Bay 12 Games Forum

I brought up the topic of leather values in the «☼MASTERWORK-DF - Studded With Patches☼» - Unofficial release thread (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=133174.msg4856279#msg4856279) but decided to open a new thread in order not to bog down that thread with some potential back and forth discussion.

Here's the first two posts regarding it.

I've been goofing around with the leather values to try and come up with a more reasonable progression of values.  Here's what I have.

name	value
leather	15
fur	15
suede	5
tough leather	20
studded leather	25
lamellar leather	55
chitinplate	30
rigid chitinplate	60
shellplate	30
rigid shellplate	60
scaleplate	30
rigid scaleplate	60
nether leather	75
dragon scale	75

Its tough when some of the materials end up being metal grade.

Let me know what you think.

Quote from: Billy Jack on December 23, 2013, 05:02:16 am

I've been goofing around with the leather values to try and come up with a more reasonable progression of values.  Here's what I have.

Hmm, let's see how these compare to their metal equivalents. From the manual:

Leather = Leather
Tough Leather = Copper
Studded Leather = Scaleplate = Shellplate = Chitinplate = Bronze
Lamellar Leather = Rigid Chitin¹ = Rigid Scale² = Iron
Rigid Shellplate = Iron++
Nether leather³ = Dragon scale = Steel

¹ Rigid Chitin is iron grade, but very light, and so should be worth more
² Rigid Scale is iron grade, but fireproof, and so should be worth a tiny bit more.
³ Nether leather has a fixed temp, making it slightly more valuable than dragon scale.

Copper has a material value of 2, and when made into bars would be worth 2×5 = 10. However I believe it requires only a *single* piece of leather to make armour (which would require 3 bars), giving tough leather an equivalent value of 30. However it also takes a single piece to make a leather helm (would would only require 1 bar). So I like your in-between value of 20.

If we're using metal equivalent material value × 10 to figure out the leather equivalent, then this would put studded leather, scaleplate, shellplate and chitinplate at 40 (based on bronze = 4)
Lamellar, rigid chitin, and rigid scaleplate would be 80 (based on iron = 8 ). Rigid chitin and scaleplate may be worth more, since they're light and fireproof respectively. I value lightness over fireproof, so perhaps 90 for rigid scale, 100 for rigid chitin.

Rigid Shellplate would be worth 120 if we model it on the value of rusty steel (12). However given that rusty steel is apparently 80% as good as regular steel, it may be undervalued in the raws. Giving Rigid Scaleplate a value of 160 would put it mid-way between iron and steel in value. (The manual notes it's heavy, but I don't know if it's heavier than its metal counterparts)

Nether leather and dragon scale are apparently steel grade, light, and cool. They should be worth *at least* 240 (based upon steel), but probably more since they're both light *and* fixed-temp, so I'd suggest 360.

Of course, all of these values are great in terms of figuring out how much it's worth compared to metal bars, but there's also the question of whether we'll see crazily-expensive items once crafted. Socks have a x6 multiplier, so normally a 'metal' sock would be worth just slightly more than a bar of the same material. However if leather gets multiplied the same way, then a dragonscale sock would be worth 1800☼, whereas a steel sock only 144. 'Armor' has a multiplier of 21, so a 'steel armor' would be 504, but a dragonscale armor 6300. That's high, but since dragonscale is about 1/5th the weight of steel, it doesn't feel unreasonable. This does put masterwork dragonscale armour into artefact-level value ranges, but a masterwork dragonscale armour sure *sounds* like an artefact to me!

One could argue the values I've suggested could be halved, but I wouldn't be inclined to make them much lower than that.

Just as an aside, I would *love* to rename 'Rigid Shellplate' to 'Hardened Shellplate', so all the 'rigid' items have the same qualities. One could even put forward an argument to rename 'lamellar leather' to 'rigid leather'.

TL;DR: The new leathers should be worth a lot more.

Are you tired of scrolling through 'endless' pages of different animal leather, chitin, scales, feathers, etc? Do you get upset when you want a leather bag made but instead get a chitinplate bag?

The following changes are what you are looking for. They are intended to remove all of the 'flavor' from leather, chitin, scales, feathers, shells, and a couple other things.

In the stockpile options for Leather you will only have the following items:
  Dragon Scale
  Suede
  Netherbark Leather
  Leather
  Rigid Chitinplate
  Rigid Shellplate
  Rigid Scaleplate
  Feather
  Fur
  Stomach   <-- Was already in the list from, but lost within the huge list.
  Chitinplate
  Shellplate
  Scaleplate
  Bonerattle
  Tough Leather
  Studded Leather
  Lamellar Leather

Those will also be the only leather options when specifying the material for leather uniform items for your military.

If you use Workflow, you'll have an easier time finding the particular leather type that you want. (Currently, most of them are all under a nameless creature). Just start typing the name once you have gone into the Creature parent menu.

NOTE: As I'm typing this, I realize that suede is still hidden under a nameless creature, but it is the first nameless creature in the list, located about 28 pages down the list.

There's a lot of files to modify, so make a backup of the RAWS before you do this. Using Windows, I just use Explorer to search for the particular string that I need to change. There will be a few extra files listed that don't have what I'm actually looking for, but there won't be any files that are missed. I'm sure other tools and editors can also accomplish this.