Huzzah! I've been meaning to seek this forum out since I started playing.
First of all, the Astronomy is an interesting idea, would be neat to see some basis for why the dwarves act the way they do. Plus, it would help to have groups of highly similar individuals, I could decide what materials to use in construction (Duvak like granite, the color lemon((since when is 'lemon' a color?)) and cats for their bravado) and (Metronak likes marble, the color lemon, and cats for their beard). These people could be born the same day but different years and therefore like similar things with random modifiers for each year (cats for bravado as opposed to beard).
However, my complaint comes from the fact that dwarves should never see the sky! They should grow up believing that the Heavens are made of the rock over head and that the rocky heavens Heavens held up by timber beams (timber from Tower Caps of course). Only the original immigrants should know the dark secret of the bright, vomit inducing Sky. (Dang, went all Logan's Run there)
Next Ceramics!
I know this has been suggested before, but I gotta get my 2 cents in.
First gathering clay: Designate a clay gathering area along a clay containing wall in a similar way to how you would designate an area for mining. Have clay gathering slowly eat away at the wall like mining, only much much slower. So, designate a 5x5 area of solid clay wall for clay gathering, and eventually you will have a 5x5 room. If stone is encountered in the area, then the stone is left alone. Sort of like how "damp" stone is left alone.
Now, have ceramics exist in two forms: Green (unfired) and Finished (fired). Green has only the initial material value and whatever quality modifier imbued to it by the Potter (craftsdwarf, whatever) that made it. Finished ceramics could get a 2x value modifier. On top of that, allow them to be decorated with bone, shell, studded with metal, encrusted with gems, etc. These could be some bad-ass trade goods.
Goods made from ceramics could include weapons, bricks (finally some fricken stone in a world with a water level and no sand!), pottery, crafts, decoration, cups, statues, etc, etc
I think that they ought to come in stacks like ammo. Lets face it, you are gonna get a huge number of plates out of a ton of clay. So I figure that making a stack of 10 plates at low level Potter from a unit of clay is not unreasonable, and getting a stack of 40 from that same unit of clay from a Legendary Potter makes sense.
The act of firing (baking) ceramics could have some interesting skill effects. Since firing ceramics in the real world is a gamble, have the skill of the Dwarf firing them (furnace operator skill) effect how many Finished ceramic items you will ultimately get in a stack. Say you have a Legendary Potter making the greenware (unfired) ceramics, but only a midlevel Furnace Operator running the Kiln, a stack of 40 unfinished plates may end up as a stack of only 20 plates!
Now, my idea for plates. Have them act as the obvious trade good, some of these things are gonna be absurdly valuable by the time they come out of the Kiln. But, you could also have them act as value enhancers for food! Say a dwarf eats a -well-crafted- meal. If he eats it off of a plate it could seem to him that he ate a +finely-crafted+ meal instead. Plates would, depending upon their own quality and such, improve the meal for the dwarf! As they say, when you go to a restaurant, you pay for the atmosphere and the food! So if you eat a burger in a fancy restaurant as opposed to McDwarves (copyright!) you are gonna enjoy it more!
Now, to keep this from being an easily exploited thing, make plates run a chance of being broken after each use. Say a dwarf grabs a plate from a stack of 20 +<<Plates>>+, he is gonna run a 1/10 chance of breaking that plate and not being able to return it to the stack when he is done. Or say his meal is interrupted somehow (a kobold thief pops up next to the Hammer dwarf at the next table and Hi-Jinks ensue), our original dwarf is gonna get pissed and smash his plate because he was interrupted during his meal.
So, more later. When I remember the rest.
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Topic: The Inventions Megathread. (Read 7111 times)