I'd certainly like a hauler profession ("Teamster"?), especially if higher skill levels, like Professional Teamster, would have the ability to *gasp* use the hidden Teamster secret skil of "Anti-chronoism" that would let them stack small, individual items of like type back into the sorts of stacks they were divided from in the first place.
They could then use this secret skill to carry more objects at once (possibly even getting reduced fatigue for carrying heavy objects), or maybe just plain move faster.
Anyway, jokes aside, I would like to have the ability to make "hauler" a more well-paid position (instead of often taking longer than virtually any other job, especially wood hauling) than it currently is, so that I don't have to worry about my haulers having a peasant uprising if I don't set them all to pump operator, and let them cycle who gets to sit there doing the high-paying job that produces no value instead of being stuck with the highly valuable job that produces no pay.
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With regards to talk about the way that skills are handled... Looking back on it, the way that I generally deal with skills is that I basically dig out a warehouse/stockpile for a raw material, with a stairwell in the middle (for maximum effciency), which leads to all the workshops, stacked vertically over/under their resource warehouse.
Jobs are essentially divided by what their input material is in a broad sense, and then what they produce. My fortress is divided based upon what raw materials are available in that area (for example, my farms define my food quarter and my textile mill's location, my glass and metal zone is where I could drag the magma channel, my gemsetters are near the glass factory, so I can practice on glass, my wood is near my enterance, etc.), and my labor is essentially divided based upon what workshops I want them to work in. Skills are basically just a reflection of what labor a dwarf has used.
Following that model, if you want to divide up a skill, you should be proposing a new process, a new workshop, instead of just a new skill. Why should resmith/copper be treated as a different skill from blacksmith/iron, when they both are essentially the same thing from a player point of view?
Metal -> Forge -> Iron/copper chain.
Yeah, maybe theoretically, there might be some different process that should have gone on if the game were more realistic and detailed, but that's all the player really sees or interacts with, metal goes in, product comes out. Why do we need to worry about a skill's historical precedent or proper nomenclature when it has no real effect upon how the game is really played?
The best reason I saw given out to make a seperate skill was when BlckKnght said that we should have a "Cooperage" or whatever it's called, make barrels take wood and metal, while dividing barrels into different types by what they hold, and adding new steps into the process of making a barrel.
It's adding a large amount of complexity to the game in a fairly basic and essential industry, so I doubt it would be terribly popular, but it at least DOES give a fair reason to make barrels have a skill pulled out of an existing skill, because it would be involved in a different process.
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Beyond all that, I think that if there's any material that could actually really call for more specialization, it's masonry. There isn't much point in specializing woodworkers much more than they already are specialized, because people may or may not be using all that much wood, depending on where they embark. They may or may not use all that much non-goblinite, depending on where they embark, or if they have flux. But you can bank on the fact that they're almost certain to have more stone than they can get rid of, barring extreme examples with aquifers. (And those essentially only last until you make the cave-in/permanent pump solution to get past that aquifer.)
Since players likely make anything they can possibly get away with out of stone, making the stone industry a little more complex than hefting a chunk of ex-mountain into a workshop without any tools, and using what I presume is one's psychic powers to meld it into a door or a table or something could be a little more detailed.
At the VERY least, that "make a wall" masonry could be different from the "carving of an object out of stone" masonry, and I'm sure that I've seen people suggesting block making or other such things be its own skill, although I think of block making as little more than something I do to make stones dissapear into bins and maybe train your masonry.
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This just in as I hit post...
NW, you raised this multiple times when you described a labor as not a skill--how is woodburning (when it has its own workshop, its own task, and it's own purpose) not a skill? When we're discussing an overhaul of the skill system, I'd like to see some attempt to describe what qualifies as a skill.
As far as I can tell, skill level does the following: 1). Increases quality, 2). decreases time to produce, 3). increases stack yield--any skill thus far validates at least ONE of those three (a Legendary Woodburner takes less time to produce ash, a Legendary Lyemaker takes less time to produce lye--in the upcoming release, this entire setup is actually worthwhile as dwarves will use soap.)
As far as I can tell, your qualification for a skill is wholly dependent on what gives quality and also stack yield--a Legendary Miller gets a larger stack in a bag than a Novice Miller, for instance. Am I wrong in this assumption, that number two on the qualifications that, as far as I can tell, is something you dismiss wholeheartedly? (I would prefer that each skill instead required two of those--a Legendary Woodburner would yield more ash than a Novice, in shorter time too; same with a Legendary Lyemaker.)
Like you say, I don't consider it a skill because it has no real impact on the way I run my fortress whether I have a dabbling or a legendary wood burner or lye maker. "Time to complete" is no real factor, since the time to complete any task is generally more contingent upon the distance to the stockpile than the actual time to complete a task, and only the quality or stack yeild really matter in the long term.
That's why I will toss things like "butcher", or "wood burner" or "miller" (and milling skill does not produce more product, and at a millstone, it does not make a difference in how long it takes) all onto any random dwarf I have no real job for - their experience gains in that skill have no real impact.
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Topic: List of expanded skills? -Skills talk in general- (Read 4313 times)