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[Impaler[WrG]]

Coins are generally made with cold metal 'blanks' being stamped with a die.

[praguepride]

Coins are generally made with cold metal 'blanks' being stamped with a die.

And how do you get these cold metal blanks? I'm betting they don't just pop out of the ore like that


To my knowledge you melt down the ore and fill sheets to create the blanks. Let them cool and then press into them with a stamp.

Now granted, we have awesome machines that do that now, it was probably harder to mint coins cold back in the day...

Edit: From wiki

The preparation of the flan or planchet has varied over the years. In ancient times, the flan was heated before striking because the metal that the coin dies were made out of was not as hard as dies today, and the dies would have worn faster and broken sooner had the flan not been heated to a high temperature to soften it.

[Andeerz]

NW_Kohaku and praguepride, you both raise some excellent points.

And Impaler[WrG], this discussion of smithing skill division does have to do with the economics in the game.  The way skills are handled in the game directly affects how resources are consumed and what results from their consumption.  But, I do think that this discussion of economics probably merits another thread.

However, I do feel I need to explain some stuff that arose from a previous post of mine...

Yeah, I shouldn't have thrown around the term "realistic" without some definition first.  I define "realistic" as "resembling real life". To explain what I mean by "realistic economy", I will start with a quote by NW_Kohaku, as he put things quite nicely:   

"The economy" is nothing less than the sum total of every human interaction in an entire global community of billions of people.

Replace "human" with "dwarf, elf, human, gobbo, etc.", "an entire global community" with "a DF-generated-world", "billions" with "thousands", and you have what the economy ideally is in DF. 

How do we make a more realistic economy in DF?  Answer: Make the interactions between entities more realistic.  This includes interactions between dwarfs and raw materials, which ties directly into the skills and professions discussed in the present thread.  Making this stuff better modeled will result in a much more realistic modeling of economics in DF, and will help set the groundwork for making other aspects of the game's handling of economics more realistic.  Those other aspects are for another thread. 

[Kavalion]

Personally, I do think that various smithing skills are far too rewarding when compared to other economies, considering how simple it is to set up.  And I almost feel like it would make sense to have a ton of skills for metal, since... they're dwarves.  At least 50% of them should have metal-related skills, right? 

Realism is great and should be considered, but game fun and balance should probably take precedence.  Right now, (and maybe changes to this are already in the works) I think the Farming and Metal industries are way too easy and profitable (not to mention aiding the dwarves in survival a lot more) when compared to other industries like Meat, Glass, and Wood.

So, I could see more complications to smithing helping to make other industries more attractive - at least in early fortress life.

[NW_Kohaku]

Personally, I do think that various smithing skills are far too rewarding when compared to other economies, considering how simple it is to set up.  And I almost feel like it would make sense to have a ton of skills for metal, since... they're dwarves.  At least 50% of them should have metal-related skills, right? 

Realism is great and should be considered, but game fun and balance should probably take precedence.  Right now, (and maybe changes to this are already in the works) I think the Farming and Metal industries are way too easy and profitable (not to mention aiding the dwarves in survival a lot more) when compared to other industries like Meat, Glass, and Wood.

So, I could see more complications to smithing helping to make other industries more attractive - at least in early fortress life.

Wait, what? 

Right now, the textile mill is probably the most complex industry, but metalsmithing comes close.

Also, metal is too easy to make money compared to things like glass or wood or meat?

OK, if you have magma and sand, and simply channel that magma near the sand, and you have what effectively amounts to a limitless license to mint money.  You have infinite green glass, which can be set up to provide infinite glass items, which are at least decently valuable, or you can make raw green glass and decorate everything else.  Then you can make clear glass if you have ashes.  Yeah, maybe it's labor intensive, but you can easily outpace a handful of platinum items with a 40 material value by simply making over 20 glass items.  And those glassmakers would rise in experience faster, as well.

Which brings us to wood.  Yeah, sure, it's not valuable, but it doesn't really have to be - you generally use it for beds, barrels, bins, and the charcoal or ashes that are used for other industries.  Without magma, that metal industry requires a wood industry.  Even with magma, you probably want wood for steel production.

Stone?  Stone is basically the same as glass, you have more stone than you can do anything with, so you might as well turn them all into doors or blocks or tables or something. 

Meat?  Yeah, not as powerful or valuable as farms (unless you go unicorn or mermaid breeding), and it has some more micromanagement involved with ensuring you have enough butchers on duty, places to put the chunks, or manually designating the victims.  Still, you do get food, bones, and fat all at once.

Really, I hardly use my metal production at all.  I pretty much make steel armor and weapons, plus silver weapons, and maybe make an alloy of tin and copper (depending on the relative amounts available) to make chains.  My glass production is just so much easier for trade goods, and I don't have to worry about running out of sand.

[Kavalion]

I don't consider metalsmithing or textiles to be very complicated. 

Mining > Furnace Operating > 1 of 4 metalsmithing skills.
Growing > Plant Processing > Weaving > Clothesmaking.

They are fairly simple and generate a lot of wealth, plus utility in the case of metal armor, weapons, and high value furniture for the dwarves to admire.  Since we can buy every type of metal from the dwarven caravans, we can get plenty of material to keep the smiths busy even if we aren't mining a lot of usable ore (not to mention melting invaders' equipment).  Dye and alloys are some nice options, as well, to expand on the industries.

I think the meat industry is probably the hardest, since we've got to deal with animals, rotting, and low value, low utility results.  Generally, it's simpler to just bypass the bulk of this industry by buying the cheap meat and leather in bulk from the caravans (and we can usually get a little higher value leather by doing this anyway).  It's not like we won't have plenty of goblin bones.

[Kilo24]

I pretty much concur with Kohaku's above post.

Farming isn't that profitable, it's preparing meals which is the big part (something which meat benefits from as well.)  And metalsmithing is already a pretty involved industry.  You need to mine out veins to get the ore you want, smelt the ore with wood or magma, then forge it with more wood or magma (wood still being required for steel.)

Selling iron from goblins is very valuable, but that's a fault of their inventory/a lack of a good supply/demand model.  It certainly wouldn't be nearly as profitable if you had to melt it down first and reforge it into different-sized armor.

Stone crafts are laughably easy to make and you've got a nearly endless stone supply.  A few stonecrafters (or one legendary one) is an extraordinarily easy way to make money.

And this suggestion would not appreciably make it harder to make money.  If anything, it would discourage metalcrafting for non-monetary works as a whole because it's harder to train up, whereas you could just dedicate one financially motivated crafter to working with platinum ore to make 3000 platinum goblets a year.  It limits what dwarves can do effectively, which makes them less interesting.

[Lmaoboat]

Does this really add anything to the game besides some flavor text? I don't see any result of this is besides having to assign more tasks. The complexity of this game should come from emergent gameplay, not piling even more arbitrary micromanagement on people.

[CaptApollo12]

There's already something blacksmithing, weaponsmithing, armorsmithing, metalcrafting, etc.  Do we really need four more skills to manage?  Would these all be multiplied so you have redarmorsmithing different than whitearmorsmithing different than red and white metalcrafting?

Way to blatantly distort and Straw-man what I said, I swear it's as if you didn't even read anything past the first sentence.  First off its a net incresse of 2 skills because 4 our added and 2 are removed, sorry if I exceeded your mathematical education.  Second I explicitly said Weapon and Armor smithing are not appropriately 'crossed' with each of the 4 metal types and should remain separate skills.

Weapons and Armor smiting would remain separate skills to reflect the high skill level needed to make these objects, as both weapons and armor are realistically only made from the harder copper alloys, Iron and Steel both Weapon and Blade smiths should be though of as highly refined Blacksmiths.

If would appreciate people at the very least debating what I actually proposed rather then immediately going into either a tantrum or rapture over something far far larger in scope then what I'm proposing.  I personally don't like skill synergy concepts and think a modest division/reorganization of certain skills will produce a desirable system without the need for synergy (which would be an interface and game play nightmare).

Raptor Jesus went extinct for our sins. I remember thinking about this when I read it, but its too painful to look through it again to see if Im just random. I think this would not work for DF, but is a cool idea. Just like a lot of suggestions in this game it just doesnt fit. Though I would welcome playing a game you programmed where you had redsmithing etc etc.