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[rashik]

There are a lot of different skills in the game. Some of them have not yet been fully implemented, but some, in my opinion, do not make sense. This applies to work skills such as Butchery, Gelding, Milking, etc. I suggest to completely remove all skills that do not affect the quality or quantity of production and replace them with labors, similar to hauling. Instead, it is possible to introduce general skills that will be responsible for the speed and quality of such low-skilled jobs (as it currently works with military professions). An example of such skills: stamina - will display the fatigue of dwarves who can leave the current task unfinished at low rates, dexterity - affects the speed of work. The main influence on these works from the physical attributes.
Probably some skills have to be reworked (fisherdwarf, brewer, miner).

A more complex idea with the addition of different strata of the population and families belonging to these strata.
- The low-skilled dwarves from the example above ~20-40% of the population. They can do all kinds of work. After receiving the skill of the 6th level, they change their rank and get a profession. Cannot be a target of strange mood.
- The middle-class, which can be divided into 3 castes: military, crafters, intelligentsia. They are not available to perform low-skilled work, will receive negative thoughts when resting in the same tavern or training in the same barracks with ordinary workers. With the military and crafters, everything is pretty clear. Doctors, architects, performers, tavern keepers, scholars can be attributed to the intelligentsia.
- And the nobles (except for the expedition leader). All types of work are not available for them (as for children), with the exception of the main specialty. Trading for a broker, management, only education and training for squad leaders. Priests should probably be included here, and add similar ranks for scholars and guilds. They will mainly affect the morale and speed of learning new skills in these zones. Barons and kings and their children are just idlers.

New goals for dwarves to improve social rank, appropriate reactions to communication between different sections of the population, etc.
Add behavior to children - from time to time follow the parents and learn from them. After reaching adulthood, they should join the respective ranks.
Add families (with their own surnames) that will represent their segment of the population. When status changes, a new family with a new name is founded, this mechanic will primarily affect children. A new family with own name can also be created after performing some deeds: creating an artifact, killing a megabeast, changing status. The name may reflect this act.

In many cultures, last names have some meaning. In Iceland, there are no surnames at all, only patronymics (Urists[son]). In many countries, surnames are derived from the father. For example, in Slavic countries they are formed by adding a suffix. Different nations have different sets of suffixes (Russia - Urist[ov/in], Ukraine - Urist[enko/uk], Poland - Urist[ich/owski]. Nicknames, professions, etc. are also used. But it can be difficult to keep unique name for every dwarf. So such system needs to be improved or have additional checks. No need to change name of a spouse. But in most cases they have to be from the same class.

A few thoughts about reworking of skill affect on speed, using the example of mining. My idea is adding a base excavation speed that cannot be exceeded and will be achieved at skill level 5-6. Further increasing of the skill will reduce the penalties for excavating more difficult areas. I read somewhere that the developer does not want to add the influence of the hardness of the rock, but you can add complexity depending on the depth of the excavation (this will reflect the engineering difficulties of the work, building mines is a science) and/or the type of tile (soil/stone/vein/cluster). A higher skill will reduce mining time multiplier down to 1.
Similarly, you can change the crafting time by adding a difficulty multiplier to some types of work, reaction difficulties. It looks rather strange when mason hardly rise the first few levels of the skill and then suddenly starts making one stone block after another, instantly becoming legendary. It's also a good idea in the Masterwork mod to have an extra stonecutter workshop in the production chain.

And finally some words about trade
The current balance is rather weird, especially when it comes to trade agreements. Some basic resources have many different materials (stone, leather, metal) and some do the opposite (cloth, silk). Also, some things are brought in containers (leather), some in stacks (meat, cheese). As a result, you can order a huge amount of leather (the industrial production of which is unreal now) but let's say it is impossible to import coal normally.
Accordingly, the idea is to add special containers for all kinds of resources, including stone. Add an item mass multiplier for the price, which will increase the cost of buying and reduce the cost of selling. Orders in a trade agreement should be made for entire categories, not specific material. This option should remain, but it will only change the distribution of goods brought in by material and not the total quantity. Reduce the cost of exporting food (perishable goods). In other words, make a price multipliers for certain categories of goods and they should be different for export/import and even civilizations.
There are other ideas about trade: traders come from specific cities, bringing the appropriate set of goods, materials, give only a quarter of the price for goods available there. Ability to send own caravans to others. Separate caravans for trade agreements in large quantities. This will allow to make new specialty of the fort with large numbers of trade deports. Contracts on military protection of trade routes. But all of this needs to be thought through in detail and will require a complete overhaul of the current trading system but can be really interesting.

Sorry for bad english. Mostly done with google-translate and edited a little by me.

[Red Diamond]

Social strata don't exist prior to well a process of stratification, which is nowhere described in your post.  Having nobles that won't do any work really is quite pointless, one person we can handle because we can fire them from their noble job if needed and they do have a job of sorts (still pointless though) but bad luck could quickly result in a fortress collapsing because only nobles were left or because the nobles were all unhappy from being demoted together, if that mechanic is added in.

Also I cannot see why you would remove the redundant skills rather than make them functional. 

And adding more complicated trading is not really the way to go, the present trading is highly complicated as is.  The main issue with trade at the moment is the lack of any simulation of demand, a huge quantity of low-value items can therefore be sold to parties even though there should be no ability to sell them since the demand for such a quantity of items would not reasonably exist given the limited population.  Ability to create your own caravans would be welcome, but the issue then is raised as to why anyone would necessarily want to send a whole caravan to trade with us to begin with. 

[rashik]

Thank you for your opinion.

I offer a very simplified model of social strata, which can be modernized later.
My idea was that lazy nobles should be a problem to deal with (like goblin invasion).

Of course, it is better to make most if skills to be more useful, but the years go by and nothing changes.

I believe there are a lot of features already in this game and it's better to polish and expand the existing rather than work on adding new. Military bugs and trade balance are the most annoying for me, that's why I made this post.

[Red Diamond]

Thank you for your opinion.

I offer a very simplified model of social strata, which can be modernized later.
My idea was that lazy nobles should be a problem to deal with (like goblin invasion).

Of course, it is better to make most if skills to be more useful, but the years go by and nothing changes.

I believe there are a lot of features already in this game and it's better to polish and expand the existing rather than work on adding new. Military bugs and trade balance are the most annoying for me, that's why I made this post.

The years go by because the whole skills setup is quite broken as it is and is going to be replaced altogether in the future, same with a lot of DF broken mechanics. 

The real problem with your social stratification idea is that isn't really as basic or simplified as you imply.  It is really a caste society, but with only two castes since the low-skilled dwarves will pretty quickly end up being middle-class given how skills work (why you need to reduce the number of actual skills?).  Actual independent caste societies always have more than two castes, because a caste society is something invented by the highest caste to divide everyone else lower than they are by also giving them somebody to look down upon (kiss up, kick down).  When we have only two castes in a social system, what we are normally looking at is a form of Apartheid or Slavery.  Yes, your simply stratification idea is basically describing a system of slavery or apartheid, simply replace your lazy nobles with white-people/slave owners and it looks rather familiar. 

Yes, in a lot of cases like military conquest and societies that believe in slavery such a system makes sense; you aren't advocating them simply by depicting them (however you may well be).  The danger is when you abstract away the social basis for a division like that you simply naturalize it and naturalizing social institutions is very much advocacy.  Even if you aren't arguing that it is good because it is natural, you are all the same arguing that resistance to it futile which has much the same effect. 

In a more concrete gameplay terms, the player is given a choice between genociding the upper caste or adopting their entire rationale and running the fortress as though everybody else were their slaves.  A better approach is to focus upon the actual issues that are presently abstracted away in the present setup, issues like. 

1. What work do individual dwarf actually want to do vs what work does actually need doing.

2. How is the wealth of the fortress divided among the individual dwarves.

3. Why does anyone do any work at all?

Basically the higher the class of dwarf, the harder it will become to get them to do things they don't want to do and the more expensive they will become to employ. 

[Azerty]

Social classes will await for better implemented economics (to model the accumulation of wealth by groups) and law (to get the legal consequences).

Maybe some of the skills you want to fold are simply awaiting better implementation: for exemple butchery might later involve how much of the meat is succesfully recuperated from bodies.

[rashik]

the low-skilled dwarves will pretty quickly end up being middle-class given how skills work

player have to manage this, as he will get no haulers
but in general your arguments are convincing

Maybe some of the skills you want to fold are simply awaiting better implementation: for exemple butchery might later involve how much of the meat is succesfully recuperated from bodies.

the problem of such skill that it do not provide full-duty work like crafter skill or farmer. do you really have a butcher in your fortress?

[Red Diamond]

the low-skilled dwarves will pretty quickly end up being middle-class given how skills work

player have to manage this, as he will get no haulers
but in general your arguments are convincing

At present hauling doesn't really require a specialized group of hauling dwarves, skilled dwarves can just haul when their particular skills are not needed.  But yes you did propose changing it to a system where all our skilled dwarves are going to laze about when their special skills are not in need, apparently that is an improvement.....

Pretty much your proposal makes the game harder by 'some reason' instituting a worse economic system than what already exists.  We end up with a load of people lazying around because there isn't any suitable work to do at the moment and with the development of the wider economy we are going to end up with rampant overproduction because we have to give our skilled dwarves work to do that fits with their skills even if those skills aren't really needed at the moment.  There needs to be a why behind why the dwarves ended up adopting such a broken system and the why is lacking here.

I feel that dwarves need here to actually have ideas as to what labours they should be doing and what status they are.  We should be able to make them do labour that are 'below their status', unless actual laws exist at the civilisation level to prevent us, but they shouldn't be happy.  Eventually after being forced to do the demeaning work, the dwarves either reconsider their social status or reconsider what jobs they ought to be doing.  So we can 'cure' our lazy nobles, though they won't like being cured  .

Another issue to consider is personal preferences for labours.  If a dwarf likes doing a task, they will do it regardless of whether it is 'beneath them' while if they hate doing a task they will only do it if their have a very low status and it will still make them unhappy.  Having a 'social baseline' like we have with values would work there, civs invent underclasses of slaves/prisoners/serfs whenever there is work to do that they have to do but their society hates doing.  With the right (lack?) of morals they might actually start wars in order to get slaves to do all those demeaning jobs that still need doing; if they can't or won't do that they would instead change their views.