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[feelotraveller]

It is probably worth leaving the possibility to specify certain types of stone.  E.g. for a custom stonecrafter role chewing through some excess economic stone, or whatever

you mean to have general categories for economic, non-economic stone?

I didn't think that through.  It is probably better just to have the facility to specify a bunch of individual stones.

[Aquathug]

Here is my scenario:

I have a custom profession, lets call it 'craftmaster' which includes wood and stone crafting. I want to add metal crafting to it, using the right click customize dropdown menu, without going through the custom profession grid view (bear with me)

I understand that the proper way to do this would be to go into the custom profession grid, find the profession, edit it, and call it a day. However, from what I have seen in the latest version jump is that more professions are being added, probably with more to come. This can lead to scalability issues through version releases, especially when you have a couple dozen custom professions that would otherwise have to be updated via the view itself. If you find my proposal sound, would this be something that could be achieved?

TL;DR: Would it be possible to get a button to allow one click updating for custom professions?

[thistleknot]

I have a few suggestions for a default gridview layout for labors.

That:

Hauling superlabors be moved to the front

2 hauling superlabors specifically

1. Helpful labors, but exclude hauling

and one for

2.  Hauling labors + Helpful

Helpful Labors

I assign "Helpful" to those who have specific tasks assigned.  Sometimes I exclude nobles from these tasks; but more often than not, they are included as well.

"Helpful" pretty much means everyone has these labors enabled:

  burial (burial is of high importance to happiness and miasma)
  cleaning (cleaning I've found hasn't done much in 34.11; but... if I could clean up spills of blood on the floor [without dfhack], I'd gladly do so!!!)
  feed patients/prisoners (important for some)
  food hauling (optional, otherwise food will rot)
  lever operation (high importance generally when asked for)
  Push/haul vehicles (a rare event that should be enabled by default)
  Recovery Wounded (rare event, high importance)
  Refuse Hauling (preventing miasma is of high importance)

Hauling

I assign Hauling to pretty much everyone else.

I use these labors for those who don't meet a certain threshold of labors assigned.

  Animal Hauling
  Construction Removal
  Food Hauling
  Furniture Hauling
  Haul Trade Good
  Haul Water
  Item Hauling
  Stone Hauling
  Wood Hauling
  +
  Helpful

[feelotraveller]

The tricky thing about a default grid view is that it is the default.  So while I think that the superlabour groupings proposed are good/useful ones they are not going to appeal to players who tend to micromanage more (like myself).  I say this not because it will effect me (I'm happy being able to customise my own grid views) but because I think that we need to decide what purpose the default grid view serves.

If I remember rightly earlier default grid views (20.x?) basically followed the schema used by DF itself.  The advantage of this approach is that it makes it an easier transition for players used to the labour assignations used by the game itself.  Its weakness, in my opinion, is that the default groupings supplied by the game are not on the whole that useful. 

The current default grid view moves away from this somewhat without making much progress, imo again, in grouping the labours all that well.  It differs enough to be somewhat confusing without gaining much in functional grouping.  For me personally it also fails to achieve its aim of getting everything on one screen since I tend to play on a laptop with a 15.4 inch (16:9) screen.

I think that before a new labours grid view is devised we need to address the priority of issues like these.  For example I think that the priority for the default view should be functionality for the mid-level user.  My reasoning is that for many users their experience stops at plugging in the tool and using it.   In this case any learning hump difficulties with differences from the default DF assignations quickly fade into the background.  (I also think that in many ways having a distinctly different grouping to DF itself helps prevent confusion.)  If there is agreement on this then we can start discussion about what a functional layout might look like.  On the other hand if the consensus is that sticking as close as possible to the default grouping is best then we can discuss on what basis we are willing to make exceptions.

Similarly I think another thing to decide is if we want to try to restrict the width of the grid view to fit a single page at a given screen size/resolution.  If we do then the question (after the size is decided...) becomes what is most important to fit into a given number of slots, or perhaps whether we should  go for a lower pixel count.  If not, which happens to be what I think, then in some senses the sky is the limit (although maybe 2 'pages' worth on the smallest screen we reckon anyone will use is more credible...) and we have a lot more latitude to include various supergroupings or alternative designations.  The discussion will then tend to be about what slots should appear on the first page, or as first (or last) slots on the grid view, etc.

Personally I think that we should try to include a labour slot for every default labour in the game (even those not currently used like alchemy) along with a clear and up-to-date read me in the top level of the folder giving advice on prioritising which slots to delete, and how to do it.  This has the advantage of introducing the user to the customisation features as well as allowing them to attempt fitting everything onto their specific-sized screen.  I can see the advantage in including groups such as all hauling but for me they are a lower priority.

What do you think?

[feelotraveller]

I have made a set of customised Civilian roles for Dwarf Therapist.  Feel free to do whatever you want with them.   

They can be found at: http://dffd.wimbli.com/file.php?id=9661  Read the notes there to find out a little more.

I welcome comments, criticisms, feedback, expressions of puzzlement, etc. either in the comments at DFFD or via PM here.

Depending on what splinterz thinks I am happy to respond in this thread too, but we should respect his wishes.

I have no short term plans to revise the military roles as it took me far longer than I originally envisaged. The civilian roles will be updated if they can be made better...

[splinterz]

Here is my scenario:

I have a custom profession, lets call it 'craftmaster' which includes wood and stone crafting. I want to add metal crafting to it, using the right click customize dropdown menu, without going through the custom profession grid view (bear with me)

I understand that the proper way to do this would be to go into the custom profession grid, find the profession, edit it, and call it a day. However, from what I have seen in the latest version jump is that more professions are being added, probably with more to come. This can lead to scalability issues through version releases, especially when you have a couple dozen custom professions that would otherwise have to be updated via the view itself. If you find my proposal sound, would this be something that could be achieved?

TL;DR: Would it be possible to get a button to allow one click updating for custom professions?

so something like right click -> update custom profession from dwarf?

[splinterz]

...add hauling superlabors to default views...

currently it's not possible to package customizations with DT, this includes scripts, custom professions and superlabors. once there's a way to include default versions of these (like roles are currently) this may become possible. for now, you're stuck with your custom views.

[splinterz]

The tricky thing about a default grid view is that it is the default.  So while I think that the superlabour groupings proposed are good/useful ones they are not going to appeal to players who tend to micromanage more (like myself).  I say this not because it will effect me (I'm happy being able to customise my own grid views) but because I think that we need to decide what purpose the default grid view serves.

If I remember rightly earlier default grid views (20.x?) basically followed the schema used by DF itself.  The advantage of this approach is that it makes it an easier transition for players used to the labour assignations used by the game itself.  Its weakness, in my opinion, is that the default groupings supplied by the game are not on the whole that useful. 

The current default grid view moves away from this somewhat without making much progress, imo again, in grouping the labours all that well.  It differs enough to be somewhat confusing without gaining much in functional grouping.  For me personally it also fails to achieve its aim of getting everything on one screen since I tend to play on a laptop with a 15.4 inch (16:9) screen.

I think that before a new labours grid view is devised we need to address the priority of issues like these.  For example I think that the priority for the default view should be functionality for the mid-level user.  My reasoning is that for many users their experience stops at plugging in the tool and using it.   In this case any learning hump difficulties with differences from the default DF assignations quickly fade into the background.  (I also think that in many ways having a distinctly different grouping to DF itself helps prevent confusion.)  If there is agreement on this then we can start discussion about what a functional layout might look like.  On the other hand if the consensus is that sticking as close as possible to the default grouping is best then we can discuss on what basis we are willing to make exceptions.

Similarly I think another thing to decide is if we want to try to restrict the width of the grid view to fit a single page at a given screen size/resolution.  If we do then the question (after the size is decided...) becomes what is most important to fit into a given number of slots, or perhaps whether we should  go for a lower pixel count.  If not, which happens to be what I think, then in some senses the sky is the limit (although maybe 2 'pages' worth on the smallest screen we reckon anyone will use is more credible...) and we have a lot more latitude to include various supergroupings or alternative designations.  The discussion will then tend to be about what slots should appear on the first page, or as first (or last) slots on the grid view, etc.

Personally I think that we should try to include a labour slot for every default labour in the game (even those not currently used like alchemy) along with a clear and up-to-date read me in the top level of the folder giving advice on prioritising which slots to delete, and how to do it.  This has the advantage of introducing the user to the customisation features as well as allowing them to attempt fitting everything onto their specific-sized screen.  I can see the advantage in including groups such as all hauling but for me they are a lower priority.

What do you think?

ResMar has done a lot of work with the two new default labour views included to address this already. the full view has a column for every labour, so that's going to be the limiting factor in how small the view can be. the compact view is aimed at the mid-level users. it's got a hauling superlabor (even though it's not packaged) and the unused labors (animal care, alchemy) have been removed from it.

the ordering of the labours has always been an issue, and for new players, reorganizing the full view to match exactly as it is in game, may be a better idea. however, that creates a disconnect with players as they move to the more advanced compact view, which is not ideal. on the point about the readme, the manual has a good explanation of how to create/modify new custom views i believe.

if you have some other ideas for the default views, maybe mock them up. i can always get a set together and we can run a poll to see what people would prefer.

[splinterz]

I have made a set of customised Civilian roles for Dwarf Therapist.  Feel free to do whatever you want with them.   

They can be found at: http://dffd.wimbli.com/file.php?id=9661  Read the notes there to find out a little more.

I welcome comments, criticisms, feedback, expressions of puzzlement, etc. either in the comments at DFFD or via PM here.

Depending on what splinterz thinks I am happy to respond in this thread too, but we should respect his wishes.

I have no short term plans to revise the military roles as it took me far longer than I originally envisaged. The civilian roles will be updated if they can be made better...

this thread is just fine, it's directly related to DT.

• Brewer: you could keep the Plants (Alcohol) preference, since this is a plant preference, not a food/drink preference
• Butcher: i don't know if preferences count for non-item products, maybe having a domestic creature category would help here?
• Cheesemaker: no preferences (milk, cheese?)
• Clothier: no yarn preference?
• Cook: maybe food storage containers (pots/barrels) and i'll have to check the plant/crop preference (eg. cooking quarry bushes)
• Dyer: can yarn be dyed?
• Engraver: dislikes vermin removed?
• Farmer: looks like a crops category would be useful. seems there are a few negative preferences as well?
• Herbalist: same issues as farmer
• Leatherworker: perhaps some of the more common clothing items as well (cloaks, hoods, mittens, etc.)
• Lyemaker: uses a bucket in the reaction
• Shearer: i might be able to add a category for shearable creatures
• Small animal dissection: i've got the creatures with extracts split for fish vs land so the general category should be ok
• Spinner: i'll have to see about wool preferences (linked with shearing i believe)

i've been working on cleaning up the preference stuff in the role editor. many of the craft roles have the same set of preferences, so maybe it would be useful to also have a general 'crafts' category to include as well.

[thistleknot]

Geez. Tldr (okay, I did read it)

All I was proposing was two default hauling superlabors.

I find them useful at the front of the labors vs the rear.

As for grouping of labors...

I think matching labors to the ingame professions (Farming, Ranger, etc) is the best approach.  I believe that is how the default labor gridview is setup.

[Aquathug]

Here is my scenario:

I have a custom profession, lets call it 'craftmaster' which includes wood and stone crafting. I want to add metal crafting to it, using the right click customize dropdown menu, without going through the custom profession grid view (bear with me)

I understand that the proper way to do this would be to go into the custom profession grid, find the profession, edit it, and call it a day. However, from what I have seen in the latest version jump is that more professions are being added, probably with more to come. This can lead to scalability issues through version releases, especially when you have a couple dozen custom professions that would otherwise have to be updated via the view itself. If you find my proposal sound, would this be something that could be achieved?

TL;DR: Would it be possible to get a button to allow one click updating for custom professions?

so something like right click -> update custom profession from dwarf?

That would be exactly it.

[khearn]

"Helpful" pretty much means everyone has these labors enabled:

  burial (burial is of high importance to happiness and miasma)
  cleaning (cleaning I've found hasn't done much in 34.11; but... if I could clean up spills of blood on the floor [without dfhack], I'd gladly do so!!!)
  feed patients/prisoners (important for some)
  food hauling (optional, otherwise food will rot)
  lever operation (high importance generally when asked for)
  Push/haul vehicles (a rare event that should be enabled by default)
  Recovery Wounded (rare event, high importance)
  Refuse Hauling (preventing miasma is of high importance)

Hauling

I assign Hauling to pretty much everyone else.

I use these labors for those who don't meet a certain threshold of labors assigned.

  Animal Hauling
  Construction Removal
  Food Hauling
  Furniture Hauling
  Haul Trade Good
  Haul Water
  Item Hauling
  Stone Hauling
  Wood Hauling
  +
  Helpful

I don't think I want my legendary weaponsmith running into the middle of a battle to recover a wounded dwarf. I'd rather let an expendable hauler do that. Yes, I use burrows to confine my civilians to the fort during attacks, but sometimes fighting ends up inside the burrow (Dammit! I thought I had the caverns sealed off! Where'd that giant bat in the forge area come from?).

My list of "hauling" type labors that everyone has is much shorter:

• Burial (because rotting friends makes dwarves unhappy)
• Trade Goods Hauling (it can be a pretty high priority to get everything hauled and then get the broker to get his lazy butt to the depot)
• Levers (because when a lever needs to get pulled, it is often the absolute, number one priority in the entire fort)
• Feed patients (because even with everyone having it turned on, it still doesn't always happen enough)

I generally only have a few dwarves with the reduced set of hauling labors. My miners get the reduced set from the start, and various others get it when I really need them on the job, such as the broker (get to the depot, dammit!), weapon/armor smiths (when I need stuff made), my Chief Medical Dwarf (and other medical professionals when there are wounded), and sometimes my mason or carpenter when I have a lot for them to make. But if I'm seeing the non-miners listed above sitting idle when there is stuff to be hauled and nothing high priority for them to do, I go ahead and turn hauling back on for them.

Only the miners get them turned off full time. If I see the miners sitting idle, I go find something more for them to dig. I can always use digv on a vein of useful ore to occupy them.

I've generally got enough dwarves with the full hauling set enabled that things like food/refuse hauling gets done quickly enough. Recovering wounded often doesn't ever happen, even when half the fort is sitting idle, so not having it set on a few dwarves doesn't matter much and doesn't seem worth the risk.

Actually, now that I think of it, I might want to start going with three sets:

Essential (everyone gets them):

• Trade Goods Hauling
• Levers
• Feed patients/prisoners

Risky (Only expendable, low skill dwarves get them):

• Burial (also a risk of having dwarves rush into a raging battle)
• Recovering Wounded
• Wood hauling (usually involves long trips on the surface or in caverns)

Other (everything else)


   Keith

[feelotraveller]

I have made a set of customised Civilian roles for Dwarf Therapist.  Feel free to do whatever you want with them.   

They can be found at: http://dffd.wimbli.com/file.php?id=9661  Read the notes there to find out a little more.

I welcome comments, criticisms, feedback, expressions of puzzlement, etc. either in the comments at DFFD or via PM here.

Depending on what splinterz thinks I am happy to respond in this thread too, but we should respect his wishes.

I have no short term plans to revise the military roles as it took me far longer than I originally envisaged. The civilian roles will be updated if they can be made better...

this thread is just fine, it's directly related to DT.

• Brewer: you could keep the Plants (Alcohol) preference, since this is a plant preference, not a food/drink preference
• Butcher: i don't know if preferences count for non-item products, maybe having a domestic creature category would help here?
• Cheesemaker: no preferences (milk, cheese?)
• Clothier: no yarn preference?
• Cook: maybe food storage containers (pots/barrels) and i'll have to check the plant/crop preference (eg. cooking quarry bushes)
• Dyer: can yarn be dyed?
• Engraver: dislikes vermin removed?
• Farmer: looks like a crops category would be useful. seems there are a few negative preferences as well?
• Herbalist: same issues as farmer
• Leatherworker: perhaps some of the more common clothing items as well (cloaks, hoods, mittens, etc.)
• Lyemaker: uses a bucket in the reaction
• Shearer: i might be able to add a category for shearable creatures
• Small animal dissection: i've got the creatures with extracts split for fish vs land so the general category should be ok
• Spinner: i'll have to see about wool preferences (linked with shearing i believe)

i've been working on cleaning up the preference stuff in the role editor. many of the craft roles have the same set of preferences, so maybe it would be useful to also have a general 'crafts' category to include as well.

Thank you for the feedback. 

There is a 1.01 version up already which fixes the dislikes for farmers and herbalists (my mistaken clicking and late night editing to blame).  I also added the weapons grade metals to weaponsmiths (I'm sure I had already but well...) and fixed one role where some of the preferences were not weighted one.

As far as I understand it the preferences are for plants and not their products (so e.g. Prickleberry bushes vs. Prickleberries).  If that distinction doesn't hold please let me know because it effects a lot of roles.  The only preferences dwarfs can get for the food 'ingredients' or products, are preferences to consume, as far I am aware.  So this counts for flours, honeys, milks, oils, etc.

I assume that there is some effect of plant and creature likes even when they are not strictly used in item production.  So the Shearer who likes alpacas presumably can get a boost to happiness from seeing an alpaca?  That would be sufficient to make it a relevant preference even if it is incidental to item spawning (aka 'production').

I don't think that dwarfs can get a preference for yarn (or thread for that matter).  I'm keeping my eyes open but I haven't seen one yet.  Similarly for wool (although in this case the wiki suggests dwarfs can get the preference).  I play quite slowly and don't see that many dwarfs compared to some so feel free (anybody) to correct me if you have or see one.

Butcher - great idea to add a list of domestic/slaughterable animals.    I don't know about the non-created items either ... I'll take it under advisement.

Cook - don't use pots or barrels specifically in their work. (I had to draw a line somewhere...)

Engraver - all dwarfs have a dislike for a type of vermin hence this was an automatch and redundant.

Farmer and Herbalist general plants categories would be useful (particularly for reducing the tooltip).  Presumably the farmer category is a subset of the gatherer one... 

Leatherworker - hm, might be worth adding them all?

Lyemaker - thanks! First change for 1.02...

Shearer - assuming three is the comprehensive list (barring trolls) it is probably not needed.

Small animal dissector - I've never used the extraction labour.  Can all those things be extracted?  If so the wiki is rather incomplete.

The craft roles are a bit finicky.  This page on the wiki http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Finished_goods (scroll down to the table) is a good place to start.  I don't mind listing the items individually and if the highlighting preference thing comes to pass then having them ennumerated separately will be what I want.

Thanks again for your comments and it is quite possible I am just plain wrong about something or other.   

Edit: Wait, is the Engraver vermin thing a negative weighting to liking a type of vermin?  Now that is relevant but I am not sure how Dwarf Therapist deals with this.  Does it give the dwarfs who merely dislike a type of vermin an increased suitability compared to those who disklike one type of vermin but like another?  If so you are right...

[splinterz]

you're correct on the plants point, it's liking the actual plants, not their products. i have a bunch more categories on the current unreleased build (still working on quarry bushes) to split plants in to alcohol, mill, crops and extract. that should allow some fine tuning between roles of plant processing, herbalism, milling and farming. however if it's not the plant that's used for the jobs, maybe these are pointless...

i've added a category for shearable creatures as well, and for the creature extracts, i believe they all produce venom, other than the special ones like fire snakes and such. i still haven't checked to see if it's possible to determine which animals are domestic, it might be something only related to the civ you're playing. butcherable creatures can be done though.

it looks like yarn is grouped in with wool and fur so i've updated the description, and yes they can have a preference for wools.

for creatures it's looking at the 'likes creature' preference, so having 'dislikes vermin', is saying they don't have a 'like creature' preference for vermin. it's true they all have a dislike for vermin, which is why it's ignored for the roles, but some may actual like a certain kind of vermin, which would be badfun to have them engraving all over the fortress. the way the negatives work is the dwarf will get an inverse rating, so in the case of the original engraver role, a dwarf that likes vermin would get a very low score.

[feelotraveller]

Okay I'll add yarn where appropriate, use the general category for extractable creatures and add back a negative preference for vermin for the engravers (I got misled because I jumped on the automatch thing without thinking further).  They are the sorts of oversights I was hoping to correct.    

By the way is there anything other than Moghoppers that fish dissectors process?

If you are adding extra general categories one for 'fishable' creatures would be great.  The custom fisherdwarf role has them all listed - I double checked the raws (although the 1.0 version had one as a dislike by mistake).  Cave lobsters are correctly omitted from the list.

Currently I have dwarfs who have preferences for Emerald (as a colour) and Gems (as a shape).  Most similar preferences will be irrelevant but these two would seem to be promising for Dyers and Gem workers respectively.  I've also seen Red as a colour preference and, I think, Cabochons (sp?) as a shape.  Or do these preferences work somewhat differently?