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[Maklak]

Caravans seem to get larger over time, so I guess giving them profit helps.

While I can buy all I need with goblin trash, rock crafts / mugs / instruments / toys, large gems and such, I preffer selling meals. I only recently discovered 's' button in 'g' trade depot menu, and it made me happy. Works for mechanism too, so I can mass obsidian or flux mechanisms, and sell anything under exceptional. I can also just make whatever I need at the moment, and melt/sell anything low quality.

In my previous forts, I used to control the amount of crafts produced, but with meals I no longer need to bother. I can just buy all food from caravan, set still and lavish meals on repeat, and have everything I need to buy from caravans. More time to focus on building projects or whatever I find fun.

[darkflagrance]

The high prices for prepared meals seem reasonable to me. Consider all the resources that go into that quarry bush roast:

Miner digs farm plot.
Planter grows quarry bushes and pig tails.
Thresher processes pig tail thread.
Weaver makes cloth.
Clothier makes bags.
Thresher processes quarry leaves.
Cook makes roast.

If the roast has several ingredients then it might also represent the work of millers, butchers, beekeepers, barrel-makers, military to protect the above-ground berry farm, etc.

So it makes sense to me that a finished good requiring coordinated team effort is worth a lot more than a gabbro mini-forge that is the work of a single craftsdwarf.

What frustrates people I think is that dwarfs "should be" master stone and metal crafters based on our imagination. But currently prepared food is the most lucrative industry due to the "stacking" effect of something like "quarry bush leaves [25]." What would be cool is a comparable stacking effect for other crafts. For example a jewel-encrusted figurine of a dwarf is a nice craft good, but a "stack" of 32 jewel-encrusted figurines becomes a "chess set" worth a small fortune. Just a thought...

The correct answer.

[celem]

Yeah thats a good point.  Time or mandwarfhours gives prices.  I always feel a little guilty when I sell something stupidly high value that was easy for me to make...  I think because farms and my cook/hunters all do their thing on auto the cooked meals feel like free stuff, that and the fact that overproducing is easy even with 1 cook and 200 dwarves to feed.

Personally my alltime favorite is goblinite.  The metal I melt for furniture but clothing gets a masterwork image added to remove the brackets and goes out with the next caravan

[Stil]

It might be nice to see perishables (I know barrel increases shelf life) decrease in value if the merchants know they won't be able to sell all the stock before it spoils. But I think it's fair to trade food - dorfhours and resources go into that stuff. Think at what you're losing due to opportunity cost.

I trade the other way - I give the elves free stuff. Magma showers and all that jazz

[Stormcloudy]

I feel like we might be underestimating the quality of masterworks.

They're 12 times more valuable than a base good, so they've got to be at least a little bit special in some way. Maybe when magic is built in, they'll show their true colors, and thus their value. That hundred-thousand worth of food you traded may be keeping the traders' homes' soldiers buffed with increased Toughness or Speed.

The masterwork golden amulet masterfully encrusted with every single gem on a 4x4 embark there should be something pretty cool about it. Maybe magical throat armor?

A masterwork granite mug should negate mundane poison, being magical and food-related.

Those masterwork wooden toy axes and lead mini-forges should help children who play with them gain skills or attributes (Noble Evolution would be hilarious - four generations of playing with a masterwork axe as children, and they're the hulk at birth).

And on it goes. Just a few examples. I feel that Legendary and Masterwork are underestimated. As, I suppose are the useless artifacts. Until magic is implemented, they will, likely, feel unimportant.

[Andal]

I feel like we might be underestimating the quality of masterworks.

They're 12 times more valuable than a base good, so they've got to be at least a little bit special in some way.

I think this is really what I feel about dwarven industries in general, and especially food. A masterwork roast is not just a really good meal at a fine restaurant, it's a mind-blowing, life-changing culinary experience that gives a beardgasm with every bite, worthy of being engraved all over the walls of a fortress. A masterwork goblet isn't just a really fancy cup (or an easy dorfbuck), it's a sublime work of art to be passed down as a family heirloom through generations. Artifacts are legends in their own right, with other races whispering tales of the mighty and arcane treasures of the dwarves. Our fortresses pumping them out quickly is a sign of how incredible the player-run fortresses are: pinnacles of dwarven civilization inhabited by walking legends and peerless masters of their craft. You don't get masterworks from the mountainhome (until, of course, you become it)! I envision throngs of dwarves turning out at the return of the caravans from the peerless fortress of Labouredcontrolled, and auctions of Amost Manorsquare's latest culinary production drawing hundreds of nobles and the royals themselves. So buying out the raw supplies offered by the caravan, and giving the traders a healthy profit, doesn't feel like an exploit at all.

Just my two Adil Gusgash 68 copper coins.

[Patchy]

Beyond the first year or 2 I don't bother trading anymore, I just toss whatever I don't want or made while training dwarves in the magma sea or under an atom smasher. Those don't have weight limits on how much they can destroy unlike traders. Traders also run the risk of getting killed while leaving your fort too, and then dropping all the junk you were trying to get rid of on your lawn.

[ImBocaire]

I feel like we might be underestimating the quality of masterworks.

They're 12 times more valuable than a base good, so they've got to be at least a little bit special in some way.

I think this is really what I feel about dwarven industries in general, and especially food. A masterwork roast is not just a really good meal at a fine restaurant, it's a mind-blowing, life-changing culinary experience that gives a beardgasm with every bite, worthy of being engraved all over the walls of a fortress. A masterwork goblet isn't just a really fancy cup (or an easy dorfbuck), it's a sublime work of art to be passed down as a family heirloom through generations. Artifacts are legends in their own right, with other races whispering tales of the mighty and arcane treasures of the dwarves. Our fortresses pumping them out quickly is a sign of how incredible the player-run fortresses are: pinnacles of dwarven civilization inhabited by walking legends and peerless masters of their craft. You don't get masterworks from the mountainhome (until, of course, you become it)! I envision throngs of dwarves turning out at the return of the caravans from the peerless fortress of Labouredcontrolled, and auctions of Amost Manorsquare's latest culinary production drawing hundreds of nobles and the royals themselves. So buying out the raw supplies offered by the caravan, and giving the traders a healthy profit, doesn't feel like an exploit at all.

Just my two Adil Gusgash 68 copper coins.

This. Why else would migrants come by the truckload to our fortress? They want to see where the magic happens. A blinking dwarf, a legendary dwarf, isn't just someone who's really good at what they do; they're legendary. They are the exemplars of the craft that will be held up by civilizations the world over as the pinnacle of what one can achieve. I imagine a legendary mechanic would be a dwarven Thomas Edison, able to perform feats of engineering years ahead of his time; a legendary miner would be a John-Henry-type figure, able to do the work of twenty-five men in a quarter of the time; a legendary craftsdwarf would be a dwarven Michelangelo, producing crafts of varied and subtle nuance that make grown dwarves weep; a legendary hammerdwarf would be Chuck Norris, Bruce Lee, and Captain Falcon all rolled into one indomitable package.

Who WOULDN'T beggar themselves to be able to own the work of these paragons?

[Maklak]

As for Dwarf labor involved in making roasts, most of the time I don't even have to farm. I just buy all food from caravans. It gets hauled to nearby stockpiles and turned into booze and roasts. I have a booze stockpile close to kitchen, so some roasts end up as quite large stacks. Even after factoring in overzealous butchering animal husbandry, cheesemaking and occasional farming or plant gathering, this is not much effort compared to say, selling junk goblinite and crafts.

The way I see it, people complain about roast prices, because of the way they are calculated. Each ingredient gets quality modifier for how finely it is minced, the four are added together, multiplied by quality multiplier for the whole meal, and then by sum of stack sizes. IMO a good way to change this, would be to have 1 quality modifier for the meal itself, and count each ingredient as decoration, so rather than something like (10 *minced1 *base_price1 + 10 *minced2 *base_price2 + 10 *minced3 *base_price3 + 10 *minced4 *base_price4) *quality *stack_sum we would have: (10 *minced1 *base_price1 + 10 *minced2 *base_price2 + 10 *minced3 *base_price3 + 10 *minced4 *base_price4 + roast_base_price *quality) *stack_sum

I'm not sure, it all the 10s are there, I just assumed basic prices for decorations are 10. Removing them from meals would further reduce prices.

OFC there still would be cloth, and glass serrated disk industry.

[EllisMaestr]

I just got some dwarf traders with two animals and lots of stuff I wanted. I ended up owing them about 7.5k dwarfbucks. What did I trade them in return? One +giant, serrated steel disc+. It was worth 11k.
Is this a bug?

[EllisMaestr]

I just got some dwarf traders with two animals and lots of stuff I wanted. I ended up owing them about 7.5k dwarfbucks. What did I trade them in return? One +giant, serrated steel disc+. It was worth 11k.
Is this a bug?

[edit] sorry, double post

[celem]

no thats about what its meant to cost.  Again, think of all the stages in making it, since even with magma forges steel eats coal...If you check your military youll notice a masterwork steel weapon is generally worth round 12k.  This is why with skilled smiths its viable to buy out all the caravans inferior armour/weapons/misc steel goods and reforge it

[Saiko Kila]

I just got some dwarf traders with two animals and lots of stuff I wanted. I ended up owing them about 7.5k dwarfbucks. What did I trade them in return? One +giant, serrated steel disc+. It was worth 11k.
Is this a bug?

Masterful disc is worth over 45k. My dwarves make a million worth of such discs (and spiked balls, they are worth the same) in a month, among other things. It's ridiculous but that's how it is.

[noob]

if you feel bad about it give them extra profit

[Mushroo]

Those masterwork wooden toy axes and lead mini-forges should help children who play with them gain skills or attributes (Noble Evolution would be hilarious - four generations of playing with a masterwork axe as children, and they're the hulk at birth).

I love this idea!