Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Random832]

Barrels cannot be made of wood alone, and most [wooden] furniture would certainly be _easier_ (can be made faster but lower quality, perhaps) to make with the use of nails. Doors that can be shut tightly or locked yet are openable at both ends (so not simply barred) need doorknobs and bolts, and for any door you'd need hinges - which certainly _could_ be made of wood or stone, but these would be quite brittle.

It could reasonably be easy to keep up with if you have any metal - one bar of metal could be turned into, say, 1,000 nails*, 30 barrel hoops, or 50 door kits. [obviously, these would be a stack - and we certainly need to allow more than 10 nails to be put in a bin] but it would be something to think about - and quality could matter - a low-quality door bolt or hinge, or one made of soft metal, could very well be a door's weak point, and items made with soft nails may be more susceptible to wear.

Door hardware would be selected when the door is built, not when it's made.

*Yes, this is a lot. Nails are much smaller than bars of metal. Each item built will also require dozens of nails, while a barrel only requires two hoops.

[irmo]

I like this; it would tighten up some of the ridiculous "stone doors on a stone room full of stone furniture and stone decorations" fortress design, and give us a practical use for metal other than weapons.

[G-Flex]

I'm okay with things as trivial as *nails* being abstracted out. There's a certain level of management I don't think a lot of players want.

[Earthquake Damage]

I think it's implied that dwarves have all sorts of bits, bobs, and miscellaneous tools at their disposal.  While I understand that some people like the excessive, time-consuming micromanagement of absolutely everything, some of us much prefer abstraction.  Tedium is not fun.

That said, I oppose this suggestion.

[Neonivek]

"Barrels cannot be made of wood alone"

Uhhh... Yes they can... Quite easily...

[Silverionmox]

You can do a lot without metal parts; nails used to be a rare trade good. Medieval construction or furniture certainly didn't use many nails, and there are relatively few metal clamps in even the largest medieval cathedrals.
However, it depends on the piece of furniture: a window definitely needs some framing, especially as soon as we get figurative windows. On the other hand, I always pictured doors as a kind of very well-balanced wedges, so that it could turn at a slight touch; dwarves could do that. Trying to attach a stone door to metal hinges probably would be more difficult if anything.

I can see uses for more metal than now though:
- some specific furniture, as mentioned above
- small mechanisms; stone or wooden mechanisms would be large and require more space to install, forcing you to dig out a channel to build a weapon trap for example; metal ones would function as they do now.
- tools: the right tool for the right job, no more forging in lava with bare hands! Especially this one would vastly increase the value of metal for non-martial uses.

[Warlord255]

I would also have to agree in opposing this; however, needing mechanisms in some way for door locks might be worth looking at, if only for requiring mechanics to install as a secondary step.

[Aqizzar]

I'll break the trend and say that I'm all for it.  I get the feeling that DF is set up to track every last bit and piece, and removing abstraction would help gameplay by adding that much more of a challenge.  Certainly if you're trying to emulate starting a settlement from scratch from such a "low-level" view as DF, you can't just assume your dwarve conjure hardware out of the air.

I'd also like to add a tangent, that stone doors always struck me as a cheap cop-out.  I've never heard of doors being made of stone - I'm not even sure how you could and still have a door a person could easily open, like you'd want in a bedroom.

[Random832]

I think it's implied that dwarves have all sorts of bits, bobs, and miscellaneous tools at their disposal.

These are different because they are not reusable - making more things requires more of them. I'm not saying require making a carpenters toolkit.

[Random832]

I'm okay with things as trivial as *nails* being abstracted out. There's a certain level of management I don't think a lot of players want.

And if you read what I was saying, nails were proposed as an entirely optional way to sacrifice some quality to make furniture-making faster. I.e. you can get by entirely well without it, but you might want to bring some on embark to make those first seven beds more quickly.

And you could also make doors with no bolts or doorknobs - you just couldn't lock them; you could still "forbid" them, but hostiles, berserk/tantruming dwarves, animals, and dwarves who are just really hungry would ignore it.

[Impaler[WrG]]

Perhaps just 'hardware' as an item would be possible, a bar of metal makes 10 hardware which can then be turned into a large number of other things.  Thus we get to use metal in a lot of common items without too much micro management.  Alternatively you identify the few important abstract categories for needed items and try to represent only those.  For example 'Toys' and 'Tableware' could be categories of items that aren't differentiated any further and have specific uses that would have unique uses.

[Align]

It could reasonably be easy to keep up with if you have any metal - one bar of metal could be turned into, say, 1,000 nails*

Worse than coins?

[Random832]

It could reasonably be easy to keep up with if you have any metal - one bar of metal could be turned into, say, 1,000 nails*

Worse than coins?

They wouldn't be getting hauled around and changing hands all the time - some would be removed from the stack and used to make something. There wouldn't be any reason for the stack to get broken up into a bunch of individual things and hauled around randomly

[Granite26]

I could see 'hardware' as an item, 1 iron for 100 hardware.

It wouldn't be a bad idea to create the capability to store hardware in buildings.  Say, allow the smithy to store up to 300 units of hardware and use it straight out of the building, with no carrying involved (or else carrying a stack of 100 to another building).

[Draco18s]

Urist starts building a barrel, collects 50 nails.
Urist can't find any wood, cancels task.
50 nails returned to stockpile.
Cog starts building a bed, collects 25 nails (from the stack of 50), but also can't find any wood.
Tost goes to put in a door, needs 5 hardware, takes it from the stack of 25 sitting in the carpenter shop.  Halfway to the construction site, the player realizes that he had Tost grab the wrong door, so the task is canceled.
Urist, in the mean time is told to take down a door, which returns 5 hardware as well.
The player now has....

Nails [950]
Nails [25]
Nails [20]
Nails [5]
Nails [5]

...floating around and each taking up a stockpile location because they don't fit into bins.