I love this mod, here are some of my suggestions:
1. Leather production is needlessly drawn out. I don't foresee too many situations where studded leather would be used in favor of lamellar since the latter doesn't require a new reagent. On a similar note, bone studs tend to be very scarce unless you have a constant butchering supply. They're also not historically accurate (as far as I know) since metal studs were used to assemble lamellar.
Suggestion: Get rid of studded leather, change studs to be made out of metal as well (maybe 1 bar = 5 studs?). I'd also love to see an option where chitinplate and scaleplate would just be called 'leather', since they're functionally identical already.
2. The main draw for me is how much simpler the material process is (no more giant bat leather waterskins!) and I'd like to see that applied to equipment as well. This might be too onerous a request but I personally don't get much out of the flavor names of the various armors. I don't see the need for bloodsteel weapons (just make them steel) or winged helmets (if they're identical to helms, just make them helms). The practical concern about this is that it makes equipping your military much more complicated. If you're short on weapons and armor and want to scavenge your enemy's, you'd probably want to have duplicate entries (cap, helm, winged helmet, etc) set up in your uniform to facilitate that but that's really time consuming. I'm sure others get a kick out of the new armor/weapon types but I don't see the need when you're managing 100+ dwarves.
Suggestion: Option to make equipment generic.
3. Some manufacturing limitations don't make sense to me. Why can't my clothier make cloaks or robes? Why can't I smelt masks? I can understand if this is meant to encourage trade but current DF trade mechanic is way too screwed up to currently salvage. Would it be possible to severely restrict what civilizations offer in order to make trade more interesting? No one gets excited when the caravan brings you 20 pig tail ropes and 100 different types of flasks. Skipping through that list gets tedious and players generally only look for a few key items. In my last run for example, I only traded for alcohol, wood and its derivatives (ash, lye, coke), steel, and elephants. The caravans never really had anything worthwhile otherwise. Drow do not bring iridium and slade as promised (at least not that I've seen) and when they do bring weapons and armor, they're of a wildly different and often useless material.
Suggestion: Severely restrict what caravans can bring (if possible) in order to make trade more worthwhile. Severely restrict the materials weapons/armor are made out for trade to make them more worthwhile (copper great axe? yay!!). Similarly, wood is the most undervalued item in the game. It does not deserve a price of 3 dorfbux, that's ridiculous.
4. The crate mechanic is fantastic and I'd love to see that expanded to other mass items. Every civilization should be offering this and it should be the bulk of the trading. Purchasing crops or meat now is especially tedious as you have to confirm the quantity as well.
Suggestion: Crates of rough wood/smooth wood/coke/ash/lye/alcohol/flux/glass/cloth/leather/crops/etc would be fantastic in addition to what's already offered.
5. Minor but why is 'make set of clothing' done at the craft workshop?
Suggestion: Make sets of clothing at clothiershop.
6. I like the idea of a training system but the current one is convoluted. I have to take logs, get paper, get ash, get ink, get leather, assemble it, build the proper workshop, limit it to the proper person and blah wayy too many steps. I usually just mod in a practice workshop or something because that's far easier to manage. Most professions can practice in more conventional ways (make rock blocks, make copper spears, plant stuff, etc) so this is only really useful for doctors. Coincidentally, it makes sense to me that in the DF world, books would only be used to teach "literate" pursuits such as bookkeeping and medicine. I don't see how I can learn how to wield an axe from a tome.
Suggestion: For realism and consistency purposes, books should not be home-made (where did they get that knowledge from??) and should only affect certain professions ("non-manual" if that makes any sense).
7. Shouldn't bullets be made of lead? That's the practical, historical, and contemporary usage. Definitely not steel.
8. Is it possible to restrict materials for random equipment? It doesn't make sense that an unskilled hunter immigrant would show up with sladeadamantine bolts.
Bugs (apologies if these are already reported)
- Stack soap making doesn't seem to do anything, at least when using tallow.
- Not sure if this is a bug but weapons are often listed several times in stockpile menus (there's about 5 listings of 'crossbows'). This makes stockpile management difficult.
- Brewery seasoning not available? I saw something about this on the changelog but didn't quite understand it.
- Smooth wood is worth the same as roughwood ($3)
That should be all (for now?). Cheers dude.