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I really like the new system.

127 (35%)

Better than before, but more needs to be done.

93 (25.6%)

It doesn't make a difference to me.

41 (11.3%)

The changes don't really address my issues.

6 (1.7%)

I don't like it at all.

35 (9.6%)

I have mixed feelings on the matter.

61 (16.8%)

Total Members Voted: 362

[Graknorke]

Steel is supposed to be difficult, and has always required trade to be produced in mass amounts. The initial methods of making it WOULD have the furnace buildings in a site near ore and coal. But as the industrial capacity became greater, it became much better to trade for the materials rather than having such a mix of industrial processes in one place.

Basically, caravan arc to make steel making viable again.
Sources are my own knowledge.

[Splint]

Eh. Once blocks can be used in place of raw stone in place of it for smaller things and for making steel, since we only get two bars a pop anyway, things will balance out and no-one can complain at all.

[Xenos]

Time to abuse stack splitting for steel coins/bolts so I can afford to make steel everything...

[Graknorke]

Wait what? Using blocks for smelting?
How would that make sense? Before one bar of steel would use a total of two ores and a flux and a charcoal.
With the changes, one ore should then produce two bars of steel, flux and fuel notwithstanding.
Assuming exactly 1/4 drops, for a 4 tile area, you would get the same amount.

[Xenos]

Wait what? Using blocks for smelting?
How would that make sense? Before one bar of steel would use a total of two ores and a flux and a charcoal.
With the changes, one ore should then produce two bars of steel, flux and fuel notwithstanding.
Assuming exactly 1/4 drops, for a 4 tile area, you would get the same amount.

They should have clarified that you would use flux blocks for smelting ore boulders.  Otherwise it is ridiculous.

[Laserhead]

One thing I've noticed, if you embark with nothing but a little food and the supplies for a metal industry on the wagon, you can have two guys in steel equipment using just what you brought with you. Before you'd have had to have used bronze to get a reasonable amount of metal for the standard number of embark points.

[Panando]

I really like the system for the most part, and my only gripe is now the embark prices are even more out of whack. I know, I know, the whole system really needs a massive re-tuning, but now you can get bronze bars (from ore) for a mere 1.55pts each (assuming malachite, cassi, bit. coal).

Other than that I love the reduced drop rate and the ability to more easily import metal ores.

[traxzilla]

Do you make them because you enjoy using them as trade goods, or because it's a way of getting rid of the stone that you'd otherwise be atom-smashing?

Mechanisms (and other things that need to be made from raw stone) are an interesting case. If you're making enough of them for the 1/4 drop rate to be an issue, then the labour and infrastructure you already had available for your mechanism-using megaproject can be briefly diverted into pump part production in order to set up an obsidian farm.

I use crafts furniture to level up my masons and crafts as my primary trade goods. I tend to load caravans down with as much as they can possibly carry, both to make them happier (and thus bring me more stuff next time) and to inflate my fortress wealth to bring in more fun.

For mechanisms, grates, floodgates, statues, and other such things... well, I like to build excessive amounts of traps, bridges and waterways.

I don't think catapults can use blocks as ammo either. I know siege weapons are not very effective, but hopefully that will change in the future. Not sure about stone-fall traps.

Obsidian farming is what I will probably end up doing.

Edit: I meant to say I use furniture to level up my masons (mostly statues) and crafts as my primary trade goods, and I should probably proof-read better. Edited to fix.

[Graknorke]

Crafts train stonecrafting, not masonry. Metal crafts can easily susbstitude stone ones, especially if you just make a few high-quality gold ones (like it's good for anything else). The rest are totally valid though. Mechanisms and the like will need tweaking to make multiple from one boulder (I mean, it's meant to be about 10 metres cubed? You would have to be pretty inefficient to make ONE chair from that.).

[Kar98]

I wasn't aware that creating blocks gave you more building material. I was going to complain about the lack of boulders makes it harder to build walls but this does change things quite a bit. I did like the lack of stupid amounts of rock

[Eric Blank]

Do you make them because you enjoy using them as trade goods, or because it's a way of getting rid of the stone that you'd otherwise be atom-smashing?

Mechanisms (and other things that need to be made from raw stone) are an interesting case. If you're making enough of them for the 1/4 drop rate to be an issue, then the labour and infrastructure you already had available for your mechanism-using megaproject can be briefly diverted into pump part production in order to set up an obsidian farm.

I use crafts to level up my masons and as my primary trade goods. I tend to load caravans down with as much as they can possibly carry, both to make them happier (and thus bring me more stuff next time) and to inflate my fortress wealth to bring in more fun.

For mechanisms, grates, floodgates, statues, and other such things... well, I like to build excessive amounts of traps, bridges and waterways.

I don't think catapults can use blocks as ammo either. I know siege weapons are not very effective, but hopefully that will change in the future. Not sure about stone-fall traps.

Obsidian farming is what I will probably end up doing.

Stone fall traps are moderately more effective with boulders being larger and/or denser now.

I definitely want to be able to produce more furniture from boulders, though. If you had a high-quality (not badly fractured) chunk of stone, about a cubic meter, which I think is roughly the volume in-game, you could produce a couple good-sized coffers from it just by splitting it in half, shearing a slab off the top, hollowing out the remainder and using the slab you sheared off as a lid, then move on to use the scraps from the process of hollowing out the interior to produce smaller items like mugs. It could be more efficient actually to cut it into 5cm thick slabs and use them to construct tables, cabinets, coffers, chairs or other objects that need large surface area but can afford to be fairly thin. Blocks would basically be premade slabs, so letting dwarves use them to construct the items slightly more rapidly could work if you've somehow made too many blocks and are short on boulders.

I've gotten used to the changes to a degree, but I'd still like some way to control the volume of material that is lost in mining.

[Splint]

I wasn't aware that creating blocks gave you more building material. I was going to complain about the lack of boulders makes it harder to build walls but this does change things quite a bit. I did like the lack of stupid amounts of rock

As far as blocks go, it's basically a requirment now to get the most out of what boulders you get. Although to cover evertyhing I need I tend to need to quarry out vast amounts of stone unless I wanna just go cheap and small.

As far as the gold crafts go, it may be one of those things that attracts more  dorfs than you can take care of, though depending on the situation YMMV after all...

[chevil]

I like the changes. Changes in ore drop rate means that less time is spent smelting. Only thing that i didn't like is that i ran out of stone and had to mine just to get more stone.

[Rude]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Do you make them because you enjoy using them as trade goods, or because it's a way of getting rid of the stone that you'd otherwise be atom-smashing?

Mechanisms (and other things that need to be made from raw stone) are an interesting case. If you're making enough of them for the 1/4 drop rate to be an issue, then the labour and infrastructure you already had available for your mechanism-using megaproject can be briefly diverted into pump part production in order to set up an obsidian farm.

I use crafts to level up my masons and as my primary trade goods. I tend to load caravans down with as much as they can possibly carry, both to make them happier (and thus bring me more stuff next time) and to inflate my fortress wealth to bring in more fun.

For mechanisms, grates, floodgates, statues, and other such things... well, I like to build excessive amounts of traps, bridges and waterways.

I don't think catapults can use blocks as ammo either. I know siege weapons are not very effective, but hopefully that will change in the future. Not sure about stone-fall traps.

Obsidian farming is what I will probably end up doing.

Stone fall traps are moderately more effective with boulders being larger and/or denser now.

I definitely want to be able to produce more furniture from boulders, though. If you had a high-quality (not badly fractured) chunk of stone, about a cubic meter, which I think is roughly the volume in-game, you could produce a couple good-sized coffers from it just by splitting it in half, shearing a slab off the top, hollowing out the remainder and using the slab you sheared off as a lid, then move on to use the scraps from the process of hollowing out the interior to produce smaller items like mugs. It could be more efficient actually to cut it into 5cm thick slabs and use them to construct tables, cabinets, coffers, chairs or other objects that need large surface area but can afford to be fairly thin. Blocks would basically be premade slabs, so letting dwarves use them to construct the items slightly more rapidly could work if you've somehow made too many blocks and are short on boulders.

I've gotten used to the changes to a degree, but I'd still like some way to control the volume of material that is lost in mining.

How does old world masonry work? How do you "sheer" off a bit of stone? Wouldn't chisels ruin anything you chiseled off? I can't imagine any sort of hand saw that could handle huge blocks of stone. It seems like even something as simple as splitting a boulder in half would be mostly hit and miss as far as precision goes.

[wuphonsreach]

I think the simplest change that would work for me would be to add a "D" (dig) and "H" (channel) designation for digging which takes 2x as long, but produces 50% better drop rate from that tile.  Then I could go with the faster "d" and "h" methods early on, but when I start caring about how much stone I'm getting I could switch to a slower "D" and "H" method.

I tend to do a lot of construction in my large forts and that often means digging out large portions of the map just to get the raw materials.

I do like having less loose stone lying around from a cleanliness standpoint.  With the new wheelbarrows, it also makes stone hauling take about 1/5 the time it did before as there's both less rock to carry and the wheelbarrows make it fast.