Deon, Mech, I obviously love you both for your efforts, but I'm a little worried about Mechanix's additions as they seem to make wood redundant -- rock anvils? Rock chains? Even rock vials? I know dwarves have rock affinity, and this is a fictional game, but to be honest this is suddenly verging sort of close to the precipice of cheap.
Now.. I obviously know your decision to include them would have been considered, but I just wanted to throw my $0.02 in here now before the iron cools. Toady undoubtedly at some point explored the possibility of rock cages, weapons, trap parts, and so on, and decided ultimately that rock was inappropriate or unsuitable -- probably because it's brittle and can plane away, ruining everything. I could easily tolerate them with some sort of failure rate, if only to balance out their accessibility. The dynamic of an all-rock furniture/weapon pile is pretty significant.. not to mention one that can be dismantled back into its component rock ingredients when no longer required.
And Mechanix.. I don't hate you, honest. I'm just concerned over the legitimacy this all-rock business brings to the table, and I hope I've been fair with my criticism.
And for those unaware, inclusions are:
Craft rocktip arrows (50), Craft rocktip bolts (50), Grind non-economic rocks, Craft rock animal trap, Craft rock anvil, Craft rock axe, Craft rock bucket, Craft rock chain, Craft rock crutch, Craft rock enormous corkscrew, Craft rock giant axe blade, Craft rock maul, Craft rock mechanism, Craft rock mechanism (magma safe), Craft rock menacing spike, Craft rock pick, Craft rock serrated disc, Craft rock spear, Craft rock spiked ball, Craft rock splint, Craft rock traction bench, Craft rock tube section, Craft rock vials, Cut obsidian into gem, Cut large gem into gems.
There are other minor things, too. Like getting sawdust in your flour when you use that wooden quern - run a Google search for 'wooden quern' -- and rock weapons, most notably spears. But as they were present since before 3.25d, I will leave them as an aside..
Reprah, I hear ya, and you're being quite fair. I put a lot of thought in to all these changes and it all boiled down to this: How do I want to play the game?
For me, the fun part is building. I don't want to have to deal with the resource scarcity of certain things, namely wood, in order to build simple things. Dwarves are the foremost stoneworkers in the known world. It seems silly that anything is out of their reach in regards to making things from stone. To me, the only thing wood is good for is burning, which is the direction my mod takes
I understand what my mod does and how it changes the DF metagame, but that's how I like to play.
But all that aside, I eventually want to be able to make everything out of every material, within reason. That, within reason part, I'm still working on. Does it matter if you can make something out of a certain material, but no one ever uses it? Probably not, and that is where more testing and feedback like this come in (which is always appreciated). The game and mods are constantly changing and being updated, nothing is set in stone. (heyoooo!)
That being said, stone anvils and chains are probably going to get axed in my next release. I originally had stone anvils in there because I forgot to bring an anvil once and didn't want to have to deal with that again (this was before I decided to release my first mod).
The chains don't really make sense because of all the moving parts... But then again, a stone bridge and mechanism can be made of stone and routinely are, and they move...and there's lots of other things made out of stone that move... I don't know. It needs to be tested more. Seriously though, how many chains are you making out of stone to where it breaks the game balance? Normally you just make them from the crappiest metal you have laying around and it impacts the game not at all.
I'm pretty ok with everything else, including cages and picks. If you can make picks out of copper, which is softer than the rocks it will be used to mine out, then you should be able to make picks out of stone. It may violate standard DF flavor, but it at least makes sense. Stone worked tools were good enough for the Egyptians, and I hear they built a couple neat things out of stone once or twice.
I AM probably going to change the reaction though to require magma safe blocks, just to make them a little harder to make.
For buckets...if you can make pots in the original game, then why not buckets? They're just smaller pots... Maybe this could be balanced by having to include a cloth rope for a handle? One boulder plus one cloth rope= two buckets? I'd be ok with that. Again, more feedback and testing is needed.
I'm not happy with rocktip arrows or bolts at the moment either, and I'm currently testing different ways to go about tackling that particular problem. Namely how weak they are...
As for rock weapons, I'm probably going to remove them from the Stonecutter in favor of making them craftable from Obsidian at the Craftdwarfs shop. One would think that blunt weapons would be great when made of stone, but oddly enough that's not the case... The sharp ones do ok though.
I'm fairly certain Toady included resource scarcity and management as part of the original game for the sake of balance, and I know I'm throwing that right out the window. Eventually the hordes are going to break through the defenses and kill everyone anyway, so in the end it's not going to matter.
Happy building.