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[Warlord255]

Every repost is a repost of a repost. This is no exception, as I've suggested this idea before. TL;DR version is at the bottom.

Right now, cloth is not a very useful industry. At best, you can do the following:

1. Replace your dwarves' clothes every 5 years.
2. Make ropes and bags.
3. Sell cloth to merchants who are trying to sell you cloth.

Compare this to the wood, metal, stone, or glass industries, which let you make weapons, tools, traps, and furniture, which are the backbone of a functioning and furnished fortress, as well as valuable crafts. Granted, you can make cloth crafts, but it's effectively the same as selling the cloth, and you're more likely to grind your excess stone and must-go-somewhere bones into crafts.

Short of re-dressing your dwarves - which you rarely have to do, and aren't obligated to - cloth is entirely optional. What little you need (bags, rope) can either be imported or replaced with other industries (leather, metal).

So, the question arises; what is the simplest-to-code way to make cloth useful and/or necessary? Some ideas...

1. Bedsheets.
While the lack of bedsheets/matresses can be waved off with "dwarven toughness", it wouldn't be all too hard to implement them as a bonus to beds. Using the decoration system, a mattress and sheets (perhaps also pillows) can be used to improve a bed's quality, and some tangible bonus could be achieved from it - such as shorter sleep periods or faster wound recovery, to say nothing of the ubiquitous "happy thoughts". The bonuses for mattress/sheets/pillows would have to be averaged somehow such that ultra-beds take a bit of work.

2. Doormats
Not sure if/when this will be valid; if, with the upcoming version's contaminants, we have phenomena like muddy bootprints or trudged-in blood, a token doormat could stop these contaminants, or arbitrarily clean the boots/shoes. Would be relatively easy to code, though, I'd imagine.

3. Dressing
A token system for dwarves owning multiple sets of clothes.
    a. Dwarf is now the proud owner of a fancy dresser. Huzzah!
    b. Dwarf gets freebie clothes (as they do now), puts them into dresser.
    c. After sleeping, dwarf goes to dresser and changes clothes.
    d. When clothes reach their deteriorating point, they are not destroyed until the dwarf changes out of them, at which point they will seek new clothes.
    e. While on break, Dwarves will wash their clothes arbitrarily at the dresser using a bucket of water. They wash one set, then change into it and wash the other.

4. Rope Ladders
Slated to go in next version, but again, can be accomplished with imported cloth.

5. Cleaning Rags, Bandages
Low-quality cloth scraps could be used for the Cleaning labor, or as part of health care. The latter could well be a way to make basic cloth production a necessity for a fortress.

Well, that's all for now. Here's the TL;DR version.


-Bedsheets to improve bed quality, reduce sleep/heal time
-Doormats to stop contaminant spread, if applicable
-Dwarves switch sets of clothes after sleeping, use dresser
-Rope ladders, likely to go in next version
-Rags/bandages for cleaning/health care/medicine


Any contributions/discussion welcome.

[Foa]

Well, the doormats need to be like shag carpet if you want it from cloth.

And, there better be happiness from the clothing changes ( Bob Dylan has recently changed into a fresh [Article of Clothing] lately ) , and the other thing you asked for, like Urist was able to get the stench of Elf from themselves, or was able to shine his artifact adamant codpiece.

[profit]

Bandages that dwarves can carry while on a march could be exceedingly useful to keep from bleeding to death.

[tsen]

-Windmill component
-Oilcloth outgarments to mitigate unhappy thoughts from being in rain. (Also adds another alchemist use) Would be standard issue for military, hunters, woodcutters, plant gatherers, fisherdwarves. Winter clothing to mitigate cold effects, whatever they might be.
-Bandana/filter mask type things to mitigate inhaled stuff and handkerchiefs to reduce transmission of sickness if it is relevant.
-Fire arrows/bolts/ballista bolts, torches, wicks for candles and lanterns
-Cushions for chairs/Upholstery
-Tapestries (requires thread, possibly multiple types of thread and or multiple colors of dyed thread) Reduce unhappy thought power for noise a little maybe?
-Twine (think of it as the 14th century duct tape. Could be used in conjunction with cloth or paper wrappings to create neat packages that would allow haulers to carry more than one item at a time, especially when dwarves bought or sold items. Would free up some bins possibly.
-Uniforms for military dwarves (tabards perhaps, with images designed and sewed on)
-Thread required to sew images onto items or to sew period. I.e. make shirt requires 1 thread 1 cloth (ideally 1/20th of one thread or somesuch if we can get Toady to spring for more closely tracked material units)
-Aprons to help keep the dwarves' "normal" clothing cleaner so they spend less time cleaning (thereby improving productivity)
-Battle Standards (1 spear + several dyed cloth = standard, wield as spear, standardbearer grants some kind of morale bonus to nearby dwarves)
-Bags to contain bones.
-Cloth or thread to make relevant instruments and tools like bagpipes, harps and bowstrings. (Sinew or metal wire would make more sense in some cases)
-Pajamas
-Tablecloths, napkins, towels (tablecloth adds its value to the value of the table, napkins increase happy thought from eating, towels mitigate unhappy thoughts from being out in the rain and prevent unhappy thoughts from bathing)
-Sparring dummies and training weapons
-Hammocks as beds
-Mattresses  (So bed would be frame + mattress, 1 "make bed frame" would make 2 frames and 1 cloth = 1 mattress maybe)
-Process cloth further to make paper, and/or recycle worn clothing as paper material (also increase wear rate a bit and make it relative to labors performed)
-Slings (inexpensive ranged weapons)
-Padding worn in place of normal clothing beneath chain and plate armor
-Fishing nets and creel for fisherdwarves (catch fish faster, keep them in a bag then drop them off when it fills up, rather than leaving mounds of fish around.
-Tents for outdoor/aquifer fortresses
-Sails if we ever get ships
-Stabilizer used with resins to make fiberglass-like stuff or with plasters to make casts (shorten broken bone healing time) and art stuff.
-Cheesecloth, once we get milking in the game.
-Burial shrouds

To flesh out the cleaning bit, furniture could gradually get dusty and that would decrease its apparent value and chance to cause happy thoughts.

Whew. All I could think of in one sitting.

Edit: added a couple.

[Warlord255]

-windmill component

Definite yes.

Oilcloth yadda yadda raincoat, alchemist

Also yes. Winter coats are more leather territory.

Bandana yadda yadda air filter/handkerchief

Possibly. Up to Toady.

Twine

Could be implemented if multi-hauling ever comes in.

Tabards

Sure.

Thread for sewing images

Also yes.

Aprons

Doable, but may be made of leather. Specifics up to the toad.

Flags

What constitutes "morale bonus"? Can it be displayed visually?

Cloth for instruments

Metal/___gut is more relevant, and bagpipes have yet to exist.

Tablecloths, napkins, towels

I think Dwarves like the texture of stone tables. Polished granite countertops are classy. Napkins/towels falls under cloth for cleaning.

Sparring dummies

YES.

Hammocks

Maybe for elves.

Mattresses

"Decoration" system might work better, so you can have the absolute basics without cloth when you start.

Paper

Not sure.

Slings

Also not sure. What would they fling, conjured pebbles? Entire rocks? Maybe in Adventure Mode, or for kobolds.

Padding

Eh. Not sure. Will have to wait for next version's armor ruling.

Fishing nets (and line?)

Also yes.

Tents

Maybe.

Casts

Depending on how the medicine skill is handled, sure.

[tsen]

For cloth aprons I was thinking kitchens/stills not smithy etc.

No idea what Toady is going to do for morale, but I assume it'll come up eventually. If nothing else, just make the squad more responsive to commands if they have a standard bearer. Not really any need for visual, except for in military screen.

Padding is historically accurate, so there is a point in its favor.

Tents would change "slept ___" and "was caught outside in the rain/snow etc" to "slept in a tent" and that would be a much less unhappy thought. We don't need them to necessarily set up a 9x9 tent, but can just make enough to equip all soldiers with and abstract it into their backpacks as an option in the squad screen.

[scale_e]

A well might require a piece of cloth (or several) to make a filter, if it is to turn murky pool water into clean water. Otherwise it just hauls up crappy water. This filter would need to be changed regularly.

[Pilsu]

The basic bed should probably be made of cloth, not wood. Frame is the historical luxury

[Warlord255]

A well might require a piece of cloth (or several) to make a filter, if it is to turn murky pool water into clean water. Otherwise it just hauls up crappy water. This filter would need to be changed regularly.

I assumed we were referring to AIR filters, to counter inhaled poisons to a degree.

[Faces of Mu]

Do dwarves still get upset about their clothes rotting off them? I remember having tantrum spirals about this quite a few versions back. Does it still happen?

I'd like to see dwarves use thread and cloth to patch and repair their clothes. Just wearing them til they are no longer useful and then exchanging them for a new one is a bit of a modern capitalist behaviour in my view.

[scale_e]

A well might require a piece of cloth (or several) to make a filter, if it is to turn murky pool water into clean water. Otherwise it just hauls up crappy water. This filter would need to be changed regularly.

I assumed we were referring to AIR filters, to counter inhaled poisons to a degree.

No I was referring to water filters as a component for a well.
But air filters. That's not a bad idea. (thinking about miasma)

[Faces of Mu]

A great suggestion thread here about flags and banners and such. Toady made the first response. I would love to see multi-z flagpoles and banner stands (erectable once only to your set height, rather than additive building like walls and floors are now).

[Warlord255]

A great suggestion thread here about flags and banners and such. Toady made the first response. I would love to see multi-z flagpoles and banner stands (erectable once only to your set height, rather than additive building like walls and floors are now).

From that thread;

Yeah... I kinda expect a dwarf would more want their coat-of-arms carved into a wall somewhere (and perhaps colored using gems or some such?) than have a flag hanging outside their fort

You can't carry a wall into battle.

...yet.

[Felblood]

If soldiers and guards get tabbards, crooks should get some sort of gang-bandanna-esque item, that helps thieving adventurers find fences, once the criminal support devs go in.

Being able to make useful cleaning rags and bandages, out of all that goblin stuff would strike a nice balance, between making local fiber production pointless, and making the spoils of war worthless.

[Footkerchief]

I really like the doormat idea in particular.  The implementation could be as simple as removing all spatters from STANCE body parts.

tsen mentioned cloth padding under armor -- this is a good idea, and historically precedented: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gambeson