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[nenjin]

'Tis flavorful and historically accurate

...To have kids contributing their efforts to production. Maybe kids didn't forge at the age of 5 or whatever...but children basically being a source of indentured labor IS historically accurate, and holds true today in some countries. I just don't see how kids could seriously screw up your carefully organized production if you take the appropriate steps (WS profiles, as mentioned, burrows, ect...)

As an aside, I like the idea of a dwarven school teaching purely cerebral things. Organizer, observer, social skills, stuff of that nature. It would allow players to further emulate fortress inequality, by letting the children of nobles attend school, and groom them to be administrators, while the children of laborers learn laborer skills. 

[Pilsu]

The system is a failure if all it adds is tedium in the form of having to micro workshops and burrows to keep the kids doing what you want them to. I see absolutely no reason I shouldn't be able to manage their labor profiles for minor work and assign them apprenticeships should I want them to learn something a bit more involved. Hell, even combat training likely has a historical precedent, even if they weren't usable as actual troops. Kids randomly snatching up work assignments is stupid and inaccurate. They did what they were told or they got the belt. Yeah, I can see them helping out the milker out of curiosity or helping the baker just to get to lick the utensils but that's far more involved than them just snatching up random jobs.

[Decimator]

Why not have kids act as assistants to other dwarves?  Urist McMason starts up working on a new table, and Urist McKid goes to help him.  The kid gains masonry experience, and the mason gets a small speed and quality boost.

[nenjin]

I'd be ok with assigning them labor profiles that they might go fulfill. It's a decent compromise. Not sure why you keep spazzing on the concept though, you can disagree without all the vitriol.

[Shinziril]

Why not have kids act as assistants to other dwarves?  Urist McMason starts up working on a new table, and Urist McKid goes to help him.  The kid gains masonry experience, and the mason gets a small speed and quality boost.

This.  This, or something similar, seems like a fairly reasonable "apprenticeship" system, seeing as how apprentices generally got to do all the simple drudge work in the workshop while the master showed them what to do and how to do it.  I don't know about a quality boost, but a slight speed boost wouldn't hurt ("Hand me that chisel, Kogan . . .").  You could probably make a vague heuristic that biases children towards certain trades due to various traits, and then each professional dwarf chooses one or more "apprentices" to tutor.  They could do this automatically, perhaps with announcements ("Urist McMason has accepted Olon McChild as an apprentice!").  Yeeeeeeeessssss . . .

[therahedwig]

Why not have kids act as assistants to other dwarves?  Urist McMason starts up working on a new table, and Urist McKid goes to help him.  The kid gains masonry experience, and the mason gets a small speed and quality boost.

This.  This, or something similar, seems like a fairly reasonable "apprenticeship" system, seeing as how apprentices generally got to do all the simple drudge work in the workshop while the master showed them what to do and how to do it.  I don't know about a quality boost, but a slight speed boost wouldn't hurt ("Hand me that chisel, Kogan . . .").  You could probably make a vague heuristic that biases children towards certain trades due to various traits, and then each professional dwarf chooses one or more "apprentices" to tutor.  They could do this automatically, perhaps with announcements ("Urist McMason has accepted Olon McChild as an apprentice!").  Yeeeeeeeessssss . . .

I like this, it makes grown up kids different from immigrant peasants, gives more incentive to keep children alive, and gives a direct feedback to players.

Now, to balance it out, how about that apprentices can only gain up to a certain amount of skill beased on their teacher's skill. Like, a legendary mason would produce at best master mason apprentices, while a novice mason would only be able to produce dabbling masons.

[Pilsu]

Not sure why you keep spazzing on the concept though, you can disagree without all the vitriol.

I'm not sure why you read it as vitriol. I was going for confident and didn't call anyone names.

[AngleWyrm]

Several of the posts in this thread have stated strong parental opinions on how a dwarf ought to be raised. The problem with expressing parenthood is that we wind up with public schools, where every parent has had their say, and the children are fed a thousand tiny insufficient morsals of Yous-Should-Learn-Dis-Too, interspersed with censored knowledge Cauze-Theyre-Not-Ready. The result: Well just look around

[snelg]

Why not have kids act as assistants to other dwarves?  Urist McMason starts up working on a new table, and Urist McKid goes to help him.  The kid gains masonry experience, and the mason gets a small speed and quality boost.

This.  This, or something similar, seems like a fairly reasonable "apprenticeship" system, seeing as how apprentices generally got to do all the simple drudge work in the workshop while the master showed them what to do and how to do it.  I don't know about a quality boost, but a slight speed boost wouldn't hurt ("Hand me that chisel, Kogan . . .").  You could probably make a vague heuristic that biases children towards certain trades due to various traits, and then each professional dwarf chooses one or more "apprentices" to tutor.  They could do this automatically, perhaps with announcements ("Urist McMason has accepted Olon McChild as an apprentice!").  Yeeeeeeeessssss . . .

I like where this one is going.

Having kids just running around doing whatever they wanted (in terms of just taking on jobs in workshops and making shitty quality items instead of the masterwork chairs you needed for the dining room would be a pain). They'd end up in the magma with the cats sooner than later...

On the other hand, if they were to just help a craftsdwarf out and just speed up the process slightly and get some experience in the meantime. That wouldn't cause any unwanted problems or extra micromanagement of setting all workshops profiles. Heck. It would probably just work out by itself, the player won't have to lift a finger.

Now I wonder what could happen if apprentices started hating their mentoring dwarf or other apprentices...

[Aspgren]

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 .. it's likely that the children will learn much more about the chef trade than the armorsmith trade. Even if they're interested in the armor to begin with!

Wouldn't it be a better solution for kids (who have nothing better to do anyway) to "observe" something. As in a child who is interested in armor or weapons can go and play around with and "observe" either the armor/weapon stockpile or the smith's workshop. If Urist McSmith happens to use the workshop while it is being observed then the children might gain skills from that.

[Pilsu]

The kid would spend much of his time staring at a cold forge. The player wouldn't have much control over it either. Better to just go with the historical method. Makes more sense.

[Hyperturtle]

sorry, unacceptable.  Dwarf children in my fortress are paved over with magma or routed through with spikes as soon as they become seperated from mom.  They eat  up valuable cpu cycles and if I can get them under a bridge then I am saved the effort of having a coffin taking up space for them since their traces are obliterated completely once smashed.  If moms upset she can spore out another one that I'll kill.   Migrants make for better workers.  Those statues are outside for a reason, so those little twerps can get stolen by goblins while having a party.

now get off my lawn!

[tsen]

I think you guys are missing a really important point. To wit:
You're all right AND you're all wrong.

Ideally, why not provide tokens to cause a variety of behaviors based on culture? Just make the cultural value set visible in embark, and provide ways to change it if you want to.

[Mir]

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.

[Andeerz]

I like this idea and like almost everything, but I don't think apprenticeship and mentoring should be something that needs to be scheduled and managed the way you posted.  I do think the "random assistant" idea is better.  If the kid just hangs around the mentor as the mentor gets jobs done and gains skills through that, that pretty much removes any sort of setting up and scheduling while keeping it believable.  The way to maybe get around the kid being in the wrong place at the wrong time without player micromanagement would be to do what you suggested for the shadowing thing, but have it happen all the time: have the kid follow what the mentor does closely, i.e. drink when the mentor drinks, sleep when the mentor sleeps, etc.  Maybe that wouldn't work, though.  Meh.  Maybe the scheduling thing could work... I dunno.

Also, perhaps the kid could produce something every once in a while while being alongside the mentor, or sometimes aid in the mentor getting stuff done.  With the getting stuff done thing, if the kid is with the mentor while the mentor is making, say, a helm, the kid might make progress towards making his/her own helm.  Or perhaps the mentor could give the kid a project that the kid could work on... perhaps even without having to have the mentor there, which would sort of abstract out the physical presence of the mentor being needed for teaching.  I dunno if that would be a good thing, though.

With regard to working alongside and assisting the mentor, I think that would be cool but I think that if kids are allowed to be assistants, other unskilled dwarfs should be allowed to as well (unless dwarven society says otherwise) if they are willing to apprentice.