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[Reelyanoob]

I was just now trying to dispose of 30 or so children without cause tantrums, and that caused me to think of how children could be made a bit more interesting and individual in DF, and give workshop production a bit of a boost. I think most of this would not require a major change to the game.

I had the idea that if a child could be apprenticed to a specific dwarf, they could assist that dwarf in some areas related to the labour involved, ie helping to haul materials needed for tasks, even possibly looking ahead at the job queue on the workshop to pre-fetch needed materials, clearing cluttered workshops, stockpiling wood for a woodcutter etc. The child would gradually gain the skill associated with whatever core labour is involved, based on the main dwarfs primary skill level, teaching skill, level of friendship with the apprentice and other possible factors. Unassigned or not busy children should also randomly help out at workshops based on their interests, talents and personal relationships. This would help diversify what skills children pick up during adolescence, rather than the only skill trained being "farming" as now.

Apprenticeships could be used for adult dwarves as well, they would then prefer to seek jobs assisting the main dwarf, and gradually gain some skills. When the workshop/main dwarf is not busy they'd fall back on whatever labours you had assigned for them manually. Maybe 'Apprentice' labour could be added to the "Other" section of labours, which would be True by default but do nothing until you set them as someone's apprentice.

The pre-fetching, and/or sharing out of workshop material hauling could be handy. If applied to all haulers (maybe in a workshop option "Haulers Fetch Workshop Materials", or an extra labour under hauling of "Workshop Materials") it would reduce the need to make tiny input stockpiles everywhere, and increase the efficiency of workshops meaning you don't need to build so many and workers train faster.

The downside could be a whole lot more haulers to few workshops types, compared to what's optimal now, which would be boring. I think the answer to that would be to have apprentices in a particular trade learn the skill whilst general haulers do not (because they pay no attention), seeing an "apprentice carpenter" running around would be better.

Just wondering what you think of these ideas.

[Xelanthol]

I like this-dwarf childs could haul for whoever the are training under. This is a well thought idea and I support this, but it could use a bit of tweaking in response to how they learn. I think overall quality of the item should be lowered a bit as the student learns and takes his hand at it occasionally-so you dont just get a dedicated hauler AND two people skilling up.

[Reelyanoob]

I like this-dwarf childs could haul for whoever the are training under. This is a well thought idea and I support this, but it could use a bit of tweaking in response to how they learn. I think overall quality of the item should be lowered a bit as the student learns and takes his hand at it occasionally-so you dont just get a dedicated hauler AND two people skilling up.

Thanks for the response, that's a good point. Though it didn't make it into the first post as I didn't want to make it too long, I was already thinking about the learning mechanisms involved. The other type of learning is practical, doing it yourself, which is currently the only option.  Observation would gain skill quite slowly over years that way, a lot slower than practical. Time spent hauling would slow this process down.

Maybe both types of learning could be implemented under the apprentice idea with a user-settable control. For each apprentice you could set a slider value from 0 (only observe) to 100 (only practical). With 100% practical the mentor would observe and advise the apprentice to do the tasks, in the middle they'd both take a hand at the job, taking turns to observe etc.

A simpler option (no new controls/menus) with would be to enforce the apprentice to respect personal labour restrictions and workshop profiles. They'd do all the practical if their labour/workshop profile etc allows, otherwise they'd just observe.

I just had a thought of a number of training workshops all run by apprentices and a single mentor who moves between them, giving advice etc. In this case it might make sense to disable the labour on the mentor so he's always available to train the others. This would force a trade-off between using your legendaries directly or trying to train up others, and a trade-off usually makes for interesting game-play.

[IT 000]

Suggested discussed, on the eternal suggestions list, #103 with 7 votes.

eternal suggestions http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/eternal_voting.php

original topic http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=40464.0

Only seven? I'd expect something like this to be a lot more popular. I support this idea, as well as the option to train children of a certain age in the military, it was not uncommon to have squires that were seven to twelve years old helping the knights.