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[DDR]

I wouldn't like my crucial dwarfs retiring, for anything short of death. Fun fact: Since my average fortress lasts about five years, none of my dwarfs have _ever_ died a natural death.

The closest I have gotten is 'drowned' or 'mauled to death by harpy'.

[Lucus Casius]

I wouldn't like my crucial dwarfs retiring, for anything short of death. Fun fact: Since my average fortress lasts about five years, none of my dwarfs have _ever_ died a natural death.

The closest I have gotten is 'drowned' or 'mauled to death by harpy'.

Really, for a dwarf, dying of old age is far more unnatural than either of those two.

[Pilsu]

It would be nice if age actually did something though. Having your champion retire from battle and take up training recruits full-time is fine by me, as long as skill rusting is made less retarded overblown so he isn't a novice again in 2 years. Old craftsmen would probably just get slower, less precise or whatever else fits. Genetics should play a role.

Problem is, I don't think any actual combat experience is needed to reach high competence. There really is no benefit to being a veteran the way skills work right now.

[NW_Kohaku]

It would be nice if age actually did something though. Having your champion retire from battle and take up training recruits full-time is fine by me, as long as skill rusting is made less retarded overblown so he isn't a novice again in 2 years. Old craftsmen would probably just get slower, less precise or whatever else fits. Genetics should play a role.

You can do that with modding a creature's SKILL_RATES token. 

Standard is 100:8:8:16, which means that a creature gains experience at 100% normal rates, starts rusting after 8 turns (including walking from the workshop to the stockpile to pick up another raw material to do the work that will give them more EXP), loses a point of exp for every 8 turns after they start rusting, and if the dwarf is at the threshold to losing a skill rank, will wait another 16 turns before they lose their skill rank.

As has been noted, this is absurdly fast.  I went into a discussion about this somewhere around a month ago, but I basically said that it should look something more like this:

[SKILL_RATES:35:120:24:840]

That way, you have to actually not work for an entire day before you actually start rusting.  Rust still goes down fairly fast once it starts, with an entire week taking place between demotions.  The 35% normal rate of gain was put in to better reflect that it should also take you longer to actually climb up to legendary in the first place, even if it takes longer to slide down from those peaks.

Similar rates exist for Mental and Physical attributes, and should be modified accordingly.

[PecosBill]

Not that this would necessarily fulfill my dream, but we could borrow from Warhammer and have a sort of "anti-retirement" in the form of a "Slayer" type concept -- old dwarves get it into their heads that it's time to go out in a blaze of glory and any time any really dangerous creature shows up, they go arm themselves and attack it without any input whatsoever from you.

"A Titan, you say?  Here, hold me engraver's tools.  I'll be right back.  Maybe."

Come to think of it, maybe this would be an interesting option to dwarves that go insane.  Some of them become Slayers.  They run around without armor but armed with a weapon and attack whatever enemies show up on the map.  The bigger and the more ridiculous, the happier they are to run out and fight it.

[Cotes]

First of all, your fort has a limit of how many dwarves it will attract based on value (or something), so you might hit a point where you get no new dwarves and the ones you have are useless, not having even adequate in the skills you would dearly need.

...so...you... have them do shit until they get good at it? In a fort that's been around long enough to have a bunch of old dwarves, everyone's been around long enough to get good at something if you bother to allocate labor to them. Though in 0.31 you do get stupidly skilled immigrants so killing the weak ones is probably a (too) good strategy. But even then, such an old fort is going to be full up on dwarves.

I dunno, if dwarves retire it should be in the last few years of their lives, but dying on the workbench seems like the dwarfy way to go.

Fine for many skills, but I just won't bother making a few hundred copper swords to get a talented weaponsmith only to have a high master one appear in the next migrant wave.

Also, how are you even supposed to train doctors? Well, I suppose you can, but you'll still end up sacrificing dwarves for slightly different reasons.

[loose nut]

Fine for many skills, but I just won't bother making a few hundred copper swords to get a talented weaponsmith only to have a high master one appear in the next migrant wave.

Also, how are you even supposed to train doctors? Well, I suppose you can, but you'll still end up sacrificing dwarves for slightly different reasons.

That's true, some skills you want as good as possible right away, though with weaponsmiths I put 'em on iron bolt/ trap component duty until they get reasonably good. Docs, I dunno. (I am pretty agnostic about the skill rusting in 0.31.12 but that feature seems to hit doctors really hard.)

I am not really a fan of having super-good immigrants just stroll into the fort on a semi-regular basis. Some variation is good but currently it's way too up-and-down.

[Funk]

Retirement makes little sence when old age does so little to a dwarf (thay get white hair but thats all)

[thijser]

It might be a better idea to make dwarfs grow old instead. Old dwarfs would still be able to work but slower with less strenght ext. This would get increasingly strong. There would be an option to put in a age of dwarven retirement to stop them from wasting materials. These retired dwarfs could spent their time"preparing for death" this would reduce the impact from their death (only if death was natural). This would also somewhat remove the motivation from players killing of the retired dwarfs.

[mLegion]

Have old retired dwarves seek out idlers who have an active profession they are legendary in and teach them. I'd rather my smith gets a skill up in smithing from speaking to a retired legendary smith then yet another rank in comedian anyway.

Or have them follow younger colleagues to their workshops when there are jobs queued and slightly increase the rate of skill gain while they're about.

[daveybaby]

Or have a new room designation: schoolroom. Then you could assign highly skilled dwarves there as teachers, and unskilled dwarves as pupils.

Another thing that occurs to me, is writing books. Old dwarves could write down their experiences (useful or otherwise) for storage in a central library. Dwarves could also be taken by moods and shut themselves away to create a work of literary genius (or possibly just the scribblings of a deranged madman).
Not sure how this conflicts with the dwarves current artistic/historical medium though: i.e. carving stuff onto other stuff.