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[MUAHAA THE FRENCH]

it's way too slow as it is even for a competent or skilled stone detailer. smoothing rock walls and floors should be a very quick process, not one that takes multiple years to smooth out a medium size level of your fortress for an entire team of masons. engraving is what should take time, smoothing just seems to imply that you're just making sure your tunnels aren't mere holes.

ideally it should be nearly as quick as digging out the walls in the first place, which in and of itself already takes a lot of time for major pathways...

[Jacob/Lee]

Not with this team of detailers.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Hard to see, but it says 14 stoneworkers.

[orbcontrolled]

Smoothing probably entails things like chipping away excess rock, sanding down rough edges, filling in cracks with mortar, etc. Depending on just how elegant you imagine smoothed tunnels to be, I can imagine it taking quite a while.

To counter your point though; my 2-6 legendary engravers seem to practically fly over those floors. One of them steps onto a tile, steps off, and the tile is smoothed, it's like they barely even broke their stride.

So maybe the speed increases just need to be spread more evenly between the skill levels or something, because I can't see my guys getting too much faster than they already are.

If anything, I think engraving is what needs to be tweaked. Specifically it needs to slow down at higher levels because, again, my legendaries seem to leave masterpieces as casually as footprints.

[nenjin]

I guess I disagree. By the time they're adept, they're moving along at a good clip for my needs. It seems like higher agi is beneficial too. I find engravers I leave doing just that quickly run out of stuff to do because they get it done so fast. A legendary engraver busts out masterpieces like, oh, once every 15 seconds sometimes.

Besides. Engraving is the single easiest way to increase fortress value, and speeding up that process is going to take the vanilla game further out of balance. Happiness associated with engraving, and by extension, smoothing is also way too effective right now. Decreasing the time to smooth will just make that even worse, and result in less Fun.

It's not like dwarves use diamond-encrusted steel-paper to smooth it down either. Dwarves, I think, are perfectionists, so what's smooth and level to us...may be shite to a dwarf. Since they don't use tools, how long do you think it takes to polish stone completely smooth with your beard?

[NW_Kohaku]

Actually, I think it's more a matter of legendary giving WAY too much bonus.

My legendary engraver, who is a founder, basically takes as much time walking the next tile over as he does on the actual smoothing process.

My competent engraver, who I am training because I don't like to have just one of anything, meanwhile, takes FOREVER to get anything done, and often takes drinking breaks without finishing anything. 

Put the two side-by-side working on a hallway, and my Legendary can easily smooth 20-30 tiles in the time it takes the competent to smooth one. 

Basically, I think there should be a tweak done so that smoothing doesn't take such a rediculous period of time for a low-rank dwarf to smooth stone (and gain the experience it takes to get better), while nerfing legendary speed a little.   Skill in something makes you go faster, but not THAT much faster.

[LegoLord]

Competent and Skilled are fairly low skill-levels anyway.  They aren't even proficient.  They are the equivalent of the numerical levels 3 and 4, respectively, out of 20 (legendary is 15, legendary +5 is 20; I think).

[Darkond2100]

If you mod your Dwarfs to have [SPEED:1], then you will see that their engraving takes zero time at all. My masons engrave floors faster than water muddies tiles.

[NW_Kohaku]

Yes, believe me, I'm aware that it's a low level.  The problem is that it takes a LONG time to train those low levels, and then the actual work of detailing is essentially reduced to no time whatsoever when you get past the hump of around rank 5.

As it stands, it takes literal days to clear a single tile at low levels, while legendaries are apparently just hovering past the floor, using what must be their unstoppable psychic powers to pulverize all imperfections upon the surface of the floors or walls without their need to even look at or touch the stone.

[snelg]

I don't think engravers are too slow at all. I mean, they take a lot of time at first (before getting more experience). But it's ridiculously fast after a while. A legendary one can smooth a decently sized room before the others even get there.
And if they don't have other professions too they'll hang around a lot without actually doing any work.

I think that if you speed it up too much you might as well include it with the mining from the start, that way you won't have to designate it. 

[ungulateman]

They're doing it with their beards. It's not supposed to be quick.

[NW_Kohaku]

I don't think engravers are too slow at all. I mean, they take a lot of time at first (before getting more experience). But it's ridiculously fast after a while. A legendary one can smooth a decently sized room before the others even get there.
And if they don't have other professions too they'll hang around a lot without actually doing any work.

That's exactly the problem I'm talking about - it takes far too long for unskilled dwarves, and not nearly long enough for skilled dwarves.  The differences between the two extremes needs to be brought back closer together.

[Kilo24]

I do agree with Kohaku on this point.  And I'd probably extend it to Legendary status on a great many other matters too (like crafting stuff.)  Stuff gets done ludicrously quicker by Legendary dwarves; I'd like to see it down to Legendary being maybe only about twice as quick as Competent.  The quality of the jobs is pretty decent, though.

[Atanamis]

Stone smoothing is purely a luxury task, which isn't needed until you have high level nobles (to obtain sufficiently fine rooms). I see no reason why an unskilled smoother should move faster, and agree that at high levels the job is far too fast. Training a smoother is extremely simple, since you just designate the whole level for smoothing and have only a couple workers with the labor enabled. In no time at all you have legendary workers who can smooth almost as fast as they can walk.

[nenjin]

I dunno, I end up with at least 3 legendary engravers by my 6th year in. Lots of times that's due to strange moods but...

Another metric I have is I use stone detailing to build up my reservists. Even with other training jobs enabled, by the time they've gotten 6 stat points worth of advances, they're (5) engravers pretty much across the board. If they were dedicated, they'd be well on their way to legendary.

I do agree that legendaries cranks stuff out way too fast, and you have to struggle to keep them occupied, and they later interfere with your economy if you let them. I think it's a little too easy to make that jump to legendary. I haven't charted the experience slope, but I don't think it changes dramatically to get into legendary.

[Kilo24]

I do agree that legendaries cranks stuff out way too fast, and you have to struggle to keep them occupied, and they later interfere with your economy if you let them. I think it's a little too easy to make that jump to legendary. I haven't charted the experience slope, but I don't think it changes dramatically to get into legendary.

It's related to their job speed.  Since experience is a factor of number of jobs completed, you'd need exponential growth of the skill requirements to even keep each rank requiring the same time to acquire - I don't think the current skill system reflects that.

There's not so much of a problem when the primary limiting factor is limited resources (Weapon/Armorsmithing) or time taken to get to a place (how many megaprojects have resulted in Legendary Masons mainly from the megaproject?).