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[chucks]

This sort of discussion of tools and rooms and workshops always leads back to the two enternal voting suggestions for them.  I like them both, and I think it adds a further and deeper dynamic development of fortress layouts.  I have absolutely no problem with the game requiring specific furniture for specific workshop room qualities, and burrows being introduced is the first step to this.

Image you define a burrows in a non-square room, with the furniture lining the walls.  You have the tables and chairs, cabinets, chests, armor racks, weapon racks, tool racks, tool shelves.  You assign a few dwarves here (maybe a lot of dwarves), and you define some basic stockpile zones.  Perhaps you have a piece of furniture like a cabinet or shelf or rack act as bin storage, allowing the stacking of 5-8 bins in one square.  Tables and chairs accomodate the workers in their occupations and potentially rest.  Define a one square drink and another one square food stockpile, and you have a place your workers can grab a snack from when they get hungry.

As for fisheries and fishercleaners workshops, perhaps you could equipment these with aquariums (if you have them), a pit for the fish full of water, a table for cleaning, a weapon rack to keep the fishing spears and cleaning knives, barrels to toss the processed meat into and perhaps to act as a sort of live well.  perhaps another barrel or bin or some sort of refuse container could be used to have for bones and fish refuse.

Possibly you could turn fish chunks and animal chunks into chum, allowing for the baiting and angling of larger, more vicious and bloodthirsty sea creatures.  If your dwarves could paddle out in a 3x3 boat, chum the waters, lay down lobster pots, troll with outstretched nets, fish off the side with rods and spears, and even potentially have to fight and lay down steel with the fearsome creatures of the depths in order to defend life and limb!

I don't see how keeping workshops as 3x3 modular place downs with the cost of a single unit of materials at the most basic, and a few materials at the most complicated is a good way to abstract the patterns and structures of work.  Really take a look at it to see if the abstraction as a video gamey build unit similar to simcity is better, or having room based layouts similar to the sims is better, allowing your dwarfs to utilize the structures and furniture you sit down as the workshops and quarters better.

Try to distill the nostalgia for class DF design patterns out of your answers, and answer after that.  Just because it might have been one way for a very long time, would going another way be an interesting switch up?

[Leartes]

You're right, discussed many times and it should be implemented at some point - I mean the modular workshops of cause. It would be so great if you could place the different furniture items needed and define a workshop around it. You could make bigger workshops with build in storage room to prevent clutter or workshops with several workbenches to allow more than one dwarf to work simultaneously. It could go as far as having a legendary dwarf teach a dabbling one by increasing experience gain while working next to a experienced dwarf.... so many more possible applications ... I bet it is already in his def.-notes to do something like that

On fishing, splitting things up in several ways of fishing sounds great as well, also spearfishing should be only possible inside brooks, like your dwarf is standing up to his belly in the water ready to fight the (nerfed) monster carp.

For tool cluttering - I am very much for it. For better organization it should be possible to define containers like chests to contain tools for specific jobs so you can place a chest for fishing tools (lobster traps, nets etc.) close to your gate or next to the fishcleaners workshop (guess it could be merged with the kitchen). Also your dwarfs should always store their tools away when they stop doing a job/labor and the tool is not their property.
Like: your fisherdwarf stands up in the morning picks up his knife out of his chest with the personal belongings and goes to the fishery to fetch 3 lobster traps and a spear - maybe he also uses a backpack/waterboozeskin. Moves to the (designated) fishing zone and places the lobster traps where he sees fit, checks the old ones and starts fishing. In the evening he collects all traps that caught something and the bucket with his speared kills (maybe he should use a cart or so) and brings it all back to the fishery. Then going to the legendary dining hall for diner and going to bed.

Doesn't that sound awesome ?

[Pilsu]

I'm not sure why? People carry knives around even now (Hell, my daddy regularly carries around a "knife" as long as your arm, whenever he goes hiking--the legality of which is admittedly debatable.), let alone a 14th century dwarf in a fantasy universe. Infact, there have been quite a few suggestions for it. Considering that our fisherdwarfs are at considerable risk, it makes sense both as a tool, and as a last resort of defense. 

Fisherdwarves aren't necessarily fish cleaners at all. Requiring a knife for every fish cleaner is a waste. Practically speaking, leaving the equipment in the workshop makes more sense

I'd let every dwarf have a small knife for self defense but let's keep that separate from tools

[SirHoneyBadger]

I don't think knives should be kept separate from tools, at all. Knives are some of the best, most versatile tools humans have ever invented--and if everyone is capable of carrying one, it rather elegantly ends the argument of whether fish cleaners and/or fisherdwarfs should require them.

The fact that they're also weapons is entirely beside the point, here.

[Fossaman]

I agree; every dwarf should have a general purpose knife. Also a tinderbox once fire and lighting is implemented.

Knives really do fall outside the range of a normal tool. There's just so many things they can be used for.

[TheDJ17]

This is a masterful Dwarven Army Knife
It has 43 functions
It menesis with spikes of cheese.

[SirHoneyBadger]

This is a masterful Dwarven Army Knife
It has 43 functions
It menesis with spikes of cheese.

Not exactly, but there could certainly be a host of tasks a dwarf could perform, that couldn't (easily) be performed without a knife (with a steel knife, all they need is a piece of flint and fuel to light a fire, for instance, no tinderbox required, though having one might reduce the time it takes, at the cost of an extra item being lugged around). This would make for good balance, in a way that coincides with the smithing element in DF, and that also provides the aforementioned defensive measure that dwarfs who go even a little bit into the wilderness are sorely lacking.

[Byakugan01]

This is a masterful Dwarven Army Knife
It has 43 functions
It menesis with spikes of cheese.

Not exactly, but there could certainly be a host of tasks a dwarf could perform, that couldn't (easily) be performed without a knife (with a steel knife, all they need is a piece of flint and fuel to light a fire, for instance, no tinderbox required, though having one might reduce the time it takes, at the cost of an extra item being lugged around). This would make for good balance, in a way that coincides with the smithing element in DF, and that also provides the aforementioned defensive measure that dwarfs who go even a little bit into the wilderness are sorely lacking.

Aye. At the moment, a dwarf who gets jumped by wolves on his own doesn't have a snowball's chance in hell of survival-and I don't want to have to turn hunting on to give them a chance at survival! Since I prefer to capture and breed the wildlife (and ensure myself a steady meet supply), knives would be perfect. Looking further to the future, dwarves might also use them as part of the toolset for grooming themselves, so they really have alot of untapped potential atm.

[Pilsu]

I see you completely ignored the fact that having 5 fish cleaners and only one fishery would still require 5 knives to be lugged around

[SirHoneyBadger]

I see you completely ignored the fact that having 5 fish cleaners and only one fishery would still require 5 knives to be lugged around

I don't think anyone's ignoring it, but I also don't think too many people are suggesting it's an enormous problem, either. People carried knives back then. They have for atleast 10,000 years, that I'm aware of, and people still continue to do so, even in our extremely modern era (I will myself, once in a great while, but more often than I carry a cell-phone.).

People don't even like to carry loose change around, anymore, so it can't rationally be argued as more inconvenient than convenient, atleast for most.

To me, it just doesn't feel right that something so ubiquitous and generic would need to be attached to a workshop. Dwarfs have to carry around an axe to chop wood. This is a very similar situation--easier, based on the assumption that a knife is easier and cheaper to manufacture than an axe, as well as less awkward/heavy/dangerous/threatening to carry around.

[uttaku]

I disagree with you honeybadger, in many cases and cultures the fish preparation knife would be seperate from the everyday knives used, this knife would tend to be a lot thinner and sharper than a normal knife, and so unsuitable for combat, and so i feel it makes sense to restrict it to the workshop.

A real world example is JApan where the sushi knives would be the chefs most prized possesion and would never leave the kitchen and certainly never be sullied by combat.

[SirHoneyBadger]

This isn't Japan, though. It's certainly not modern Japan.

Specialized knives are a convenience. I assure you that fish (if not sashimi) can be prepaired quite satisfactorily with a buck knife.

I haven't gone so far as to fillet a trout with a neolithic blade, but it was certainly done, very frequently, and well enough that we're all still here as a species.

[Byakugan01]

This isn't Japan, though. It's certainly not modern Japan.

Specialized knives are a convenience. I assure you that fish (if not sashimi) can be prepaired quite satisfactorily with a buck knife.

I haven't gone so far as to fillet a trout with a neolithic blade, but it was certainly done, very frequently, and well enough that we're all still here as a species.

True enough. There's also the fact it might well be possible to prepare multiple knives from a single bar of metal-it's not like it would be a huge drain on your resources to have to make the knives, so that wouldn't be an issue. Also, the dwarves might simply be gutting the fishes when they prepare them, seeing as eating the resulting meat still produces bones-which wouldn't be the case if they were fillets. And speaking from personal experience, to gut a fish all you need is a sharp knife, nothing special.

[chucks]

This isn't Japan, though. It's certainly not modern Japan.

Specialized knives are a convenience. I assure you that fish (if not sashimi) can be prepaired quite satisfactorily with a buck knife.

I haven't gone so far as to fillet a trout with a neolithic blade, but it was certainly done, very frequently, and well enough that we're all still here as a species.

I haven't filleted  a trout with a stone knife, but I have filleted bream with a very sharp survival knife before.  Specialty knives definitely do assist with the task they're made for, but they are most certainly not required for a job.

However, I do see the points of both sides of the debate of whether job tools belong to the dwarf vs. belonging to the shop.  I would like to see a hybrid system where a dwarf can own and carry job tools if he desires to, but also that workshops can be equipped with tools for general use by workers that don't own the equipment.

It is my experience that work areas with a surplus of tools (but not so many that it's cluttered to hell and back) are very helpful for getting a lot of work complete.

[SirHoneyBadger]

I don't have any problem with related equipment being storeable for use in workshops.