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[nymersic]

I don't know why it isn't like that now, but building structures with masonry [walls, bridges, floors, etc] gives no experience in masonry.  So I build some huge tower made of ten thousand boulders, and my masons are no more experienced for it.
Is it unreasonable to ask that my Urist McBricklayer get experience when performing his profession?

[Warlord255]

The killer question here is what happens if you deconstruct said walls; you can farm the same stone ad nauseum for EXP.

Now for stone - or even wood - it's not too big a problem, but if this is applied to metalsmithing, which uses its requisite skills to install walls, then you have a problem.

[nymersic]

The killer question here is what happens if you deconstruct said walls; you can farm the same stone ad nauseum for EXP.

Now for stone - or even wood - it's not too big a problem, but if this is applied to metalsmithing, which uses its requisite skills to install walls, then you have a problem.

I don't see why.  Why is that worse than having my mason pump out rock blocks for months on end?  The way you said works that way for the architecture skill.  It seems to have a direct parellel to something like farming - planting the same seeds and reaping the same crops over and over - or to a more obvious one like a metalsmith [as you mention] just having a furnace operator melt his creations and re-make them.  Either way, doing this should make my dwarf more skillful.  The idea that some of my hardest working masons [the initiate peasants] can do their jobs for a year and not even be dabbling masons is just absurd.

If all I wanted was experience for my masons doing a stupid task, I'd have them pumping out rock blocks.  Those can at least be useful, as you can stack them in bins and they make more valuable structures.  Where's the logic flaw?

[Fossaman]

Sure, it's an 'exploit' that lets you train a mason without using much material. But ask yourself: Could I do this in real life? Yes. Yes you could. You'd get really, really bored, but you'd learn the right way to build a stone wall.

[Tamren]

I don't see anything wrong with "farming" construction projects to make your masons better. Thats how people learn IRL.

The sticky point is that someone who makes brick walls all day shouldn't be able to go home and carve a masterwork statue.

[nil]

I thought those things do give experience?  Not workshops, but constructions and anything with architecture.  I'm positive it can give a dwarf with no skill dabbling, can it just not do anything more than that?

[Fossaman]

Experience is never earned by masons except at the mason's workshop. The 'building designer' skill can be earned by designing buildings that require an architect, but it's totally separate.

[sproingie]

In the real world, you could become very skilled at making blocks by doing it over and over, but you still won't be carving the next Pieta.  Skills have millions of degrees of overlap and bifurcation.  If you want to model this in a game, you can have skill-to-stat or skill-to-skill synergies, plus a cap on maximum XP gained from any single task.

Or you could just do what's actually fun for the player, even if it's simplistic.

[nil]

Experience is never earned by masons except at the mason's workshop. The 'building designer' skill can be earned by designing buildings that require an architect, but it's totally separate.

Whoops, you're right.

[Rowanas]

Well, where gameplay and realism collide, gameplay wins. I like the xp cap for jobs thing, but again that doesn't make sense because people can keep earning from doing things over and over, and then they CAN create masterpieces having never done the new but related activity ever before. They learn things about the materials, the tools, the wrist movements, and so even if they've never pumped out a bracelet, they know how the wood is likely to shear or break, they know what materials would be best etc.

[Pilsu]

The sticky point is that someone who makes brick walls all day shouldn't be able to go home and carve a masterwork statue.

Perhaps Masonry should be separate from the Stoneworking?

[Starver]

Perhaps Masonry should be separate from the Stoneworking?

Or (as I postulated[*0*], as an afterthought, but taking up far more text than I originally meant to) make skill-trees.  And/or cross-disciplinary requirements for some tasks.

As fo getting skill puttting up a wall and taking them down (noting that you can, apparently, get architectural skills for preparing some constructions, regardless of whether they get built), surely the balance here is time?  If you get 30 units of skill for (irreversibly) making a stone chair, then maybe you only 2-5 units of skill for a wall, depending on how you want to balance it (or c.f. rough walls with finely made walls with the best stone blocks[1]).

It might be about a week of game-time to make the chair, and a few hours to build a wall (half an hour to dissassemble it, probably to no additional skill[2]).  The balance between the two is time.

[*0*] Inserted Addendum:  Managed to forgot to put "in another thread just now" at that point within that convuluted sentence.  (The following feetnetes are original, this one has been edited in after posting.)

[1] Setting aside the issue of walls constructed of standard stone blocks is probably easier for any old schmo than it is for the artisan to put together an equivalent structure out of irregular mini-boulders.  Maybe time taken and ultimate quality are dealt with differently, though.

[2] Though I'd like the idea of child disassembling structures[3] and earning a piddling but cumulative amount of experience, a bit like they already do with impromutu (non-"Only Farmers Harvest") reaping of the fields, meaning that some of my 2nd-generation kids have been known to be Adept Growers or better when attaining adulthood.  (At least they have when I overdo the various plantations, rather than underdoing them!)

[3] Health And Safety aside.

[Pilsu]

Seems pretty off to be good at making chairs after building lots of walls though

[Granite26]

Didn't we have somebody preaching a skill for a task, a product, and a material, so carving a stone chair would be 'furniture making' skill x 'Stonework' skill x 'Chair' skill?

[Starver]

Seems pretty off to be good at making chairs after building lots of walls though

Even 'bridging' walls that are the sole connecting point diagonally (in a vertical plane only) between a cliff edge and a humongous hanging city?  Magma[1]-proof walls?  Pretty sturdy walls that must include keystones, finely carved joints and such?

Even 'rough' walls are obviosuly built in the knowledge of inherant lines of fracture (for stuff like slate) and compressive strength (alum?) using fingernails or scratchy beards that are obviously as hard as diamond to chisel or grind the necessary adjustments into the raw material (obsidian, or even kimberlite that may still contain diamond traces?).  Do that enough, and you could probably fashion an equally probably alum sceptre or obsidian earring out of a ton of raw rock, given a suitable work bench (also carved out of alum or obsidian or wood or ice by someone who may only just have started dabbling with the craft... ).


[1] Though not vermin.