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[The-Moon]

If dwarfs are not using skills, then over time they should decrease.

The only thing which would prevent this is when they get to the higher levels.

As they gain more skill, the chance of them losing skill for not using them decreases over time.

[Capntastic]

This would be kinda annoying and lead to a lot of micromanagement, I think.

[Mechanoid]

It would be useful to make your soldiers stop becomming champions, however. As long as they're on-duty and not fighting anything, they arn't really increasing their skills, which means that they can avoid becomming champion weapon users.

[pickupsticks]

Didn't see this thread, and searched for "skill decline"... so I posted another very similar thread in error!  I suck at this internets thing, for sure.

My post from the other thread:

quote:
How about if skill levels decline for unused skills?
(VERY slowly, I mean - perhaps only if the skill has been completely unused for a whole year)

This would lead to dwarfs that change profession eventually forgetting about what they used to do.
Dwarfs that take on a job where they never interact with other dwarfs would lose their social skills eventually.
Dedicated military dwarfs would lose their trade skills altogether in time, leading to anxiety if they get booted out onto civvy street.

(I got to thinking about this because I have immigrant dwarfs in a current fortress who are acting as haulers, but listed as Fisherdwarf. They will never fish again, I assure you. It would be nice if after a couple of years, their designation changed to reflect what they've been up to)

I could see problems for long term hospital cases...

[The-Moon]

Maybe a option for each person to learn, or unlearn skills?

Also a skill cap for each dwarf  

[Funkadelic Jive Turkey]

Skill caps are garbage for immersion, although sometimes necessary for game balance. I've repeatedly suggested lowering the rate of gain for (at least) some skills though.

As an extension of the topic though, perhaps dwarfs would learn slower\forget relative to their age.

[Wolfius]

Not sure how I feel about skill decrease, but atleast disable skill loss for a dwarf's highest trade skill; being dwarves especially, it would be important to them, and retention is much better for things you consider important.

[Neonivek]

Here is what I think would be a better option then skills decreasing over time

How about if a skill isn't used for a long time you get "Rusty" to a certain degree... however that goes away rather quickly when you start using the skill again.

To have someone go from lets say an almost legendary cook to unable to cook without giving food poisoning is kinda much.

Skill Degredation would be sad mostly for two situations
A) In Dwarf Fortress mode you rely entirely on Carivan trade for certain resources which come rarely. Lets say you only got two peices of metal every carivan. You would be doomed to forever have horrific quality goods.
B) In Adventurer mode there are Emergency skills that don't come up often (such as swimming) and there is also times where you don't really go out and kill things for a long period of time playing the social game (which for now is looking for old adventurers, looking for good store equipment, and looking for drunks)

[Draco18s]

Certain skills would be immune.  Trading skills only get used once every 3 months, so they'd degrade on a MUCH slower level (decades).  Swimming is a skill you never really forget how to do (at least, to keep yourself from drowning, you can't expect a retired olympic champion who hasn't been in the pool for four years to still be able to compete--he can keep himself alive, but he's not going to be "as good").

[Wolfius]

quote:Originally posted by Draco18s:
<STRONG>Swimming is a skill you never really forget how to do (at least, to keep yourself from drowning, you can't expect a retired olympic champion who hasn't been in the pool for four years to still be able to compete--he can keep himself alive, but he's not going to be "as good").</STRONG>

As far as swimming goes, I hadn't been in the water for five, maybe almost ten years until last summer. Hadn't forgot a thing; like riding a bike.

The Olympic but isn't really a good example, as that requires the kind of hard-to-maintain peak physical condition that degrades very quickly.

[ricemastah]

Wolfius that is exactly what Draco is saying. Or at least I think he is. Anyway, as pointed out before, the whole long-term wounded dwarf thing would be bad. A rusty or something tag would be much better. You lose your edge, but you can generally get it back pretty quickly after doing something for awhile

[Draco18s]

quote:Originally posted by Wolfius:
<STRONG>The Olympic but isn't really a good example, as that requires the kind of hard-to-maintain peak physical condition that degrades very quickly.</STRONG>

so, in other words, it's like one of those exponential curves... http://www.sixsigmafirst.com/proba_files/image066.jpg
In this case, X is time and Y is skill level.  Degrades quickly at high levels and very slowly (if at all) at low levels.

[Wolfius]

quote:Originally posted by Draco18s:
<STRONG>

so, in other words, it's like one of those exponential curves... http://www.sixsigmafirst.com/proba_files/image066.jpg
In this case, X is time and Y is skill level.  Degrades quickly at high levels and very slowly (if at all) at low levels.</STRONG>

It's not even really skill - competing at that level requires peak physical condition, which you lose very quickly if you don't stay on top of it pretty much constantly(even if the loss is tiny, the margins are so small that it takes you out of the running). So it's not really comparable to something like, say, smithing.

[Toady One]

Armok 1 had rust points that accumulated over time without use.  These points were subtracted from the skill level to get the number used during actions.  After the rust hit a certain number, the skill level would decrease permanently (very slowly).  Rust worked off about ten times as quickly as regular skill gain (don't remember the exact numbers).  I'll probably do something like that again.

[The-Moon]

I suggested this mainly because, id like to get rid of the skills which come with migrants, which they don't need.

With the new conversation skills patch, which allows everyone to have conversation skills. Don't really need those unused skills in the list