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[Solara]

My masons and carpenters are vital to my fortress. I turn off their hauling jobs and set up special stockpiles and give them special bed and dining rooms, all designed to keep them in their workshops every moment that's possible. So it's very frustrating that there's no way to stop them from constantly running off to do grunt work all the peasants and gem setters and other useless immigrants that are supposed to be building my walls.    

I think it would be realistic and less annoying if the job required for building any sort of wall or floor was simply 'architecture' (especially since that's kind of an underused skill as it is)

And as long as I'm making requests, I've always wished wood and stone walls/floors used different keys. I can live with placing each tile individually if I have too but it would be nice if every one of those times I didn't have to scroll past a twenty different types of wood when I want to build with stone, or vice versa.

[Capntastic]

Architects just design stuff.    The masons and carpenters actually build stuff.   Just like in real life.   Regardless, I think that it's sort of superfluous- for now- until we can build more buildings besides workshops.

[Ihlosi]

quote:I think it would be realistic and ...

Um ... no way. Architects don't build buildings. Just like engineers don't build cars.

That's why irl you only need one architect for your house, but a whole bunch of bricklayers/carpenters/etc. Unless you want to wait a long time.

[ February 09, 2008: Message edited by: Ihlosi ]

[Solara]

Fine, fine, but my points still stands. There needs to be some way to keep my dedicated masons and carpenters from running off and abandoning their workshops until a 60-tile wall is in place and all the buildings are roofed over. If architecture alone is just too unrealistic for people to handle then make it take carpentry/masonry and architecture together.

[veryinky]

My suggestion is just the opposite.

Make the actual hauling of materials to the construction site of a construction, bridge, road, workshop, anything a hauling job instead of a mason or architect job.

Simply put:

A 3x10 road requires 10 blocks.

1. An architect goes to the site and designs the road. Or even could design the road from an office.
2. 10 "rock hauling" jobs are created with the destination being the road. So multiple haulers can work on the same road.
3. after the rocks are hauled, the mason comes and assembles the blocks into a finished road.

For walls, the same thing, minus the architect.

1. A stone hauling job is created to bring the rock to the construction.
2. A mason is then called once the rock is in place.

Essentially, this frees up the masons from the work of having to haul the heavy stones into place and can just go from construction to construction finishing the jobs. The unskilled task of actually moving the stones is done by the hauler pool.

[Gauteamus]

Sort of related: wouldn't it be nice if construction jobs (walls/floors/et c.) actually gave experience?

[Hellzon]

quote:snip veryinky's text

Add some form of "workshop profile" for building walls/floor and I really like it. Then you can have grunts make buildings and the skilled masons make stone furniture.

[penguinofhonor]

.

[numerobis]

Abused how?  Designing a ton of supports and tearing them down gives you architecture skill; operating a useless pump makes you a legendary pump operator.  Why not have legendary bricklayers?

[Solara]

I really like the idea of having a separate 'building' skill, I actually prefer it to my suggestion but I guess it just depends on which is easier to program. (not that it's likely Toady will actually do this either way, poor guy gets swamped by these threads and I'm sure already has plenty of ideas of his own...)