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[SirHoneyBadger]

Could we please stop with the black letters? It's hurting my eyes.

I like Laertes' suggestion about skill potential being linked to personality. Makes complete sense to me.

[ballisticginger]

i know it's not really the same but i find putting dwarfs in jobs that put them in contact with their likes makes life a lot easier, i know giving them happy thoughts isn't the same. hunters with bolt preladictions ftw.

Assigning apprentices would be a nice touch, maybe with a simple experience bonus.

with the war arc's development into sending troops off map will make sending craftsmen elsewhere a lot simpler to impliment.

but yeah trait bonuses to experience would be good.

[Pilsu]

How is that more dull than grinding?

Well for one, he might as well immigrate with legendary status if I don't have to do anything to get it. Not even feed the bastard

Why is he my settlement's property anyway? Didn't he come here to make a living, not get shipped abroad for slavery?


Artsiness certainly shouldn't be a requirement to become a master craftsman. I can see it providing a small quality bonus to certain labors like engraving but it shouldn't matter too much. And mind you, I already assign labor based on personality. Which leads me to hating the fact that game assigns skills to immigrants randomly. Why is an art hater given engraving skill? This is stupid

[SirHoneyBadger]

If he's not your property, then why are you grinding him in the first place? How's that less of a slavery issue?

If this is a big deal, let him decide to go off to the Mountainhome, or stay, when the offer comes.


As far as "artsiness" is concerned, it may not have a strong impact on technical achievement (although it certainly can be argued for having some), but it certainly should be for artistic achievement, which should then have a large impact on the value of anything created.

If a dwarf doesn't like or have talent for what he's doing (which is where personality comes in) then it's reasonable that he'd probably lack a motive for achieving the rarified levels of excellence that the "Legendary" tag denotes.

[HatfieldCW]

I'd rather see a deeper tech tree, using finished goods as "ingredients" in other stuff.  A bed that's made out of a log can only be so fancy.  Once it's installed, why not have a little build menu right there on it, letting you designate it to be equiped with a mattress, some sheets/blankets/pillows, etc.?  Cushions for chairs and thrones, gem windows in doors, these kinds of improvements need a more controllable way to be brought about, so that you can have six dwarfs working in concert to make rad stuff, instead of just having one guy get so freaking awesome that he can somehow take a rock and make it into a drum that's worth a horse.  If you ask me, magic's already in the game.

[Pilsu]

If he's not your property, then why are you grinding him in the first place? How's that less of a slavery issue?

He's part of a communist commune, earning his keep is par the course. Sending him to work for someone else makes him property. You just want a silly mechanic because it's convenient, a really bad reason to have it

If you want easy skilled workers, you should pay an existing worker to migrate

As far as "artsiness" is concerned, it may not have a strong impact on technical achievement (although it certainly can be argued for having some), but it certainly should be for artistic achievement, which should then have a large impact on the value of anything created.

If a dwarf doesn't like or have talent for what he's doing (which is where personality comes in) then it's reasonable that he'd probably lack a motive for achieving the rarified levels of excellence that the "Legendary" tag denotes.

That's working on the assumption that enjoyment of art denotes potential for excellence. Striving for excellence is a separate trait I might remind you

91 - 100     Constantly strives for perfection.
76 - 90    Thinks it is incredibly important to strive for excellence.
61 - 75    Strives for excellence.
25 - 39    Doesn't go out of its/his/her way to do more work than necessary.
10 - 24    Very rarely does more work than necessary.
0 - 9       Does the bare minimum necessary to accomplish the task at hand.

I can see this trait having an effect on the quality of goods produced. Of course, lazy dwarves would end up being completely useless if you go by the description. Then again, cutting corners makes you work a lot faster so I suppose that'd make them suited for other work

Hmm, looking at the personality list, quite a few of these would have very dramatic effects on labor. I think this warrants a thread of it's own, this one got really sidetracked


I resent the notion that you'd become "legendary" just by churning out a lot of nice crap and happen to like art. That's not an achievement


As for Hatfield, those are matters for other threads. Pretty extensively discussed

[Leartes]

I resent the notion that you'd become "legendary" just by churning out a lot of nice crap and happen to like art. That's not an achievement

I strongly support the personality traits way but I don't intend to make everyone who likes art a legendary crafter in a year or two.
I think there should only be a legendary worker in a specific field every so many years and definitly not more than 5 in one fortress at the same time (except it is a really huge and old fortress). But I think there should be worker who do the same profession all their life and never become legendary (!)
I would do it in the way that workers with bad personality traits gain experience slower and until they stagnate in their progression. I think a untalented and a talented worker of the same skill level should produce similar results but the talented worker gets at the level in a much shorter time and has the potential to reach much higher. But legendary status should only be reachable by highly talented master crafters/workers who happen to make an artifact while already being on a high skill level. (also enabling dwarfs to create more than one artifact in their lifetime - just keep for example 2 years time between one dwarf getting a second mood)

Of cause this mechanic would require more micromanagement of your dwarfs to select who has the potential to become your next generation master smith but there could be options to sort your dwarfs in the units list for different criteria to keep it managable.

[Pilsu]

How would you define talent?


It will be difficult to ever find a good engraver if he needs to like art, be imaginative and set on excellence. Contrast a blacksmith that only needs to have work ethic. Then again, Michelangelos probably should be rare . I'm fine with this as long as my immigrants can be modded or requested with no skills. I don't want Monet to have soapmaking in his list of skills when I finally find him. Pet peeve

[SirHoneyBadger]

Communist? Are you sure you're not playing Dwarf Kremlin?

It's very clearly, if theoretically at this point in time, defined as a feudal society (there's a clear progression from baron to king). That's without question. So no, your argument is invalid, and considerably more "convenient" than anything I've come up with.

So, since you still haven't defined them as "not slaves", I stand by my opinion that it would be interesting for our dwarfs to have their own separate adventures, both apart from, and outside of, the Fortress, and our governing of it. I feel that would be entirely within the spirit of the game, as opposed to communism.


I don't want easy skilled workers. I never said I did. I wouldn't be opposed to the existence of some kind of work pool to draw from, in the game, so that we had some limited control over migrations.

I want the process that turns them from unskilled yokels to master craftsdwarfs to be more interesting. Grinding is an institution-an oppressive and ubiquitous one-in video games.

DF can do better.


Enjoyment of art doesn't denote potential for excellence--that's why we're burdened with critics, after all. However, passion should be a requisite for upper echelons of achievement.


Monet, by the way, probably had quite a few supplementary skills: As the son of a grocer in the 19th century (his father wanted him to take over the business), he could very well have known how to make soap. As a passionate gardener and ameture botanist, he certainly knew how to grow his own food.

Michaelangelo, for that matter, was not only a sculpter and a painter, he was also a poet, an architect, and an engineer.

[Granite26]

I think that it would be easier to have max skill mods of greater than *2 if they were significantly rarer. 

As far as economies go, I'd say it's communist.  Feudalism implies taking fief of lands and owing loyalty to a higher power.  None of that is implimented.  For the most part, the state owns the means of production and there is little concept of private property.

Even more telling, the workers do not own the products of their labors.  It's not justified as taxation or liege duties, they just don't own anything.

The political class is just using titles of nobility to justify it's position.

(Plus, what government has a history of killing large portions of it's populace in massive social experiments?)

[Pilsu]

Monet, by the way, probably had quite a few supplementary skills: As the son of a grocer in the 19th century (his father wanted him to take over the business), he could very well have known how to make soap. As a passionate gardener and ameture botanist, he certainly knew how to grow his own food.

Michaelangelo, for that matter, was not only a sculpter and a painter, he was also a poet, an architect, and an engineer.

I'm aware of such things but I really don't want their lists to be cluttered by randomly assigned novice crap they'll never use. And unless they have dabbling wrestling, some cooking skill and everything else a child would be expected to learn, their past really isn't an excuse. It's just an outdated game mechanic from the days the labor couldn't be assigned


You just want to outsource the grinding while inexplicably retain control over the worker

[Granite26]

I'm hearing justification for control over what shows up in the 'skills' screen to satiate people's OCD

[SirHoneyBadger]

"You just want to outsource the grinding while inexplicably retain control over the worker"

No, I actually want less control over the worker, while making the grinding more interesting and realistic.

As I understand it, the game is moving towards greater independence for our dwarfs. If one of "my" dwarfs wanders off into the wilderness, that's pretty interesting to me. If she comes back stronger than before, that's just balance against all the time I didn't have any control over her actions.


And turning your dwarfs into single dimension skill-zombies is pretty harsh. Why not just throw out personalities while you're at it? I agree that the ideal would be that those skills come out of somewhere in that dwarf's history, but the current situation might just be a placeholder, anyway.

[Pilsu]

As I understand it, the game is moving towards greater independence for our dwarfs. If one of "my" dwarfs wanders off into the wilderness, that's pretty interesting to me. If she comes back stronger than before, that's just balance against all the time I didn't have any control over her actions.

That means little when you would have spent the time grinding him up which you now got for free

And your "yours" I mean the settlement. You are the spirit of it so to speak. If you're thinking of journeymen, you sure aren't saying it

And turning your dwarfs into single dimension skill-zombies is pretty harsh. Why not just throw out personalities while you're at it? I agree that the ideal would be that those skills come out of somewhere in that dwarf's history, but the current situation might just be a placeholder, anyway.

The current system is a relic of a time when labor couldn't be reassigned. I'd have a tough time arguing against dwarves having skills they've actually used them but as is, it's completely meaningless. By all means, develop it. If I get refugees, I expect them to be skilled. There's no point in young immigrants being trained in useless junk randomly. They should show up with friends, childhood sweethearts, social skills and periodically miss home until they settle in. Send letters home to their parents if possible. Receive notice of their passing and mope. Things like that I like. A completely unartistic immigrant inexplicably showing up with novice engraving? Go hug a freakin' hippo

If our immigrants or worse yet, starting dwarves start coming from a set pool, a majority would have to be youngish peasants. Either that your starting dwarves will have useless skills as well or end up being 200 years old. Surprise! I see little wrong with the majority of the pool consisting of no skill peasants that spent their youths cleaning and hauling. People are already suggesting that kids be able to do those things in your settlement. I'd love to cook up a caravan of immigrants from the young hopes of my fort and send them out to find their place in the world if I don't have work for them. Any old dwarves or dwarves with real skills would probably already have a place in their homes

Just do something with it, I can't stand the RNG flailing about aimlessly annoying me for no reason

[SirHoneyBadger]

As far as the dwarf not being around to be ground, it's not meaningless at all. You're giving up the moment-by-moment choice of what to do with that dwarf. And the possibility of using him for defense, or just the possibility of him being "the right dwarf in the right place at the right time".

Not to mention, no Artifact moods.

It's not a huge thing by itself, I admit, not objectively. But it's giving up possibilities, and allowing other possibilities to happen.

Suppose your dwarf gets captured by goblins, and is forced to reveal the location, strength, wealth, and details of your Fortress? Suppose he was always working for the goblins, all along? Maybe he "borrows" an artifact or two on his way out? Maybe he goes out, dies, and comes back to haunt your Fortress? Maybe he offends the King of the Mountainhome, who decides that all the dwarfs from your Fortress are a bunch of schmucks?


"The current system is a relic of a time when labor couldn't be reassigned."

So from what I'm reading here, from this point on, we seem to be more in agreement than not, yes?