How can I create work orders that accept multiple materials?

Question

I want to create a work order for, let's say, swords, and I don't care if they are made of iron or steel, I just want 20 of them.

How can I do that?

Answer 1

Pretty sure it can't be done in a single work order. The way I handle multiple input jobs is with redundant orders.

In your case you'd probably want to use the steel first. In classic version, you would set that up as follows:

J, M, Q, 'Forge steel short sword', quantity (1). Then highlight the job in the jobs list and type C to add conditions. Press 'a' to create an item condition. With the condition selected type 'i' and make the item type 'short sword'. Then type 't' to add the trait 'metal'. Cycle 'q' until you have 'less than' and use 'n' to enter 20. The condition won't be met unless you have less than 20 metal short swords available. That will include copper, bronze, and silver. You'll have to smelt or sell those since we can't differentiate beyond 'metal'. You can add reagent conditions as well. You won't want a product condition since that will be specifically for steel swords.

Now create a 'forge iron short sword' order with the same 20 metal swords condition but also add a condition Available steel bars = 0.

As long as you have steel bars available the first order will run. If there's no steel it will fall back to the iron short word job.

This can be set up for bituminous coal/lignite or magnetite/limonite/hematite. It's convenient to set-and-forget but you do wind up with a lot of work orders.