As a means of making DF more user-friendly (pffft!), realistic, and immersive all at the same time, I think there should be some loosening of the blanket restriction of "Item X can only be made at workshop Y, by a dwarf with labor Z enabled". For example, suppose you want to have a pewter bracelet set with cut citrines. In real life, that job draws heavily on both one's metal-crafting and gem-setting skills, so it doesn't make sense that a Gem Setter is the only dwarf who can do it, or that he gains no experience as a Metalcrafter for performing this task, or that the labor can only take place at a Jeweler's Workshop.
Having such a hard-cut distinction between closely related skills makes the game feel clunky & artificial. You might have a Legendary Stonecrafter, who can churn out magnificently worked mugs, rings, crowns, etc., all in the blink of an eye . . . but there's this bizarre force-field preventing him from making even the simplest stone chair, or smoothing a rock wall. And even if you turned that force-field off by giving him permission to do those jobs, he's still crap at them, because working stone has nothing in common with working stone, oh goodness no.
Removing this distinction would make the game easier for less-experienced players, and most especially send them running to the wiki far less often, as they no longer need to check if, for instance, copper chains have to be made by a Blacksmith at a Forge, or if they're a Metalcrafting job. The player shouldn't have to remember if leather gloves count as "clothing" or "leather" for workshop purposes--because, in this case at least, there's enough similarity & overlap that the gloves should be able to be produced at either type of shop, and by either type of craftsdwarf.
Spelled out, my actual suggestion is:
1) Expand the menu for each type of workshop, to include an entry for every job that could logically be done there.
2) Expand the list of dwarves that might be summoned to do each type of job, to include every kind of worker that could logically do that job feasibly well--either through familiarity with the base material (as in a Carpenter trying her hand at Woodcrafting), or the decorations (adding spices to the meal was done by the Herbalist, not the Cook), or the tools/techniques involved (a Surgeon stitching up new clothes instead of organs), or the type of finished product (the Mason making a wooden table instead of a stone one), or through the knowledge of being the end-user (a wooden hive being made by a Beekeeper instead of a Woodcrafter).
3) Add a permission option for every workshop: "Allow cross-training", which can be turned On or Off. With it Off, workshops would behave exactly as they already do: They would not display the expanded job lists ("make leather amulet" would not appear at a Leather Works, only at a Craftsdwarf's Workshop), and they would not summon dwarves who lacked permission to use the one applicable skill. But with cross-training turned On, the skill overlap would be allowed, and more dwarves would do more things.
4) Continuing from #3: With cross-training Off, again, nothing changes. The Gem Setter who decorates a bunch of metal trade goods with loose gems gains experience as a Gem Setter, and nothing more. But with cross-training turned On, a dwarf performing an "overlap" job would still gain the same amount of experience, but divided among all relevant skills, with the result that the same Gem Setter has a good chance of gaining a new level of Metalcrafter.
5) Since the point of this suggestion is partly to make the game more user-friendly, perhaps the "Allow Cross-training" setting should be part of the global Workshop Orders menu, not an individual toggle on every single workshop. (Or maybe even both, so the user can set the default to be open-use, but also still reserve a few individual workshops for specialists only.)
Of course, the goods produced by skill overlap are going to suffer a hit, quality-wise: A Legendary Weaponsmith using cross-training to make shields certainly isn't going to bang out a ☼shield☼ on her very first try. But, due to her expertise with the materials & tools, she might just produce a -shield- or +shield+.
Another fringe benefit of "more dwarves doing more types of jobs" is the fact that dwarves who feel bad about not having practiced a craft/skill in a while, will have more opportunities to meet that psychological need.
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Topic: Crafting/Workshop Overlap (Read 374 times)