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[Wyrm]

Wyrm, children have no self-discipline, even adults have this problem, they have to learn it. ADD, ADHD, and whatever can be overcome.

I am textbook ADD. I have learned more self-dicipline through practice, to a point. After which it's essentially compensation for a shortcoming. I also have learned to block out outside distractions, but they are different abilities.

Even though you practice, it doesn't mean you get better. ( True fact )

What is this in reference to?

[Pilsu]

You also have not answered my point that someone who takes four years to learn material others learn in one has below average learning ability.

That's because in Dwarf Fortress, you can't be any worse than anyone else at learning if you've had as much practice as everyone else. Having to redo the year over and over would make you better at learning than anyone else.

This "learning ability" you speak of would be a part of the cognitive statistics if it were to work in the way you describe. I.e. personality screen stuff that doesn't start at 0.

So gobbos and kobalds have cloaking devices, huh? Honest-to-goodness cloaking devices that only fail if you run headlong into them? That's not an abstraction?

Just saying, don't talk of what the spotting skill does (without addressing the fact that having sharp senses does not contribute) if it doesn't actually take place and isn't even remotely plausible of an abstraction. If stealth is not actually stealth but invisibility, then we shouldn't pretend it's anything else just to justify a redundant skill that seems to go up by simply seeing someone, whether they're sneaking or not. Ridiculously poor abstractions should be kept out. If you want to pretend stealth makes sense, might as well cut the middle man and tie detection to actual senses instead of having to bang your head to a wall when your sentry lets a kobold past him because his detection skills failed to spot the kobold walking across a bridge. Again, the skill starts at 0. You're blind as a bat without practice. Practice seemingly being just seeing enemies. I guess my guards that have never killed a goblin just figured the child snatcher wearing someone was a real dwarf and let him pass. But not to worry, their eyes will surely be honed for some reason when they stab someone a few thousand times and see their faces while they do so.

Dogs don't actually see too good, and our taller stance gives us a larger range to see things. We have a better chance at spotting things than a dog, at least during the day. While dwarves are short, they stand taller than the average dog, so dwarves have a range advantage over dogs. Furthermore dwarves can see in the dark, so their advantages are preserved at night. Dogs would rely cheifly on other senses to detect intruders at distance, like smell and hearing. Dogs being bad at visual spotting is entirely appropriate.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sighthound

Spotting skill: 0. Chance of seeing targets: 0. Sense: 0.

If detection was covered by senses, sighthounds could be bred. Also, senses covers more than just eyesight so dogs in general would be good at detection. Currently, as you have to admit, they are unable to be better than dwarves at seeing, smelling or hearing things.

Archery and fighting are baseline skills for the basics of combat that is not punching or matrix esque dodges. Archery is firing from advantageous positions(Such as behind fortifications), coordinating fire upon enemies, and other important minor skills that would be an unnecessary bloat.

And then you stop and realize that aptitude with throwing knives makes you a bow prodigy.

You do realize that knowing those minor skills as you call them would make you an equally fantastic shot with a bow as a crossbow, right? Saying that archery has minor things to know besides how to handle the instrument does not really justify the kind of raw prowess gained from completely unrelated weapons. Even if you know how to judge distance and coordinate fire already, you'll still be an awful shot with a bow if you've only ever used a crossbow. Not so in this game. That's why archery is a pointless skill and should go.

[Firehound]

It's not a pointless skill, however if it's affects are as drastic as you claim,
1. I want proof.
2. Then it needs a little nerfing.

Sorry if I seem to not take your word, before I realized people were just complaining over the magics of Bronze collosus made of metal and no bleed in 31.01 I trusted their unsubstantiated claims combat system overhaul is very bad! No kill easy! Where it is just somewhat buggy.

[Kilo24]

The important question about adding a skill in DF is not whether or not you learn by doing it in real life, but as to whether or not adding a skill makes the game more realistic than not having the skill.

Student as a skill is much less realistic than simply ignoring the experience factor, unless you had a great deal more complicated calculations to add to learning that you simply don't have at this point (student/teacher's interest in the subject, distractions in the classroom and on their minds, quality of materials to learn from/practice with for example.)  And more than likely, it'd follow the same ludicrous exponential speed growth that the Legendary skill level currently has (which should be nerfed in pretty much every job, IMO) which is pretty bad.  If the effects of the Student skill were capped to, say, a student with no experience learning at half the rate of a legendary, then I wouldn't mind as much (but it still would be worse than no skill at all.)

If realistic, spotting as a skill should be continually exercised from birth.  And the experience rewards for it should be lessened such that not everyone is a legendary spotter by 2.  But I don't think that the game engine can do that in any way that makes that well-handled, in either the load on the CPU or in terms of a much better experience reward system.  So, spotting doesn't work well as a skill.  It doesn't work perfectly as senses either, but that lets you handle poor eyesight from genetics, old age, or wounds more intuitively.  (Sight hounds could be modeled as having a genetic bonus to the skill and its learning rate - not that that's actually in the game right now.)

Archery has flaws as a general skill.  It also has flaws if being separated into wholly distinct throwing darts, crossbows, bows, and shuriken - at least until we get a decent skill synergy system in.  I'd prefer it to stay as Archery and weapons-based melee combat skills to be lumped into a similar melee combat skill; they both have significant problems either way, but one is much simpler and requires less micromanagement.  For the binary option of having them together or apart, the former is best IMO, since they all overlap a good bit with eachother.  Once we get a better skill system (like with specializations or synergies), it should be re-examined, but... simplicity is just the better path right now, IMO.

[Wyrm]

You also have not answered my point that someone who takes four years to learn material others learn in one has below average learning ability.

That's because in Dwarf Fortress, you can't be any worse than anyone else at learning if you've had as much practice as everyone else. Having to redo the year over and over would make you better at learning than anyone else.

Baloney. Someone spending four years to learn the material others learn in one is manifestly below average in learning ability, and as such needs that extra experience just to get to the same level of ability as everyone else. He's not even at parity with those peers unless and until he can learn as fast as them. On a DF scale, he as negative skill in learning.

So gobbos and kobalds have cloaking devices, huh? Honest-to-goodness cloaking devices that only fail if you run headlong into them? That's not an abstraction?

Just saying, don't talk of what the spotting skill does (without addressing the fact that having sharp senses does not contribute) if it doesn't actually take place and isn't even remotely plausible of an abstraction. If stealth is not actually stealth but invisibility, then we shouldn't pretend it's anything else just to justify a redundant skill that seems to go up by simply seeing someone, whether they're sneaking or not. Ridiculously poor abstractions should be kept out. If you want to pretend stealth makes sense, might as well cut the middle man and tie detection to actual senses instead of having to bang your head to a wall when your sentry lets a kobold past him because his detection skills failed to spot the kobold walking across a bridge.

And what makes you think that each z-level is completely level ground, that grass is as short as a lawn, and that a kobold sticks out like a sore thumb against the background from afar? It's an unfathomable assumption in the real world. In that world (the one you live in), there are plenty of places to hide in a 'flat' plain. A real grassland is nothing like a lawn, and rocky terrain will afford plenty of places to hide. Also, your dwarves are not omniscient — your lookout doesn't necessarily know that the person he sees on the bridge is a dwarf or a kobold. Also, if he's a lookout, he's not going to be looking exclusively at one bridge.

Again, the skill starts at 0. You're blind as a bat without practice. Practice seemingly being just seeing enemies. I guess my guards that have never killed a goblin just figured the child snatcher wearing someone was a real dwarf and let him pass. But not to worry, their eyes will surely be honed for some reason when they stab someone a few thousand times and see their faces while they do so.

Strawman. Zero spotting skill ≠ blind. It means you have base ability to spot things, whatever that is. There's plenty of reasons why an ambush party can be hidden in a seemingly flat expanse.

Dogs don't actually see too good, and our taller stance gives us a larger range to see things. We have a better chance at spotting things than a dog, at least during the day. While dwarves are short, they stand taller than the average dog, so dwarves have a range advantage over dogs. Furthermore dwarves can see in the dark, so their advantages are preserved at night. Dogs would rely cheifly on other senses to detect intruders at distance, like smell and hearing. Dogs being bad at visual spotting is entirely appropriate.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sighthound

Spotting skill: 0. Chance of seeing targets: 0. Sense: 0.

If detection was covered by senses, sighthounds could be bred. Also, senses covers more than just eyesight so dogs in general would be good at detection. Currently, as you have to admit, they are unable to be better than dwarves at seeing, smelling or hearing things.

Wow! Are you saying that DF skills/abilities framework needs improvement? Well, knock me down with a feather, but I'm shocked! Could it be that supposedly intelligent creatures being so diligent in their work that they starve themselves to death or fall asleep in the halls even though they have a perfectly good bedroom available may need some improvement in the brains department?

Will you drop this "Zero skill = zero ability" strawman now? Zero skill means average ability, and for the case of dogs, it means average ability for a dog — whatever that may be. It needs some fiddling, but when has that not been the case in DF?

The important question about adding a skill in DF is not whether or not you learn by doing it in real life, but as to whether or not adding a skill makes the game more realistic than not having the skill.

Student as a skill is much less realistic than simply ignoring the experience factor, unless you had a great deal more complicated calculations to add to learning that you simply don't have at this point (student/teacher's interest in the subject, distractions in the classroom and on their minds, quality of materials to learn from/practice with for example.)  And more than likely, it'd follow the same ludicrous exponential speed growth that the Legendary skill level currently has (which should be nerfed in pretty much every job, IMO) which is pretty bad.  If the effects of the Student skill were capped to, say, a student with no experience learning at half the rate of a legendary, then I wouldn't mind as much (but it still would be worse than no skill at all.)

Quite frankly, I haven't seen very much effect of the student skill at all, even when I have cranked it up to Legendary levels. While I take note of the caution, I think your concerns are a tad overblown.

If realistic, spotting as a skill should be continually exercised from birth.  And the experience rewards for it should be lessened such that not everyone is a legendary spotter by 2.

This argument is based on the strawman that zero skill = zero ability. It doesn't. It means average ability. I certainly couldn't construct a bed that would be of any usable quality — you'd probably be more comfortable on the floor than in one of my beds, yet dwarves that have Not Carpenders on embark are able to punch out standard quality beds that work as well as any. Same story with trap mechanisms: a mechanic-in-name-only is able to make a mechanism that works reasonably well first try. If I tried that, it would be a worthless POS. The obvious conclusion is that a dwarf, upon reaching adulthood, is assumed to have some basic competence in many fields already, probably from what passes for dwarf school. Therefore, zero skill = average competence.

[Daywalkah]

Archery and fighting are baseline skills for the basics of combat that is not punching or matrix esque dodges. Archery is firing from advantageous positions(Such as behind fortifications), coordinating fire upon enemies, and other important minor skills that would be an unnecessary bloat.

And then you stop and realize that aptitude with throwing knives makes you a bow prodigy.

You do realize that knowing those minor skills as you call them would make you an equally fantastic shot with a bow as a crossbow, right? Saying that archery has minor things to know besides how to handle the instrument does not really justify the kind of raw prowess gained from completely unrelated weapons. Even if you know how to judge distance and coordinate fire already, you'll still be an awful shot with a bow if you've only ever used a crossbow. Not so in this game. That's why archery is a pointless skill and should go.

That's why we have the throwing skill. How often do you see dwarves throwing knives anyway? The part about coordinating shots and such makes almost no sense considering you still have to adjust the angle of a crossbow or bow, it would just take a little getting used to. You make is sound like it's impossible to adjust to using a crossbow over a bow, when the two are similar in many ways.

[Pilsu]

The saying goes "to train a longbowman, you start with his grandfather." Wikipedia plainly states that crossbowmen took a fraction of the training of longbowmen to be effective^[1]. Saying that they're similar is seemingly baloney.

We're talking about the Archery skill here. Perhaps throwing doesn't actually train it but I have no reason to believe it doesn't. It's a video game and it's the designated ranged synergy skill. Even if throwing is exempt, it still shouldn't exist.

You speak with real life logic Wyrm. The game does not actually work like that. Only way it could work like it is if learning aptitude was a mental trait which is not trained. Dwarves would in fact have innate differences in learning ability and general intellect. But, alas, it is a skill and thus my "strawman" is in fact completely accurate in game mechanic terms.

As for your strawman claims, welcome to video games. That dog would be worse at spotting than a trained, nearly blind and deaf dwarf even if it was bred to be good at it, at least in real life terms. Since, you see, the skill handles spotting. A barely trained dwarf is automatically better at spotting than a dog that can't learn this arbitrary "skill." You can call me names and throw your own seemingly unrelated strawmen if you want but it does really change the facts. Yeah, I suppose having no skill at all doesn't actually make you completely unable to spot anything but the blindness was intended as hyperbole.

If spotting was tied to senses instead of an arbitrary skill, dogs would have a natural aptitude beyond that of dwarves. As it is now, having the default skill and being unable to progress makes them terrible. And even if they could learn it, dwarves wouldn't have the disadvantage you'd expect. It's not done well as is.

[Azrael]

I like the idea of skill learning being based on other skills in the category. It seems logical and intuitive (so long, that is, as the categories are logical and intuitive). For a while I made all my idle miners do stone detailing etc., because it just seems like they'd be better at it, or at the very least learn it more quickly. It's just mining but with a smaller pick and hitting it lighter, right? Skill in one of them seems to imply skill in the other in my mind.

[snelg]

I believe archery is a good skill to have since it's making sure someone who's great at firing a crossbow have at least a small advantage over someone who's never even thrown a rock before (so no archery skill at all) if they're both were to use bows.

[Wyrm]

You speak with real life logic Wyrm. The game does not actually work like that. Only way it could work like it is if learning aptitude was a mental trait which is not trained. Dwarves would in fact have innate differences in learning ability and general intellect. But, alas, it is a skill and thus my "strawman" is in fact completely accurate in game mechanic terms.

Of course there should be individual differences. By why is this incompatible with there being a learned element to learning itself? You do not explain why this should be the case. I argue that a learning skill makes sense in that respect. But you somehow distorted that position into "I think the learning skill should be the only factor." So yes, your argument is a strawman.

As for your strawman claims, welcome to video games. That dog would be worse at spotting than a trained, nearly blind and deaf dwarf even if it was bred to be good at it, at least in real life terms. Since, you see, the skill handles spotting. A barely trained dwarf is automatically better at spotting than a dog that can't learn this arbitrary "skill." You can call me names and throw your own seemingly unrelated strawmen if you want but it does really change the facts. Yeah, I suppose having no skill at all doesn't actually make you completely unable to spot anything but the blindness was intended as hyperbole.

Again, strawman — you're somehow interpreting my assertion that "skill matters in spotting" into "skill is the only thing that matters in spotting." Same with learning. Grab a dime and buy a clue. You can account for inherent individual and racial/species differences in ability and have there being a learned component to abilities. It allows there to be differences between individuals in some task, yet allow people who are below average to become at least useful in that task.

If spotting was tied to senses instead of an arbitrary skill, dogs would have a natural aptitude beyond that of dwarves. As it is now, having the default skill and being unable to progress makes them terrible. And even if they could learn it, dwarves wouldn't have the disadvantage you'd expect. It's not done well as is.

Black-white fallacy. You think that someone's spotting ability must be wholly due to senses, and that learning how to scan an area well and learning what to look for when surveying a landscape cannot be a part of it.

Come to think of it, I have never seen a cloaked invader be detected by any means other than a civilian unit stumbling onto it, dwarf or dog, no matter how much I've amped up the spotting skill. This is more an indication that the spotting system is not implemented in any useful way, period. To assume that this incomplete system is somehow the final form of the system is rather ridiculous.

[Daywalkah]

The saying goes "to train a longbowman, you start with his grandfather." Wikipedia plainly states that crossbowmen took a fraction of the training of longbowmen to be effective^[1]. Saying that they're similar is seemingly baloney.

We're talking about the Archery skill here. Perhaps throwing doesn't actually train it but I have no reason to believe it doesn't. It's a video game and it's the designated ranged synergy skill. Even if throwing is exempt, it still shouldn't exist.

I'm just going to say it again that you have to adjust the angle of a bow or crossbow to hit a target. That is at least, if not entirely, archery.

Crossbows are listed as a type of bow.

[alamoes]

Archery skill is basically having good aim and guessing skills.  It should be changed to trajectory, the math of angles and power effects or something like that.  The bow shooting and junk would be comfortability with the bow shape and not shaking with it. 

[eerr]

"Remove concentration skill. This is presumably already covered by the self-discipline personality trait."
On the contrary, some people are born natrually more inclined to focus and discipline. And people can learn enhancements their discipline too!
Self-discipline enhances the concentration ability.



"Remove student skill. If the skill is deemed necessary, use other existing skills in the category of the taught skill instead. For instance, a masterful woodcrafter would learn carpentry extremely quickly and an axeman likely would have no trouble grasping how to use a sword effectively. Categories aren't perfect seeing as bowmen would somehow be prodigies in swordsmanship but it's still better than an entirely redundant, unrealistic, pointless skill."
Student skill is the learned ability to learn. This is not garnered purely from other skills.
Perhaps it should form as concentration and practice garnered from other traits, however,
Just because everybody in your school learns in the exact same way, does not mean that it is not impossible to have different learned abilities to learn.


"Remove archer skill. There should be no synergy between the different classes of ranged weapons seeing as they are fundamentally different from one another."

They are not completely different and not completely the same.>
I would check the future goal log but I don't even remember where that is anymore.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

"Core73, COMBAT OVERHAUL: This one is a bit vague, mostly because the Combat Arc consists of so many small changes rather than a few sweeping additions. Aside from obvious changes to projectiles and the wrestling interface, skills could afford to overlap, attributes need to be associated to skills properly, skills could become rusty and ultimately degrade as in Armok 1, new general combat related skills can be added, styles/techniques for weapon/weaponless fighting roughly along the path Armok 1 had started, etc. As a dev item, this'll be done when combat more or less makes sense."

This is planned, and may or may not be happening soon.

[marcusbjol]

Any martial skill takes years of practice.  Yes, years.  It should take a long time to train any skill.  Funny enough, we get blackbelts in a year of game time.  How long does this take IRL?

Bows vs Crossbows and Training - Saying that crossbows required less training is partly true.  People by and large were not trained to shoot accurately, but on how fast they could load the crossbow and have everyone shoot en mass at an area.  So having a seperate "ranged combat"  vs a particular weapon skill makes sense.  The ranged combat skill check would verify you correctly plan the projectile's path to hit the target, weapon skill to execute said plan correctly.

More skills is not better.  I have a hard time understanding why having a cheesmaking skill when we have a cooking skill.  Processing of edible goods to other edible goods falls under cooking.  Or why there are dissection skills when the fish cleaning / butcher skills exsist as well.  Both dissection and butcher describe the same thing:  Disassemble an animal to its component parts.   If you make too many skills, you end up a skill set that might include Surfing, Hanggliding (Rolemaster did this and it was a mistake).

[Wyrm]

More skills is not better.  I have a hard time understanding why having a cheesmaking skill when we have a cooking skill.  Processing of edible goods to other edible goods falls under cooking.  Or why there are dissection skills when the fish cleaning / butcher skills exsist as well.  Both dissection and butcher describe the same thing:  Disassemble an animal to its component parts.

There are distinct differences between cheesemaking and cooking and butchery and dissection. Cheesemaking involves controlling a huge batch of milk, turning it into curds and whey, compacting the curds into raw cheese, and then letting it age. It's complicated enough to make it a separate dicipline in and of itself. What cheesemaking shares with cooking is the transformation of food, but carpentry and woodworking share the transformation of wood, yet woodworking is different enough from carpentry to be distingushed as a separate labor and skill. Same with butchery and dissection: they have taking apart the animal in common, but that's about all they have in common.

Also, skills aren't really proficiencies per se, but rather they're attached to labors, measuring how good you are at performing that labor. So long as the dissection and butchery labors remain separated, and the cheesemaker and cooking labors remain separated, so too will the attached skills. While a system of synergies may make sense, it is useful to know whether or not a given dwarf is good at cheesemaking specifically, rather than trying to remember "good cooks are good cheesemakers".