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[Techhead]

An oft suggested topic is the uselessness of many professions in DF, especially in immigrants. In addition, many jobs are shoved into the farming profession. Here is a comprehensive list of my ideas on the subject:
1. Bow Making also makes bolts and arrows at the bowyer's workshop.
2. Animal Dissecting made into a subset of Butchery.
3. Fish Dissecting made into a subset of Fish Cleaning.
4. Cheese Making made into a subset of Cooking, and the job is moved to the kitchen.
5. Dying moved to the Craftsdwarf category.
6. Milking moved to the Ranger category.
7. Potash Making and Lye Making merged into Ash Working.
8. Soap Making renamed Alchemy or Chemistry, "Processing plants (to vial)" is moved to this profession.
9. Wood Burner moved to the Woodworker category.
10. Pump Operating moved to the Peasant catergoy.
11. Animal traps are made by Carpentry or Blacksmith skill, although used by trapper.
12. Glassmaking moved to Jeweler category.

EDIT: I bolded all the ones that seem to have reached general agreement, underlined the ones that are kinda controversial, and italicized entries added or modified.

[Granite26]

An oft suggested topic is the uselessness of many professions in DF, especially in immigrants. In addition, many jobs are shoved into the farming profession. Here is a comprehensive list of my ideas on the subject:
1. Bow Making also makes bolts and arrows at the bowyer's workshop.
2. Animal Dissecting made into a subset of Butchery.
3. Fish Dissecting made into a subset of Fish Cleaning.
4. Cheese Making made into a subset of Cooking, and the job is moved to the kitchen.
5. Dying moved to the Craftsdwarf category.
6. Milking made into a subset of Animal Caretaking.
7. Potash Making and Lye Making merged into Ash Working.
8. Soap Making renamed Alchemy or Chemistry, "Processing plants (to vial)" is moved to this profession.
9. Wood Burner moved to the Woodworker category.
10. Pump Operating moved to the Peasant catergoy.

Wow, I agree with every single one of those, with a single caveat.

They should only be grouped together in terms of the skill they use/improve.  They should still be different tasks in the 'jobs a dwarf takes' screen.

Simultaneously, I think that Engraving and Smoothing should be split into two tasks (in the V->L Labor screen), but continue to use the same skill.  The same with Dig Dirt, Dig Stone and Dig Ore.

[Impaler[WrG]]

1. Bow Making also makes bolts and arrows at the bowyer's workshop.
-- Agree
2. Animal Dissecting made into a subset of Butchery.
3. Fish Dissecting made into a subset of Fish Cleaning.
-- I'd move both dissecting actions into Alchemy
4. Cheese Making made into a subset of Cooking, and the job is moved to the kitchen.
-- Not sure, Milking needs to be fixed first to see how useless it truly is or isn't
5. Dying moved to the Craftsdwarf category.
-- Disagree, Dying has its own workshop and should retain its own skill
6. Milking made into a subset of Animal Caretaking.
-- Could work but I'd like to see Animal Caretaker as more of a Shepard
7. Potash Making and Lye Making merged into Ash Working.
-- Agree
8. Soap Making renamed Alchemy or Chemistry, "Processing plants (to vial)" is moved to this profession.
-- Agree
9. Wood Burner moved to the Woodworker category.
-- Disagree, move it to a new category of 'Laborer' which would include all of the non-food related skills that currently fall under Farmer.
10. Pump Operating moved to the Peasant category.
-- Mixed, It probably shouldn't be in the Engineer category but it dose seem to be above the peasant level.

[Techhead]

Move Dyeing to the Craftsdwarf category, with weavers, clothiers, glassmakers, woodworkers, strand extractors, etc.
Wood Burners I debated sticking as a subset of Furnace Operating, but I decided they fit better as "farmers"
I would still move cheese-making away from the Farmer's Workshop into the Kitchen, even if kept as their own skill.
Also, I wasn't too sure about the Pumpers, but I added it to the list anyway.

[Dame de la Licorne]

1. Bow Making also makes bolts and arrows at the bowyer's workshop.
2. Animal Dissecting made into a subset of Butchery.
3. Fish Dissecting made into a subset of Fish Cleaning.
4. Cheese Making made into a subset of Cooking, and the job is moved to the kitchen.
5. Dying moved to the Craftsdwarf category.
6. Milking made into a subset of Animal Caretaking.
7. Potash Making and Lye Making merged into Ash Working.
8. Soap Making renamed Alchemy or Chemistry, "Processing plants (to vial)" is moved to this profession.
9. Wood Burner moved to the Woodworker category.
10. Pump Operating moved to the Peasant catergoy.

1 -> Agree.
2 & 3 -> I remember Tarn saying something about the dissectors being responsible for extracting things from creatures that could then be refined into meds.  So these jobs should remain in the butchery/fishery.
4 -> Not sure, once milking's been fixed it'll be clearer whether or not this job is useful as is.
5 -> Agree.
6 -> Agree.
7 -> Okay, but keep the two jobs separate in the v-p-l menu.
8 -> Agree.  And in addition, take the raw extracts from 2 & 3 (whenever they get put in) and add them here for refinement.
9 -> Agree.  They could be classified as either furnace operators or woodworkers (category-wise), but it makes more sense (to me) to make them woodworkers since they don't ever work with metal.
10 -> Agree.

[Othob Rithol]

I'm assuming  by "subset of" you mean the skill is dropped and the labor added to the new skill.

Most of my suggestions are just shuffling (since I avoided this in my GM thread)

1. Bow Making also makes bolts and arrows at the bowyer's workshop. and bone bolts too
2. Animal Dissecting made into a subset of Butchery.
3. Fish Dissecting made into a subset of Fish Cleaning.
4. Cheese Making made into a subset of Cooking, and the job is moved to the kitchen.
5. Dying moved to the Craftsdwarf category.
6. Milking made into a subset of Animal Caretaking. Keep it a skill. Add also Butcher, Tanner and Milking to "Ranger" Set so all hunting/animal husbandry skills are together
7. Potash Making and Lye Making merged into Ash Working. since potash is made from lye, keep it lye maker
8. Soap Making renamed Alchemy or Chemistry, "Processing plants (to vial)" is moved to this profession. or merged with lyemaking.
9. Wood Burner moved to the Woodworker category. - only slightly more appropriate
10. Pump Operating moved to the Peasant category. - Or eliminated completely.

Alternately you could split farming into three groups: Animal skills go in "Ranger", Plant Skills go in the new farming group, and all cooking/burning/brewing/lye/potash/soap/any conversion goes in a new group. No idea what to name it, but all involve using heat to alter an organic material.

Moving the craft skills into their material categories makes sense too (wood, stone obvious, metal already is, bone goes to the rangers). Make glass part of Jeweling.

[MMad]

I totally agree with the spirit of this thread (if not all of the specifics of the suggestions). Complexity is awesome when it generates emergent coolness, but complexity that adds complexity without generating particularly interesting gameplay should be pruned, IMO.

[Techhead]

I didn't like the idea of a single profession getting 2 workshops, thus (al)chemist is separate.
I didn't move butcher and tanner because all the ranging skills work with live animals, while butchers use live animals only half the time.
Wood-burner really is the kinda guy who is kinda in 3 profession categories, so I figured Woodworking is best.
Othob, I said bolts and arrows, regardless of whether they are bone or wood.

I imagine that the farming category is mostly drudge-work that the typical medieval serf might do.

[Granite26]

I think there's enough cloth related skills to warrant a new category.

Dyer, Weaver, Clothier, and Leatherworker at least.  Maybe Tanner.

I like Animal Husbandry as
Hunter, Disecter, Milker, Butcher, Trapper and prolly Tanner.

There's no reason that all 'skillsets' (pregenned Migrants) should have skills with only one category.  Maybe vertically integrate some (Hunter+Butcher+Cook)  or Create a new Ranger type (Plant Gather + Hunting + Wood Cutting).  Maybe allow people to define their own?

Edit - Spelling

[Silverionmox]

The best solution would be to make custom skills possible, so everyone can try out different combinations.

Most suggestion are very sensible anyway, except making the wood burner a woodworker. Burning stuff is entirely different from crafting something with it. Since he might as well burn peat or discarded clothes, put it in the ashworker category.

[Granite26]

Do you mean custom skill sets?  Like the colors people go in?  Sure, that's cool. 

I think the divying up was started by the guild talk.  If colors = which guild, the colors should be more logically grouped.

[Silverionmox]

Not only colors and groupings, but being able to assign every action to a skill, and every skill to a job. The idea has been around for a time to split up skills, giving them several properties: the material, the tool, the workshop, the product. So a player could for example group all skills that make use of a chisel and call it the chiseler profession. It would then be on the job list to be enabled/disabled. Or make a profession that is called serf and assign all hauling and pump operating.

The dwarf would then be able to gain XP in the subskills, rather than the profession. That even allows for overlapping professions: you could specify that the professions blacksmith, armorer etc. include furnace operating. One less skill to assign separately, and there's always someone around to ready more cokes, might they run out. Alternatively, you could decide to make a specialized ironsmith: he would then gain XP faster in working with iron, but not with the other metals.

[Othob Rithol]

Simultaneously, I think that Engraving and Smoothing should be split into two tasks (in the V->L Labor screen), but continue to use the same skill.  The same with Dig Dirt, Dig Stone and Dig Ore.

Your going for the "only the good engravers/miners do detailing/ore/gems" right? Since we don't have a workshop for these guys you could instead go with an orders screen option that sets min/max skill levels for those tasks (just like workshop profiles). In my opinion the labors screen is already crowded barring some sort of tabbed organization I have seen in other suggestions.

I think there's enough cloth related skills to warrant a new category.

Dyer, Weaver, Clothier, and Leatherworker at least.  Maybe Tanner.

Completely agreed.

[Hyndis]

The standing orders screen should fit a lot of this stuff in, such as min/max skill for digging up ore, gems, stone, and soil.


However, I would like to see architecture get some more love. Right now the skill is basically only used for bridges, trade depots, and furnaces, so it gets very little work. Perhaps expanding it so it also includes constructing walls and floors would make it a more valuable skill. You could have anyone with the masonry skill haul blocks to the site, but then an architect would have to visit to turn it into a finished structure, much like current building projects.

[Othob Rithol]

and screwpumps, and water wheels, and supports....