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[numeral]

I'm not sure if this is really relevant or if anyone has already suggested this idea, if so I'll delete this topic but I was thinking along the lines of adding a new order, minimum engraving skill.

The way engraving and stone smoothing works now is that anyone who has the engraving labor on will both smooth stone and engrave so if I want only my legendary engraver to engrave and my novices to smooth I have to turn off their labor while engraving and then turn it back on for smoothing and I can't smooth a certain area and engrave another area at the same time, tedious and useless micromanagement, if we had an order to set the minimum engraving skill only dwarves equal to or above the skill order would engrave and keep me from going batshit insane.

comments welcome kthx

[Caz]

That'd be nice.


It would also be useful if we could specify the spheres of engraving when designating - so we can get engravings of plump helmets near the dining hall and engravings of goblins on fire near the fort entrance.

[numeral]

That'd be nice.


It would also be useful if we could specify the spheres of engraving when designating - so we can get engravings of plump helmets near the dining hall and engravings of goblins on fire near the fort entrance.

hrm, if engravings were set up like stockpiles and had settings you could set up what type of engravings you want engraved in a certain area, they could also give different effects depending on who sees them and what the engravings are, make dwarves hungrier, thirstier, happier, sadder, scared etc or scare gobbos or even make them feel more welcome, could be interesting to flesh out such an idea

[alfie275]

I would like to see an option to choose a number of things for the engraving to be about, you just add each one like with adding work orders. You could say 'burning' and 'goblins' for burning goblins or for a tomb of Urist McCool it might be 'Urist mcCool' and 'slaying', maybe with negatives for bad things to engrave: 'Dwarf',NOT 'Dying',NOT 'Pain', or even set a mood for the engraving, a number of 1 to 10? 1 Being sad, for the insides of cells, and 10 being happy, for the dining hall.

[Derakon]

While I support being able to say "Only these dwarves smooth; only these dwarves engrave", I don't support giving the player control over what gets engraved. Encouraging dwarves to be less repetitive with their engravings is fine; saying "draw this on your walls" isn't.

[Aspgren]

While I support being able to say "Only these dwarves smooth; only these dwarves engrave", I don't support giving the player control over what gets engraved. Encouraging dwarves to be less repetitive with their engravings is fine; saying "draw this on your walls" isn't.

I second this.

[Hectonkhyres]

hrm, if engravings were set up like stockpiles and had settings you could set up what type of engravings you want engraved in a certain area, they could also give different effects depending on who sees them and what the engravings are, make dwarves hungrier, thirstier, happier, sadder, scared etc or scare gobbos or even make them feel more welcome, could be interesting to flesh out such an idea

You have no idea of the levels of awesome you just released into the world with those sixty-nine uncapitalized words and questionable punctuation.

[zchris13]

While I support being able to say "Only these dwarves smooth; only these dwarves engrave", I don't support giving the player control over what gets engraved. Encouraging dwarves to be less repetitive with their engravings is fine; saying "draw this on your walls" isn't.

I second this.

NO. THIS IS NOT WHAT HE WAS SAYING AT ALL IN THE OP.

You misunderstand. The OP wants to be able to tell the dwarves, "HEY YOU! Engrave something suitable for a dining hall here please."
Not, "HEY YOU, I WANT A PICTURE OF 3 DWAVES BEATING THE EVERLASTING CRUD OUT OF FIRE DEMONS HERE"

I would rather roll the dice about the fire demons on my entrance. Much better if you roll the dice. No penalties, no nothing, it is just that YOUR DWARVES ARE IDIOTS.
I would just rather not have a picture of AdamFoodstuffs, a legendary cat tallow roast, in the elf drowning chambers.
It is rather hard to get the dwarves to engrave setting appropriate materials, such as food in the dining hall.  Each option would draw from a (editable in the raws) list to determine what sort of historical things or items would be engraved. Instead of a total dice roll.

EDIT. Holy crap. I didn't realize. I am really stupid today.  The fire demon caps lock was totally yelling at my dwarves.

[WJLIII3]

While I support being able to say "Only these dwarves smooth; only these dwarves engrave", I don't support giving the player control over what gets engraved. Encouraging dwarves to be less repetitive with their engravings is fine; saying "draw this on your walls" isn't.

I second this.

NO. THIS IS NOT WHAT HE WAS SAYING AT ALL IN THE OP.

You misunderstand. The OP wants to be able to tell the dwarves, "HEY YOU! Engrave something suitable for a dining hall here please."
Not, "HEY YOU, I WANT A PICTURE OF 3 DWAVES BEATING THE EVERLASTING CRUD OUT OF FIRE DEMONS HERE"

I would rather roll the dice about the fire demons on my entrance. Much better if you roll the dice. No penalties, no nothing, it is just that YOUR DWARVES ARE IDIOTS.
I would just rather not have a picture of AdamFoodstuffs, a legendary cat tallow roast, in the elf drowning chambers.
It is rather hard to get the dwarves to engrave setting appropriate materials, such as food in the dining hall.  Each option would draw from a (editable in the raws) list to determine what sort of historical things or items would be engraved. Instead of a total dice roll.

While I agree with you, I just want to note that thats not what the OP wanted at all. Not even remotely. All the OP wants is to be able to tell his Stone Detailers to limit themselves to smoothing, not engraving, until they reach a certain skill level.

In the future, please avoid using the ole Cruise Control for Cool until you've double-checked to make sure you're saying something true. Or if you actually want to get across that you're yelling. That works, too.

[Aspgren]

I'll just leave this here.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[alfie275]

How about if it's ina  tomb it will be about the dwarf being entombed and the things he likes?

[Derakon]

ZChris: wow, you feel strongly about this, huh?

I don't want the players to have any control over dwarves' creative activities. That includes artifacts, engravings, decorations, and all that jazz. Maybe someday Toady will add support for dwarves thinking "Oh, hey, this is the diining room, I guess making images of the mayor's death by starvation would be inappropriate." But that's a far, far cry from the player saying "Hey you, engrave this," even if "this" is a theme instead of a specific subject.

This is like those suggestions to improve pathfinding by having the player mark out checkpoints in their fortresses. The right solution is to make the dwarves/game smarter so that the dwarves/game decide for them/itself what should be done. Having the player intercede is just a hack.

[Silverionmox]

With all sympathy for players who would like to play DF: the movie, I don't think that ordering a particular picture is that different from ordering a particular piece of furniture made from a particular material, or placing it in a specific place. Or ordering dwarves to become a full-time pump operator, whatever his preferences are. Not to mention digging out rooms of a specific shape on a specific place... and I'm sure a significant part of the playerbase would consider it a nightmare, should they dream about their dwarves digging of their own volition in the fortress. And it's just about the same thing: uncontrolled dwarves.

The distinction between functionality and creativity is a false one: sometimes the medium is the message, and the choice of material, decoration type or image might be used to honour, commemorate or mark (eg. uniforms) someone or something.
I do expect the subject of images, and particular types of decorations to have an effect on dwarves. If they do, they're functional. If they don't, it might as well say: "This boot is decorated with a random image".

Sometimes a player comes up with a crazy idea that cannot possibly be foreseen. If someone wants to send out an expedition with the specific goal to carve a sky-high obsidian obelisk, covered from top to bottom with engravings of the Carp, why shouldn't he?

I do think there should be significant risk be associated with forcing dwarves to do stuff they don't want to do. Ordering Urist Short-of-temper to engrave roaches, which he hates, should be enough to make him tantrum. Cog Dewbeard could go for suicide, while Lorbam the Restless will probably emigrate. (Also, since it should be a rarely-used feature, the normal, at-the-dwarf's-discretion engraving will be standard, and specific engravings will be hidden somewhere in the interface.) Offsetting this will require the player to play close attention to the dwarves' personal likes and dislikes, making their personality play a greater role, not a lesser.

[Momaw]

I fully support the idea of being able to assign a minimum skill level for engraving.  However instead of a global setting, e.g. "Min engraving skill: high master",  ideally the elegant solution is that you would be able to adjust the required worker skill of a job that is not yet in progress. Either during the Designate operation (as in, you chose Engrave, and then while you are laying out the area it gives you a menu of skill levels), or after the area is designated through the Orders menu.

I do not support the notion that we should be able to tell dwarves what to engrave on their floors and walls with some kind of keyword system.  At most, dwarves should take cue from the room type if any to decide what should be engraved there.  This could require some cleverness to come up with an accurate guess as to where your entrance is.

[IceShade]

Shucks. I planned ahead in this fortress. I designated three dwarves, and they would smooth ridiculously large areas. They'd all level up together and when they were done, they were all about proficient. Their first engravings weren't amazing, but sooner or later they got more experience. Now they're my three legendary engravers. When they go to work, it's non stop "Urist McEngraver engraved a masterpiece! [more]" every few seconds.

But yes, anything to avoid this annoying micromanagement. I've had it in the past.