Sculptures

Sculptures are pieces of art made at a sculptor's table that add (or not) beauty to any room they're in once they are installed. A finished piece of art gets a quality that affects the beauty and market value.

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. 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 ex. File:Blue Forest.png vs File: Blue Forest alt 1.png.

Sculptures come in three sizes:

• Small sculptures require 50 materials or 500 small volume materials (silver or gold).
• Large sculptures require 100 materials or 1000 small volume materials (silver or gold).
• Grand sculptures 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.

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

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.

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

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 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.

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 equally efficient (1 grand is almost exactly the same as 4 large), but small sculptures are half as efficient (unfortunately, they can't occupy only half a tile).

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

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
• A seemingly random event with no relation to the colony
• A border to the art
• A texture
• A design style
• A location

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. As of version 0.17.1546 (23 May 2017) this affects more on the beauty than before; random furniture has less or no beauty effect.