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[Togre]

My fortress has easy access to iron.  So my military has iron armor and weapons as their default.  Aside from iron I buy as much steel as I can from caravans and keep some silver around for blunt weapons.  Is there anything I *need* other, lesser metals (bronze, copper, tin, etc.) for or is there no downside to "wasting" these on bolts, furniture or exports?

[Lectorog]

Just use stone for exports and furniture - if they're done well, it's worth about the same.
If you have serious military crossbow dwarves, use your cheapest metal for bolts. Otherwise, give your dwarves bone/wood bolts. I use hunters' kills to make them bone bolts.
Silver is good for blunt weapons - the best, probably.
Make the iron into steel for the weapons, and armor if you have the time and resources. Steel weapons over iron ones should be high priority.

If you have all of your metal needs fulfilled, you can go ahead and waste the rest of it on crafts. You won't gain much extra profit over stone, though - it would probably be quicker and cheaper to leave the metal sitting around and make goods out of stone, with no significant loss to profit.

[Excedion]

Use silver for warhammers and steel for armor when you can make it. Just use bronze or copper for bolts and save your iron for steel making.

EDIT: I tend to keep bars of lesser metals around for mandates and for dwarves who have a preference for it

[Daetrin]

I don't know if this is still the case, but in mature forts prior to 31.25 I noticed clearing my stockpiles of enormous amounts of excess food and metals seriously helped with FPS. If you have bunches of iron I'd consciously process your copper and such and clear it out.

[jaxy15]

Copper is the densest metal you can make shields from.
Make copper shields.

[franti]

Bronze is denser than Iron/Steel, but firmer than Copper/Silver, so I consider it the best Blunt Material.

[UristMcHuman]

Make the iron into steel

What if he has no Flux?

Bronze is denser than Iron/Steel, but firmer than Copper/Silver, so I consider it the best Blunt Material.

The firmness of metal is not currently implemented, which is why you don't see XXSilver MaceXX after two hits with it. Until we start seeing this, silver is the best blunt weapon material<sup>1, 2

1</sup> Actually, Platinum is the best, but it is not a weapon material by default, so Silver is the next best.
² As you may have modded in, Slade is actually *the* best, but that is undiggable by default, and usually occurs in a VERY hostile area anyways. Use Silver.


My opinion: Make shitloads of bolts from the Copper and make armour from the Bronze. Or, alloy your Tin with your Copper to make more Bronze. Then make even more armour. Arm your soldiers with Bronze armour and give them Iron Short Swords. If you find Flux, don't bother to make Steel. You need two chunks of it per bar of Steel (because Pig Iron also needs one Flux boulder).

[franti]

Steel isn't worth the effort. For the same ammount of ore/fuel, you could arm four times the number of dwarves in iron, bronze, or funobtanium.

[Lectorog]

Make the iron into steel

What if he has no Flux?

Then he obviously can't make steel. He should if he can, though. He can even import flux - it's cheaper than importing steel, or he could do both together.

Bronze is denser than Iron/Steel, but firmer than Copper/Silver, so I consider it the best Blunt Material.

The firmness of metal is not currently implemented, which is why you don't see XXSilver MaceXX after two hits with it. Until we start seeing this, silver is the best blunt weapon material<sup>1, 2

1</sup> Actually, Platinum is the best, but it is not a weapon material by default, so Silver is the next best.
² As you may have modded in, Slade is actually *the* best, but that is undiggable by default, and usually occurs in a VERY hostile area anyways. Use Silver.

If you're including metals that aren't weapon materials, don't forget that gold is still above silver, density-wise.
Slade has no metal template. You'd have to make your own, which could or could not be more dense than silver.


And if all of your dwarves are already outfitted, work towards upgrading their weapons, then armor. If you have more dwarves that need weapons and/or armor, make that out of some cheap/easy metals. Armoring your dwarves should be higher priority than giving them good armor.

[Ubiq]

My fortress has easy access to iron.  So my military has iron armor and weapons as their default.  Aside from iron I buy as much steel as I can from caravans and keep some silver around for blunt weapons.  Is there anything I *need* other, lesser metals (bronze, copper, tin, etc.) for or is there no downside to "wasting" these on bolts, furniture or exports?

Bronze is superior to iron for military purposes; on the other hand, so long as you don't fight humans who have access to bronze, iron weapons should be enough to deal with just about anything that might attack you. Either way, if you have sufficient supplies of flux/bronze components, you should switch your armor over to steel and/or bronze.

[ImBocaire]

Bronze actually is inferior to iron in recent versions, at least for weapon materials. With armor it's extremely variable depending on what material is against it.

I've had good luck with turning leftover bronze into trap components. Ten bronze serrated discs is a wonderful counterpoint to any objections the goblins might raise toward your real estate choices.

[Jelle]

You can use tin for glazing, even if the pots aren't earthenware the added value is nice.
If you've got copper and zinc by all means make brass, it's good stuff and makes fine furniture or crafts or some such. If anything you can use them for metal studs.
If you've got gold and you have the common ore of copper, tetrahydrite, it's also a good idea to make electrum bars if you don't have any other ores of silver. Same goes for galena.
Lead though, no idea what you'd do with that, if you don't have gold galena is fairly worthless. Maybe catapult ammo? No idea if that'd work.

[geail]

I use lead for training up metalsmiths.  Gotta love those lead barrels and tables.

[franti]

Lead can be used in Lay Pewter, which allows you to squeeze as much value out of it as possible.
Brass is a decent weapon/armour material: I make light armour out of it for my archers.

[Fredd]

Give your armorers skills a boost, create copper armor, then melt the non-masterpiece stuff, sell off the masterpiece for flux, other goods.
 If you are lucky, your trader might can trade for several different types of flux stone. Max seems to be on the trade agreement 5 highest priority requested. Request steel bars, buy steel anvils for melting purposes. Start your steel armor production when armorers have good skills