium skill consider essential is not) would be possible, but that's a suggestion that I do not care for and isn't the one of this thread.

edit:Any merchant knows [ETHIC:TRADING_AT_A_LOSS:UNTHINKABLE]./edit

For those who say tl;dr: shame upon you and a pox upon your brain for saying such a thing.

[irmo]

Kobold, do you have some kind of weird profanity filter that replaces the letter 'v'?

[CobaltKobold]

...*cough*...read my signature.

V/v are producible by only slow means (cut/paste (but not with ctrl-v) or alt-fn[laptop numpad access]-8o/jj8), so I usually omit them when it does not impair meaning.

[bjlong]

While I understand what you're saying about dwarven craftsmanship, kobold, I don't think that we should say that dwarves never fail simply because they're dwarves. Any neophyte will make serious mistakes when first learning how to do something, no matter how great they will turn out to be--just look at all the greats in any sport. They all have scars from when they did something wrong. Otherwise, dwarven infants could start churning out crafts and weapons from the time that they are born.

I imagine that legendary human craftsmen end up only as good as master dwarven craftsmen, but they all start out the same way--bumbling and incompetent. The dwarves would shoot ahead and quickly master the trade in 3/4ths the time that humans master theirs.

However, you seem to be suggesting a mechanic which works the same as crafting failures. However this gets put in, whether with dabbling carpenters churning out three !!Oaken Barrel!!'s for every Oaken Barrel, or just taking four logs to make one Oaken Barrel, we seem to agree that the mechanic needs to be there.

[CobaltKobold]

*ahem*

but that's a suggestion that I do not care for

...You'd ha'e to ha'e comedically negati'e skill to accidentally make ‼Oaken Barrel‼ instead of Oaken Barrel.  Nyuk nyuk.

Working with wood is probably something that they indeed would not ha'e any special racial talent in- it's not like they ha'e [WOOD_PREF].