One issue I can see arising due to the split (though it is already somewhat present) is that training all the skills needed during adventure mode may start to get a bit tricky unless you artificially start using them at inappropriate times.
Well, are they really "needed" if they're not even getting used?
Wasn't a notion of skill synergy thrown in too ? Footkerchief, help us !
Yeah: "There were several minor skill-related alterations, but the main changes were the addition of a situational awareness skill that works with some of the new attributes to handle attack-from-behind/charge surprise/ambush detection rolls, and the use throughout of the melee combat skill for other misc. combat rolls that used to be handled by total skill (a "level" placeholder that's now scrapped entirely). The melee combat skill (and archery) are also currently used to handle weapon "skill synergies" -- that system will likely be changed to something with more branching structure during the Combat Arc, but this will do for now."
Toady also posted a few more details about the function and future of the "Melee Combat" skill:
There are also general skills for melee/ranged combat that pick up some of the slack that used to depend on "level" (counterstrikes, noticing charges, etc.). Those just need to be handled with the new atts and so on, but there's also something to be said for keeping the new "melee combat" skill, as somebody that has been using a sword and fighting in real fights with it for fifteen years would be able to pick up a spear or a mace and have a real advantage over a completely inexperienced person, and not just because of atts. As these skills are given names, the melee combat skill might fade out and be removed, but I'm not sure. There's something to be said for having a skill tree like Armok 1 had, so that say as a simplified example effective_mace=max(mace,sword/3) or effective_mace=max(mace,melee) and that kind of thing, but I just haven't made a final decision on that (what I'm setting up now won't feel it too hard either way if I decide to change later, so I'm not that worried about it, but I'll still have to make up my mind one way or another in a day or two).
Kind of hard to trim this down for my point but if your sword skill adds to your mace skill (*I'm not sure if the above just substitutes sword/3 if it's higher than mace or adds them together,) then that first question of why we'd need to train up skills we weren't using kind of falls in on itself as being really obvious.
Crossbows are COOL!
Well there is a reason why King Richard the Lionheart wanted them outlawed.
When catapults are outlawed only outlaws will have catapults.
Yeah there are two reasons why I bring it up at odd times
1) I often argue with people who arn't there (Bad habit)
2) I am moody
Anyhow that is all I am going to say on that subject. There is probably more too it but I don't possess any further insight into myself, I could even be wrong.
As for Trees dropping multiple wood. Would you also suggest that wood grow more slowly?
I'd suggest that instead of hauling around a whole tree trunk they chop it up into several units of wood and maybe ever a few size categories. As making several hauling jobs at the site of a downed tree is probably not a good idea we could instead have the carpenter shop process the wood. Stripping off the branches that are too small to use for building could give a stack of material useful for wood crafts (maybe carving or basket weaving,) or that you could burn several units of for all of our burning things products.
The actual blocks of wood produced from a log would go to most of the other purposes we use wood for.
So basically I'm thinking the carpenter dwarf or lumber-jack-dwarf could be a bit more like a tree-butcher, especially because describing it that way should sound even worse to the elves.
*you might eve make wooden supports take considerably less wood than wooden walls to allow for more interesting bridge building- if we get to a point where lanes actually need supports ever so far to stay up.
I hope trees drop multiple units of wood in the coming update. I find the fact that making above-ground housing out of big granite chunks is easier than construction with wood is a bit too unrealistic, even in heavily forested areas.
I would point the blame for that particular unrealism at the fact that mining is way, way too easy, exhibiting few of the historical hazards of mining. The rock doesn't shatter your tools, fall on you, collapse beneath you, suffocate you, poison you with dust, or incinerate you with explosive vapors. It just yields meekly before the pick. That's boring and not hardcore at all, even taking dwarves' nebulous talents into account.
To be fair it pretty much does fall on them and out from under them before players understand cave-ins and probably several times (or many,) after that when they forget about them.
But it should never get to the point where realism is added just for the sake of difficulty, or for realism's sake at the expense of fun. The fun factor is infinitely for important than how realistic the mining is.
Perhaps the game could include a smaller scale collapse that is common and likely to lightly bury nearby miners to the degree that other dwarves have to haul debris off of them so they can stand back up? It could even just work out that the wall they were mining crumbled onto them, and possibly walls next to it that weren't even designated for mining (though without the abilty to engrave constructed walls us OCD people would get rather pissed off about that.)
It's not like the rest of your dwarves are very busy when you first start mining out the fort so it would give them something to do until they've got shops to work in and food to grow/cook/brew.
As you dug deeper they could increase in severity to the point where you had to do a lot of reinforcement type stuff to keep it as just minor injury and "digging" them out instead of fatal collapses.
And the underground gas stuff could have similar mechanics.
Really I think this sort of thing would give more purpose to being good at mining than just "fast and makes more stone."