Well, rather than come up with my own bright ideas, I had the somewhat dim idea to rather take six similar ideas posted around the forum and rather than build on them together, link them in novel ways to create a super-suggestion that may even fill out the entire contents of an arc. This is only the first of many of such 'six degrees' I plan to make.
Six Degrees of Crafting:
1st Degree; Skill Synergy
Similar to the recently created thread (find it yourself, I'm too lazy to), but with a slight change. Instead of skills working as they do now, they should be a generalization of a specific group of skills. For example, mining; experience in mining would reflect the total experience gained in say, 'pick swinging' 'mineral identification' and strength [the attribute], which would all be individual, but invisible skills. However, the experience shown in mining would be capped by the so called 'main attribute', which in this case might be 'pick swinging'. So a legendary stonecrafter would have high skill in mineral identification, but since they had no pick swinging skill, the mining skill wouldn't be displayed. However, since they have this skill in mineral identification, they'd still have an advantage over any other dwarf off the block (not counting attribute gains). This would make skill bleed effectively invisible (and therefore you don't have all your legendary stonecrafters skilled in mining), but still have a noticeable effect.
This makes fighting much more interesting. Say the axedwarf skill has under it the subskills 'strong attack', 'medium attack', and 'light attack' (not necessarily all of the skills under it). An axedwarf could have great skill in making heavy strong attacks, but would be unable to maneuver quickly and make light attacks. Or perhaps a dwarf has a specific skill in armor using that counters a specific type of attack (e.g. one dwarf with armor using has a high skill in blocking strong attacks). This would facilitate 'fighting styles' that have been suggested. But more on that later.
The second part of this suggestion is to group materials into subgroups, with which skills are automatically associated. For example, we might put 'marble' and 'gneiss' together under 'banded stone'. Anyone working with banded stone, whether it be a miner or a stonecrafter, would gain experience in 'banded stone', thus creating a more in-depth skill bleed without going into specific materials. This ties into the next suggestion...
2nd degree; Material Identification
There was a thread sometime ago suggesting that dwarves should only see 'wood', with an acute knowledge of stone and metals, should be able to easily identify them, while elves and humans would be able to identify wood very easily, but only see 'light stone/dark stone', 'so and so color metal', etc... Tying this in with the first degree, any entity would require skill in working with the specific group the material was in order to identify it. For example, take a fresh new peasant, with no skill in the previously mentioned group 'banded stone'. Initially, they'd only be able to identify the super-group that marble and gneiss are in, in this case 'white/light stone'. So all marble and gneiss, when zoomed to would say 'white stone'. But as they gained experience in working with marble and gneiss, they'd slowly come to the realization that this 'banded stone' was different from other 'white stone'. So now you'd be able to identify banded stone, as compared to lumping all white stone together as 'white stone'. But as you became more experienced in banded stone, you'd come to realize the differences between marble and gneiss. Thus, you make the final distinction and you can identify 'marble' and 'gneiss'. This becomes important in the case of similar minerals that are of different color; for example, felsite is somewhat similar to rhyolite, but they'd initially be classed in different groups, 'light stone' and 'dark stone' respectively. But a somewhat skilled craftdwarf would be able to recognize that even though they are different colors, they have some similarity. An even more skilled craftdwarf would be able to see their exact stone names. This makes the next degree far more important...
3rd Degree; Schools/Apprenticeship
In dwarven schools/apprenticeships, the knowledge of rock could be passed on, e.g. be able to pass on at least familiarity of all materials/creatures/etc... to new dwarves. This leads to things such as martial schools, where knowledge of how to fight specific enemies can form (e.g. Urist McChampion is a master at a heavy fighting style, and can teach recruits the finer points of bashing their enemies to bits), or perhaps a mining apprenticeship (e.g. Urist McMiner is teaching young Bormek McMiner how to identify banded stone, and how to best wield a pick). This would be especially useful for the next degree...
4th Degree; Bring back the Guildmasters!
The 3rd degree and 2nd degrees have specific implications in this. It was suggested that guildmasters come back, but with functions. Now, in addition to their suggested attributes (which I won't reiterate), they become invaluable teaching tools. My guess is that guildmasters would have at least 'skilled', or any analog to 'skilled', in every subskill under their sphere, and therefore be able to identify every material and teach every material their guild controls. They'd prove invaluable in giving your crafters/fighters a head-start (e.g. The Head of the Stonecrafters Guild teaches all your fledgling new stonecrafters 'familiar' (or analogous) skill in every stone group, giving them at least a small headstart as compared to if they had simply dove into stonecrafting, or the Head of the Fighters Guild teaches all your new recruits the finer points of dodging arrows).
As later suggested, guilds could house specific 'houses of thought'. E.g. one stonecrafter guild could be especially skilled in working with banded stone, but perhaps not so great at working with any other type of stone, while another stonecrafter guild is incredibly skilled at working stonecrafter tools (whatever the 'main' skill of stonecrafting would be), but is not too familiar with any particular type of stone. This could create inter-fortress tensions similar to how Toady wants religions to eventually do. This also lends to 'fighting styles'. The House of Flying Axes could teach their axedwarf recruits legendary light attack moves, but the House of Decapitation would teach their axedwarf recruits how to swiftly take off heads with heavy attack moves.
Another function of guildmasters would forever prevent trade injustices. Remember that traders aren't always necessarily masters at their craft; a human trader might not know the difference between gneiss (value 1) and marble (value 2), e.g. they'd be lukewarm to trust your dwarves telling them that their white stone crafts are in fact more valuable marble (a cool note with this, you could trick traders into thinking that your pyrite goods were actually gold!). However, they would be completely trusting of the guildmaster. You could order guildmasters to the trading depot as you do your trader, and they would mediate trade. (In order to balance this though, perhaps guildmasters are under some great oath to always tell the truth about what material they are trading, thus why you could not order the guildmaster to the depot). This goes into our 5th degree...
5th Degree; Fluctuating Prices
You know when your trader sets the prices for certain types of goods? Basically like that, except it happens in real-time. Toady has stated he wants to shy away from a real supply-demand system, and I think such a system wouldn't really fit into DF (although, naturally capping the price of mass-produced cheap stone goods actually does have some merit to it, but I digress). Rather, nobles should instate price mandates, depending on their own personal likes (e.g. Urist McNoble likes marble, has mandated all marble objects be sold with at 200% price), and give us something to like about noble mandates. Another thing, such as the banning of trade of a specific type of item could increase the price in outlying entities, given that the object is now in demand. This ties into the 4th degree in that traders could only be told that a specific material which was mandated to be sold at 50% value was 'alunite' and at 200% 'marble', but they only know both as white stones. Your dwarves may have some luck in convincing the traders that your expensive crafts are in fact marble, but a guildmaster would have the greatest sway in convincing the traders that your crafts are marble. A special note though, that you should be able to specifically choose whether or not a guildmaster is present at the trade depot to oversee trading. It should be that 'guildmasters never lie', so by having the guildmaster 'missing' while you are trading would let you trick unsuspecting merchants. Merchants which have been tricked (they should find out as soon as they return to their parent civilization), however, should get relatively angry, and even siege your fort if you do it too often. This ties into out sixth and final degree...
6th Degree; Better Crafting Control
All of these steps lead up to a demand for better crafting control. If we want to make 6 ashen beds specifically, by god give us the tools to make six ashen bed specifically. However, the way these specific options appear should be like the way reactions occur at the furnace. Only if you can identify the material, and have the material present, should you be presented the option. This would significantly cut down on unnecessary screen clutter, and possibly make a brute-force system viable.
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Topic: Six Degree Suggestions (Read 1041 times)