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[Skorpion]

I think the next release should display fractions of bars as well as whole bars on the 't' screen for smelters. It'd make melting items more efficient, certainly.

[Phantom]

Wasn't this suggested a lot?

[Grendus]

It's always seemed strange to me that you get less metal back from melting than you spend making the item. The great thing about recycling metals as opposed to paper or plastic irl is that you get almost the same amount of metal from melting that you spent making it. Metal is only lost slowly through rust, wear, breakage, etc. A solid piece can be melted down into liquid metal of the same mass.

[Pilsu]

Wouldn't hurt if melting was a bit more sophisticated than using a single bar of charcoal to melt a tin flute

[Granite26]

Is there an easy way to create a pile of objects that are designated as 'to be melted?'  If not, that'd be super handy, as I could gather up all the detritus from a battle quickly, and not have bored FO's when I lock out the outside

[Draco18s]

It's always seemed strange to me that you get less metal back from melting than you spend making the item. The great thing about recycling metals as opposed to paper or plastic irl is that you get almost the same amount of metal from melting that you spent making it. Metal is only lost slowly through rust, wear, breakage, etc. A solid piece can be melted down into liquid metal of the same mass.

It's a game mechanic thing.  If you could turn 1 bar of gold into a statuette, then back into a gold bar you could repeat the process ad fuel-initem* until you were a god at making gold crafts.

And you only ever dug one bit of gold ore out of the earth.

*That is, as long as you have fuel

[AltF8]

It's a game mechanic thing.  If you could turn 1 bar of gold into a statuette, then back into a gold bar you could repeat the process ad fuel-initem* until you were a god at making gold crafts.

And you only ever dug one bit of gold ore out of the earth.

*That is, as long as you have fuel

I agree from a game mechanic standpoint, but I guess if you take the time and fuel to do it, why wouldn't you get really good at it after a while?

[Grendus]

It's always seemed strange to me that you get less metal back from melting than you spend making the item. The great thing about recycling metals as opposed to paper or plastic irl is that you get almost the same amount of metal from melting that you spent making it. Metal is only lost slowly through rust, wear, breakage, etc. A solid piece can be melted down into liquid metal of the same mass.

It's a game mechanic thing.  If you could turn 1 bar of gold into a statuette, then back into a gold bar you could repeat the process ad fuel-initem* until you were a god at making gold crafts.

And you only ever dug one bit of gold ore out of the earth.

*That is, as long as you have fuel

Agreed. Magma as an infinite energy source is awesome, but it screws stuff up. However, if there were no magma forges or magma smelters, I would consider it perfectly acceptable to simply forge and melt a craft over and over, so long as you're willing to use the charcoal.

[Granite26]

Agreed, it's a break applied to a break...

My preferred fix would be it taking actors longer to develop skills, but that would require a rebalance of quality levels, etc

[Pilsu]

Magma forges, no matter how unrealistic, are irrelevant. Metal can be recycled very efficiently, there's absolutely no reason a smith couldn't practice with the same metal over and over. It'd be very tedious to keep remelting your work but there's no reason you couldn't do it

[lucusLoC]

The whole metal industry suffers from a bit of too much abstraction. Currently everything seems to be hammer forged, which is verry efficeint way to use metal, but is verry labor intesive and time consuming. Milling, cold forging and casting metals are not in at all. I think once these are in the metal system will work much better, since there will be consumables other than metal for most jobs (for example, stone or ceramic casts for casting, made by a mason, that cannont be reused)

Once we have a "casting funace" and a "milling/cold forging shop" then we can revisit metal use and magical dissaperance. Untill then it is just a broken mechanic put in place to balance another broken mechanic.for now it works as a functonal placeholder.

[Pilsu]

But it doesn't balance anything. It's completely unrelated to the issues you mentioned

"Hmm, several metalworking methods are missing. Better make recycled metal magically disappear!" WHAT?

[tsen]

I suppose if item quality affected the time taken to melt that would be something of a balancing factor. Rationale could be that the smelter has to perform rituals to make it "ok" to melt down examples of the fort's craftsdwarfship, and the nicer the piece the more involved the ritual. Goblin crap, of course, can simply be tossed into the crucible without fanfare. This might necessitate some kind of tag attached to meltable items to show their origins.

[Grendus]

I suppose if item quality affected the time taken to melt that would be something of a balancing factor. Rationale could be that the smelter has to perform rituals to make it "ok" to melt down examples of the fort's craftsdwarfship, and the nicer the piece the more involved the ritual. Goblin crap, of course, can simply be tossed into the crucible without fanfare. This might necessitate some kind of tag attached to meltable items to show their origins.

That sounds a little... strange, actually. Would be better to simply increase the time taken to forge or melt with magma. Using a magma forge would still be preferable for the resource management bonus, but using magma to level metalworking would be much slower than using charcoal. A decent excuse would be the extra safety precautions for working with magma as a power source.

[Maw]

I suppose if item quality affected the time taken to melt that would be something of a balancing factor. Rationale could be that the smelter has to perform rituals to make it "ok" to melt down examples of the fort's craftsdwarfship, and the nicer the piece the more involved the ritual. Goblin crap, of course, can simply be tossed into the crucible without fanfare. This might necessitate some kind of tag attached to meltable items to show their origins.

That sounds a little... strange, actually. Would be better to simply increase the time taken to forge or melt with magma. Using a magma forge would still be preferable for the resource management bonus, but using magma to level metalworking would be much slower than using charcoal. A decent excuse would be the extra safety precautions for working with magma as a power source.

I could buy that.  For the benefit of 'unlimited' resource (powering the forge), offset is time duration to do anything (safety precautions, limited endurance for the high temperatures working near magma etc).  Makes me think of Winter of the World series, particularly book 3 with Alv's setup on the island.

Thus, if you had adequate resources (charcoal), or alternatively an efficient industry for its supply, using a charcoal forge will produce more quickly.