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[Pilsu]

I don't know, I don't really treasure the dungeon master even if he does work

What better way to make the player care about the little runts than time and material investment?

[PTTG??]

Currently, it's way too easy for dwarves to go from no skill at all to legendary in a given field.

This is kind of silly and creates problems, I think. Why is everyone in the world "Legendary" at their profession within the span of a few years tops?

This makes long-term forts kind of odd. Children become master socialites by the time they reach adulthood, and your fortress is full of "legendaries" who aren't really legendaries at all, since they're commonplace.


My thoughts on how to improve this:

• Dwarves should gain skill much, much more slowly at high levels. By changing the way the scale works, dwarves could still become "novice" or "competent" in a REASONABLE amount of time, but it would take many, many years to become a grand master.
• Perhaps attributes, personality, or other inherent traits should affect a dwarf's natural ability to do something. This way, some dwarves find it easier to become extremely high-skilled than others - some form of natural aptitude.
• To counteract the resulting lack of highly-skilled dwarves, a fortress should be able to attract (and for a price, potentially start with) higher-skilled dwarves. If your fortress is the metalworking capital of The Invisible Clamps, you should be able to attract some Master Metalsmiths sometimes, and if you're extremely damn lucky, a legendary one, whereas if you're just some podunk farming community, you might get mostly (no label) dwarves, with maybe some good farmers, but nothing too great. After all, a fortress should be able to attract migrants reasonably; highly-skilled dwarves should be attracted to fortresses when it makes sense for them to.
  This all would counteract the potential problems posed by post #1, would make individual dwarves worth more (which is GREAT for both gameplay and character attachment), and makes more sense anyway than having every immigrant have some default, minor level of skill like they currently do.
• Artifacts shouldn't necessarily bring dwarves to legendary status right away, even if they become less common. A substantial skill bonus would be enough. It's weird enough having legendary dwarves so common, never mind when you have a handful of dwarves becoming Legendary Whatevers automatically from making an artifact using a skill they hardly knew beforehand. Also, if points #1 and #2 are in play, it would still be worth a lot to have a dwarf go from, say, Competent to Adept due to a strange mood, without being absurd.

I heartily agree with this, perhaps combined with some other time-scale changes to make movement and crafting have realistic relative values.

[Groveller]

I don't know, I don't really treasure the dungeon master even if he does work

What better way to make the player care about the little runts than time and material investment?

He doesn't do much work though. And of what he does, little is very useful. And of that, even less can't be done by any other dwarf. And he's easily replaceable. And you don't have to do much to attract him, nor does it take long.

I don't value a legendary planter as much as I value my legendary armoursmith. It's not the mere fact of work, but the results.

Time and material use can still be the triggers for noble blahsmith arrivals. They'd be among the last nobs to arrive, as the King prefers to keep them with him. There could easily be a decade delay between one's death and another one turning up. Sheer rarity adds value.

[Pilsu]

Sheer rarity makes them annoying

Why even have skill progression if it's practically worthless to train your own artisans? Then after 10 years you'd get some randomly generated prick that likes pig iron and crystal glass and does the bare minimum necessary to accomplish the task at hand. Oh, maybe just to rub it in he has a profound understanding of his emotions and likes to defy convention


I could see work taking longer to encourage having more than 1 worker churning out your trade goods while 150+ idle and it would also make it take longer to churn out artisans and make it feel like they aren't shake n bake cookies; just add 600 logs but damn, I can't fathom why you think getting randomly generated assholes demanding things and acting like royalty would be more rewarding than training your own men. Personally I think none of the immigrants should have any skills other than social ones. And those should be in a separate tab to avoid clutter

[Groveller]

Hey, I'm not saying it'd be more rewarding. Just that it wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing.

[Draco18s]

Yeah but it just seems like a random post containing information no one asked for if you weren't trying to make a statement

My point started out as a "well it takes N many tasks" in the vein that legendaries are extremely easy to acquire (can you think of a non-trivial task you've done 1000 times?  Say...driving to the store for groceries) and that some tasks are far easier (see farming: planting and harvesting EACH give 30 exp) than others.

Only I looked at the EXP page on the wiki and noticed that just about every job gives 30 exp, smoothing/engraving and mining give 10 (mining out 3000 tiles is pitifully easy).

[Gork]

Perhaps you could incorporate personal "aptitude" into skill development. For example, let's say you can have three (or more/less) levels of aptitude for a job (Normal, Able, Genius) and, depending on the skill in question, add a multiplier to experience gained.

An easy skill like Mining could have multipliers between 0.5x and 1x the experience gained currently, while Armorsmithing would have a range of 0.75x-1.10x or something. Upon generation, a dwarf could have X "aptitude points" distributed among a few jobs and if he's already good at something, those skills could have higher priority.

Personally, I don't mind jobs as they are, I see legendary miners as employees of the month.

[Pilsu]

(mining out 3000 tiles is pitifully easy).

Perhaps it should be in a game where ore is destroyed by an unskilled miner. That really should be more on the lines of woodcutting where only speed is affected

As for Gork, I consider liking suitable materials as an aptitude trait. We don't need more random factors that render most dwarves waste matter