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[Neonivek]

Id personally would like to see Journeyman as the barrier before a Dwarf needs special circumstances to advance! such as studying abroad or requiring indepth study or refinement that couldn't be done just by doing the job over and over again. Afterall... not everyone who is a blacksmith for a living is a master.

Though I guess Talent could determine how far you get after you try to break through Journeyman... but Id like it to stop at Master rather then High-Master.

Sorry I am confusing myself.

[SirHoneyBadger]

No, you're right. Things like that should be looked at, and terminology shouldn't be used unless it has some kind of specific meaning.

[Razzums]

I must say, this has the possibility to be the greatest release of DF ever.

[Narmio]

On the subject of skills and advancement, although if this goes on for much longer we should split it off into a Suggestions board thread...

I think a relatively simple way to realistically model advancement is to base XP gain on a "relative difficulty" number.  What I mean by that is that you have a "difficulty" for each task, and you compare that to the dwarf's skill.  Making bolts, for example, is easy compared to making crossbows.  Shooting from two squares away at an archery range is easy compared to hitting a charging goblin from a screen's width away. 

Where this ties into XP gain is this:  A dwarf achieves maximum learning rate when doing something challenging, but not too challenging.  In other words, you compare the difficulty to the dwarf's skill and create a normal distribution about the relative difficulty, shifted slightly upwards. 

The result, if you want a dwarf to train fast, you need to challenge them constantly.  If you just leave a dwarf repeating a simple task ad nauseum, they will soon "outgrow" the learning potential of that task.  Once you've made a thousand bolts or shot a thousand into a stone target from five paces, there's just not much doing more of that will teach you.  Conversely, if you've never made any armour before starting out with a full suit of steel plate probably won't teach you much either: you're just going to massively cock it up.

This "relative difficulty" number could be used for other things, too:  Task speed (so a dwarf gets faster at easy things first, but is still slow at hard stuff), quality modifiers (so a Proficient dwarf might produce high quality shields much more often than high quality suits of full plate, because they're still beyond him somewhat), etc.  It's a concept that I think you can do a lot with, and while there's a fair bit of development effort involved, none of it is all that complex, and the results would help with the "legendary proliferation" problem quite a lot.

Wouldn't it be great if your marksdwarves could only (efficiently) learn so much from the archery range, and would have to move on to shooting real targets to progress further?  And if sparring dwarves learnt fastest when sparring with someone *slightly* better than they are?  And if your miners didn't become legends from clearing a 100x100 sand stockpile, but instead needed to reach exotic metal veins deep in the mountains to continue "learning"?

I'm just me, but I think that's pretty cool.

[jasonxfri13th]

I wonder when this will be released... hopefully before summer so I can waste it all on Dwarf Fortress, it would be the best summer ever!

[Dareon Clearwater]

That would decrease the overall progression of skill, yes. But it is still an unrealistic model for learning. Some people will never be rocket scientists, Olympians, or movie stars no matter how hard they try.

I'm slightly reminded of the XCOM (At least Apocalypse) system, where a unit could never advance beyond twice their initial level of skill.  That can't be applied straight into DF, though, because then Akath Shinymud, immigrant Soap Maker, could only ever advance to tier six soapmaking, and always be dabbling in everything else.

I must say, this has the possibility to be the greatest release of DF ever.

Until the next one!

stuff

Now that sounds good, actually.  I'm not at all enamored of any of the other ways to arbitrarily limit skill gain.  Plain failure,for instance, just annoys me, mostly because it always happens when I have just enough of something to make something once.

But this, if there's no way to fail, makes a decent amount of sense.  I can still send Slappy the Fish Dissector over into the Vitreous Lava Pits to make glass, he'll just take a few months if I want him to make a corkscrew instead of blocks.

[Neonivek]

I'm not at all enamored of any of the other ways to arbitrarily limit skill gain

Mine was supposed to represent the rough limit of advancement through pure repetition and serious contemplative study, break through training, or extreme challenges.

There are differences between people who do things for their entire lives and a master.

As someone once said: "A Drunk flailing his arms in a bar is unlikely to learn martial arts"

[Duncan]

I personally find it ironic that Toady is finally implementing combat announcements...in a fortress about 6 months ago, I got this awesome glitch where my announcements page was flooded with adventure mode-esque combat announcements. While it was completely awesome to read about every limb being hacked off the attacking goblins, it amusingly made normal announcements go unnoticed...one of my better DF moments

[Tormy]

I personally find it ironic that Toady is finally implementing combat announcements...in a fortress about 6 months ago, I got this awesome glitch where my announcements page was flooded with adventure mode-esque combat announcements. While it was completely awesome to read about every limb being hacked off the attacking goblins, it amusingly made normal announcements go unnoticed...one of my better DF moments

Actually, it will work like this:
02/18/2009
"Combat messages in dwarf mode will default to notices -- this means that they aren't displayed at the bottom, but instead give you a little letter notice on the left bar of the screen according to the type of combat message (combat/sparring/hunting). You'll then be able to view the stored combat messages, separated into combat/hunting/sparring lists for each dwarf."

I find this method pretty cool. Good job Toady! 

[Savok]

I must say, this has the possibility to be the greatest release of DF ever.

Every release is the greatest release of DF ever. Except the majorly bugged ones, which are fixed within a few days.

[Flaede]

I must say, this has the possibility to be the greatest release of DF ever.

Every release is the greatest release of DF ever. Except the majorly bugged ones, which are fixed within a few days.

Bugs can be fun! look at the Cat With No Hands! But yeah, I get what you mean.

[Areyar]

I think T1 mentioned handling the wanted zooming to 'recent friendly death' and not pause/zooming on "ortoclase!". Which has been a major cosmetic (and minor gameplay) issue for some time now. 

great!

@Toady1:
Now that you're working on zooming to events etc.
Consider including a 'dwarfcam' option.
Not 3d-First-Dwarf-Perspective, merely keeping a selected dwarf (or squad) centerview. Adventure mode essentially.
It would be usefull in running battles as well as fun to observe a dwarf on his biurnal routine.
 
I'm sure it has been suggested a million times already and might even be on the todo list. :blush: anyhow, a reminder.


edit: bugs are great! you can play with them, leave them rotting behind a barrel and even eat them when you're really hungry.

[scribbler]

Hmm, now that there's going to be more messages and filtering (hopefully with zoom/pause options for everything) maybe they can be streamed to a side panel. It might be useful to get a running commentary on what's going on. Kind of your own personal DF novel.

Streamed:
McOne and McTwo have become romantically involved.
McLazy has stopped making beds, again, because he wants yet another drink, but not from the keg in his workshop.
The iron stores are down to ten.
McQuick has finished a sword. Her smith queue is empty.

Logged:
Shale 492, Mayor McCheese
Food stocks are sufficient for more than a winter, ore stocks are dropping low. McOne and McTwo have become romantically involved. The klingons have entered the neutral zone.

Or both, stream brief messages and log them for reference/posterity. I've always found making repetitive or random messages interesting to be a fun challenge.

I see all sorts of evil options for people to provide various filters/RAW files for arranging their logs (can you say Boatmurdered). Interesting message streams/logs could be a new player challenge... heavy modding might be a bit much, although the logs could be parsed elsewhere (like a Perl routine) then the perspective could even be changed by an ambitious user... I'll stop now.

Jamini might keep up on Ulogeshud... (We need a gen option to stop when the dwarves run out and generate refugees.)

[Techhead]

I vote for immigrants with higher initial skills, personally. Perhaps 3-6 levels in one of their aptitude skills (Random), a couple levels scattered among related skills, and 1-3 levels in their interest (Even dwarves might have hobbies). These numbers would be cumulative and thus a dwarf whose aptitude matches their interest could possibly come in with 9 levels in a skill (Professional).

Example: Momuz Plantfurrows has an aptitude for farming but always felt a deep love for clerical work. His skills are:
Skilled Grower
Novice Herbalist
Novice Miller
Competent Record Keeper

Would you care about your immigrants more if they came like this???

[Mel_Vixen]

iirc i had once and only once a immigrant Smith which was legendary. I can remember that one cause i got a anouncment for him an he was the only smith i had to this time.