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[Cotes]

I hope this hasn't been suggested too short time ago before (actually I'd think this is already is planned, except that there's not any reason it wouldn't have been implemented yet I can think of), but anyway.

Shouldn't soft metals like gold in this game be made unusable for creating items before making alloys from it? Not only would it be more realistic, but you'd actually have some real use for the alloys too... Right now, I just kinda know that the possibility to make them exists, but there never seems to be any point.

[thijser]

well it's easy to make real live gold items they just wear down quickly so you really want is items wearing down. Alloys are really usefull as many have properties that are much better then the origenal. (steel for example)

[Hyndis]

Pure gold is used all the time to make crafts. The crafts are usually then decorated with gems.

[Cotes]

well it's easy to make real live gold items they just wear down quickly so you really want is items wearing down. Alloys are really usefull as many have properties that are much better then the origenal. (steel for example)

Do you mean larger gold objects when you say 'wear down'? Because to my understanding pure gold jewelery just plain breaks. If wearing/breaking down items are ever made into a feature, sure do it like that, but for the time being wouldn't simply disabling the option to make gold stuff be good enough?

[Grendus]

That will eventually be solved with realistic wear and armor/weapon repair. Historically, metals like silver and gold were used in ceremonial armor and weapons, or used in rigged battles (pitting a prisoner armed with a lead sword against a gladiator armed with steel is a good way to make the gladiator look strong without putting his life at risk). The main problem is that right now weapons made from soft or brittle metals don't break, so gold war hammers do a ton of damage. It will be fixed, don't worry.

[Cotes]

I'm pretty sure that even the ceremonial weapons were made of gold and silver alloys, not the pure metal. That's my problem.

[NW_Kohaku]

Well, you can bend pure gold by hand, so it does have the benefit of being easy to work with (and valuable), but pure gold chairs and tables are kind of laughably unrealistic.

Your most common alloys of gold are with copper (rose gold) and silver (electrum, but this is actually another way to get "white gold" (and white gold is another name for electrum), electrum is important only in that it is actually a naturally-occuring alloy, so the notion of purposefully alloying electrum is a little odd).

• Most gold we use in the real world is some kind of alloy of gold, silver, and copper all at once.  A good measure would be 2 gold, 1 silver, 1 copper, which would make 12 carat gold.
• You can also make a good white gold for working into more durable uses (like rings that are expected to take a beating) by mixing 90% gold and 10% nickel.
• Since mixing in copper makes gold more reddish (hence, rose gold), you can actually mix copper in with white metals like zinc or nickel, and produce a somewhat more yellowish gold than the white gold formula above.  Something like 3 gold, 1 nickel, 1 copper.
  
• "Green gold" (actually only slightly greenish, but mostly yellow) is made with a ratio of about 2 gold to 1 silver.
• "Blue gold" is made of 3 parts gold to 1 part iron.  This blue is only a (very brittle) surface coloration, but really is a bright sapphire blue.

Oh, hey, and Black Bronze, according to Wikipedia is 96% copper and 4% gold, but in DF is 2 copper to 1 gold to 1 silver (no idea how silver got in there), and was basically just used because it made for a cool-looking purple patina made nice decorative touches, not for serious use.  (Patina being the copper-alloy equivalent of rust, but where it actually prevents any further corrosion, unlike iron, which will entirely rust through.)  Toady's notes in the raws say this:

temperature values unknown, used copper
also called shakudo or hepatizon depending on the proportions (some have no silver)
   got the name from black corinthian bronze, though these proportions are more like regular corinthian bronze/brass
      I just wanted the liver-colored one, dropped "corinthian" because it sounds too location/culture specific
value of 11 is the weighted average value of 2copper/1silver/1gold components

[Neonivek]

Yeah Pure Gold was used all the time but the reason you don't see if very often today is because Pure Gold is impractical. Though as the fashion and luxury world has shown us time and time again is that Practicality isn't always king.

As for the names of gold. If we were to seperate them I'd actually would prefer it to be "Gold" and "Pure Gold" or "True Gold"

[Mel_Vixen]

IIrc the Inka used a Gold-lead alloy wich made theyr "treasures" less worth then the spain conquistadores etc. thought.

[Cotes]

As for the names of gold. If we were to seperate them I'd actually would prefer it to be "Gold" and "Pure Gold" or "True Gold"

Eh, why just not use the proper names for the different alloys like DF already does? Plain 'gold' to imply an alloy is pretty silly, especially when the game has multiple.

[Grendus]

Dig Deeper actually had the different gold alloys, and it worked just fine. If we implemented this (which I approve, I like greater variety of metal and alloys) I'd recommend not dumbing it down at all.

[NW_Kohaku]

While alloys are nice, what we really need to make it worthwhile to even use these things is to either make metals like pure gold or silver or lead wear extremely quickly, so that we'd want to make alloys just to make decent stuff, or we could make pure gold simply not capable of being used to make statues or furniture in the raws (seems the easy way), or we can make these alloys actually have slightly more value than the weighted averages of their component parts.  (Which might be tricky, as only one alloy will have the highest value, and all others will likely be ignored, except for mandates, then.)

[Pilsu]

Don't forget tarnish reducing items' aesthetic value. Low maintenance is a perk in itself, even if another alloy is technically worth more.

What alloys would you include and what are their special properties?

[Neonivek]

As for the names of gold. If we were to seperate them I'd actually would prefer it to be "Gold" and "Pure Gold" or "True Gold"

Eh, why just not use the proper names for the different alloys like DF already does? Plain 'gold' to imply an alloy is pretty silly, especially when the game has multiple.

Because generally a gold alloy that looks exactly like gold tends to be called "Gold" and is measured in karats. Unless you want gold to be measured in Karats... which personally is fine and would be nice for Adventurer mode.

[NW_Kohaku]

Because generally a gold alloy that looks exactly like gold tends to be called "Gold" and is measured in karats. Unless you want gold to be measured in Karats... which personally is fine and would be nice for Adventurer mode.

Well, like I said, you can make "12k Gold" with just 2 Gold, 1 Silver, 1 Copper.  That's a decent decorative gold.  Technically, it would be 14.4 karats, but you could make "14k Gold" with 3 Gold, 1 Silver, 1 Copper, as well.  You start to get soft in this range, but "18k Gold" is 4 Gold, 1 Silver, 1 Copper.

Mixing in either zinc or nickel will give Gold much more hardness.  You can make a "White Gold" by making there be a significant amount (half or more) of the white metals, which may include silver as well.  (If you have about 25% white metal and 75% gold, you get "Green Gold", which is a sort of pale tennis ball green.)

You can preserve the yellowish color of gold by balancing any white metals in the alloy with an equal amount of copper for color balance.  Hence, you can have a harder "16k Gold" by mixing 4 Gold, 1 Nickel, 1 Copper, or a gold that might be hard enough you could make serious furniture or mugs you can drink from out of "Hard 12k Gold" made of 2 Gold, 1 Nickle, 1 Copper.

Rose Gold should actually be closer to copper in color.
see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Aepli-Trudel_lion_pendant.jpg

Blue gold is purely for decorations.  Heck, you might even make it count as a "gem".

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Electrum is just a gold/silver alloy that occurs naturally, so having to make it on purpose by alloy is actually a little odd.  If we're doing modding, maybe someone should just make electrum an ore stone that gets turned straight into electrum.  Mixing gold and silver should actually make White Gold or Green Gold, depending on how much silver is used.