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[JimboOmega]

Guys, it's not that hard if you pick a site. My site has wood, limonite and flux, I'm fine.

I picked a site - I saw shallow metals, thought it'd be easy pickings.  But shallow metals meant the top layer of rock had Galena.   

The embark info does not say "limonite".  (Though flux and wood, yes).  How can you tell what metals are there?

Also does deep metals mean metals both at the upper layers and further down, or merely that there is metal at lower layers?

[slink]

I must say I don't particularly like the change...

That's what most of us said when metals became super-abundant in 0.31.01

That is what some of you said.  Some fraction of any group sharing a negative opinion will complain openly.  Last time the complaint was expressing the opinion that there was too much metal.  Now the complaint is expressing the opinion that there is too little metal.  Some of us say nothing at all, so no one knows what we think, or how many of us there are. 

[Proteus]

Guys, it's not that hard if you pick a site. My site has wood, limonite and flux, I'm fine.

I picked a site - I saw shallow metals, thought it'd be easy pickings.  But shallow metals meant the top layer of rock had Galena.   

The embark info does not say "limonite".  (Though flux and wood, yes).  How can you tell what metals are there?

Also does deep metals mean metals both at the upper layers and further down, or merely that there is metal at lower layers?

You cannot tell which metal/s there are.
But if it is "metals" instead of just "metal" there is more than one kind of metal on the map.

And nope, deep metals means exactly what it says...metals deep down there.
If you donīt also have shallow metal/s you wonīt find anything within the upper layers.

I hope Toady implements "Coal" as another piece of information
in one of the next releases.
It would be really useful to know whether there is coal at the embark location or not.

[NW_Kohaku]

Even when you take trading into account do you really want to be ordering in caravans of nothing but metal? That'll be expensive...

I'm sorry, what is this "expensive" you talk about?

As long as we have infinite resources in the form of glass, ceramics, and stone crafts, which recieve massive bonuses to price in the form of quality bonuses, there will never be a time where we need fear "expensive" base metal bars. 

Yes, they do, if something falls on them from above it'll be stuck there until deconstruction.

So fortifications block line of sight downwards, then?

You can build guard towers that work just fine at shooting down a z-level onto the goblins below.  I'm not sure how much line of sight is blocked when building towers more than one z-level higher than what you are shooting at, but going further than one z-level is not necessary.

You cannot tell which metal/s there are.
But if it is "metals" instead of just "metal" there is more than one kind of metal on the map.

And nope, deep metals means exactly what it says...metals deep down there.
If you donīt also have shallow metal/s you wonīt find anything within the upper layers.

I hope Toady implements "Coal" as another piece of information
in one of the next releases.
It would be really useful to know whether there is coal at the embark location or not.

Actually, from what I understand, it's worse than that - "metal" refers to anything that isn't a layer stone.  I embarked on "deep metal" and found only useless brown jasper.  Microcline is a "metal". 

Worse, just do a site finder search for sites with no deep or shallow metals, and half the world will light up.  Those are sites with no metals, gems, or even microcline in their layers whatsoever.  Literally nothing but the layer stones and soils. 

Yes, some sites have plenty of the most important resources, but having microcline be so rare that only 5% of the planet has access to it is just absurd. 

That said, Toady is already changing things, so it shouldn't stay like this for more than the next bugfixing release, anyway.

[Proteus]

...

You cannot tell which metal/s there are.
But if it is "metals" instead of just "metal" there is more than one kind of metal on the map.

And nope, deep metals means exactly what it says...metals deep down there.
If you donīt also have shallow metal/s you wonīt find anything within the upper layers.

I hope Toady implements "Coal" as another piece of information
in one of the next releases.
It would be really useful to know whether there is coal at the embark location or not.

Actually, from what I understand, it's worse than that - "metal" refers to anything that isn't a layer stone.  I embarked on "deep metal" and found only useless brown jasper.  Microcline is a "metal". 

Worse, just do a site finder search for sites with no deep or shallow metals, and half the world will light up.  Those are sites with no metals, gems, or even microcline in their layers whatsoever.  Literally nothing but the layer stones and soils. 

Yes, some sites have plenty of the most important resources, but having microcline be so rare that only 5% of the planet has access to it is just absurd. 

That said, Toady is already changing things, so it shouldn't stay like this for more than the next bugfixing release, anyway.

Ouch,
sounds like this is the reason why I didnīt find any real metal in my 1st .19 fort,
despite having deep metal on the map.

[doctorspoof]

I must say I don't particularly like the change...

That's what most of us said when metals became super-abundant in 0.31.01

That is what some of you said.  Some fraction of any group sharing a negative opinion will complain openly.  Last time the complaint was expressing the opinion that there was too much metal.  Now the complaint is expressing the opinion that there is too little metal.  Some of us say nothing at all, so no one knows what we think, or how many of us there are. 

I was not expressing distaste for the 31.01 metal abundance, I was only commenting that a similar scenario has occured before with DF's development cycle. We'll have to do what we did last time and accept it, albeit with complaint.
I'm sure a lack of metals will provoke both new ideas and new playstyles for newer members.
Necessity leads to invention, and all that.

[Angel-of-Dusk]

Ethier A) Play the previous version, like I am
or B) Hope toady appeases both sides of this arguement, by giving an option for old vs new metal rarity.

[ThrowerOfStones]

Even when you take trading into account do you really want to be ordering in caravans of nothing but metal? That'll be expensive...

I'm sorry, what is this "expensive" you talk about?

As long as we have infinite resources in the form of glass, ceramics, and stone crafts, which recieve massive bonuses to price in the form of quality bonuses, there will never be a time where we need fear "expensive" base metal bars. 

Yes, they do, if something falls on them from above it'll be stuck there until deconstruction.

So fortifications block line of sight downwards, then?

You can build guard towers that work just fine at shooting down a z-level onto the goblins below.  I'm not sure how much line of sight is blocked when building towers more than one z-level higher than what you are shooting at, but going further than one z-level is not necessary.

You cannot tell which metal/s there are.
But if it is "metals" instead of just "metal" there is more than one kind of metal on the map.

And nope, deep metals means exactly what it says...metals deep down there.
If you donīt also have shallow metal/s you wonīt find anything within the upper layers.

I hope Toady implements "Coal" as another piece of information
in one of the next releases.
It would be really useful to know whether there is coal at the embark location or not.

Actually, from what I understand, it's worse than that - "metal" refers to anything that isn't a layer stone.  I embarked on "deep metal" and found only useless brown jasper.  Microcline is a "metal". 

Worse, just do a site finder search for sites with no deep or shallow metals, and half the world will light up.  Those are sites with no metals, gems, or even microcline in their layers whatsoever.  Literally nothing but the layer stones and soils. 

Yes, some sites have plenty of the most important resources, but having microcline be so rare that only 5% of the planet has access to it is just absurd. 

That said, Toady is already changing things, so it shouldn't stay like this for more than the next bugfixing release, anyway.

I'm nearly 100% sure this isn't the case. In my experience, every layer has some gems mixed in - they're ubiquitous. It's just only a single type or two per layer now. And I've encountered clusters of non-layer stones as well. AND I have metals.

There is certainly still less variety, even in cluster stone and gems, but I'm pretty sure metal MEANS metal, not gems.

[plisskin]

Sounds like .19 is a good version for veterans seeking a challenge and some bee-stings. I'm still playing around like a fat Roman imperial feasting on ores like vineyard grapes in .18 hopeful for bugfixes in the next version to try it all out.

Ultimately I like the idea of a fort with more scarce resources and a focus on improvisation and perseverance in the face of a cruel world. Trade is supposed to be the new thing, right? This'll make pillaging and declaring war on other Civs to be that much more weighty, which'll enrich the feeling of playing in a fully functioning world.

[EmperorJon]

Yeah, but so far I've genned about 20 worlds and not found any iron. Anywhere. It'll be there SOMEWHERE. But... most places have no shallow metal. That's nothing. Or 1, usually Tetrahedrite, or 2... one of which is always Cinnabar and useless from what I've seen. And until trading improves, that's a problem. Because if you think, oh well, never mind, I'll order it in, they still bring 1 single metal bar per year. XD If Toady makes it so that caravans come with, I dunno, bins and bins of metal bars and ores... maybe.

I'd like to see you as a functioning part in your civs economy. So maybe you don't have iron... or any metal, but when the diplomat arrived he'd say 'Oh I see you have no metal here but loads of nice land. That's good, er mind if you wall it all off and cover the whole thing in farms and cows? There's a good lad... it's just there's this food shortage in the capital you see...' then brings a caravan of metal and everything you've not got.


But anyway, it's still 'early days' for Dwarf Fortress. You can see that just by, well, looking around. Everywhere in adventurer mode for example. One day I can picture a game where your world is covered in tiny towns to huge cities, ports, roads, everything. You could be on a permanent road with traders always passing through, or on the coast getting shipping, or... well, anything! The possibilities are elflessendless!

[The Scout]

I have no metal. None. I get all my metal from the dwarven caravans, the goblins, and melting down everything. Deep metals my ass. A gem isn't metal. So, I've set up a military consisting of 30 marksdwarves who pin-cushion everything with bone bolts.

[NW_Kohaku]

Ethier A) Play the previous version, like I am
or B) Hope toady appeases both sides of this arguement, by giving an option for old vs new metal rarity.

He is.

Regarding the fighting that has taken place upthread, people should relax and not fight with each other when we are the source of your grievances.  As I acknowledged in the release notes, this is a problem.  The release was split because it was delayed and needed to be aired out.  I cleaned up a lot of the loose (split?) ends, but I only thought of this one at the last moment, so I mentioned it in the notes and plan to sort it out during this bugfix period.  Once we have trade, some assurance that a reasonable amount of ore is being brought to the surface in world gen and better local mineral veins, I imagine it'll be less of a problem, but we don't have any of those things yet.  Even after that, I think we should end up with some world gen options for different play styles for next time.  As people have mentioned, an over-abundance of metals will essentially remove that element of the economy (and warfare etc etc), but not everybody is going to be playing for those reasons and it is very easy for me to fix.  Worlds with some variation in metal distribution will be the ones that receive the most attention over the long term, though.

That said, I don't really fully endorse this move.  I'd rather all playstyles are incorporated into a single idea rather than having separate init options that turn off every function which makes no move to allow any playstyles than just one. 

Again, this is obviously very, very rough.  I get the sense Toady threw code to make materials scarce in general so that there would be a necessity for trade later, but then didn't do much besides make a default "rarity", since platinum is as common as any given iron ore, and he released the code he had, expecting us to playtest it to where it would be an acceptable level.  He seems to have pretty clearly jerked the throttle too much towards making everything very, very rare on a global scale.  (To the point where no civilizations have access to iron ore in some cases.)

I'm nearly 100% sure this isn't the case. In my experience, every layer has some gems mixed in - they're ubiquitous. It's just only a single type or two per layer now. And I've encountered clusters of non-layer stones as well. AND I have metals.

There is certainly still less variety, even in cluster stone and gems, but I'm pretty sure metal MEANS metal, not gems.

Well, I'm embarked on a site with no deep metal no matter how deep I dig, and I've heard reports of similar problems from other people.

[slink]

I must say I don't particularly like the change...

That's what most of us said when metals became super-abundant in 0.31.01

That is what some of you said.  Some fraction of any group sharing a negative opinion will complain openly.  Last time the complaint was expressing the opinion that there was too much metal.  Now the complaint is expressing the opinion that there is too little metal.  Some of us say nothing at all, so no one knows what we think, or how many of us there are. 

I was not expressing distaste for the 31.01 metal abundance, I was only commenting that a similar scenario has occured before with DF's development cycle. We'll have to do what we did last time and accept it, albeit with complaint.
I'm sure a lack of metals will provoke both new ideas and new playstyles for newer members.
Necessity leads to invention, and all that.

I see.  I misunderstood. 
 
As someone mentioned a couple of posts ago, it will be easier to bear with a total lack of metal (or only zinc, for crying out loud) once we can actually order metal by the bin.  At the moment, I am perfectly happy to play without my own source of metals, with invasions turned off.  I was equally perfectly happy to play with gems and ores dripping from the landscape, also with invasions turned off.   
 

[JimboOmega]

For me shallow metal meant galena in the first layer, below that, gems.   One or two types per "layer" (of about 5z).  I think it was turquoise mixed with the galena in that top layer, below that, different stuff.

I've been looking for the blue metal, out of frustration, but all that has gotten me is troglodyte and related cave species problems.  (I walled it off, it's safer now, etc)

[Skivverus]

Decided to try a challenge embark of sorts; had a rather incoherent idea of it, so was thinking something between "use no metal" and "surface stone-and-clay fort". Used the site finder to look for clay without aquifer, ended up picking a site that it labeled as having clay and a bit of soil. No mention of metal or anything like that.

Well. No metal so far, but the layer stone's chalk once you get down to it, the entire surface is covered in vegetation, and I'm finding lignite veins along with gems.

The metal industry's looking rather more tempting now. Particularly since the Mountainhome has access to iron even if I might not.