Bay 12 Games Forum
Dwarf Fortress => DF Suggestions => Topic started by: Porpoisepower on September 05, 2008, 12:54:36 pm
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I think the whole having to designate wood for ashes alone, is pretty lame part of DF. Especially since there's not 1 but 3 skills/jobs that depend on it 4 if you include glass making. Also important is the fact that wood is a far more rare commodity than stone...
A couple ideas that I'ld support to improve this.
1. All Coal powered workshops create ash..., maybe add a workshop task called Gather Ash, which will cause a dwarf(Maybe with Ash gathering skill) would clean the workshop and generate blocks of as In addition make lignite and bituminous more common.
3. Allow the burning of rubush to generate ashes. This seams to be popular in past posts... I generally don't have a problem with excessive ammounts of rubbush,
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Why can ashes be used to build buildings?
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Why do we need a skill to collect ash? I know DF does have a lot of skills like this, but this seems like a theoretical hauler skill for every thing that can be hauled.
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"Ash" refers to wood ash which is a liming agent
Burning charcoal probably would produce it but it's a question of whether said ash has altered properties and remains useful
Burning wooden trash into ash would be a nice feature. Perhaps even charcoal
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I don't think the ash that results from coal is usable for the lye creating processes that wood ash is used for. According to Wikipedia coal ash can be used in concrete in place of a large portion of the normal allotment of Portland Cement and the Romans made use of volcanic ash in a similar manner in their concrete.
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Hrm.
Personally I'd rather see asses created as a byproduct of making charcoal, in a manner like when you melt metal items; ie, for every x units of charcoal you create, you get x/y units of ash.
So if you are making charcoal, you'll get ash as a byproduct, but if you don't need/make charcoal, you'll have to burn the wood directly.
I also like the idea of burning rubbish to generate ash. I don't think it'd be best to not have trash items generated (we have enough stuff going on without tracing garbage), but if you set an ashery to the 'burn trash' job, any dwarf with the cleaning job will 'gather trash' in a room, and the amount of ash generated would be a factor of the size of the room he picks and the traffic in it.
In any case, I think burning would should be the most direct and controllable way to get ash, but some other options with some output would be nice.
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Hrm.
Personally I'd rather see asses created as a byproduct of making charcoal, in a manner like when you melt metal items; ie, for every x units of charcoal you create, you get x/y units of ash.
So if you are making charcoal, you'll get ash as a byproduct, but if you don't need/make charcoal, you'll have to burn the wood directly.
I also like the idea of burning rubbish to generate ash. I don't think it'd be best to not have trash items generated (we have enough stuff going on without tracing garbage), but if you set an ashery to the 'burn trash' job, any dwarf with the cleaning job will 'gather trash' in a room, and the amount of ash generated would be a factor of the size of the room he picks and the traffic in it.
In any case, I think burning would should be the most direct and controllable way to get ash, but some other options with some output would be nice.
No. That's not what wood ash is.
Wood ash can have lye precipitated out of it. This is not true of the random ash you'd get from burning trash, and DEFINITELY not true of coal "ash".
In fact, I doubt coal ash/soot would have very much of anything in it at all. Coal has likely very few non-combustible compounds in it.
In short, saying all ash is the same is like when people suggest that any ground-up rocks should be usable as sand for glass production. It betrays a complete lack of understanding of the actual processes involved.
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1. All Coal powered workshops create ash
Makes sense for me.
3. Allow the burning of rubush to generate ashes.
Also wooden furniture(all kinds of), and weapons/ammo (some use for elven junk, duh)
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1. All Coal powered workshops create ash
Makes sense for me.
Are you completely ignoring every post in this thread that explains why this doesn't make sense?
"Ash" in dwarf fortress is wood ash, used for creating potash/lye. You cannot use the remains of any old combustion reaction to do that, and you CERTAINLY can't just dig up some coal soot for it.
[edit]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fly_ash
Coal ash apparently consists largely of silica (makes sense; it's a very abundant compound so it's going to be a coal impurity), calcium oxide, and a bunch of toxic contaminants. You aren't going to make potash or lye (potassium compounds, although lye can be a sodium compound as well) at all with it. Or much of anything else, although maybe the lime could be used for something, although the extreme impurity of it would limit that severely.
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Personally I'd rather see asses created as a byproduct of making charcoal
Man, that would smell HORRIBLE!
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Are you completely ignoring every post in this thread that explains why this doesn't make sense?
Lets just say that this is some aspect of the game I would like to see simplified a bit. Ash/Lye/Soap/Potash/Pearlash business is way too complex as it is now, and does not bring much fun to gameplay as I see it.
So, in my opinion, a situation where you use up some charcoal and get heat + ashes would be just fine.
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It's too complicated because there are a few side products missing...
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The root issue for me is that there is a lot of stuff that wood is the only viable material. Plus getting dwarves whose sole trade is taking wood and making it into less useful crap.
It also seems wierd since there are alot of tasks that result in byproducts which in general can be turned arround and made into useful stuff. If I can gut a cat and use almost every bit of it(bone bolts, meat, leather, dtc) why cann't I burn a log or two and get ash and charcoal?
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just a guess, but I wouldn't be surprised to find out that burning for charcoal and then burning the charcoal is a more efficient process than just burning for ash. More efficient = less useful biproducts for lye-making.
again, just a guess
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The root issue for me is that there is a lot of stuff that wood is the only viable material. Plus getting dwarves whose sole trade is taking wood and making it into less useful crap.
It also seems wierd since there are alot of tasks that result in byproducts which in general can be turned arround and made into useful stuff. If I can gut a cat and use almost every bit of it(bone bolts, meat, leather, dtc) why cann't I burn a log or two and get ash and charcoal?
Yeah, currently animals give much more product than trees, I'll give you that.
Also, realistically-speaking there are more ways than just wood to get charcoal, such as animal bones.
Ash, though, is the only DF source I can think of for lye/potash.
But there ARE other sources for fertilizers. So it's not like potash has to remain the only fertilizer anyway.
And complaining about lye/pearlash being oh-so-hard-to-get is silly. It's used for luxury goods. Soap wasn't around everywhere in medieval Europe itself, and high-quality clear glass sure as hell wasn't either. That stuff SHOULD take effort.
Lets just say that this is some aspect of the game I would like to see simplified a bit. Ash/Lye/Soap/Potash/Pearlash business is way too complex as it is now, and does not bring much fun to gameplay as I see it.
So, in my opinion, a situation where you use up some charcoal and get heat + ashes would be just fine.
No it's not. And that's like saying you should be able to heat up sugar and get gold: Charcoal has nothing in it resembling anything you want to make potash. They're completely unrelated things.
Dwarf Fortress obviously takes a pretty realistic and detailed approach to things. I know not everybody wants that from a game, but some people do, and that's what this game is. The last thing Toady is going to do is throw in "simplifications" that, far from just being simplifications, don't actually make any sense at all. Trying to get potash out of coal ash is like trying to get ham from a tree.
And really, the reason there are so many wood byproducts is because, well, wood is damn useful. Besides, like I said above, a lot of those are specialty uses that not every fortress is going to want anyway, and the real problem is that there aren't other sources of things like charcoal and fertilizer... although really, you can just use coal instead of charcoal anyhow, although that's not renewable. Bone charcoal would be nice to have, for instance. The reason the wood byproducts aren't simplified more is because they have such varied uses in different industries.
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I don't agree with this idea but wood being so useful and relatively rare it can be a problem. It would be nice if one tree went further than it does currently, tree farming would be nice, more logs from one tree also would be nice, burning furniture should be possible too really, it has been mentioned before about having control over sites outside of your fortress, being able to set up a lumberjacks shack which delivers regular logs in return for supplies and some coins say would be nice.
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Yeah, those are all real problems. I just like to think of realistic solutions, and I do think they exist.
Tower-caps being able to grow underground WITHOUT special water sources would be nice, as would tree farming in general, although you have to consider also the fact that, in real life, trees don't mature in 2-3 years, so you don't want to make it TOO easy.
And like I said, charcoal has other sources itself. For instance, you can make a sort of charcoal (although not in large pieces) from bones, and apparently even sugar.
Honestly, I never had much of a problem with wood. Every trading race brings some, and you can chop some down at your current site as well. The only time I've had a problem is when I need to rely on it for furnace operation, which becomes problematic, but I guess that's why dwarves live so close to magma.
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trees don't mature in 2-3 years
Tower-caps are mushrooms ;)
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I think it should be possible to harvest wood--not useable logs, just wood--from trees, without cutting them down. Perhaps a single unit, once a year, per mature tree.
Such wood could then be used for charcoal, sawdust, paper, etc.
If that were implemented, tree maturity time might be extended considerably, since the logs themselves would be more similar to stone (although perhaps also rendering a larger volume of charcoal, if burned.).
If fallen leaves were additionally harvestable, they might eventually be used as a fertilizer, helping to extend our charcoal supply.
Also, as far as fertilizers go, I'm hoping someday our dwarfs will be able to make Terra Preta:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terra_preta
It might end up being more expensive and labour-intensive than other fertilizers, but it lasts and lasts and lasts. Really amazing stuff. I'm trying to implement it into my garden, on a small scale.
Since charcoal can also be used to filter water, it might be used in a process to render murky pools into clean, drenable water.
Also, it's slightly off-topic, but relevant to the conversation:
I'd like to see coal tar as a byproduct of rendering coal into coke. It's got a ton of applications, from aniline dyes and drugs (tylenol):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aniline#Uses
to soaps/shampoos, and tarmac roads. It was even used in Egyptian mummification:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_tar#Applications
I'm especially interested in the dyes, though.
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Yeah, dwarves should have TONS of dyes at their disposal.
Off-topic, but I love the sort of green glass you can make with pitchblende (believe it or not, this is tech level appropriate since you only need a small amount of Uranium Dioxide to produce the color): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_glass
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Actually, I was thinking of humans.
Dwarfs probably wouldn't care, since they spend so much time in the dark. They've got gems for color, anyway.
Same thing with elves: they've got flowers to fondle.
Dyes were extremely valuable in medieval society, though, and dwarfs might trade coal tar to humans, while elves might trade vegetable dyes.
If you were of the peasant class (and you were), you'd be lucky to own even a single piece of dyed cloth, but the rich and the aristocracy were crazy for it, so dyed cloth be an area of trade that might be cornered by humans, who so far don't seem to have much going for them in the game.
That glass is really cool, by the way. From what I read, it looks like it comes in a couple of different colors, too, which is always nice.
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Well it depends. In my hometown which was Weaver- and dyer-city blue was pretty common and rather cheap because, thanks to the "via regia" and the "Sechsstädtebund" which was one of the mightiest tradefedearations on middle-european continent after the "Hanse", we traded big amounts of cloth and Waid (German Indigo) eastward.
Other plant-dyes like yellow or light green were pretty common too. Most times you got more or less dyed wool. The real expensiv stuff was silk, good linen and the special dyes used for them.
Well as said my hometown was pretty much an weaver- dyer- and tradertown so i guess the standarts here, in terms of clothing, were a good part higher then in most parts of the country.
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Actually, I was thinking of humans.
Dwarfs probably wouldn't care, since they spend so much time in the dark. They've got gems for color, anyway.
Dwarves are master craftsmen and artists, though.
Also, they're surrounded by all KINDS of things that can be used for coloration. The amount of coloration you can do just with minerals is amazing. Hell, by any rational standard, dwarves should have like a dozen colors of glass to choose from.
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Well, it's an option open to any species. Humans just seem like they'd be more invested in dyes than other species might incline.
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Perhaps, but my point is that dwarves are surrounded by so many potential mineral dyes that coloration of things like glass especially should just be a matter of course for them. e.g. "what color do you want your windows today?"
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It's a good point, I'll admit.
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I'll second the bit about dwarves and dyes.
As for the wood issue: I like the idea to harvest wood (but not logs) from grown trees. Also, after tree maturation times are increased, the ability to cut a sappling to get a little wood or wait for a bigger tree and get more wood, perhaps 2 or 3 levels of tree size.
Also: refuse -> compost. I wanna use goblin chunks to grow my Quarry Bushes!
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Meat doesn't make good composting material.
It attracts vermin, and the wrong kinds of bacteria.
Bones would be great, though, and maybe blood, if it's been dried. You can also bury a fish underground, and then plant corn on top of it. That's what the Native Americans did, back when fish were a lot more easy to get than corn.
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You can also probably compost a bunch of other random organic waste, like hair and the inedible portions of plants. And grass, and so forth.
Also, for some purposes, you should be able to actually collect shrubs themselves instead of just harvesting the fruit (which somehow destroys them). I'm not sure what good they'd be, for the most part (lye ash wouldn't be able to be collected from most of them, if you want to get realistic), but it would at least be nice to see a differentiation between "get strawberries from this bush" and "uproot this entire bush, taking the strawberries and turning the rest into a fine brown mist". It should be possible, for instance, to plant shrubs which survive over the years and harvest from them every once in a while. Underground versions of this concept should exist, too.
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Im going to piss everyone off and suggest that the elves have the dye market under their thumb, they have nothing better to sell.
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They have a monopole under the Lable Microcolth and you have to pay a license which states that you can only use the clothes on your body.
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You can also bury a fish underground, and then plant corn on top of it. That's what the Native Americans did, back when fish were a lot more easy to get than corn.
Ironically enough, they learned that from the Spanish.
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Yeah, then the Europeans decided to make corn a staple in many parts, not realizing how to actually make that diet work, resulting in severe malnutrition epidemics.
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Yeah, then the Europeans decided to make corn a staple in many parts, not realizing how to actually make that diet work, resulting in severe malnutrition epidemics.
Which could, and I think should, be a risk in DF eventually, if you don't have enough of a variety of foods.
As far as elves go, I'd really like to see them have knowledge itself, under their thumb. Not skills, really, but a trade in books and information. That'd fit into their immortality status. They also might do a brisk trade in pharmaceuticals and poisons, wine, plants, fine cloth (including silk, dyed and otherwise) and genetically engineered animals (sounds sci-fi? Well your chihuahua's ancestors looked just like wolves.).
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And from somewhere the animal-man have to come. Joke aside i wonder why elves trade anyway animals. In threetoes storys it looks like animals and elves form a symbiotic society. Are these traded animals the unintelligent ones? Did they comit any crimes?
Another thing with which elves could trade could be peat as form of fuel for heating - i would guess too that peat is the main elven fuel.
I am not sure if "books" is the right thing for elves. I think they would more tend to woven scrolls which are embroidered. edit: Fine Embroydery could also part of the trade between elves and humans since a elve has more time to spare and i would guess from his long life much more experience in such things.
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And from somewhere the animal-man have to come. Joke aside i wonder why elves trade anyway animals. In threetoes storys it looks like animals and elves form a symbiotic society. Are these traded animals the unintelligent ones? Did they comit any crimes?
Given what I've done with dust booths and cage traps...
They're elven nobles.
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and genetically engineered animals (sounds sci-fi? Well your chihuahua's ancestors looked just like wolves.).
That's a result of selective breeding, or unnatural selection. It works much faster than natural selection. Genetic engineering is actually editing the genes in something yet to be born. There is an important distinction there.
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What about adding in wood waste as a burnable source for ash and charcoal? Does it really take a whole tree to make a chair or a stack of bolts?
There should be all sorts of sawdust and little bits of extra wood that can't be used lying around.
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The problem is that the current trees are just a placeholder. Multitiletrees would have much more wood so you get less problems from wood shortage.
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The problem is that the current trees are just a placeholder. Multitiletrees would have much more wood so you get less problems from wood shortage.
yeah currently its kinda unrealistic, it seems any job requiring wood, actually requires an entire trees worth of wood all in one go.
currently crafting a steel short sword means using anything up to 4 trees to smelt the ores and craft the finished product
hopefully somewhere down the line, cutting down a single tree should yeild a hell of a lot of 'wood logs' that can be used in a multitude of different ways and possibly even splitting said logs for fuel burning or ash/charcoal creation.
edit, i had a few more ideas while posting in another thread.
im kinda envisioning trees yielding multiple usable prodcuts kinda like how butchery does now.
you would have bark, trunks, branches and smaller twig like branches, all with their varied uses. maybe a sawmill and miller job to create usable blocks and planks, and woodcrafters fashioning hafts, handles, poles and arrow/bolt shafts out of smaller limbs. making cordage from bark, all that sort of good stuff.
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And of course, bark, logs, limbs, and twigs could all be used for fuel and ash.
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!!YES!! !!BURN!!
This is planned, right?
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And of course, bark, logs, limbs, and twigs could all be used for fuel and ash.
And goblins and elves.
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No, they couldn't, but I'm not going to explain basic chemistry for the eight hundredth time.
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An elf might be usable, since they love trees so much, and you've got to wonder where little elves come from...
Goblins can't burn though, it's where you get iron.
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No, they couldn't, but I'm not going to explain basic chemistry for the eight hundredth time.
I heard somewhere that people who burned corpses for a living made sure to add a woman for every ten men, to assure that the stuff kept burning well by the extra fat..
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No, they couldn't, but I'm not going to explain basic chemistry for the eight hundredth time.
I heard somewhere that people who burned corpses for a living made sure to add a woman for every ten men, to assure that the stuff kept burning well by the extra fat..
But that would not get the type of ash that is so useful in DF.
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No, they couldn't, but I'm not going to explain basic chemistry for the eight hundredth time.
I heard somewhere that people who burned corpses for a living made sure to add a woman for every ten men, to assure that the stuff kept burning well by the extra fat..
But that would not get the type of ash that is so useful in DF.
But as a fuel?
Or just make it possible to burn prisoners... for gigs? *chaotic-evil*
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What if carpentry created "Wood Scraps" and Wood scraps could be burned at a wood furnace/ashery similar to melting metal objects?(10 Wood scraps = 1 bar of charcoal/ash?)
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Should leaves leave wood ash? Sounds a bit dubious really
I don't think burning bodies produces enough heat to smelt anything. They are after all, mostly water. Not very efficient of a heat source
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Should leaves leave wood ash? Sounds a bit dubious really
I don't think burning bodies produces enough heat to smelt anything. They are after all, mostly water. Not very efficient of a heat source
We're talking about dwarves here... 70% alcohol!
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Good point. But you're probably burning goblins and elves most of the time
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Should leaves leave wood ash? Sounds a bit dubious really
I don't think burning bodies produces enough heat to smelt anything. They are after all, mostly water. Not very efficient of a heat source
Well, if the body was dried out, it might work with, oh, maybe 2-3 bodies? I'm not entirely sure what size they would be dried out, so I can't really say. But drying it out would only be a valid possibility in certain climates (magma pipe might be good enough).
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Bodies burn extremely hot, if you didn't know that. The fat melts, and fat is water insoluble. It won't mix with all the water in your body. It will instead soak into whatever clothes are left. Molten fat burns in clothes really hot. Like an enormous candle. But hotter.
Really crazy relults when some crazy dudes burned a pig on some show. They lit a bed on fire. It was intense. The bed lit the pig.
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Talking about burning dried bodies, there's anecdotal evidence from Egypt that mummies burnt to run steam trains weren't worth the effort. I forget the actual quote I heard now. :( It was a documentary.
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Don't think goblins have much in the way of fat
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Well it is said that black dye made from mummys was one of the blackest blacks avaibable.
But we were at ash.
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Good point. But you're probably burning goblins and elves most of the time
Urist McPitchfork: We found an Elf! Burn it!
Cog McPhilosopher: How do you know it is an Elf?
Urist: ...
Cog: What do you do with Elves?
Urist: Burn them!!!
Cog: Ah! What else do you burn?
Dakost: Goblins!
Bembil McGreenHeadWound: Water! Water!
Urist: Wood
Cog: Exactly, and therfor?
Dakost: Elves are made of wood?
Cog: So how do we tell if Elves are made of wood?
Urist: Well they got upset when I tried to trade them a wooden Scepter, Called us muderers they did!
Cog: Not where I was going... but works for me. BURN THE ELF!
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I'd like to be able to burn wooden waste (such as non-masterwork beds and all the wooden arrows and swords and crap the elves leave lying around) to create ash. Just as a smelter can melt an iron spear to make 1/3 of an iron bar, a wooden sword ought to be burnable at a wood furnace to make 1/3 of a unit of ashes.
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What if carpentry created "Wood Scraps" and Wood scraps could be burned at a wood furnace/ashery similar to melting metal objects?(10 Wood scraps = 1 bar of charcoal/ash?)
I think just a basic conservation of mass approach would solve much of the problem. In addition to the wood scraps, adjust some tree/product conversions. 1 barrel per tree? 25 arrows per tree? 1 spear per tree? Expand those out a bit and those trees go a lot further so that turning some trees to ash doesn't seem as costly. In reality, a tree should produce about 3 barrels plus a pile of scraps.
I don't seen an inconsistency that it costs more stone than wood to produce things - wood is quite predictable in how it behaves under tooling. Stone isn't.
And I like the idea of burning unwanted wood items for ash - barrels, bins, etc. That seems like a no-brainer.
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Talking about burning dried bodies, there's anecdotal evidence from Egypt that mummies burnt to run steam trains weren't worth the effort. I forget the actual quote I heard now. :( It was a documentary.
And the fact that these are multiple thousand year old mummies worth a lot of money has nothing to do with it?
Sorry, but seriously, mummies as a fuel source? They aren't even all that common, when compared to normal dead bodies. Also, steam engines require much more fuel than smelting copper.
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Sorry, but seriously, mummies as a fuel source? They aren't even all that common, when compared to normal dead bodies. Also, steam engines require much more fuel than smelting copper.
Actually they are (or were, before they were used to run trains). Basically anyone who died in the desert mummified naturally, and relatively common people were mummified at various times. There were thousands and thousands of mummies of common folk, slaves, etc. and with trees being scarce and mummies plentiful, well, you can see where things led. They were also ground up and used for medicine apparently. Now, royal mummies are indeed rare, but not because there were so few mummies, but because there was so few royalty.
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Talking about burning dried bodies, there's anecdotal evidence from Egypt that mummies burnt to run steam trains weren't worth the effort. I forget the actual quote I heard now. :( It was a documentary.
And the fact that these are multiple thousand year old mummies worth a lot of money has nothing to do with it?
Sorry, but seriously, mummies as a fuel source? They aren't even all that common, when compared to normal dead bodies. Also, steam engines require much more fuel than smelting copper.
They are worth a lot when you're talking about royalty, now. If you're suggesting it has always been this way, I disagree.
Wiki link (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mummy#Egyptian_mummies_as_a_commodity) suggests that it's an urban myth under debate... but hey, I said anecdotal. ::)
*edit* no, I didn't read all the way through to the end of the thread. :-X
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Early Christians hiding/worshipping in caves(re:crypts) in Egypt used to burn mummies for light, as well.
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Actually they are (or were, before they were used to run trains). Basically anyone who died in the desert mummified naturally, and relatively common people were mummified at various times. There were thousands and thousands of mummies of common folk, slaves, etc. and with trees being scarce and mummies plentiful, well, you can see where things led. They were also ground up and used for medicine apparently. Now, royal mummies are indeed rare, but not because there were so few mummies, but because there was so few royalty.
The whole burning mummies for train fuel was invented out of whole cloth, pardon the pun. By Mark Twain no less.
I shall not speak of the railway, for it is like any other railway--I shall only say that the fuel they use for the locomotive is composed of mummies three thousand years old, purchased by the ton or by the graveyard for that purpose, and that sometimes one hears the profane engineer call out pettishly, "D--n these plebeians, they don't burn worth a cent--pass out a King;"*
* Stated to me for a fact. I only tell it as I got it. I am willing to believe it. I can believe any thing.
http://etext.virginia.edu/railton/innocent/text/mapchap58.html
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What if carpentry created "Wood Scraps" and Wood scraps could be burned at a wood furnace/ashery similar to melting metal objects?(10 Wood scraps = 1 bar of charcoal/ash?)
I think just a basic conservation of mass approach would solve much of the problem. In addition to the wood scraps, adjust some tree/product conversions. 1 barrel per tree? 25 arrows per tree? 1 spear per tree? Expand those out a bit and those trees go a lot further so that turning some trees to ash doesn't seem as costly. In reality, a tree should produce about 3 barrels plus a pile of scraps.
I don't seen an inconsistency that it costs more stone than wood to produce things - wood is quite predictable in how it behaves under tooling. Stone isn't.
And I like the idea of burning unwanted wood items for ash - barrels, bins, etc. That seems like a no-brainer.
Conservation of mass with regard to trees is a very commonly requested feature, and probably shouldn't be brought up here so much as it's already very wanted. But yes it would solve many problems! :)