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[Pilsu]

Just to point out, a skill is something you learn by doing.


If concentration is to be in the game, it should be a personality trait, not a skill that goes up by grinding. Personally I think that if you can ignore inner distractions with self-discipline, I don't see why you can't use it for outer ones.

I really don't know what you people see in the student skill. If the learner's pace is to be reflected, it should be tied to mood and other factors, not a "skill". "Man, I'm going to be so much better than everybody else at learning, I've had to redo 3rd grade 4 times now! By the time I'm done with the 9th, I'll have so much more learning experience I'll breeze by everyone else in high school!"

Problem with the archery skill being distance judging is that you magically become adept at throwing knives or using a completely different type of weapon with it. It just doesn't work.


Also, why is spotting a skill now? Shouldn't it be tied to the senses? Would give an actual point for picking guardsmen with good eyesight.

[Hugna]

As far as this update goes, Student, and Concentration have no purpose at the moment. It doesn't go up on experience, and cannot be taught. Teacher also cannot be taught or gained experience in. If there is a way to do it, i'm not seeing it right now.

[Mel_Vixen]

Spotting is a skill to uncover unusual things in a scenery aka the knowledge of what to look for. Sure senses are tied into spotting too but i bet half of us woudnt think twice over a penguin at the north-pole. 

Student as skill is controverse but i see it as skill that allows you Destill the important things out of a lengthy lesson a book etc. So its actually taking notes, different learning techniques, abstraction etc.

Teacher and student go up atm only in military training.

Self-dicipline again is controversial but form my pov it reflects how good you are at disciplining yourself. Say to not eat a cake, to not slack off all day or to read a book. Concentration as skill makes here sense if you need to be concentrated, being highly concentrated onto something means that you are sunken into the the thing you are doing. For example: If you read a Book and you get sidetracked constantly but you keep comming back to the reading you are not very concentrated but your are very disciplined.

[Kilo24]

Having a student skill is actually probably simpler than the alternative, which would be a processor-intensive calculation involving all relevant personality traits and skills to form a model of how willing and also how able a particular dwarf is to learn from the specific instructor. It wouldn't HAVE to work that way, but doing it otherwise would be an inelegant kludge.

Having a student skill is already an inelegant kludge.  With the current skill system, it's less accurate and elegant than having no skill whatsoever, IMO. 

Also, I doubt that the calculation would be noticeable unless it was extraordinarily poorly implemented (not that variable experience for teaching sessions is really important.)  Checking and multiplying together a number of variables isn't that big a deal if you do it once per teaching session.

[Greep]

Personally, I'd wish architecture were removed, and masonry was not required for some buildings, or have an order allowing "All dwarves build" allowing non-architects/masons to build workshops.  It's really annoying how every time I want to make a darned furnace I have to remember to turn on arc, turn on masonry, build, remember to turn OFF masonry. etc;

[Rowanas]

Hey, real life people grind concentration up all the time. Never heard of meditation?

[Greep]

Hey, real life people grind concentration up all the time. Never heard of meditation?

thing is, meditation requires self-discipline   But I guess there is a difference.  Playing video games can sometimes take enormous concentration without having any self-discipline at all.

[culwin]

If a dwarf has high teaching and high student skills, can they then teach other dwarfs to be better students and teachers, creating a perpetual cycle of learning until all my dwarfs are little Einsteins?

[Wyrm]

If concentration is to be in the game, it should be a personality trait, not a skill that goes up by grinding. Personally I think that if you can ignore inner distractions with self-discipline, I don't see why you can't use it for outer ones.

I can. You can have self-dicipline yet still be distractible. If you imagine hearing a loud explosion, it's pretty trivial to avoid letting it distract you. An actual loud explosion, on the other hand, is something you can only ignore if you're deaf. The two types of stimuli are processed quite differently. Self-dicipline will allow you to avoid self-generated distractions and choose a spot where external distractions are minimized, but ignoring a distraction you have no control over is a quite different skill.

I really don't know what you people see in the student skill. If the learner's pace is to be reflected, it should be tied to mood and other factors, not a "skill".

What about study skills? Note taking skills? Learning to zoom in on your particular problem with the material? Those have nothing to do with attitude; those are matters of practice.

"Man, I'm going to be so much better than everybody else at learning, I've had to redo 3rd grade 4 times now! By the time I'm done with the 9th, I'll have so much more learning experience I'll breeze by everyone else in high school!"

Inappropriate comparison. The skills you learn in high school build on the skills you learned in elementary. In DF, you can't achieve legendary Carpenter skill until you go through grand master level (unless you achieve it using a strange mood). Learning how to learn helps, but you still need to master the material. And quite frankly, if it takes you four years to learn material that it takes others one year to learn, then your learning abilities/skills are below average.

Also, why is spotting a skill now? Shouldn't it be tied to the senses? Would give an actual point for picking guardsmen with good eyesight.

Spotting is a skill, too. Good eyesight helps, but it does no good if the guardsman has no idea what he's looking for, or if his spotting pattern has holes in it that an enemy can easily slip through.

[NinjaE8825]

Also, why is spotting a skill now? Shouldn't it be tied to the senses? Would give an actual point for picking guardsmen with good eyesight.

Speaking as an aspiring visual artist, you'd be amazed at how much hard work goes into training yourself to consciously analyse the data your eyes are giving you. Basically, spotting skill is the difference between going "All's well!" and "Waitasec, that shadow is too red. There's a ninja behind that pillar!" Whereas you'd check against the dwarf's eyesight to see if he can see the bee that's about to sting his allergic kid fifty yards away, you'd use spotting (I imagine it synergizes with discipline or concentration) to notice that the kid's shadow is mocing slightly out of synch. Of course, they'd have a lot of synergy - a colorblind guy wouldn't be able to notice the subtle change in hue from the fire imp lurking above the doorframe, whilst a guy with no spot but excellent eyes would be too busy looking at the pretty butterflies at the other end of the field to notice the shadow of a goblin falling on him.

[Pilsu]

Note taking isn't a skill worth having. It's ridiculously banal. As for concentration, having it as a skill denies individual variance. Some people do it better naturally. It ain't because of practice. If you want a concentration ability, have it as a personality trait that is subject to change over time. On the other hand, that means we'd have dwarves with lousy self-discipline but somehow a flawless ability to concentrate. How do you reconcile that?

And it's not an inappropritate comparison. You see, that is exactly how skills work in Dwarf Fortress. If he does the same thing over and over again, he will always be better at it than anyone else.


That's all well and good Ninja, except none of those things actually happen in the game. They're not even abstracted, there is no cover benefits beyond total invisibility behind a bush. Your spotting skill is seeing someone walking towards you on a suspension bridge and failing at it because you're only level 2! hurrr.


Also, creatures that aren't intelligent cannot become good at spotting and are always lousy at learning. This includes dogs. You see what my damn problem here is?

[Silverionmox]

It's easy to imagine someone that's bad at motivating himself to start to do something, but can be completely caught up in an activity once he starts.

[Wyrm]

Note taking isn't a skill worth having. It's ridiculously banal. As for concentration, having it as a skill denies individual variance. Some people do it better naturally. It ain't because of practice.If you want a concentration ability, have it as a personality trait that is subject to change over time.

And yet practice is part of the equation. It's a black-white fallacy to say that it's due completely to one's inner disposition.

On the other hand, that means we'd have dwarves with lousy self-discipline but somehow a flawless ability to concentrate. How do you reconcile that?

They have ADD. They're good at ignoring distractions they cannot control, but lousy at not letting their minds wander to other subjects of their own will.

And it's not an inappropritate comparison. You see, that is exactly how skills work in Dwarf Fortress. If he does the same thing over and over again, he will always be better at it than anyone else.

Unless everyone else is also learning the material, in which case the outcome is more open to debate. Not everyone learns woodcutting in DF. The difference in skill among dwarves is due entirely to how much practice they get at it, just like in real life.

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 all well and good Ninja, except none of those things actually happen in the game. They're not even abstracted, there is no cover benefits beyond total invisibility behind a bush. Your spotting skill is seeing someone walking towards you on a suspension bridge and failing at it because you're only level 2! hurrr.

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?

Also, creatures that aren't intelligent cannot become good at spotting and are always lousy at learning. This includes dogs. You see what my damn problem here is?

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.

[Firehound]

Spotting is noticing odd things... like that the bush is moving towards you. Or that person coming towards you is small and green and you've never seen a dwarf without a beard and wearing a mask. Try asking ten people to intimately describe the facial features of the last ten strangers they saw after they go to a mall. Chances are, they won't remember more then gender, and maybe not even that.

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.

Fighting is on the other hand, Most likely basic first aid(apply direct pressure to wound to stem bleeding...), how to hold oneself, how to charge properly, how to defeat a charge, and other important minor skills.

[EyeOfNundinate]

If a dwarf has high teaching and high student skills, can they then teach other dwarfs to be better students and teachers, creating a perpetual cycle of learning until all my dwarfs are little Einsteins?

If a great teacher/student was able to teach you how to be a good student, then America would be out of its educational rut, damn unresponsive ingrates.
Wyrm, children have no self-discipline, even adults have this problem, they have to learn it. ADD, ADHD, and whatever can be overcome.

Even though you practice, it doesn't mean you get better. ( True fact )
Besides human nature involves many redundancies, remove them and we would stagnate. ( DNA Decay, Mutation, Retroviruses, community, ... )