It seems troublesome to have the child join in some work .. the way it
usually goes for me is that a dwarf is loafing around and then he
decides "WELP. Time to make that sword that was ordered a week ago!"
and he goes there and gets it done in no time at all. To think that a
child would find interest and run there to help him right at that
moment seems a bit weak ..
Children as they are kind of boring and useless. Migrants are simply
better. I wholeheartedly agree that it would be nice if this was
changed to balance things out somehow. However; I'd really rather not
see a system that requires a lot of micromanagement and/or doesn't add
any Fun(tm) to the game.
Aspgren brings up an extremely important point as well; if it's all
just on-the-fly random, kids are unlikely to be in the right place at
the right time. The basic 'random assistant' idea, though tempting on
first glance, won't work.
Thus, I think
Mentoring and Apprenticeship is the way to go.
Major benefits:- Improved usefulness of Children
- Adds depth to the complexity of the game without requiring extensive
micromanagement (in fact, you can ignore it if you choose)
- Adds depth to the social structure of the fortress, and makes things
a little more immersive
Major drawbacks:- The only thing I can think of is that it might take a little more
CPU power... however adding an init option to disable the system
completely resolves that easily.
Details:Children automagically choose (similar to cats adopting owners) an
adult dwarf as a Mentor based on a congruence between their stats and
the profession of the adult.
Children can only have one Mentor. Adults have a cap on the number of
Apprentices they can have.
The Player should have access to a very basic scheduling system
similar to the military schedules, that controls when kids go to
school (more on this later), when they shadow their Mentor, and when
they have free time. Everything else is hands-off.
Children, when scheduled to shadow, follow their Mentor around and
help them with any tasks they do for the most part. Based on either
stats, or whatever else, they might run off sometimes to eat or drink
or sleep... but usually they hover near their Mentor and help them
wish tasks. Helping makes tasks faster, and the child gains skill in those tasks.
I also envision their learning being goverened by the Mentors teaching skill, and the apprentices learning skill. Scarily enough, that almost makes some kind of sense!
This is where school comes in. Schools could be rooms... maybe assigned from a table like offices and dining rooms... require chairs and tables (desks) and whatever else. Children scheduled for schooling will mill about at the school like a meeting room, and slowly train up their learning skill.
I think a lot more depth can be added fairly easily... Shadowing and Schooling can have strong negative happiness, which forces players to schedule at least some free time.
If I steal one of the earlier ideas about toys... toys can provide strong hapiness bonuses... thus making enough toys and having them kicking around will make sure you can counter the unhappiness caused by shadowing and schooling.
If you REALLY want to run with this plan, you can make dwarves gain skill extremely slowly if their learning ability is low... but now you start to force the issue with using Mentor and Apprentices, and I don't know if we want to force it. But if you do... well this balances things well. Once a kid passes into adulthood maybe, they gain learning much much slower... so you really want to train up learning early.
I think, in the long run... it's kind of like farming. It's something you have to set up, and it takes a little work... but once you have it going, it more or less takes care if itself. You don't need any real micromanagement, or anything.
Anyway, I'm not sure if this is a good idea or not. It sounds like it might be... but it might not be worth it. I dunno.