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Yes, too much value is gained from spoils of war.  There should be more emphasis on crafting your own goods.

123 (65.4%)

Yes, but it's unbalanced on purpose so that you can worry about more important things if you choose.  It's a design decision.

37 (19.7%)

No, the trade system feels balanced just fine as it is.

24 (12.8%)

No, in fact they aren't valuable enough, and I feel like I should earn more for fending off intruders!

4 (2.1%)

Total Members Voted: 188

Voting closed: December 08, 2009, 10:03:30 pm

[Jiri Petru]

Double post again. Sorry, I keep mistaking the quote and modify buttons. Wish there were a delete button. 

[Lyrax]

For a very, very, very long time (up until the 19th - early 20th century) the word 'robe' meant 'clothes' and 'to clothe' and only very recently has the word lost those meanings.

On the other hand, I don't think the clothes of goblins should be very valuable to dwarves without reprocessing.  And much of their clothing ought to be pretty worthless after the goblins are done with it.  But some of it has to be worth saving.

Dwarf clothing should probably be buried with the dwarves.  After all, these are our people.

[nil]

I think the dwarves should be able to reprocess clothing because I think they should be able to reprocess anything; being able to take things apart and put them back together in general seems to be a trait dwarves should have, and as people have pointed out there's plenty of historical precedence for ragpicking.  Also, players have a tenancy to throw dwarves into extreme situations where reprocessing would seem less out of place--while a medieval city might not recycle their enemy's clothing in an organized way, twelve dwarves living in the side of a zombie-invested glacier might.

But Jiri is right, in that basically forcing the player to do so on a large and organized scale just to keep FPS down doesn't really make sense. For one, scavenged cloth should either be of low quality or require some sort of extended bleaching process (maybe another use for lye?).  Second, and importantly, the piles of dead goblin clothing should disappear by themselves if the player clooses not to claim them.  Fabric exposed to the elements should start degrading within a few months, and disappear completely within a year or two.   I'd like to see Kobolds get more involved too, zeroing in on unguarded piles instead of trying to sneak through the front gate every time.

In other words, the option to scavenge and reuse enemy clothing should be there for those who want or need it.  But it should bring in a low value or have some other disadvantage.  Ideally, a prosperous fortress won't even bother, letting lesser races and mother nature take care of the refuse instead.  Maybe even have poor, idle dwarves do the same thing individually, to raise a little extra cash (although the economy will have to be much less broken before that would be worth anyone's time).

[Skorpion]

The thing is, my reprocessing suggestion isn't reprocessing the clothing for reuse as clothing. It's basically cleaning and shredding them for use as rags.
Rags which, with the dwarven love of machinery, will be used for lubricating gears and axles with animal fat, tourniquets, bandages, and so forth.

It's certainly better than just throwing it all into the magma pipe as an offering to the earth.

[Dvergar]

Honnestly I find that my goblin attackers wear have more invested in armor than in clothing, metal being reusable and all looting it is a no-brainer, and yes it brings in too much money

But like I said before this is irrelevant because of the potency of a trained stone-crafter, the Dwarven currency should inflate very rapidly due to the ease of creating wealth.

[Skorpion]

Skill progression should be a lot slower. Someone doing nothing but eating, drinking, sleeping, and crafting rocks can be legendary in a few years. Worthy of legend, producing masterpieces with every stone.

[MuonDecay]

Not only is it abundantly overpowered to sell the clothing of invaders, but I'm outright just tired of mopping it all up. Even modding them to not wear clothing, only armor, has not really alleviated the FPS-crushing season of dumping and melting that follows every siege.

For a remarkably long period of time, nothing in the fort gets done because the dwarves are busily smelting the bloody armor of the goblins. I can't stand just hiding it because eventually the map is covered by untold thousands of pieces of refuse.

[Urist McDepravity]

Rapid degradation upon piercing/chopping/slashing for cloth and blunting for armour impacts should be sufficient. You cant expect something wearable when you just chopped wearer in halves. XX(GCS silk loincloth)XX is realistic enough, no value and therefore kind of no reason to strip it.
Burning (or even, mass-burning) corpses with all their cloth is also great idea. You should get some useable ash and bones as result.

[Neonivek]

Rapid degradation upon piercing/chopping/slashing for cloth and blunting for armour impacts should be sufficient. You cant expect something wearable when you just chopped wearer in halves. XX(GCS silk loincloth)XX is realistic enough, no value and therefore kind of no reason to strip it.
Burning (or even, mass-burning) corpses with all their cloth is also great idea. You should get some useable ash and bones as result.

Don't forget that some kinds of cloth rot

[Warlord255]

As valuable as spoils of war are I have always been able to purchase all non-trade goods from the caravan starting with the very first dwarven caravan, creating stone mugs is so simple, effective, and even neccessary in order to create stockpile areas.

Compared to stone-crafting, all other trade goods fall short, metal-working, textiles, and gem cutting may create more wealth, but require more micro-managing and infrastructure, and are thus unneccessary

Sorry if that is too far off topic...

No, it's within the realm of the discussion.

Stone production is somewhat ludicrous right now, and crafts even more so. Even with mass blockmaking and megaconstructions, it's a bit silly... methinks we should toss some fantastical lithovores in to help alleviate the problem.

[Dvergar]

Hmmmm.....lithovores, sounds fun, maybe the notorious black pudding will make it into Dwarf Fortress or one of its other amorphis friends

Regardless, a goblin nation that waves of goblins at a few dozen dwarves and fails again and again is either masochistic, or simply weak.  In both cases the goblins should not be wearing a masterpeice Giant Spider Silk thongs which likely are worth more than their pitiful nation. 

Hopefully once the new military arc is implemented the net worth of the attacking force will be directly related to the economic prowess of the state, repeated failure to destroy a dwarven neighbor would decrease their wealth and therefore decrease the value of the loot.

[darkflagrance]

To further elaborate on siege improvements:

In the future, based on dev goals, potential wealth from war, and warfare in general. will be much more limited due to:

-the enemy civs only possessing a limited amount of soldiers

-diplomacy and incentives for diplomacy (i.e. reasons why someone might seek to end a war instead of continue the slaughter for fun)

-enemy armies being better at fighting with regards to AI and siege techniques - thus it will cost more in terms of resources to kill them, and it will be harder to strip their loot from their cooling corpses

Thus, our current profitability level of loot, while perhaps slightly mildly unbalanced due to GSC silk availability, is not necessary at excessive levels by itself - it is only unbalanced because so much of the military arc is not complete.

[Qmarx]

Compared to stone-crafting, all other trade goods fall short, metal-working, textiles, and gem cutting may create more wealth, but require more micro-managing and infrastructure, and are thus unneccessary

Sorry if that is too far off topic...

Glass crafting is a little better, IMO.

[Urist McDepravity]

Don't forget that some kinds of cloth rot

Yes, but there's no need to increase speed for invader's cloth compared to already-implemented. Currently, dwarven hygiene does not differ much from goblin's, running covered in vomit and blood, and storing stuff on the floor (not like cloth bags or wooden bins help much).
Althrough it could make sense to rot faster if covered with contaminants.

[Dark Dude]

I think Zwei's idea is best. Just drop the prices of these materials tenfold at base cost. I'm pretty sure living in an almost resource-void glacier should be impossible, but with goblins throwing themselves at my pillbox every season, I get a fresh supply of tens of thousands worth in armour that buys all my logs, alcamahol and meat and keeps everything alive and happy >_>