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[Thelogman]

I started noticing skill decay today. My Legendary Mason and Armorer from Moods who were in the military have decayed all the way to Peasants, and a handful of other guys who arrived with high master skills have been decaying down pretty far as well.

What is your take on the skill decay? Honestly, I think it's a really interesting idea, but I find it really annoying in practice. Also, I don't think that a Dwarf should be able to drop all the way from Legendary to nothing, Legendary to High or Grand Master maybe, but the ability for the most trained of dwarves to become complete novices (or worse really) if I don't make sure to make enough, say weapons, every once and a while is a little annoying, unsettling even, since it forces me to micro-manage who does what when if I want all my guys to stay skilled.

[Tarran]

Skill decay? I never had it before. And frankly I don't even know if it exists.

[Diablous]

Yep, Toady implemented it. I remember hearing that it should be easier to train them back up.

[Tarran]

Yep, Toady implemented it. I remember hearing that it should be easier to train them back up.

How fast is it? It never bothered me. So it can't be that fast.

[Diablous]

Yep, Toady implemented it. I remember hearing that it should be easier to train them back up.

How fast is it? It never bothered me. So it can't be that fast.

Not sure.

[CaveLobsterShell]

I started noticing skill decay today. My Legendary Mason and Armorer from Moods who were in the military have decayed all the way to Peasants, and a handful of other guys who arrived with high master skills have been decaying down pretty far as well.

What sort of time frame are we talking here?

[bmaczero]

Toady called it "rust", I think the skill level is still intact, you just have to work off the rust for it to show up again, which happens faster than training, like Diablous said.

[Urist Imiknorris]

Make enormous copper corkscrew / R

Don't have any stockpiles that accept non-masterwork enormous copper corkscrews.

Problem solved, if you have more than one weaponsmith. Same things apply for copper leggings, buckets, and goblets. Periodically mark everything in the forge for melting

[haywire]

Stats seem to decay as well.  The only physically in shape dwarves in my fort of 30+ years are the ones in the military, and everyone has all red mental stats.  I'm either missing something, or stats fall way faster than they raise.

[Ilmoran]

Stats seem to decay as well.  The only physically in shape dwarves in my fort of 30+ years are the ones in the military, and everyone has all red mental stats.  I'm either missing something, or stats fall way faster than they raise.

Pretty sure I've seen that there's a bug that stats never rise, they just fall if you don't have you dwarves training in the military.

As for skill decay, it's an interesting idea, but I agree there should be a limit to how far you can fall, unless re-acquiring the skill is *really* fast (like, 1-2 jobs per skill level to re-acquire).  On the bright side, if you don't mind editting raws, you can remove skill/stat decay:

[SKILL_RATES:<% of improvement points you get>:<unused counter rate>:<rust counter rate>:<demotion counter rate>].  Default is [SKILL_RATES:100:8:8:16].   [SLOW_LEARNER] changes the 100 to a 50.  You can't apply it to individual skills right now.  Lower numbers in the last three slots make those processes happen faster, so [SKILL_RATES:100:1:1:1] would make a creature lose skills quickly.  You can feed NONE in the last three if you want.

[PHYS_ATT_RATES:<att token>:<cost to improve>:<unused counter rate>:<rust counter rate>:<demotion counter rate>].  Defaults for are 500:2:3:2, except for RECUPERATION and DISEASE_RESISTANCE that don't have change rates.

[PHYS_ATT_CAP_PERC:<att token>:<cap %>].  Default is 200.  This means you can increase your attribute to 200% of its starting value (or the average value + your starting value if that is higher).

These have corresponding "MENT_ATT" tokens.

Edit:  Those go in the Dwarf entry of creatures_standard.txt

[Hyndis]

Interesting. Might be a good workaround to remove decay until the bugs are fixed.

Currently only military skills seem to count for improving attributes. Also, skills can decay so quickly that your legendary blacksmith will be producing regular quality items after just a regular break. That vacation dwarves take each year is long enough to turn a legendary blacksmith into a dabbling blacksmith.   

[SirHoneyBadger]

That needs to be modified a bit, then. If you don't use a skill at all in 20 years, it should start decreasing, but not over summer vaca. Especially since these are dwarfs, who it seems to me would be more mentally focused on earning and keeping their skills than humans.

After all, even a vanilla dwarf lives 175 years on average (and my own versions can live for 1500 years, if they somehow survive that long). So they should be a bit mentally fortified against this kind of thing...

Modding this is going to be a popular request, I'll wager.

[Ilmoran]

That needs to be modified a bit, then. If you don't use a skill at all in 20 years, it should start decreasing, but not over summer vaca. Especially since these are dwarfs, who it seems to me would be more mentally focused on earning and keeping their skills than humans.

After all, even a vanilla dwarf lives 175 years on average (and my own versions can live for 1500 years, if they somehow survive that long). So they should be a bit mentally fortified against this kind of thing...

Modding this is going to be a popular request, I'll wager.

I'm sure it'll get tweaked to more reasonable values in coming releases.

As for forgetting a skill over summer vacation:  Look how much students forget over summer if they're not interested in it   

I would say that a) a dwarfs highest skill should take longer to rust than lower skills (basically, he is assumed to actively like doing whatever his highest skill is, and thus have better retention of it), b) dwarven personalities should affect skill decay (i.e. the dwarves with poor memory or focus rust faster; doesn't need to be much, maybe 5%).

[Hyndis]

You can test this out easily enough. Get a legendary dwarf, such as a blacksmith. Get a huge pile of metal bars. Have him make something like buckets on repeat. Not metal blocks because they have no quality modifier, but anything works that has a quality modifier.

You will notice that you will have quite a few no quality items. A legendary should only make masterwork, exceptional, or superior items. A legendary +5 should only ever make masterwork or exceptional. But your legendary +5 will make a few low or no quality items when he comes back from break.

[peterix]

Hmm. So that's why my legendary miners screw up so much.


Silly. I'll be modding this out for sure.