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[Martin]

I have a special layout for training siege operating that cuts down on hauling time quite a bit...

Also keep in mind that dwarves are not efficiency-minded creatures. If there is a stone on the other side of the map, your siege operator likely will zero in on that stone. For this reason, I recommend using a ballista and reusing the same three or four arrows.

Walking of any kind undermines the effort. That's why pumping is attractive as a labor. And dwarves are only strange about what they take when it comes to hauling. For jobs, they always take what's closest that matches the task. Most of the fortress design for Morul was setting up job functions so that he didn't need to walk more than 1 tile to get what he needed, and letting the other 40 dwarves keep those stockpiles full.

For attribute grinding, you want that, but for all 40 dwarves. Hauling/walking is the #1 thing you are trying to eliminate as almost *anything* other than hauling, walking, eating, drinking, sleeping gives you attributes. That's why mining and engraving work pretty well - assuming you designate reasonably, you'll get 1/3 job (mining and engraving give 1/3 the experience per job) per tile moved, which isn't bad, especially as the jobs are extremely fast at higher skill levels. There just aren't that many jobs that give experience without anyone needing to walk.

[smigenboger]

how about the manager skill?

[Martin]

how about the manager skill?

Manager is good, it's just a little tedious on the player since there's no way to automatically queue up jobs other than a macro. But the main problem with manager is that you can only have one manager. You can have 200 pump operators, however.

There's a big difference between techniques to make a Morul and techniques to make an army, or an efficiently hauling fortress. I was able to use the entire fortress to do the things that didn't gain Morul skills, which basically left the rest of the fortress to languish to a large degree, skill and stat-wise. For quite a long time, all of the food, all of the booze, all of the trade goods were made by Morul. Everyone else just hauled, with some mining, engraving, and then eventually taking care of food and 20-30 years later, after there just wasn't enough hauling to do, building out the fortress.

That's the problem with the military stuff. It's great for an army, but once they hit elite, they're not going to haul stone blocks any more.

[Rolan7]

how about the manager skill?

Holy cow!  I'm so glad I asked for suggestions, because clearly I can't think of everything (:
I was working on a massive glass-making operation to train record keeper, but I would guess that Job Manager is just as awesome as Record Keeper, and all it takes is (as Martin said) a macro to queue up the jobs!

If I recall correctly, record keeping beat out even low-level-wrestling while supplies lasted.  So, next test:

Dwarf 1: A record keeper, counting a pile of embark-wood and the stream of green glass.  Test ends when he finishes counting.
Dwarf 2: Job manager, supplied by a macro which creates 100 collect sand (1) orders and 100 make green glass (1) orders.
Dwarf 3,4: Both practice wrestling with steel buckler and cat leather armor.
Dwarf 5,6: Practice wrestling, but only dwarf 5 has armor/shield.
Dwarf 7: Prepares the testing area, engraves it to attract immigrants.
Immigrants: Trigger Job Manager job, then fulfill the sand/glass orders as fast as they're given.

Hypothesis:
Dwarf 1 and Dwarf 2 gain XP at the same rate, highest in the group, until Dwarf 1 runs out of record-keeping work.
Dwarves 3 and 4 gain XP fast at first, but never faster than Dwarf 1 or 2.  They will gain Wresting, Armor Bearing, and Shield Use quickly at first, along with slow social XP.  As they become better wrestlers (dodgers) the martial skills will level slower, and social skills will raise faster, for much less total XP gain.
Dwarves 5 and 6 will be the same as dwarves 3 and 4, except that the armored dwarf 5 will gain much more XP than 6.  Will dwarf 5 initially gain XP faster than dwarf 1 or 2?
Dwarf 7 will get bored and flood the world with magma.

I promise to take more frequent notes this time, so skill gain rates can be charted and analyzed.

(Did anyone else notice the bay12games site go super-slow for a few hours last night?  Right as I try to vote in Mafia, of course (it's ok, I was wrong *again*).  I thought for sure the new version was out.)

[smigenboger]

Good luck on the experiment, I'll be suggesting a new one soon on a seperate thread

[Lord Dakoth]

Good luck on the experiment, I'll be suggesting a new one soon on a seperate thread

It's the new guy! Hey! Hope you're enjoying your time here.

It dawned on me that we haven't discussed Animal Caretaker. You might not want to use it because it's rather "bugged," but if you're not concerned with ethics I believe it's worth a try. AND ETHICS BOW BEFORE SCIIIIIIIIIENCE!!! Two wounded doggies coming right up.

[Rolan7]

It dawned on me that we haven't discussed Animal Caretaker. You might not want to use it because it's rather "bugged," but if you're not concerned with ethics I believe it's worth a try. AND ETHICS BOW BEFORE SCIIIIIIIIIENCE!!! Two wounded doggies coming right up.

Yes, I thought of this actually.  Promising due to how fast it repeats, and I previously thought it was completely bugged.  But!  Martin's Morul actually healed animals!  If I read the thread right, he had to injure new animals from time to time.  Made a science of animal abuse, in fact, finding the perfect height that would leave the most dogs heavily wounded but not dead.  About 20% still died.  Ahhh, fun reading.

I also thought of Animal *Training*.  This could possibly be very fast, and a dwarf will keep training the same animal repeatedly.  The downside is it requires food, which means a lot of haulers keeping an adjacent food stockpile full.

Eheh, enough procrastinating (anyone here play Killing Floor?  My Steam ID is tratan3, hit me up, level 5 medic!)  It's time for SCIENCE!  Results in the morning.

[Martin]

Oh, yeah, animal caretaker worked pretty well for Morul. Assign someone to animal training, have them train a dozen war dogs (they'll automatically follow that person, without being assigned) and chuck the healthy ones off a 4 story platform (seemed to yield the right yellow/red to death ratio). The pop cap gets in the way a bit, but if you make all your animal species trainable and raise the litter size to 100 to race past the species popcap, you'll be able to do this for an entire fortress at the expense of framerate.

And zooming to a dog after a birth announcement and seeing 100 puppies seemingly all squirting out of it is pretty damn funny.

[Cheddarius]

Nice. I'll be watching this experiment.

[Rolan7]

Alright, setup of the experiment is done.  Behold the map here: http://mkv25.net/dfma/map-7877-pickhollow

The macro for the Job Manager was tricky, here it is:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Code: [Select]

[BIND:MACRO1]
[SYM:F11]
[MACRO:LEAVESCREEN:2]
[MACRO:D_PAUSE:40000]
[MACRO:D_PAUSE:40000]
[MACRO:D_PAUSE:40000]
[MACRO:D_PAUSE:40000]
[MACRO:D_PAUSE:40000]
[MACRO:D_PAUSE:40000]
[MACRO:D_PAUSE:40000]
[MACRO:D_PAUSE:40000]
[MACRO:D_PAUSE:40000]
[MACRO:D_PAUSE:40000]
[MACRO:D_PAUSE:40000]
[MACRO:D_PAUSE:40000]
[MACRO:D_PAUSE:40000]
[MACRO:D_PAUSE:1]
[MACRO:CLOSE_MEGA_ANNOUNCEMENT:1]
[MACRO:D_HOTKEY2:1]
[MACRO:D_JOBLIST:1]
[MACRO:UNITJOB_MANAGER:1]
[MACRO:MANAGER_REMOVE:500]
[MACRO:MACRO2:500]
[MACRO:MACRO1:1]
[BIND:MACRO2]
[MACRO:MANAGER_NEW_ORDER:1]
[MACRO:SELECT:2]
[MACRO:MANAGER_NEW_ORDER:1]
[MACRO:STRING_A097:1]
[MACRO:STRING_A119:1]
[MACRO:STRING_A032:1]
[MACRO:STRING_A101:1]
[MACRO:STRING_A101:1]
[MACRO:SELECT:2]


The pauses don't actually repeat 40000 times each, there's some limit on how much a macro will repeat.  Hard to pin down, and I haven't tried, but I do know it's even.

Since I've observed no limit on the number of jobs in the jobs list (it's at least 500) I might use an unpauser utility in the final run.  I've never used one, is it a Dtil thing?  Is there a 40d16 version?  I need macros to setup the jobs, and I don't know which d# macros were introduced but I don't think they're in vanilla version 40.

The actual test subjects are still in suspended animation (locked in little corridors), I'm testing Job Manager with the seventh dwarf (like Stukos the Dwarven Scientist from the original test).

The result: *drumroll*
500 jobs managed in just under 3 days.  Confirmed 10XP per job, for a total of
5000/3 = 1667 XP per day.

1667 XP.  Per.  Day.

That looks like game, there.  Though, he did start with 14 agility from preparing the testing area, so it's not final yet.  Here's comparison from test 1 though:

Runner up:
Mistem the reserved Wrestler averaged 496/day for his first 14 days.  Then Tulon learned how to dodge.

Honorable mention:
Stukos the Dwarven Scientist, once experienced, gained almost 270/day Record Keeping right before he ran out of records to keep.

Summary:
I will run the full experiment now that it's set up, to be scientific.  Even with the agility bias though, I think Job Manager is a shoe-in.

Getting ahead of myself:
With my current macro setup, on my laptop, roughly 3 days (500 jobs) takes 18 seconds.  A dwarf becomes an adult at 12, and lives to at least 150, that's 138 years spent under the macro.  138*12*28=46,368 dwarven days.  (46368/3)*(18sec)/(86400sec/day)= a mere 2.4 days of running time, assuming I can get the fortress to hold together 150 years without falling apart.  A small population, additional babies disabled, sealed away from the outside world should do it.

[Martin]

Wow. If you can do 1000 xp per day (meals and sleeping included), that's huge. Morul amassed 2M xp after 60 years. You'll get there in 6 years at that rate.

[Rolan7]

It is done!  The results of the second experiment are in! 
Please view the google doc: http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0At7ivKix5v-TdGFnZkpQdVlDZjVrWU5YcjhJekxyOUE&hl=en

There's a chart plotting the daily rate of XP gain for each test subject, and a chart of their total XP values.  There's also a spreadsheet containing all the data.  Took a bit longer than I expected, does anyone have a better way of reading data from Dwarf Therapist?  I'm mousing over the dwarves' names and typing it in.

Anyway it looks like the "1667 XP per day for job manager" was largely due to that dwarf's incredible agility.  Also though, like most jobs, Job Manager gains XP faster as the dwarf becomes a better (faster) job manager.  Job Manager actually won this test: you can see it's gain rate overtake the others in the last month.  Still, it looks like I should train my super-dwarf in wrestling first, then switch to Job Management. 

I'll probably run a few more months and post them, later.  I'm on EST and I haven't gone to sleep yet (:  Good thing I choose my own work hours.

[Grendus]

Have you tested pump operator yet? I suspect that it will start very slow with the low endurance/skill dwarf wheezing like a smoker and end up keeping pace with wrestling, though nowhere near record manager. That's just ridiculous, infinite exp.

[wagawaga]

the researcher threw his bucket in the testing "pond" and generated about 10,000 cancellation announcements.  Additional buckets didn't help, apparently he wanted THAT bucket, even when forbidden.

I had that happen to me too.
It seems that when a "fill pond" job is generated, a bucket is tied to that particular pond FOREVER.
Or at least until the pond is removes, or the job performed.
So you have to remove the zone and then make another one.

EDIT
About the manager, don't a multiple job yeld more experience?
I mean is there any difference between "Collect Sand (1)" and "Collect Sand (30)" except for time taken?

According to the wiki:

Work orders provide 10*(number of items in order) of skill points to organizer skill upon verification by the manager.

This could reduce significantly the time spent running macro.

Also, reading the wiki page now, it says that social skills are listed "relevant" when choosing a dwarf for the job.
Test confronting a legendary socialdwarf vs a dabbling socialdwarf (but with same agility)?

[Rolan7]

About the manager, don't a multiple job yeld more experience?
I mean is there any difference between "Collect Sand (1)" and "Collect Sand (30)" except for time taken?

According to the wiki:

Work orders provide 10*(number of items in order) of skill points to organizer skill upon verification by the manager.

This could reduce significantly the time spent running macro.

Also, reading the wiki page now, it says that social skills are listed "relevant" when choosing a dwarf for the job.
Test confronting a legendary socialdwarf vs a dabbling socialdwarf (but with same agility)?

I was sure that collect sand (1) and collect sand (30) were identical to the job manager (same time, same experience).  I just tested though and the wiki is indeed correct.

Unfortunately the collect sand (30) job takes much longer to approve than the collect sand (1).  (Darn, no multiplying the experience gain by 30X).  Still, you're right that this greatly decreases the amount of macroing required!  Two extra keypresses on job order, but only 1/30 the number of job orders necessary.  Thanks!

As for the social skills being relevant to Job Management, this could well be the explanation for why the researcher leveled *SO FAST*.  Faster than even his agility seemed to indicate.  I will run your test, and thanks again!