Sculptures

Sculptures are pieces of art that (hopefully) add beauty to any room they're in once they are installed. They are one of the most effective ways to improve a room's impressiveness. A finished piece of art gets a quality that affects the beauty and market value.

Construction

The artist's skill is a driving factor in the quality of the sculpture. Sculptures can be reinstalled or uninstalled. Sculptures may be deconstructed to salvage 75% of its materials. If a sculpture job is interrupted for any reason the sculptor will drop the piece on the table, and it will be in an unfinished state until the same author finishes it. A sculptor cannot work on another sculptor's piece.

Counter-intuitively, stone sculptures are not made from stone chunks, but from multiple stone blocks at an art bench, requiring an additional step of processing for those.

Types of Sculptures

Sculptures come in three sizes:

Small sculptures, which are 1x1 and require 50 materials or 500 small volume materials (silver or gold).
Large sculptures, which are 1x1 and require 100 materials or 1000 small volume materials (silver or gold). Large sculptures require 2/3 more work than small sculptures.
Grand sculptures, which are 2x2 and require 400 materials or 4000 small volume materials (silver or gold). Although the grand size occupies 2x2 tiles, the beauty of the piece is attributed to one of the four tiles only, yielding the same overall beauty per tile as four large sculptures. Grand sculptures require almost 6x the work of a small sculpture, or 3.5x the work of a large.

On each individual page is a table detailing statistics on sculptures.

Usage

The inspect pane indicates the name of the piece's sculptor and how much work is remaining. The stockpile filter includes an entry for unfinished sculptures (under >Items >Unfinished) which allows the player to control where they are stored if keeping them by the table becomes an inconvenience. The piece will be named under a title and although same titles can be used, the storylines will differ; for example, both sculptures in the images below are titled "Blue Forest".

When and What To Use

The small sculpture has the highest work:material ratio (6 vs 5 vs 4.4); since the base value (before the quality modifier) is work + material, that gives small sculptures the highest value per material and lowest value per work, while grand sculptures are the opposite. What this means is that if you have time but are short on material and want to make the most of what you do have, make small sculptures, whereas if you have lots of material and want to create value (relatively) quickly, make grand sculptures. However, be mindful that visiting traders may not have the silver to buy the most expensive sculptures, so you'll either have to make up the remainder by bartering for more items or form a caravan of your own and visit faction bases as they do.

If you're installing the sculptures to make a room impressive, it's worth noting that, in terms of beauty and wealth per tile, large and grand sculptures are equal as one grand is almost exactly the same as four large. However, at high qualities and with high beauty materials, the beauty of large sculptures is high enough that you likely lose more impressiveness with the grand sculptures due to lost space than you gain from the tha grand's additional beauty. This means that excess beauty is wasted. Making large sculptures allows the beauty to be concentrated in one room or divided across multiple rooms as neeeded. Small sculptures are half as efficient as unfortunately, they can't occupy only half a tile.

Sculptures should be installed in areas where pawns stay for a large amount of time, such as in research rooms, where your researcher will probably be sitting from dawn to dusk, in crafting rooms, and in kitchens - especially in larger colonies, in which cooking will probably be a full time job. They should also be put in the following rooms where higher impressiveness gives a higher positive moodlet:

Dining room
Rec room
Bedroom/Barracks
Hospital
Prison cell/Prison Barracks
Throneroom

Quality of Sculptures

Quality Table

Quality	Base Beauty Modifier	Base Value Modifier
Awful	-10%	50%
Poor	50%	75%
Normal	100%	100%
Good	200%	125% (max +500)
Excellent	300%	150% (max +1000)
Masterwork	500%	250% (max +2000)
Legendary	800%	500% (max +3000)

The quality value-increase caps may also be considered in terms of the item's base value. For example, since good quality gives +25% of base value capped at +500, that means the good-quality cap is hit on any item whose base value exceeds 2000. The excellent-quality cap likewise hits when +50% base value = +1000 <--> base value = 2000 (again), while masterwork's cap hits at base value 1333, and legendary's cap at base value 750. Thus, if, say, you keep legendary items and only care about the cap on lower-quality items, then don't make gold sculptures (even small gold sculpture = $5058), and for grand sculptures only use steel ($1138) or stone ($775-$850) or wood ($745).

Here are the factors applied by each type of material:

Material	Cost	Work	Beauty	Max HP	Flammability
Silver	10	1	2 +6	0.7	0.4
Gold	100	0.9	4 +20	0.6	0.4
Steel	1.9	1	1	1	0.4
Plasteel	9	2.2	1	2.8	0
Wood	1.2	0.7	1	0.65	1
Uranium	6	1.9	0.5	2.5	0
Jade	5	1.4	2.5 +10	0.5	0
Sandstone	.9	1.1	1.1	1.4	0
Granite	.9	1.3	1	1.7	0
Limestone	.9	1.3	1	1.55	0
Slate	.9	1.3	1.1	1.3	0
Marble	.9	1.15	1.35 +1	1.2	0

For example, a large jade sculpture takes $500 in jade and 700 work time to make, has a (normal-quality) beauty of 260 (100 x 2.5 + 10), and has 75 HP.

Market Value Calculation

As of Alpha 17 through 1.1, sculptures are bought by all incoming trade caravans and have a sell price multiplier of 110%, making them valuable trade goods.

In 1.1, market value is computed as (market value of materials) + (work to make) * 0.216, and the result is multiplied by a quality factor given in the table below. (For example, steel's market price is $1.9, so a normal large sculpture has $190 in materials + (500 * 0.216 = 108) = $298.) If the quality increases the value, the increase is capped by a number independent of the size of the sculpture, ranging from +500 for good-quality items to +3000 for legendary items (which in practice mostly matters for grand sculptures made with something more expensive than steel, and for gold sculptures).

The following table describes normal-quality steel sculptures. Using other materials may multiply the beauty, max HP, and work-to-make by a factor (steel, the baseline, has a factor of 1), and also change the resulting market value.

Sculptures	Size	Materials	Beauty (Normal)	Max HP	Work to make	Value (Normal)	Beauty/work	Value/Work	Value/Material
Small	1x1	50	50	90	300	159.8	0.1667	0.5327	3.196
Large	1x1	100	100	150	500	298	0.2	0.596	2.98
Grand	2x2	400	400	300	1750	1138	0.2286	0.6503	2.845

Story Generation

Each sculpture has its own semi-randomly generated story based on past events in the colony and pre-written story segments. These stories tend to contain any of the following:

A past event occurring in or to the colony (see below)
A seemingly random event with no relation to the colony (e.g. "hundreds of doctors and engineers eating mushrooms")
A border to the art (e.g. "a triangular border")
A texture (e.g. "insert texture example")
A design style (e.g. "conveys a feeling of rage and happiness")
A location (e.g. "in a town")

The events sometimes depicted in the story can be about any of the following that occurred in the colony's history:

killings
drunkenness
vomiting
landing in drop pods
artwork created
struck ore
person captured
person recruited
animal trained
animal hunted
surgery done
someone was on fire
someone went psychotic
someone gave up

Alternatively, they can contain something random, without relating to any events in the colony at all (e.g. "this sculpture bears a portrayal of a cube"). Because of this grammar generator, artwork can have some humorous descriptions.

Version history

0.9.722 - Sculptures now have sizes - small, large, and grand. Now have generated descriptions of what they depict. Will depict events that happened earlier in a colony’s life, include: killings, drunkenness, vomiting, landing in drop pods, artwork created, struck ore, person captured, person recruited, animal hunted, surgery done, someone was on fire, someone went psychotic, someone gave up
1.1.2654 - Increase psyfocus gain of sculptures by 2, up to a max of 28 at legendary quality.

Architect

Furniture: Animal bed • Animal sleeping box • Animal sleeping spot • Bedroll (Double) • Plant pot • Sculptures (Small, Large, Grand, Terror ) • Sleeping spot (Double, Baby ) • Stool • Table (1x2, 2x2, 2x4, 3x3) • Torch lamp • Urn • Animus stone • Darktorch • Fungus darktorch • Crib
Complex Furniture: Armchair • Bed (Double) • Dining chair • Dresser • End table • Royal bed • Shelf (Small) • Brazier (Darklight ) • Drape • Grand meditation throne • Meditation throne • Slab bed (Double) • Baby decoration • Blackboard • School desk • Toy box
(research): Hospital bed • Standing lamp • Sun lamp • Bonsai pot