Bay 12 Games Forum

Picture different technology levels of of workshops. A smelter is a good example.

A really low level smelter consists of a simple camp fire or similar fire, with some sort of vessel for separating metal from slag. This is what the earliest ones looked like and is quite sufficient for some ores. I imagine copper and tin would work well.

The higher up in technology level, the more advanced the workshop, the more materials are needed for it, and eventually you'll get to the point where you actually need materials produced in a lower level workshop to build a higher level one. (Or you could buy them from someone else, of course.)

Different civilizations would have different tech levels, which are of course moderated by the materials available to them, as well as other circumstances. (A completely isolated settlement in a peaceful valley isn't going to spend a lot of resources on advanced weaponry.)

In the above example, ratmen might have been able to learn how to extract bronze and tin, and maybe even smelt them together to bronze, but maybe not more.

The dwarves, on the other hand, could have advanced blast furnaces for steel production, etc.

What I really wanted was better management, and if the one manager can take care of it, why not? As it is, you have to review your own stocks and make your own orders anyway, the manager doesn't really do much, can certainly not on his own.

Not much of a manager, is he?

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Originally posted by Tamren:
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Give me an elvish sounding word for "wet steel".
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Hmm. Maybe "çwinire" - a portmonteau of "drip" and "steel"? Steel that drips (from trees)...

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Originally posted by Axe of Agor:
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(As a side-note, I also think it would be fun if items could be made from tangible forms of immaterial realities. A sword forged from moon-beams, a spear cast from frozen fire, a cloak spun from shadows might seem surreal, but I think therein lies their appeal; and when I drive my rainbow-wrought sword down a giant's throat, I can let out a mighty cry of: "Skittles -- Taste the rainbow, bitch!")</STRONG>

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Or a sword which is actually the physical manifestation of the soul of an imagined person from a city that exists only in the memories of long-dead stars. It can only be wielded by a troubled youth struggling to recover the memories of his dark past together with his band of unlikely friends, one of which is actually the princess of a faraway land in a dimension ruled by a fallen angel, genetically re-engineered by crazed scientists, another of which is a stuffed animal given life by the tears of the moon. They struggle to save the world from the ultimate dark evil of nothingness, who, it turns out, is the twin brother of the hero, who it turns out does not actually exist, except as the shadow of the evil thoughts of a lost generation of miners.  

Oh, and there has to be an engineer called Cid in there somewhere, and a fantastic vehicle of some sort that the heroes use as a mobile base.  

I am probably sounding rather sarcastic, so I'll apologise right here and now. What I really wanted to say is that a sword made of rainbows feels a little "far out" to me. Then again I don't want to piss on anyone's ideas, and what's this forum for if not for ideas and speculation?

Dwarf Fortress has always (well, not like I've played it for years and years) felt very down to earth to me - the grim, gory, dirty reality of trying to make a living in a world full of bad things.

Swords made of rainbows remind me of Final Fantasy and that sends shudders down to my very core, because then we're on the path to dwarves who can wade unscathed through lava flows, cleave mountains with a blow of their hammers, and who come back from the dead completely rejuvenated within seconds of an application of the overabundant Phoenix Down...