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Dwarf Fortress => DF Suggestions => Topic started by: Skorpion on April 08, 2009, 04:28:35 pm

Title: Burning wooden items to make charcoal/ash?
Post by: Skorpion on April 08, 2009, 04:28:35 pm
Elves drop useless wooden armour. They sell useless wooden items and crafts.

We can melt metal items to provide bars, so why not burning wooden items for ash or maybe even charcoal? It'd certainly improve the reliance on stocks of wood logs, and would add an air of desperation when you burn the beds to fertilise the fields to get more food during a siege.
Title: Re: Burning wooden items to make charcoal/ash?
Post by: cliff987 on April 08, 2009, 04:43:19 pm
Concurred!
Title: Re: Burning wooden items to make charcoal/ash?
Post by: DennyTom on April 08, 2009, 05:05:07 pm
Could not this be modded in?
Title: Re: Burning wooden items to make charcoal/ash?
Post by: Skorpion on April 08, 2009, 05:31:50 pm
Maybe, but I haven't the foggiest.
Title: Re: Burning wooden items to make charcoal/ash?
Post by: Footkerchief on April 08, 2009, 05:32:08 pm
Could not this be modded in?

Only very awkwardly -- you'd have to add a separate reaction for each item type (beds, barrels, doors, etc.) and the job would be done at a smelter rather than a wood furnace.

I think it's come up before, but it's a good idea.
Title: Re: Burning wooden items to make charcoal/ash?
Post by: sweitx on April 08, 2009, 07:34:25 pm
Maybe it should be treated as a smelter reaction, but occurs in Wood Furnace.
And like actual melting down armor, it will take several wooden item to "charge up" the Wood Furnace before it will create a block of ash or charcoal.
Title: Re: Burning wooden items to make charcoal/ash?
Post by: Impaler[WrG] on April 09, 2009, 12:58:09 am
Perhaps "Mark Item for kindling", then a Carpenter or Lumberjack comes along and hacks away at the items with their saw or ax respectively and Kindling is left, which is basically just like a normal log of wood but can not be used for making new things only burning.
Title: Re: Burning wooden items to make charcoal/ash?
Post by: Guy Montag on April 09, 2009, 01:53:49 am
I like this idea, I think it could be handled much like the [m]elt item at the smelter is handled now, only at a wood furnace/ ashery.

"burn wooden items" or something to that effect, and have it go at the same 1/3 ratio melted metal items return. 3 bins, or 9 wooden cups convert to 1 logs worth of ash/charcoal or something.

I'd actually rather see wood scraps, saw dust or wood shavings, whatever you want to call them, as a byproduct of the lumber industry that could be used for this purpose, so this waste-burning option would be even x-tra useful. In reality I don't think they burned entire logs just to obtain the ashes, rather they just burned the sawdust from the lumber mill.
Title: Re: Burning wooden items to make charcoal/ash?
Post by: Funk on April 09, 2009, 04:55:19 pm
it makes sense if you get to stock up a set amount of wooden junk befor your dwarfs can brun/charcoal it.
dwarfs shoud try to use junk first then use logs.
maybe thay can pick wooden junk out of the dump?
that or can we get a melt/burn pile
Title: Re: Burning wooden items to make charcoal/ash?
Post by: Skorpion on April 09, 2009, 06:34:26 pm
I sorta see it working like melting items, by way of a designation. Same inefficiency, same restriction on only making it into raw materials. It'd make attracting elf sieges a lot more useful.
Title: Re: Burning wooden items to make charcoal/ash?
Post by: Jakkarra on April 09, 2009, 06:59:16 pm
is it not possible to actually do this in the same manner as melting? is melting hardcoded? and if so,would it not be possible to matglos the wood into a metal substratewith the same properties as wood, and with the same restrictions?

this does still leave the question of separating the resultant "melt wood" into the more appropriate "burn wood" wait, no wood would be a different "metal" meaning that you could make it turn to an ash bar, rather than a wooden bar. but then the ash bar would need to be broken down, forcing another possible smelter reaction, possibly called "sift ash"?

Love, jakkarra