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[snelg]

Isn't the fact that dwarves ARE trying as much as they can to make good items rather than bad ones enough? 
I guess being able to create low-quality ones would be nice in some cases though (like when the economy kicks in and every non-useful dwarf are thrown out of their rooms).
Though I've got economy turned off until later...

[Martin]

Production speed is fantastically unimportant. Rarely are you crafting against time.

There are a lot of exceptions, though:

Food, booze, farming, mining, melting, wood cutting, siege operating, smoothing, sometimes masonry (blocks) and glass, and even bone bolt production. All of these are subject to exactly the same system, though quality sometimes isn't a factor.

Take mining for example. A masterwork miner could either mine slowly and extract 100% of resources (what a legendary miner does now but at the speed of a dabbler) or he could mine quickly and leave minimal material behind (mine at legendary speed, but only leave stone behind at the rate that a dabbling miner does). That not only solves a hauling problem that doesn't really add to the game, but it also closes up a bit of a logical disconnect in that if you don't want to haul stuff you're better off with crappy miners than good ones, because the good ones can't behave like crappy ones. Training up your miner would require them to slow down trying to mine at the higher recovery rate (a tradeoff) so you have to decide if you just want a bunch of crappy miner going along or if you want to invest time in skilling them up - a strategic decision.

This requires some changes to various aspects of the production system - either giving booze quality or finding some kind of trade-off to the skill, but it's a way to balance various features. For melting, low-skill furnace operators recover lower percentages than high-skill ones, but you need to invest in a fair amount of useless slag in order to get up to the higher percent. You need to decide if you have enough long-term need to make the investment - and strategic decisions by the player are almost universally good for this kind of game.

I don't know how woodcutting would balance or some of the others, but I'm sure they can be.

[Aqizzar]

Take mining for example. A masterwork miner could either mine slowly and extract 100% of resources (what a legendary miner does now but at the speed of a dabbler) or he could mine quickly and leave minimal material behind (mine at legendary speed, but only leave stone behind at the rate that a dabbling miner does). That not only solves a hauling problem that doesn't really add to the game, but it also closes up a bit of a logical disconnect in that if you don't want to haul stuff you're better off with crappy miners than good ones, because the good ones can't behave like crappy ones. Training up your miner would require them to slow down trying to mine at the higher recovery rate (a tradeoff) so you have to decide if you just want a bunch of crappy miner going along or if you want to invest time in skilling them up - a strategic decision.

Every time someone talks about the material left behind by mining, I have to wonder whether you're thinking about this from a 'game' perspective or a 'real' perspective.  A real miner, no matter how skilled or crappy, is going to produce exactly as much waste rock - that is, all of it.  Earth doesn't disappear because a miner doesn't know what he's doing, and a proper simulation would have even more hauling.  This is exactly why humans don't live underground, you have to move every cubic inch of stone you pull out.

[Martin]

Every time someone talks about the material left behind by mining, I have to wonder whether you're thinking about this from a 'game' perspective or a 'real' perspective.  A real miner, no matter how skilled or crappy, is going to produce exactly as much waste rock - that is, all of it.  Earth doesn't disappear because a miner doesn't know what he's doing, and a proper simulation would have even more hauling.  This is exactly why humans don't live underground, you have to move every cubic inch of stone you pull out.

For me, it's 'game'. For 'real' a legendary miner would leave blocks behind vs stone, but would always leave something behind - I agree with you there 100%. But there's all kinds of things wrong with mining in the game and making them right would really kill the game. But hauling stone is a major issue as evidenced with the popularity of quantum stockpiles and such. I don't think that having half my hauling jobs be stone hauling necessarily adds to the game and I'd much rather be given far more difficult skill/production decisions to make in exchange for the endless, mindless stone hauling. I don't think I'm the only one who feels this way...

I don't take issue with *any* other hauling task than this one - stone hauling is just a drag on gameplay after a while.

[Mephansteras]

And it's a subject talked to death in the suggestions forum. Check out the realistic mining thread over there if you want to see everything that's been discussed so far.

Overall, I'd say this entire discussion ought to move over to the suggestions forum. It's interesting, but getting a bit too in depth for this thread.

[Footkerchief]

This is exactly why humans don't live underground, you have to move every cubic inch of stone you pull out.

If you mean real-life modern-day humans, I doubt that's the primary reason.  Modern construction equipment makes moving loose stone/dirt pretty straightforward -- most houses have foundations beneath them anyway.

[Pruvan]

This is exactly why humans don't live underground, you have to move every cubic inch of stone you pull out.

If you mean real-life modern-day humans, I doubt that's the primary reason.  Modern construction equipment makes moving loose stone/dirt pretty straightforward -- most houses have foundations beneath them anyway.

There's a difference between someone's basement and an underground city housing hundreds of humans.

[Footkerchief]

There's a difference between someone's basement and an underground city housing hundreds of humans.

Well of course there's a difference.  One is a basement and the other is a subway.

[LegacyCWAL]

Isn't the fact that dwarves ARE trying as much as they can to make good items rather than bad ones enough? 
I guess being able to create low-quality ones would be nice in some cases though (like when the economy kicks in and every non-useful dwarf are thrown out of their rooms).
Though I've got economy turned off until later...

In a vacuum, sure.  Better stuff is...well, better.  The problem is with the economy.  If you have nothing but exceptional or masterwork items to furnish rooms with, you're going to wind up with a lot of homeless dwarves.  Either that, or exploiting levers to give them enough money for rent.

[Granite26]

TVA FTW!!!!

[Aqizzar]

There's a difference between someone's basement and an underground city housing hundreds of humans.

Well of course there's a difference.  One is a basement and the other is a subway.

Force of habit and cost.  Digging a subway system is a massive undertaking, and digging just a basement costs more than a prefab house.  And most humans don't particularly like being underground for long periods of time.

[SirHoneyBadger]

Most humans don't particularly like being underground for long periods of time.

They're afraid of the Deros.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Sharpe_Shaver

[Exponent]

In a vacuum, sure.  Better stuff is...well, better.  The problem is with the economy.  If you have nothing but exceptional or masterwork items to furnish rooms with, you're going to wind up with a lot of homeless dwarves.  Either that, or exploiting levers to give them enough money for rent.

Indeed; the economy itself probably needs fixed, because if you have nothing but exceptional or masterwork items with which to furnish rooms, they wouldn't really cost that much, and even poor dwarves could buy them.  (Supply and demand and all that.)  Unless the manufacturers of these items spent a ton of money for the raw materials, in which case they're just poor planners, manufacturing stuff when there isn't a market for it and having to choose between either selling their products at a loss or not selling them at all at the price they need to break even.  In that case, the manufacturers become the poor dwarves due to crappily running their businesses.

[Footkerchief]

Force of habit and cost.  Digging a subway system is a massive undertaking, and digging just a basement costs more than a prefab house.  And most humans don't particularly like being underground for long periods of time.

Yes, I agree.  I was just disagreeing with your statement that the cost of hauling loose stone (as opposed to the costs of drilling/blasting or the psychological cost of living in the space or whatever else) is The Reason humans don't live underground.  Apologies for the pedantry, derail and possible misinterpretation.

[Neonivek]

Booze and Farming absolutely do not have a Speed issue. They take just as long to make no matter what quality they are.

Food, Mining, Melting, Woodcutting have iffy quality issues. They can be slowed down however for the most part it doesn't happen.
-Food: For the most part it is already about making the highest quality food as fast as possible so much. Plus it goes on a Per-Recipe basis. To quote someone: "If we double the temperature, we can cook it in half the time".
-Mining: Speed is to make sure the roof doesn't collapse.
-Melting: No idea
-Woodcutting: The quality is actually seeing the proper trees and cutting them down. The Woodcutter doesn't do that exactly thus his job can't get a quality for speed.

Simply speaking your not asking Dwarves to go for lower quality... your asking them to cut corners and be lazy often to dangerous degrees. There is a difference between making a plain mug and making gruel.

Your also mistaking what they Dwarves do in the crafting process. Embellishments are done seperately from the object itself in most cases... which doesn't make sense for some objects.

Food, booze, farming, mining, melting, wood cutting, siege operating, smoothing, sometimes masonry (blocks) and glass, and even bone bolt production. All of these are subject to exactly the same system, though quality sometimes isn't a factor

It should be said however that most of these excluding Ammo creation is quick and do not need speeding up. A Single cook can feed a whole fortress the finest foods.

Also the reason Human's don't live underground is rather complex and goes from reasons such as it being unhealthy and psychological damaging... all the way to the fact that air and mining efficiancy even today isn't all that safe.