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Author Topic: combine a few skills  (Read 2906 times)

vadia

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combine a few skills
« on: November 30, 2010, 02:35:16 pm »

just like there is no bellows workerfor all smithing jobs I don't think there should be lye makers AND soap makers. same with chese and milk,

perhaps tanners and leatherworkers also.

This somewhat limits the annoyance of useless jobs.
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Silverionmox

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Re: combine a few skills
« Reply #1 on: November 30, 2010, 04:57:36 pm »

Mind the difference between skills on one hand, and the jobs you assign to the dwarves on the other hand. They neednt be the same. Skills can be fine-grained, or consist of parts (eg. material-tool-product), without needing to toggle them all the time. Jobs/labors are what you toggle on your dwarves; the cleaning labor for example has no associated skill.
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katheb

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Re: combine a few skills
« Reply #2 on: December 01, 2010, 03:44:25 am »

just like there is no bellows workerfor all smithing jobs I don't think there should be lye makers AND soap makers. same with chese and milk,

perhaps tanners and leatherworkers also.

This somewhat limits the annoyance of useless jobs.

maybe Urist is a master lye maker and has no experience making soap!
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vadia

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Re: combine a few skills
« Reply #3 on: December 01, 2010, 09:26:58 am »

just like there is no bellows workerfor all smithing jobs I don't think there should be lye makers AND soap makers. same with chese and milk,

perhaps tanners and leatherworkers also.

This somewhat limits the annoyance of useless jobs.

maybe Urist is a master lye maker and has no experience making soap!
Then why isn't Urist a master blacksmith who has no bellowing experience?
Or a weaponsmith with no tempering experience etc.,
If we make the usefull skills encompassing, why are the useless ones so limited?
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Pilsu

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Re: combine a few skills
« Reply #4 on: December 01, 2010, 12:08:34 pm »

I imagine the useless skills are in the game largely for the purposes of profession names. You can't have millers if you have no milling skill after all. At least, the game would have a hard time assigning such a title. They may have been in for stat purposes too but that was supposedly fixed, hauling tasks now granting strength increases like they should.


I doubt ore processing would use the same skills as a smith does when heating the implement getting beaten at the time. I could see skill of the operator having an effect on ore quality some day. The quality system we have now is totally unsuited for it though and the ore itself has no quality levels.
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thijser

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Re: combine a few skills
« Reply #5 on: December 01, 2010, 03:14:51 pm »

I personally think we should have as many skills as passble and give skills the option to learn other skills more quickly. Maybe even bound it to specific materials and objectes beeing made.
But at any rate this has been suggested many times before. But because people have such diffrend opionions on what should be done it's probably best to wait around for some time.
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Maklak

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Re: combine a few skills
« Reply #6 on: December 01, 2010, 07:39:53 pm »

Heh, this is one of the problems with games relying on skill systems. It is even worse, when there is a skill cap. In UO you could only train seven skills to grand master among a few dozen, and there were hard choices to be made. DnD 3/3.5 also has a lot of skills, and you only get so many skillpoints per level.

Anyway, the problem here is how many skills to make / how fast to train to make them? On one hand there could be literally hundreds of them (like different kinds of cook for example), on the other "Amber" RPG only has 4 skills/stats.

Too few skills make the game model too simple, and people will complain.

Too many skills make the game model too complex (see "EvE" Space MMO (altough arguably EvE has to do this, to stop people from learning all the skills in  the game)), and many of them will end up being useless. Oh, and people will complain.

Balance between these 2 extremes is hard to achieve, so people will complain. I suppose Morrowind comes close to this.
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TheyTarget

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Re: combine a few skills
« Reply #7 on: December 02, 2010, 04:29:55 pm »

DnD 3/3.5 also has a lot of skills, and you only get so many skillpoints per level.

Yeah, it's a party game, and you're suppose to balance the skills between each character in your party. So you don't have two people arguing over who gets to pick the lock, and ten minutes later the same two people realize they both wanted lock picking and neither of them took disable device and they both die in a fireball trap. (I've been DM'ing to long) Kinda derailment.

Anyways, I don't think simplifying dwarf fort would ever help it. You can make your weapon smith and armor smith the same guy, and the skill set should cross a little, but a legendary weapon smith wouldn't be a legendary armor smith. Or I just have no clue what this thread is talking about and if thats the case I'll just listen.
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Marshall Burns

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Re: combine a few skills
« Reply #8 on: December 02, 2010, 06:43:08 pm »

A person who makes lye and soap (and candles from tallow, but that's irrelevant in DF for now) is called a "tallow chandler." So, yeah, these could all be one skill, AND one profession. Especially in the medieval-ish era we're working with here.
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Maklak

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Re: combine a few skills
« Reply #9 on: December 03, 2010, 07:20:20 pm »

DnD 3/3.5 also has a lot of skills, and you only get so many skillpoints per level.

Yeah, it's a party game, and you're suppose to balance the skills between each character in your party. So you don't have two people arguing over who gets to pick the lock, and ten minutes later the same two people realize they both wanted lock picking and neither of them took disable device and they both die in a fireball trap. (I've been DM'ing to long) Kinda derailment.

Anyways, I don't think simplifying dwarf fort would ever help it. You can make your weapon smith and armor smith the same guy, and the skill set should cross a little, but a legendary weapon smith wouldn't be a legendary armor smith. Or I just have no clue what this thread is talking about and if thats the case I'll just listen.


Well, my point was, that some skills could be (perhabs) combined, while some others might be divided into sub-skills, but In any case it is not exactly clear, how namy, and what skills should there be, and people will argue over any changes anyway. Having either too many or too few skills is bad, but finding the balance between these extremes is fun.

As for wood burning, soap making, lye making, milking, cheesing, and so on: I usually enable most jobs that don't influence quality of finished product on my haulers, and don't care who does it. I find it practical, since I usually (ie when not collecting goblinite, deforest, or some such) have some unemployment anyway.

As for my DnD sessions (as a player) we had "who presses buttons on the puzzle" kinds of arguments, since everyone wanted the xp for himself to stay ahead of the rest of the party. This often ended badly. We were also not above ninjaing loot from each other. My character only stayed with them, because they increased my chances of survival (if only slightly). If possible, I'd have been quite happy if some unfortunate accident happened to their characters, and mine could take their phatz, or better yet, XP for killing a few CRs equal to my level :> Yes, I know, DnD is about cooperation and team spirit, not competition, but screw that.
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Lord Shonus

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Re: combine a few skills
« Reply #10 on: December 04, 2010, 09:27:19 am »

I would have metored you all.
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Pilsu

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Re: combine a few skills
« Reply #11 on: December 04, 2010, 11:45:02 am »

A person who makes lye and soap (and candles from tallow, but that's irrelevant in DF for now) is called a "tallow chandler." So, yeah, these could all be one skill, AND one profession. Especially in the medieval-ish era we're working with here.

Got any source for the soap part? It is called "chandler."
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Draco18s

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Re: combine a few skills
« Reply #12 on: December 04, 2010, 07:21:01 pm »

A person who makes lye and soap (and candles from tallow, but that's irrelevant in DF for now) is called a "tallow chandler." So, yeah, these could all be one skill, AND one profession. Especially in the medieval-ish era we're working with here.

Got any source for the soap part? It is called "chandler."

The head of the chandlery in medieval households, responsible for wax, candles, and soap
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tsen

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Re: combine a few skills
« Reply #13 on: December 04, 2010, 08:09:09 pm »

Chandlery. +1
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MiniMacker

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Re: combine a few skills
« Reply #14 on: December 04, 2010, 09:20:20 pm »

I always found it strange how my Legendary Weaponsmith could create Masterpiece arms in a mere second, but when tasked to make a Chain, it takes a quarter of a season.
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