Steelmaking.

[Quasic]

I suppose, let me first say that this is going to be all critique.

I am lawspeaker for a village, that has been in continuous operation all Third World. We have had up to 12 active villagers at a time, although Toady cut our legs out when Dwarf Fortress released, making many of our best villagers leave to play Dwarf Fortress. (Although other reasons cited , included that they felt certain persons' appointments to moderator indicated that the developers supported ill behavior or something, I don't pretend to follow those things.)

So we have some active players still. And trying to recruit more without throwing our doors wide open to every spy and griefer-scout in creation...

But we still cannot seem to make steel. >:(

There is no reliable information on what the damned Temp-Q means. I had read forum posts indicating that it needed to hover at near 1/2 fueled for the whole run. Well, one night of not being able to personally supervise it till 4 AM after being up all day, and the steel that was almost done is now ruined. And I am UNEMPLOYED and BORED. Do we have to have a village full of OCD, unemployed people to produce quality steel or what????? That is asking too much, on top of the already numbing grind. It is no wonder there are not more active players ... or that active players often turn to raiding to meet their needs , thus causing people to quit in disgust / turn evil themselves and furthering the problem.

Also due to this, trading for steel EVEN WITH ALLIES is like trying to buy their daughter's virginity with a case of Mentos, not gonna happen.

I mean, i know that historically, steel was no picnic to make. But this is a bit ludicrous to ask of people. And these are people who barely complain about things like the "trying to up the quality of trees" HORROR GRINDS.

Lawgiver Monkeyboy

Edit: I do not have any clear idea of best fix for this, so this post is all critique as I stated. And angry incoherent critique at that.

[bgfan]

keep the temp q at about 50% for best results at your current level of active villagers, if you have under 10 people keep it higher, more than 15 lower. the steel has to stay smelting for 56 hours before it is done.

[jorb]

Temp Q should go, IMHO.

[Avu]

Make it so blue one!

[KoE]

Hasn't loftar been adamant about making steel balls-hard? I seem to recall jorb saying as much, both with the temp quality thing (which I am completely ignorant of as I took my leave before that was implemented / before I was aware of it) and with the original 'jeez keeping it going for 56 hours' bit.

Back when a single fellow could keep his steel going pretty much all the time (and remember when you could build in mines?), I thought it was fairly reasonable to require someone to log in once every twelve hours - perhaps not always doable as a solo player, but encouraging group play isn't really a bad thing. But constant tending for the lion's share of three days? Really? That seems like it's just punishing groups who aren't either glued to the computer or large and varied playtime-wise enough to babysit the steel. If that's the truth just, ugh.

It should really be about the same degree of 'difficulty' as silkmoths, which now that you can't just rip an arbitrarily large number of branches off a tree, seems like it would be the case if steelmaking just went back to what it was like in the first world.

So do we need to pester loftar about it until he relents or what?

[jorb]

It has been a pet peeve of loftar's, yes. I haven't bothered enough to challenge him on it, but good gameplay it is not.

Also, IIRC, it's only the last tick of the oven that matters anyway (Though I could be wrong on that)

[Quasic]

It has been a pet peeve of loftar's, yes. I haven't bothered enough to challenge him on it, but good gameplay it is not.

Also, IIRC, it's only the last tick of the oven that matters anyway (Though I could be wrong on that)

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
that information, is the kind of info that the wiki is desperate for.

[KoE]

It's at best a bug and at worst flat out wrong. I'm inclined to think jorb's wrong, though I honestly don't know on count of quality, but it's certainly not like the oven bug. I'd ask some of the old hands who've done it whether it works or not. (Then again, it's likely nobody tried).

Better yet, ask loftar. And then pester him to change it. EDIT: The quality thing, not the bug thing, of course.

[Avu]

Jorb is right. Only last tick matters. Still not easy to get with those completely blurry and indistinguishable progress pies. Change those too pretty please. Anything white grey or yellow sucks with those...

[KoE]

Well guess there's a first time for everything.

That brings up another pet peeve... Something tied to in-game time that's nigh-impossible to keep decently accurate track of with the routine server crashes.