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[SirHoneyBadger]

Here are a couple of suggestions about the possibility of certain "advanced" weapon types only being forgeable by smiths of correspondingly high skill.

To give you some suggestions: Any weaponsmith of any skill level could forge a basic knife, but in order to forge a switchblade, it makes sense that you'd need knowledge, or insight, into how a switchblade is put together, and thus more skill. You need more skill to create a Danish longaxe than you do a hatchet, and two-handed flamberges are just naturally more difficult to make than shortswords.

This could be applied to a very wide variety of weaponry in the game--where you'd start by having your soldiers outfitted with hatchets, slings, etc. but these would evolve over time into bec de corbins, rapiers, partisans, double-crossbows, etc., as they could be expected to evolve in real life.

Please note that this isn't a suggestion for "new technology", ala Civilizations etc., but rather an entirely skill-based exclusion system, so that as soon as you had a legendary weaponsmith, you could immediately make any weapon that was available.

Hopefully, this would make for both a more realistic forging system, while at the same time allowing for more exotic/interesting/powerful weapons in the game, without unbalancing the game at the same time.

It might also be a good excuse to greatly extend the timescale required to go from dabbling to legendary, since it would be a lot less fun to play around with such a system, if in two years you automatically got intimate knowledge of every weapon in the game, no matter how exotic and rare.

I'm not sure what Toady has in store for us, as far as "knowledge", but this seems like it might be a good case for having "mental" vs "physical" skills in the game, in that you might have a Legendary weaponsmith, with the knowledge of the design of literally hundreds of different weapons, but who has only a dabbling skill at the actual process of smithing, giving you the ability to equip your soldiers with a bunch of really cheap, poorly made meteor hammers and seige arbelasts. On the flipside of that, you might decide to set out with someone who really knows how to forge things, but who's never been out of the smithy, allowing you access to *iron club* after *iron club*. So it'd be a tradeoff.

Once your Weaponsmith (maybe change the name to Weaponmaster? and use the Weaponsmith skill to determine quality?) was able to make a weapon you particularly liked (spontoon, for example), you wouldn't be forced to wait until he/she knew how to make a Bohemian earspoon, you could just switch them to learning how to actually forge spontoons.

An alternate suggestion for this is to come up with a set of basic weapons (knife, hammer, club, pick, hatchet, spear, sling, what have you), and give each of them it's own subskill. As any given dwarf creates one of those items, they would advance in that weapon's "skill", and at some point, the skills would branch off: knowledge of knives turns into knowledge of daggers, hammers into maces, clubs into shortswords, etc., each again, with their own subskill. Allowing you to guide the "learning process" into the kinds of weapons you want, in a more natural way--giving you the opportunity to either specialize (getting the precise weapon you want, as soon as possible, and then switching to skill in forging very early, which translates to higher quality), or allowing your craftsdwarf to become a generalist, which would give you advantages in both trade (giving the customer what they want, and giving your nobles what they demand, more often), and allowing you to better adapt to circumstances (where's that brandistock when you really need one?)

Again, it's not modeling technological advancement, it's just an individual craftsdwarf learning more about the trade, and becoming more confident about what he/she can achieve, in a way that I think would be more realistic, fluid, and fun.

[Frogeyes]

How would legendary skills achieved through artifact creation affect this?

[numeral]

How would legendary skills achieved through artifact creation affect this?

hrm, he put out a few ideas, would depend which one you're talking about

a) two skills, one for forging and one for knowledge: only one will become legendary

b) subskills: one knowledge based skill to legendary and either basic smithing to legendary or a boost to general smithing(artifact creating gives 20000xp if I remember correctly, could give 10k instead)

or maybe someone has a better idea how it could work
either way I like this idea, two skills more than subskills since subskills would get really messy really fast but on the other hand subskills would make it almost impossible to level up a super smith which is the win, especially if dwarves start dying from old age. Imagine having a 90 year old smith who only just mastered every aspect of smithing dying a few days after he became a true living legend

[SirHoneyBadger]

Well, and I was thinking the subskills might be hidden from us, too, in order to reduce the visibility of the mess. You'd just see the weaponsmith and weaponmaster skills, and a list of weapons your dwarf can forge. You'd just have to keep forging like battleaxes until lochaber axes, or whatever, became available.

[Fieari]

Toady was talking about "knowledge" being implemented with regards to health care.  That could be extended to other professions as well, pretty easily (I'd imagine).  The way he was talking about it, lacking knowledge wouldn't prevent you from attempting to do whatever task, but it would cause you to mangle the attempt, whatever your skill.

I'd imagine that experimentation would work, but would result in a lot of failed attempts.  Perhaps overall "skill" would factor into how likely a chance the dwarf would have of gaining the knowledge on a given attempt... with dabblers having next to no chance at figuring it out, and legendaries having maybe a 50/50 chance.  And of course, once gained, the dwarf could pass the knowledge on to other dwarves via the new teaching mechanic Toady has also talked about.

[sonerohi]

This would be great for mining too. It's possible to be the fastest damn wall-smasher around but not know how to strike right to produce usable rocks.

[Mechanoid]

fun

No.
It's bad enough that i have to WASTE material and time getting a dwarf up to legendary so i can get items that have a good and consistent quality.

Keep that shit limited to adventure mode, please. (be glad i said please)

[edit - oh, and if this does end up happening, expect the modding forum to be flooded with "skill limit removal" raw files]

[SirHoneyBadger]

Mechanoid: A lot of people (myself included) consider the very short time it takes to get a dwarf up to legendary to be unbalanced, overpowered, and unrealistic.

In other words, over half of your items being masterwork in under 2 years time does not conform to "consistent good quality", they just make the game unbalanced and render the "masterwork" label meaningless.

If that's the sort of game you want to play, that's fine with me, but it's completely beside the point. The idea here is to make skills more interesting, and actually worth something, as well as opening up a way to add more complex weapons, without further skewing the balance.

In the meantime, keep your comments limited to polite and civil responses, please.

(and I have no idea what you even mean by "skill limit". Nobody ever said anything about limiting skills.)

[Mechanoid]

The idea here is to make skills more interesting

where you'd start by having your soldiers outfitted with hatchets, slings, etc. but these would evolve over time into bec de corbins, rapiers, partisans, double-crossbows, etc.

Starting with the same equipment setup every world/fortress and then slowly advancing through a "tech- er, skill tree" = Not interesting.

Being able to make any item at any time and having them be ballanced on their stats and purpose = Interesting.

Nobody ever said anything about limiting skills.

You need more skill to create a Danish longaxe than you do a hatchet, and two-handed flamberges are just naturally more difficult to make than shortswords.

WE REQUIRE ADDITIONAL PYLO- I MEAN, SKILL LEVEL.

[SirHoneyBadger]

It's not a tech tree. I think I've stated that atleast twice now. If you get an artifact event, you still skip all that horrible work and effort you seem to hate so much.

And for that matter, there's no reason you'd have to start with the same equipment every time, either. What your dwarf happens to know how to forge, at the start of the game, could be randomized as easily as anything else in the game.

It's not starcraft, it doesn't require any special buildings. It's skill, which is the same thing you already need to make all your uber super duper masterwork hammers, or whatever, in the game already. So your point, once again, is irrelevant.

[Neonivek]

Not a Tech tree?

I prefer a innovation system.

Rather if the characters have the skills they can learn how to do new things through innovation which is a chance sorta deal and can be shared.

However I don't think I like this Sims 2 cooking set up you seem to have. "You got to 5 weaponmaking and have learned to make a new weapon"

[SirHoneyBadger]

Neonivek: What I've got here is based on innovation. It's not "5 weaponmaking points and you can make a scimitar", it's "you've learned how to make a shortsword, broadsword, and saber, and because you know how to make those, you've figured out how/been inspired to, make a scimitar"

[CobaltKobold]

Comments:
It could be interesting. It'd be nice as passable knowledge (so not each dwarf rein'ents the wheel)- and that you could bring this knowledge on embark, and perhaps somehow permit reverse-engineering if you find something you don't know how to make. And, like most knowledge-suggestions, would be nice to be able to have alibrary so e'en if all your legendary weaponsmiths die, you still can know the technique of folding a sheet of metal a thousandfold to make a sword [e'en if nobody'll be good at it initially]. Also, trading of knowledge- sell goods for information (a bit unlikely, I think, with some tech)

And, later, it'd mesh nicely with magic arcs- perhaps some designs/materials work better with magic than others, or with particular magics.

[ Hatchet? choppy? Shovel? ]

[Neonivek]

The problem is that it sounds like "Just because you got better you automatically have innovated something"

[CobaltKobold]

Well, getting better means that you learned something, generally- either you figured out a new principle, or got better at applying old ones. (This may not be an intellectual thing learned- you may have improved your dexterity at a particular task, or your muscles learn the motions, that you need not actually think about what you're doing anymore,, for instance). So I could see it as being a probable, but not absolute.

I can't really see Urist Inventor without some way to allow non-ordered work, though, personally.