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[Halceon]

Dwarf fortress, being the highly ethical game it is, doesn't allow us to assign jobs to children right? Right - there's no assignment screen for them. That, however, doesn't mean they can't do any jobs. By using dwarf manager i've set a kid to be my fort's cook.

Now i need your ideas what to make of this. Kiddies butchering kitties? Military school for delinquents?

[Kyronea]

I make all of my children Melties. (Which is my custom Furnace Operator only job. Since I have my raws edited to melt away all the useless stone, I end up with a lot of smelters that need stoking.)

[Safe-Keeper]

DF has a bit of a strange system for gender roles and children and whatnot. Far as I know, child labour and child soldiers were fairly common back in those days. In DF, however, you have this weird idea that children, who sometimes make up a significant portion of your fortress' population, should just mope around doing nothing. The surreal atmosphere is further worsened by the presence of female warriors (or is that a dwarf thing?).

Now i need your ideas what to make of this. Kiddies butchering kitties? Military school for delinquents?

Or maybe you could draft them and let the military use them for sparring practice.

[smjjames]

I think of it as the children being in an apprenticeship. I don't usually make the children do work, but when I do, its to prepare them for a possible mood in the future and even then, I just have them make a few stuff.

[mattie2009]

DwarfTherapist + DT Cheat Mode (Allows you to give jobs to those who can't do jobs) = Fuuuun times.

I haven't had a fort last that long, but if it did last for more than two years then I'd have a lot of children all doing either furnace or crafting work.

[Stargrasper]

Gotta love DF, if we aren't committing mass genocide on the local kittens or torturing the local goblins, we're forcing the children into sweatshops.

Personally, I usually don't make the children in my fortresses do much work, if only because I tend to be really inefficient and have more adults than jobs anyway.  Then again, how much work I have depends on how quickly the glassmakers churn out blocks.  Buildings go up so quickly(and blocks disappear so quickly) when you have thirty masons.  Hey kids, guess what you're going to grow up to be?

[bombcar]

Don't children do certain jobs anyway, like harvesting and hauling?

[Playbahnosh]

Don't children do certain jobs anyway, like harvesting and hauling?

Not to my knowledge, but I would appreciate a few more hands in hauling. All those corpses, weapons and pieces of armor and clothing lying around...

[andrea]

children harvest.

[darthbob88]

Don't children do certain jobs anyway, like harvesting and hauling?

Aye, children will do "any dwarf" jobs, like harvesting, removing construction, and pulling levers. Never seen them haul anything, or do any non-mood crafting.

[smjjames]

Don't children do certain jobs anyway, like harvesting and hauling?

Aye, children will do "any dwarf" jobs, like harvesting, removing construction, and pulling levers. Never seen them haul anything, or do any non-mood crafting.

Even with Dwarf Therapist or Dwarf Manager, you can't make them haul anything, I've tried, whether intentionally or not. They however, WILL do workshop related tasks when you assign them the labor for it in DT or DM, which works perfecly for setting them for a mood. Useful when you have alot of children around and plenty enough craftsdwarves.

[loser]

Sometimes I'd kind of rather they didn't remove constructions.  That has to be the most dangerous part of above-ground projects.

It's nice that none or few of the adults end up with that bit of work, so they can all be building and hauling and mining and smoothing and tanning and all the other non-quality things to which I assign all un- and overspecialized dwarves.

But then something goes wrong.  Then I get five "collided with an obstacle" messages from the weaklings and a little later three "bled to death" messages from the legendary kids who were too hardcore to die from the fall but not hardcore enough enough to truly survive the landing.  Then I'm in the stock screen unforbidding the bodies so they don't rot.  Then I'm in the military screen assigning a patrol if the kids ended up in unsafe land.  Then I'm dwarf therapist figuring out who has become unhappy so I can give them some time off in the single-tile meeting area where legendary consolers and liars will tell them that everything is alright.

It's not true for them.  They're fucked because they're in one of my fortresses.  But it's true for me.  Everything is alright.  Nothing too terrible happens, usually.  A tantrumer did turn the Countess Consort's face inside out once, but that was actually pretty cool.

I could just leave the scaffolding up, but that is insufficiently dwarfy.

[Supercharazad]

Har, Har, Har, I have half my children working as plant processers and half as weavers, they power my fort's giant, dyed-cloth industry (I leave the dying and the making of clothes to the lengendary people)

[Fist_Of_Armok]

IIRC, in 2d, they'd raise skills with toys.

Do they still do that?

[loser]

IIRC, in 2d, they'd raise skills with toys.

Do they still do that?

I believe it's been commented on that toys do absolutely nothing right now.

I didn't play 2d, but it sounds like there were an awful lot of interesting things that went on in 2d that don't happen anymore.

2d to 3d was a damn big change.  If I understand correctly, it was the last release that broke saves prior to the release we're seeing coming up.

Should we be expecting to see a lot of interesting features in the 'current' game similarly evaporate in the next release?