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[Granite26]

Magma forges requiring more energy to use sounds like a good balancer....

[LegoLord]

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?

That is what is called a place holder, as was previously mentioned.  As it stands, I imagine working in all the missing metalworking methods could take quite a good chunk of Toady's time, so it's probably a project for a later date.

[Pilsu]

That is what is called a place holder

It's not holding the place! It's sitting in the wrong state!


As for charcoal, could just increase it's availability with offscreen lumber camps making and hauling it to you.

[Hyndis]

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

As a side note, most of the gold in use today was once used by kings, emperors, and pharaohs. Any gold jewelry you might be wearing could have been mined from the earth a few thousand years ago, and recycled endlessly ever since.

Other metals, like aluminum, are relatively new. Aluminum used to be extremely valuable because it was so hard to produce. The equal value of aluminum and platinum in the game does reflect this. But with the invention of electricity, aluminum went from being extremely rare to the most common and cheapest metal on the planet.

You need to use electricity to effectively smelt aluminum ore, and aluminum is the most common metal in the crust of the planet.

Most of the iron (and other heavy metals) has sunk down lower, below the crust and into the mantle.

[lucusLoC]

My point was that it is broken because it is a placeholder, not becuse it is supposed to be that way. The issue of dissapearing metal will probably be fixed when metal working is expanded.

[Hyndis]

You can sort of do a workaround by implementing prospecting reactions for your smelter.

For example, I have a reaction where I can generate obsidian stones from a smelter. The smelter can also melt down any stones (including obsidian) to produce a single metal bar, with the number of stones required depending on the value of the metal.

Thus, if you have a lot of labor to spare, you can generate metal from nothing. This is far slower than having ore, but its something. So it does somewhat cancel out the lost metal from melting down, and it does have the side effect of making your forge look busy.

Dozens of apprentice dwarves slaving away in the furnaces next to the magma lake, supporting the master metalworkers as they work their crafts.

[Grendus]

That's kind of... cheating though, don't'cha think? Melting down a dozen mudstone into a steel bar, aside from being a time sink, really has no downside.

[Hyndis]

That's kind of... cheating though, don't'cha think? Melting down a dozen mudstone into a steel bar, aside from being a time sink, really has no downside.

Costs fuel, or requires a magma furnace.

Besides, dwarves are supposed to be masters of metalworking. They're supposed to have gems and metal everything.

A dwarven fortress with a pig tail and plump helmet economy just doesn't really seem very dwarven. Dwarven farmers? Yeah, there's always going to be a few, but the real heart of any proper dwarven fortress will be the mighty forge.