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[Hyndis]

A minor request, just a gameplay issue really.

Currently there seems to be about a 90-95% chance that having a dorf cut gems will result in a cut gem of that type. However there is a small chance that instead of making a cut gem, they will make a gem craft, like a scepter or crown or a large gem. Something like that.

This can be somewhat annoying with glass, or any other source of gem you can get a large supply of, such as using modded reactions to prospect stone to gem, or just decorating everything with glass.

Normally you would be able to have two repeating tasks, cut raw green glass and encrust with green glass. First it makes a green glass gem, then it puts the green glass gem on something, that way the gems do not pile up in your stockpiles, nor do you run out of gems and have the encrusting gem task canceled.

However because it is not 100%, and sometimes you get a craft instead of a cut gem, eventually you will run out of gems and the task will be canceled. Or, if you put in an extra cut gem task, you will be swimming in cut green glass gems that are not encrusted onto anything.

It would also be nice to be able to turn my valuable gems into crafts. I want diamond and ruby crowns and scepters! 

So my suggestion is a relatively simple one.


Split the cut gem results into two different jobs.

Cut gems results in 100% of all gems being cut into cut gems of that type, suitable for encrusting on other items.

Craft gems results in 100% of those gems being crafted into finished trade goods, like large gems, crowns, etc.

This would give much more control for the player over what they want to do with their gem stockpiles instead of the cutting gem task producing random results. It may cut a gem, or it may not cut a gem.

Its kind of hard to plan around quantum gems. 

[Mephansteras]

I approve of this idea. Especially since my mod has some special gems which are used in reactions, and it's very annoying to find a small cache of gems useful for making special metals only to have one or two made 'unusable' by being turned into crafts.

And in general, more control over things like this is nice.

[praguepride]

I'll provide a different example of why this idea should be implemented:

I had a dwarf in a strange mood asking for cut gems, but for the first several gems I cut, finished goods were popping out. It wasn't a complete disaster, as I had enough rough gems to get a cut gem to fill the request, but imagine if that's you're only gem on the map. Considering how rare gems are in general, you should know within reason what's going to happen.

To put this same situation in a different context, imagine if your miners instead of dropping/not dropping stone, would instead suddenly craft a block out of the item instead. Most of the time it wouldn't matter too much. Chances are you're getting plenty of rough stones and blocks are usable on most "stone-intensive" projects. However, once you hit a valuable ore like Platinum or Gold or whatever, you would want complete control over how it is handled.

So imagine you had a desire to make a diamond studded adamantine blade. You've got the blade made and you've locked your jeweler into a room with nothing but a workshop, the blade, and a rough diamond. Should be a simple process to have him cut the gem  and then embed it...but NO! He creates a large cut gem instead! Your careful micromanagement is ruined by random chance!

To flip it around again, let's say that you want to produce a bunch of large cut gems...it'd be nice to have more control over it. I never understood why gems were treated so differently then other resources. I'm fine with them being refined (i.e. cut) but why do you have a chance of losing said resource?

[Deimos56]

Perhaps the workshop needs a toggle as to whether or not the Dwarf attempts a craft. As I understand it, actual crafts are supposed to be unlikely, particularly when you think about what they (the dwarves) would have to do to make a scepter out of a single ruby. The toggle will simply tell them whether or not to make a craft instead of a gem if it would normally.

[jfs]

I'd say that the ability to make crafts of a raw gem would depend on the raw gem itself, such as whether there's enough of it, whether it has large enough volumes of high enough purity and so. Essentially assign quality levels to raw gems. (Raw glass should probably be exempt from this and always be of sufficient quality for crafts.)

The second thing would be the skill of the gem cutter. You'd need a skilled gem cutter along with a high enough quality gem to successfully produce a craft. Also, a lower skilled dwarf should probably be able to produce crafts from extremely high quality raw gems and such. Essentially base the chance of gem crafting success on the sum of gem quality and dwarf skill.
If crafting from a raw gem fails, there should be a chance that the failure can be salvaged into a plain cut gem, but also a risk that there's nothing salvageable and the raw gem is destroyed, IMO.

The last thing would obviously be to order dwarves whether to always produce cut gems, or to attempt to produce gem crafts. As said above, the result of producing crafts would be rather unpredictable, but cutting should always be guaranteed success.
Finally, rather than just picking the closest gems by distance, how about instead picking lower quality raw gems over higher quality raw gems if producing cut gems, but prefer higher quality raw gems if producing crafts, thereby raising the chance of crafting success, and lowering the (potential) waste from cutting gems that could be used for crafts.

[Hyndis]

Gems currently have no quality. Gem crafts do, but both raw and cut gems have no quality, nothing to differentiate them from any other raw/cut gem.

[praguepride]

/nod. That's why if you have a ton of gems on the map, it makes a fun "cross-trainer" for other dwarves.

Swimming, pump operating, stone smoothing, wood cutting, smelting, gem cutting....all of those have no quality associated. Perhaps a time factor but other then that nadda


Well, except for the "randomly produce a craft from a gem when cut" thingy...

[Mephansteras]

Which is actually unrealistic, since the cut of a gem is very important when determining its worth. I don't imagine that you would see a jeweler in real life handing over a very expensive diamond or ruby for a novice to practice on.

[Arkenstone]

The reason why you can't choose between them is because gem crafts are supposed to be rare; if the player could toggle in between them at will, why would you choose to not make ONLY gem crafts, which can be much greater in value than a cut gem when a legendary gem cutter does it.

[jfs]

The reason why you can't choose between them is because gem crafts are supposed to be rare; if the player could toggle in between them at will, why would you choose to not make ONLY gem crafts, which can be much greater in value than a cut gem when a legendary gem cutter does it.

That's why I propose that raw gems are given quality levels.
I know they don't have quality levels currently, but in real life, gems have different levels of purity, size, ease of extraction and many other things, so why not also model that into the game, at least to some degree?
Then have the rate of success for making gem crafts depend on the raw gem quality.

[Arkenstone]

The reason why you can't choose between them is because gem crafts are supposed to be rare; if the player could toggle in between them at will, why would you choose to not make ONLY gem crafts, which can be much greater in value than a cut gem when a legendary gem cutter does it.

That's why I propose that raw gems are given quality levels.
I know they don't have quality levels currently, but in real life, gems have different levels of purity, size, ease of extraction and many other things, so why not also model that into the game, at least to some degree?
Then have the rate of success for making gem crafts depend on the raw gem quality.

There's a reason why there aren't currently quality levels on raw materials in this game, only higher value ones.  It would require A LOT of coding to put that bloat into the game, which would be better spent on finishing up some of the cores.
And, if you think about it, the ability to make a craft would be determined by both the size of the gem, and the inspiration of the gemcutter; neither of which should be controllable by the player.

Besides, gems already have quality, of sorts: the value of the gem itself.  Why else would there be separate files for rubies/sapphires and star rubies/sapphires; and faint yellow diamonds?

If you want to incorporate higher quality gems into the game, just mod in a higher value one with the tag

Code: [Select]

[ENVIRONMENT_SPEC:*LOWVALUEGEMNAME*:CLUSTER_SMALL:*PERCENTCHANCE*]

Which is actually unrealistic, since the cut of a gem is very important when determining its worth. I don't imagine that you would see a jeweler in real life handing over a very expensive diamond or ruby for a novice to practice on.

I wouldn't do that either: in fact, I don't let anyone cut gems (except glass) until they've reached at least notag level, even if they're my only gemcutter (which he always will be, unless I'm on a sand+magma map).

[Hyndis]

The suggestion is primarily for gameplay reasons, to make production chains more predictable so you can plan around them.

Gameplay > realism.

[assimilateur]

why would you choose to not make ONLY gem crafts, which can be much greater in value than a cut gem when a legendary gem cutter does it.

Because decorating furniture is much more useful than making crafts. Sure, gem crafts are expensive trade goods, but so are prepared meals, of which you can produce unlimited amounts.

Now you might want to prefer using things like gem crafts or metal jewelry as trade goods, for role-playing reasons, but from a purely practical standpoint, trade goods are a waste of scarce resources.

[Nobbins]

The reason why you can't choose between them is because gem crafts are supposed to be rare; if the player could toggle in between them at will, why would you choose to not make ONLY gem crafts, which can be much greater in value than a cut gem when a legendary gem cutter does it.

I think toggling the possiblity of making a craft should be an option. It'd take out the random factor if you need raw cuts, but still lets you get crafts with some random chance.

[Arkenstone]

The suggestion is primarily for gameplay reasons, to make production chains more predictable so you can plan around them.

Gameplay > realism.

The game's supposed to be unpredictable!
So, if you don't want to run out of gems, just have a dozen or so stockpiled in reserve!
(You can always get more cut gems from caravans)

More random=more Fun!!!
Fun>Stability!