A new development plan has just gone up, with reworking the job system as the next feature - expected in six months to a year. I've quoted relevant sections of the development page and DF Talk 22 below, to help everyone get onto the same page and keep discussions productive (though still probably very premature!).
http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev.htmlJob Priorities
- Move from jobs-pick-dwarves to a mixed system that can consider more factors together, allowing skilled dwarves to generally perform skilled jobs while not forcing the player to forbid them from hauling entirely, and allowing rare important jobs like trading to be prioritized
- Do-this-now prioritization which might stress the selected dwarf but will get the job done
- Ability of workshop jobs to steal from nearby hauling jobs if the item's location is close
- Explore ordered mining and other mining options
Generally, we'd prefer to stay away from spreadsheets or a numbers-oriented priotization for specific labors on the labor list. We'd rather see the labor list removed entirely in many circumstances, depending on fortress citizen status, but that'll have to wait until starting scenarios are completed. We're also holding off on "work crew" approaches for similar reasons, and it's quite possible these might arise with guilds and other features when the nature of the fortress is understood through the scenario.
WIP version:
http://goo.gl/fUYHm2[02:00]
We had to do some work to figure out what people wanted here, because the original suggestion was very general, and pointed in different directions, and had different approaches, and it wasn’t really settled. So we have decided, first off, that we’re not really working to change VPL [The labour list for each dwarf. Seen by pressing v-p-l near a dwarf in the game] at this moment. We have some things that we’re going to do later (we’ll get to that in a moment) that will point toward big changes toward VPL. But the first push on job priorities is just going to be about the basic ‘job selection’ model. So right now, as people know, the jobs pick the dwarves, and that leads to bad selection sometimes. The job will just snatch up the first, nearest qualified dwarf to do the job, regardless of whatever jobs that dwarf might want to do, and that can lead to some really sub-par selections.
And there’s a kind of symmetric problem if dwarves pick jobs. They’ll pick jobs that another dwarf might be better suited for. So you can’t really have jobs picking dwarves or dwarves picking jobs; you need to have a system that merges it all together and has a delay incorporated so that things can work themselves out. Not a big delay, almost unnoticeable, but just enough to get the right dwarf to the right job. And this will allow you to do things like taking a skilled dwarf, that you’d normally be forced to turn off their hauling, so that they would do the jobs you want them to do. And now you’d be able to leave their hauling on, for instance. They do hauling when they were truly idle, but they would still be able to go do their appropriate jobs when they were available. And by the same token you wouldn’t have… We noticed that a lot of people were setting up this ‘peasant class’ of dwarves, unskilled dwarves, that were just set up for hauling. That should be a little less necessary now.
[04:00]
Threetoe: Except now we’re going to be working with the last of these projects will be to implement new peasant classes of dwarves.
Toady: He he he. Yeah this is the kind of VPL change we were talking about. It should be exciting to see the status of your dwarves realized. And certain ones you’ll be able to control more than others. Now there will be a circumstance under which you can control any dwarf to a large degree, and that’s going to be the new ‘Do This Now’ prioritization for jobs, which will just snatch up the nearest dwarf that can do the job (like pulling a lever), and force them to do it. They’ll drop what they’re doing and save your fortress. Might stress them out a little bit, depending on the dwarf, but you’ll be able to do that finally. And furthermore we are mindful of things like the trading jobs, the harvest, and so on, and hopefully that’ll be handled with the new job selection model overall.
[05:00]
We are trying to stay away from spreadsheets and numbers approaches that kind of open up every single job to be ranked, you know, according to different numbers for each dwarf or workshop because that is unmanageable when the number of dwarves get high.
Threetoe: Also, it’s a hint where we’re going with this, which is to get rid of VPL all together, eventually.
Toady: Yeah, we would really like to restrict VPL possibly to a smaller number of dwarves that are actually the types of dwarves you would be ordering around like that. And we’re also aware of kind of the ‘work crew’ approaches that people have, and that will also be something that is under consideration when we do understand ‘fortress-citizen’ status a little better.
[06:00]
But for now we’re just focusing on these kind of large problems. Those two things, the ‘Do It Now’ prioritization and the overall job selection mechanic, should help with most of the major problems. We have some other small ideas, kind of along the lines of the little suggestions we’ve been doing, like workshops being able to steal from hauling jobs if the item is nearby. We’re also going to look at some of the mining suggestions, like ordered mining or vein mining, that kind of thing.
And so it should be an interesting set of job priority changes that’ll do a lot of good. Just keep in mind that when we do get to the fourth section of the new development notes, the starting scenarios, there’s going to be further changes to job priorities that should really make the whole experience more interesting and dwarfy.
In short: it looks like labours will require much less micro-management, potentially making Therapist a tool to enhance the efficiency of a subset of your dwarves, rather than being described as essential.
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Topic: Dwarf Therapist (Maintained Branch) v.37.0 | DF 42.06 (Read 1003310 times)