I found several typos in my raws, but I must still have missed some, so I just scrapped the whole thing. It's not that big a deal shuffling around the stockpile order if I can get impossible vermin junk fixed instead.
I tried to address the four item request limit in a few different ways---with the goal of getting something that weighs and costs ten times as much as a metal bar of the same metal and can be used to make ten bars of that metal.
I tried to make a tool first, but I found that tools don't respect [SIZE:#] or [MATERIAL_SIZE:#] at all. They are always treated as 1000 and 1 respectively. I guess I won't try to melt tools down for bars ever again. Also, the tokens [METAL_MAT] and [METAL_WEAPON_MAT] don't work as I thought they should. (Bugs
4979 and
5029, I think.)
They both limit a tool to being made from metal in fortress mode, but the latter tag doesn't exclude non-weapon metals. And I could embark with my "crate" tools made from wood and stone in addition to metal with either token. I guess it worked, but I don't know if caravans would bring wood or stone crates to sell. Interestingly, my bar reaction turned the stone crates into nonexistent stone bars and the wooden crates into ash bars.
I decided to make bars of special metals that can be turned into regular metals instead. By removing all of the [ITEM_*] tags I kept them from being used for weapons or crafts, etc., but you can still use them to make buildings or stud things.
Is there a better way to do this? I don't think I can prevent them from being used for buildings, but I ought to be able to keep them from being used for super-valuable decorations.
Oh, and btw I tried i2amroy's suggestion to make a stone that smelts into ten bars, but when I genned a world with my special ore it was freaking
everywhere and somehow caused surface exposed magnetite clusters too. Maybe that way could work somehow, but I don't know.