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[Pilsu]

Oh boy, another overly wordy suggestion thread from Pilsu! Will the excitement ever end? Let's get this over with.


As we all know, currently skill level is based entirely on a general competency stat in a given trade, ranging from Dabbling to Legendary and beyond. A dwarf that has reached high prestige making nothing but gabbro blocks is equally competent at fashioning marvelous marble thrones and obsidian coffins. This is obviously laughably unrealistic and a more detailed system would be more in line with the game's depth. Here's what I had in mind:


( [Item Skill] + [Material Skill] + [General Skill] ) /3 = Effective Skill Level

For clarity's sake, Dabbling skill would be the same as having no skill whatsoever. Legendary +# would be removed entirely seeing as they're not displayed to begin with. That leaves us with 15 skill ranks, neatly divisible by 3. Separate item and material types would have 15 skill ranks as well. These ranks would then added together, divided by three and rounded up or down to get the effective skill level. Still with me?



Say hello to Urist everyone. He'll be serving as our example dwarf today. He's very excited to meet you all. Don't shake his hand, he doesn't even know what washing means

As you probably have figured out by now, the symbols after each stone type symbolize numbers. ☼+ equals 7 etcetera. Pressing the item tab would list the individual skill for items instead. I don't much care for ores being processable into stone goods but whatever.. The maximum as you remember is 15

Now, it's not visible in the picture but Urist has reached his status as a master Stoneworker by exclusively churning out doors out of various rocks. That makes his door skill rating a full 15, or, if you prefer, ☼☼☼. Yay for Urist. Now let's see you come up with a use for all that crap.. Obviously, this has left his general crafting skills somewhat rusty and he has no skills whatsoever in making anything else relegated to Masonry Stoneworking. Poor Urist




So, what does this practically mean? We'll, it's really simple. Let's have some examples:

Urist constructs an Andesite Throne

( [Item Skill] 0 + [Material Skill] 15 + [Effective Skill] 14 ) /3 = 9.66...≈ 10

• Novice
• Adequate
• Competent
• Skilled
• Proficient
• Talented
• Adept
• Expert
• Professional
• Accomplished
• Great
• Master
• High Master
• Grand Master
• Legendary

And there we have it! Simple, no? Before you say it'd be unintuitive in game, the percentages for producing different quality items are not displayed as is either. Any work orders involving a specific dwarf could show his individual skill with the item ordered and a rough likelihood of end result's quality. There is no control over anything when assigning work directly in the workshop and this would provide a clear advantage for using work orders even though they take time

So, how does this relate to other professions? How does leveling up the items work? Well, the way I see it, each production labor would be assigned a material. [Stone], [Wood], [Fabric] etcetera. This would be important for determining the maximum level of item and material skills. For example:

Leveling up your Carpentry skill to Expert would raise your general potential for handling various woods to 8. Leveling Woodcrafting to Expert after that would do nothing. The highest level wood related labor would determine the maximum level attainable in material proficiencies for wood. This would be necessary to avert scenarios that unbalance the system severely. After all, you don't want to make 600 of every damn item in the game just to attain general competency. The XP requirements would have to be dramatically smaller per item, otherwise it becomes extremely tedious. But at the same time, if it's faster to level up items and types of stone and no caps are in place, a Stonecrafter making exclusively Andesite Flutes to level up would have a dramatically overblown level of skill for such little practice. For instance, a Stonecrafter making 100 Andesite Flutes would be an Adequate Stonecrafter. If in the new system you can max out a skill and material type with say, 100 items and no caps are in place, his effective skill would be Accomplished. I needn't tell you why this is completely broken. You could still churn out exclusively one type of good to level up but you'd be severely inexperienced with any other item and rock types. If our intrepid hero trains with the same stone making the same item all the way to Grand Master and tries crafting a set of granite mugs, his effective skill would only be Proficient as he overspecialized during his training. His Andesite Mugs would still be excellent however

Yes, I realize that Urist has 15 ranks in both doors and obsidian even though he is not Legendary. This is because I believe artifacts should be craftable only by the Masters and above of the trade and be the only way to reach Legendary status. Legendary skill would have little use beyond social perks if you've already mastered the use of the items and materials involved. This is to reduce the frustration involved with the resultant luck factor without devaluing the status of Legendary into something anyone can reach with plain grinding. It is a matter of prestige. Practically this would mean that High Masters have a maximum material/item skills of 13, Grand Masters attaining two potential ranks instead of the usual one. Either way, let's not discuss this in this thread. We've talked about it in other threads, let's keep it there. It's really not hard to work around if Toady does not like it

Few more things to go over even though you're getting bored. For instance, how are metal ores treated? Well, as metal of course! Worked with Stoneworking. Confused? Well, it's simple. A Grand Master Stonecrafter would still be able to use the ore like a rock but his effective skill would be reliant on the use of gold, something he probably has no experience in. Thus, the resultant exploit of using gold ore to make a statue would result in a very real penalty. As he's already great at making statues out of rock, his skill would be 15 + 0 + 14 = 9.66...≈ 10, Accomplished. Only a master of working with gold and stone could make perfect statues out of plain ore. Of course, you could just stop people from making stuff out of plain ore but I'd rather not stoop to that seeing how beautiful it can be. The average player would probably opt to make plain golden statues instead

How about other professions and interaction? Well, with a little math, a master of stone rings would now be Proficient at making wooden ones from the get go. I'm not sure if this is desirable but I'm willing to accept a master craftsman being good enough with his fingers to pull it off


Thoughts? If you have improvements in mind or would prefer particular modifier to be weaker for instance, let's hear it

[Sunken]

I like the basic idea. It's very important, however, that it
1) doesn't clutter up the interface, and
2) doesn't increase required micromanagement

By (2) I mean to say that whereas currently you may need to keep different workshops for different jobs, intended to be done by differently skilled dwarfs - with you suggestion one might need exponentially more such specialized workshops in order to make sure the right dwarf does the right job.
Now, this could be solved by interface enhancements. For example, the workshop setting might apply to the effective combined skill, not the stonecrafting skill only.

[Sunken]

It might also be worth considering chunking your skill lists a bit. Materials with similar properties could be lumped together: Gold, silver, electrum (soft metal). Granite and basalt (igneous stone). Magnetite and hematite (ores). They're not exactly the same but similar enough to warrant the saved memory and interface clutter.
Likewise similar items could be grouped: Jewelry, large carvings, fine carvings, edged weapons, polearms...

Also, with your suggestion, wouldn't it make more sense to reduce the "general skill" set to exclude the material class?
stonecrafting, bone carving -> carving
weaponsmithing, armorsmithing, blacksmithing -> smithing
etc.

Edit:
metalcrafting would split into smithing and casting, I'd say.

[Pilsu]

I like the basic idea. It's very important, however, that it
1) doesn't clutter up the interface, and
2) doesn't increase required micromanagement

By (2) I mean to say that whereas currently you may need to keep different workshops for different jobs, intended to be done by differently skilled dwarfs - with you suggestion one might need exponentially more such specialized workshops in order to make sure the right dwarf does the right job.
Now, this could be solved by interface enhancements. For example, the workshop setting might apply to the effective combined skill, not the stonecrafting skill only.

Work orders are a good way to handle it. The best dwarf with the labor active could be picked automatically if the player so chooses. Queuing a job in the workshop takes no time whatsoever so it should have downsides. You just want a stone table now. More than sufficient far into the game seeing you usually don't have that many workers for the game to pick for it. Just increase the workshop skill requirement to Competent or whatever and the immigrants leave it alone. Work orders would become increasingly relevant later in the fort's life if you choose to have several artisans at once, gradually adding depth

You really wouldn't need to even look in the drop down menus much if the work order does the microing for you. Training might take a little more than setting blocks on repeat in an exclusive workshop but I see nothing wrong with that. Besides, XP is already recorded and stored beyond any skill caps. It'd practically mean that when Cog dings into a higher rank of Woodcrafting, if he's used enough pine before the pine skill would go up automatically without need for more grinding

Practically speaking, you'd just pick Cog the trainee in the work orders menu and set up

[100 Oak Bolts]
[100 Willow Toys]
[100 Pine Instruments]
[100 Maple Crafts]
[100 Alder Cups]
[100 whatever]

And you're done. If you have more types of wood available that you want to utilize, it'd be best to pick another dwarf to train making stuff with those. Work orders would then handle microing trade good production when they're both masters so you don't have to remember which one of them is good with Willow. Even if you screw up, well, the difference between the workmanship isn't that dramatic. Value mod of about 1 total

You might need a system of managing work orders between workshops but we need that anyway 


Oh and please do read the wiki page about skill's effects on quality. I think you'll be pleased enough by how close the work quality of Accomplished really is to a Grand Master. Quite something you'd expect from a master craftsman making something new with old materials. He'd catch on pretty quick too

It might also be worth considering chunking your skill lists a bit. Materials with similar properties could be lumped together: Gold, silver, electrum (soft metal). Granite and basalt (igneous stone). Magnetite and hematite (ores). They're not exactly the same but similar enough to warrant the saved memory and interface clutter.
Likewise similar items could be grouped: Jewelry, large carvings, fine carvings, edged weapons, polearms...

Hmm, agreed. That's much better. Less clutter, less grind etc

Also, with your suggestion, wouldn't it make more sense to reduce the "general skill" set to exclude the material class?
stonecrafting, bone carving -> carving
weaponsmithing, armorsmithing, blacksmithing -> smithing
etc.

Carving bone rings would make you a master of carving stone too, that's not gonna work

[Urist Obama]

I think a leveling system like that would be better off in a single player rpg or mmo.

The current system works, don't complicate it.

[Granite26]

The current system works, don't complicate it.

Wait, what?  What game are you playing?  Don't complicate it...  the nerve...

(Not sure I like the details of this particular plan, but a little (more) depth would be welcome.)

[Impaler[WrG]]

Sounds like a decent idea, but it could be quite a bit more interesting if different materials and different items have varying 'difficulty' which just translates to how much XP you need to level up in them.

Take for example different types of stone, a brittle delicate stone might take longer to become familiar with.  This could also help to balance high value materials.

On the other side of the coin different items being different difficulties, a rock table would seem simpler then a rock cabinet.  A simple multiplier on the XP required for each level is all that's really needed here, table could be 40% and a Cabinet 120% of 'normal' XP requirements for leveling those skills.

The appropriate settings are of course going to depend on if their is any material groupings Sunken suggests, the larger the groupings the higher the XP requirements.  It also helps balance groupings of various sizes.

[Pilsu]

I think I might have to rethink my stance on the whole item groups thing. It'd rather undermine the entire point of things, especially seeing the groups would probably be too vast, not simply almost identical items. For instance, you'd probably lump all gems together. I'd go as far as to break up 'Toys' and 'Crafts' into their individual item parts in all menus

[Granite26]

Depends.  Take a look at the combat rolls Toady discussed over in the Mod board.  Most modifiers were 0-X additive modifiers, which allows getting overly specific without breaking the bank.

I.E.

0-CraftSkill + 0-ItemGroupSkill + 0-ItemSkill + 0-MaterialGroupSkill + (blah blah) + 0-MaterialSkill.


If things like MaterialSkill are capped very low, it'd be just a nudge toward the right direction (rather than a major factor how familiar you are with the material)

make sense?

[Pilsu]

Certainly seems more realistic. Types of wood aren't that diverse, balances the impact of inexperience whereas different rocks might have more dramatic differences

Gems and glass are a bit more problematic. Would a yellow diamond's cutting differ from blue ones in any way? They're just diamonds with trace metal pollutants

[Felblood]

Perhaps, instead of a separate skill for each material, each material specifies it's material skill in the raws.

Yellow, blue and white diamonds could then all have [MAT_SKILL:DIAMOND].


This allows us to trim the fat that will crop up, in the enormous number of material subskills. For example, stonecrafting could be divided up into seven or eight different skills, instead of one for every kind of stone in the world.

The drawbacks are, that it makes specializing in a single material less meaningful, and the system has to allow for an arbitrarily number of different [MAT_SKILL] tags, as players mod in more and more custom materials, or separate out skills that are folded together in vanilla.

[Granite26]

The drawbacks are, that it makes specializing in a single material less meaningful, and the system has to allow for an arbitrarily number of different [MAT_SKILL] tags, as players mod in more and more custom materials, or separate out skills that are folded together in vanilla.

How are these drawbacks?

You would, however, need a scalar, so you could determine how important the material is to the overall product without upping the value extravagantly.

[Felblood]

The drawbacks are, that it makes specializing in a single material less meaningful, and the system has to allow for an arbitrarily number of different [MAT_SKILL] tags, as players mod in more and more custom materials, or separate out skills that are folded together in vanilla.

How are these drawbacks?

You would, however, need a scalar, so you could determine how important the material is to the overall product without upping the value extravagantly.

If sandstone and puddingstone share a common matskill, then being a sandstone specialist is considerably less glamorous.

Being able to handle an arbitrary number of matskills would be an awesome feature, but Toady would have to code it.

[Granite26]

How are these drawbacks?

You would, however, need a scalar, so you could determine how important the material is to the overall product without upping the value extravagantly.

If sandstone and puddingstone share a common matskill, then being a sandstone specialist is considerably less glamorous.

Being able to handle an arbitrary number of matskills would be an awesome feature, but Toady would have to code it.

1:  That's technically true, but as discussed, it would take making something like 3 items with sandstone to gain the 1 available skill point in sandstone.  Characters wouldn't so much 'specialize' in a material as have a list of materials they are experienced in.

2: Most of the raw tags do support arbitrary numbers.  Take the weapon stuff, for instance.  The kicker would be in programming an arbitrary depth skill chart for each skill, but XML could do that handily.

[Pilsu]

Perhaps, instead of a separate skill for each material, each material specifies it's material skill in the raws.

Which then undermines the entire point of the system; requiring practice with the specific material to master it. Granite already covered synergies beautifully