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[Dakkan]

Nickel is probably one of my most favorite metals to come across in large quantities. It's just useless enough that I don't feel bad wasting huge amounts of it, yet it sounds cool enough that building entire fortress's out of it doesn't seem lame. Usually I start building castle-like structures on the top of my fortress entrance,  and slowly build off of these fortifications even larger ones. Unfortunately my current map had no gabbro... I was thoroughly crushed, and had to settle for building my megastructure out of brass. Luckily the location redeems it's lack of 5-centyness, being perched at the top of a cliff with 2 waterfalls and a river.

[Euld]

I'm making a to scale USS Enterprise from the 2009 movie. For it's base, which isn't even part of the ship, I used now over 16000 granite stones. I have only a half of the saucer done.

As much as I despise the 2009 Star Trek movie... I urge you to continue and finish xD  Is there a utility yet for the newest DF that shows DF maps in 3D?

[Lord Shonus]

Not yet. There's stonesense, but the only 3d project I'm aware of is Obsidian.

[lordnincompoop]

Nickelodeon!

[Snook]

Nickelodeon!

Already mentioned. :p

[Shrike]

If I had a nickel for each time I had excess Nickel...... er, I'd... uh..

[SkyRender]

 Nickel is surprisingly realistic in how worthless it is in DF.  It really WAS widespread in use for a long time, but mostly because it was a sort of "fool's silver" (nickel and silver look remarkably similar at a glance, not unlike gold and pyrite).  Mostly it was treated as a petty annoyance when found as a result (and that's probably why it's worth so little in DF, actually).  German miners of the 1700s considered it to be a sort of 'cursed copper' when they found it, since the ore they dug up resembled copper, but was actually just a nickel arsenide compound we know today as nickeline.  In that sense, it was even a "fool's copper" for some!  I'm not quite sure how Dwarves can extract it from garnierite so easily (a maximum of 34% nickel content by weight does not a compelling ore make), but these are the same alcoholic manic-depressives that can build an inverted fractal pyramid, so what do I know?

 I tend to ignore the stuff, as sadly the humans and Elves are both aware of its status as not-silver and I cannot thusly fool them into buying cheap nickel knock-offs claiming to be made of highly valuable semi-precious metal.

[Osmosis Jones]

Barrels.

[Stargrasper]

I tend to ignore the stuff, as sadly the humans and Elves are both aware of its status as not-silver and I cannot thusly fool them into buying cheap nickel knock-offs claiming to be made of highly valuable semi-precious metal.

This is because, to a trained eye, nickel and silver have two very different colors.  Nickel is generally described as "black", while silver is generally described as "white".  Plus nickel is a lot harder than silver and generally behaves differently.  It's reasonable that any respectable trader has enough experience around the metals that he or she could very easily tell the difference.

[Snook]

That shouldn't stop an adventurer from being able to con someone in a fishing village into trading his grandfathers epic armor/sword/whatever for some trinkets made of "silver".

Ah, power goals...

[Shogger]

I'm looking at nickel along with other abundant but useless metals in order to ease the strain that barrel production has on my lumber supplies.

[Gyvon]

train up some weaponsmiths by making countless +Enourmous Serrated Nickel Disks+ and line every corridor with dozens of them.

Puts a whole new meaning to "Nickel and dimed to death".

But seriously, I use it for bins and barrels, because my embark site has very few trees (volcano)

[Stargrasper]

That shouldn't stop an adventurer from being able to con someone in a fishing village into trading his grandfathers epic armor/sword/whatever for some trinkets made of "silver".

Ah, power goals...

I wholeheartedly agree.  There should be a risk of getting caught, but there shouldn't be anything stopping you from doing that.  Afterall, to the untrained eye, the two metals are identical.  Unfortunately, for the moment, we aren't able to trade with the untrained.  We can only trade with people that one would expect to know the difference.  Would be interesting if others tried to trick you and if your adventurer/broker had a poor appraiser or judge of intent skill, you'd be fooled.

[Joe-Schmoe]

Mod the raws.

Make Nickel Silver worth more than it usually is; perhaps not as valuable as brass or bronze (I forget whether the Nickel Silver reaction uses zinc or tin) but valuable enough that you still come out ahead, as there is more of it.

I believe changing the numbers on an existing material would work just fine; I don't think you'll have to regen a world or anything like that.

[Shaostoul]

I'm making a to scale USS Enterprise from the 2009 movie. For it's base, which isn't even part of the ship, I used now over 16000 granite stones. I have only a half of the saucer done.

As much as I despise the 2009 Star Trek movie... I urge you to continue and finish xD  Is there a utility yet for the newest DF that shows DF maps in 3D?

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=60599.msg1368829#msg1368829
That's where I'm posting the information about it.