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[aka010101]

Alright, this is going to be a bit of a beast of a post, since it covers a whole lot of topics under one idea.
To begin with, workshops, here's my suggested system, modified from a lot of stuff i've seen over the last few months on the forum.
* Workshops are not built, but are instead designated, similar to how the hospital works now.
* Various pieces of equipment and tools are needed for the workshop to function. For example, a blacksmith's would need: A furnace or forge for heating metal, an anvil, a hammer , a pair of tongs, and a source of water to quench the metal such as a bucket.
* Multiple Dwarves can work in the workshop zone, as long as they're doing two different tasks, to use the blacksmith example above, with only one extra set of tongs for tools, One dwarf could heat the metal and quench finished pieces, and the other could do the actual smithing with the hammer and anvil, speeding up the process. Making things could be a multi part process as illustrated above.
* Not all tasks require a workshop, Milking a creature for instance, would really only require the creature and a bucket.
* Different levels of complexity can accomplish different tasks. A workshop dedicated to making simple clay pots would only need a kiln and a potter's wheel, but creating glazes would require different tools, and making indents and patterns in the pottery would require additional tools.

Furniture has a lot of potential for variables. For starters, there would be a lot more call for equipment for workshops. Some pieces have to be assembled on the spot, such as a furnace, but most pieces would be built in an appropriate shop.
* Different designs of pieces of furniture would do different things. Example, benches or tables could be made larger to serve more dwarves, or simply be a small table for personal use.
* Design could vary across different cultures, A tropical Culture could favor four poster beds with insect netting, while a more temperate one prefers something more basic.
* Different levels of sophistocation in workshop furniture could affect performance, Such as the difference between a normal furnace and a blast furnaces, which would be harder to make.

Tools are something that's been slightly implemented. For example, your dwarves need axes to cut wood, and picks to mine. Some other tools are already available, like buckets, and mugs, though some have no use currently.
*Tools could be stored in workshops for group use, or owned by dwarves, which would come into play once the economy starts, a good craftsdwarf may purchase his own set of superior tools.
* A dwarf (or adventurer!) with the appropriate tools could complete tasks without a workshop, such as whittling a figure out of wood if he had a knife and some wood. This Could perhaps lead to such things as dwarven hobbies and art projects.
* Greater or Lesser quality of tools affects the outcome of a finished project. A statue made with a bad chisel , no matter the skill of the dwarf, will be markedly inferior to one made with a quality tool by the same dwarf.

Alright, i think that's all of it, i'll edit this as needed as you guys post suggestions. Have at it.

[NW_Kohaku]

... Alot of new threads today.  I guess the releases bring this sort of stuff out...

Anyway, while interesting, and honestly the sort of thing I'd kind of like to see, one of the reasons we don't have this sort of tracking of multiple types of tools used in different workshops already is that it would create a massive glut of item types for the player to have to track.

Requiring an anvil for a forge is one thing.  Requiring a player remember a half-dozen specific tools for every single job, and preventing the player from being able to do those jobs without first having some of those tools is going to make the game pretty much impossible for new players to get to understand.  ("Why can't I get my carpenter to do anything?  What, she won't work on chairs or tables without a lathe?  What the heck is a lathe?")

While I don't think that a single leftover stone from mining or a stray log is really enough to properly simulate what it takes to make a proper workshop, I do think there needs to be some limit on how many random doo-dads we cram into this game. 

Currently, engineers produce "mechanisms" which are magical things that are trap components, door openers, drawbridge raisers, floodgate lifters, lever actuators, gearboxes, and generally whatever they need to be whenever they need to be it.  Having some sort of generic "toolset" item that could work for carpenters and masons alike might be more appropriate than having sculptors and masons work with entirely separate sets of tools.

You also have to consider what it is you are going to be requiring dwarves to carry with them on an embark.  Anvils are a big decision in this game right now, because they are required for metalworking, and there is no way to make an anvil without already having an anvil (barring some freaky artifact cave spider silk anvil or something).  Other than the anvil, which you'll have to trade for, you can pretty much survive using nothing but a single pick.

So, if you have this suggestion come true, what items will be required of dwarves to carry with them on embark to start up a fort, and what can they manage to make on the spot with improvised tools?

(Also, as an organizational note, you might want to try using the [ li ] markup instead of just the asterisks.)

[Granite26]

It's been brought up before, a couple times I've seen.  Here's an early version

[sockless]

Well I was thinking about this the other day too. But I saw that it had already been suggested and was on the eternal voting suggestions. But that seems to have vanished, so I may as well suggest more things here. Hopefully this can become a good thread like the improved farming.

Throughout all my suggestions I shall refer to carpentry for examples, as that's my area of expertise.

Tools

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Most workshops should require tools, since it isn't really feasible that dwarves make stone furniture by hand.

So, off we go into the Wild Blue Yonder!

The basic workshops shouldn't require any specialised tools, since that would add to the things that you require on embark.

Instead, the basic workshops should use things that are already in game.

The carpenters workshop should require an axe as the basic tool, since to make the most basic furniture, one could use just an axe. In this vein, the masons shop should require a pickaxe.

The tools that are used to build furniture should affect it's quality a lot, maybe more than the skill does right now.

Workshops should have several tools that can be used, so a carpenters workshop could have chisels, mallets, saws etc. Every one of the tools you have should effect the quality of the finished work.

Tools should also be needed for more jobs. Fishing for instance, could use nets, spears and fishing rods.

Materials
See Kotaku's thread on mass and volume here: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=61215

Workshops

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Workshops should be zones like hospital zones are right now. The most basic workshop would be just a empty space where workers can do work and put finished things. Then they can get more complex with furniture and machines in them to make better stuff.

Workshops should be designated from a new menu screen, and should be designated in the same way that burrows are right now, so that you can have multi-story workshops.

You would then be able to place machines and furniture in the workshop in the way you can in a hospital.

Multiple dwarves would be able to work in a workshop zone, so instead of having 5 masons workshops, you'd have just 1 big shop. They would be able to work on the same project or they could work on different projects.

Machines

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Machines would work much in the same way as tools would, so they would add quality to whatever you are building.

They would be placed in the same way furniture is placed, but from a submenu in the workshop options.

Quality

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The quality of items shouldn't be a set of 5 distinct values, but instead should be a floating point number calculated from the individual quality of certain things, like the skill level of the dorf and the quality of the tree that you used.

The more tools you use, the longer it should take. Some tools will do the same thing faster than others though. This is because bodging together a crappy table with an axe would take a lot less time than a really nice table with turned legs and a marqueted top.

That's all for now, since I have to go, but I'll update it later.

[Waparius]

Currently, engineers produce "mechanisms" which are magical things that are trap components, door openers, drawbridge raisers, floodgate lifters, lever actuators, gearboxes, and generally whatever they need to be whenever they need to be it.  Having some sort of generic "toolset" item that could work for carpenters and masons alike might be more appropriate than having sculptors and masons work with entirely separate sets of tools.

Utter agreement. "Tools" would be enough at a basic level in this sort of game. If you can make them out of stone, metal and bone using nothing more than a toolmaker's zone (and maybe a lump of rock as a workbench) it solves the Anvil Problem and keeps up the requirements for various workshops.

But one thing that workshops should still be able to do is tell you what you need to be able to do useful work in them, just like an Ashery asks for blocks and buckets.

[NW_Kohaku]

I still think we want to avoid having players need to specifically keep track of how many carpenter's lathes are in their fortress, and having pages of tools in the forge's menus to wade through to find the command to make a certain type of saw or whatever.

A "craftsdwarf's tools" item that can be used in any standard workshop (including chisel, hammer, saw, and a few other basic items) can be made into a fungible single item that would work for masons, carpenters, potters, and most other workmen without having to produce a glut of about 70 new tools to cram into each workshop.

Make them producable with stone and metal, so that all you need is a single set of tools and a pick to embark.  Tools can be just a part of the building cost of a workshop, and recoverable when you deconstruct the workshop.  Metal tools might be superior to stone tools in general, but having masterwork tools would be better still. 

Using spears and nets for fishing is fairly neat as an idea, although fishing is already so underwhelming in this game that I wonder about whether we really need to make it harder to do than it already is. (Of course, the spear can help fend off the carp...)

If we add nets, maybe having a weighted net could be introduced as a weapon used in the off hand instead of a shield in combat, so that we have nets as a dual-purpose weapon.  I know I've seen suggestions like this before.

There are still many jobs that would require different tools than standard workdwarf's tools, though. 

• Butchers would need cleavers, although an axe could certainly do in a pinch.
• Doctors will probably need a special set of tools, whether it is a scalpel and needle for sutures and a host of other specialized tools or just a bonesaw and a barrel of whiskey.
• Tanning needs at least some buckets or barrels.  Tanning is typically done with sewage, which isn't really in the game yet, so that's not going to be much of a problem, and I guess we could have some sort of knife tool like a butcher's or a cook's go into the preparation process.
• Brewing requires different kinds of setups depending on what you're actually making, but I am not at all the sort of expert on this that other people who have made suggestions on booze are, so I'll just skip out of this one.
• Cooking requires at least a set of knives for all that mincing that goes on.  Stone knives could do, I suppose.  These knives could be shared with several other tasks, like tanning or butchery, so that there's only a couple new tool types being added in.  Maybe a table rather than a simple stone could be a decent idea, although there are plenty of good ideas for ways to have more than one type of cooking, including with ovens and cauldrons and the like.
• Fish cleaning should also take a knife set.
• For metalsmiths, we should be able to assume that the anvil comes with the hammer and such that are necessary to make metal items in the forge.  That way, it's just one item you need to track.
• Weavers would need a loom.  Rather than create an item that only they use, maybe it is better to require they use wood (unless you can make a stone loom...) and just have a special task to construct a loom when the workshop is built/designated.
• Something similar can be said of many jobs that need access to fire, like kilns but also kitchens.  The furnace would have to be built on the spot from fireproof materials.

So... I'm thinking we can reduce this down to three new items, which shouldn't be much more of a load on the player than it already is, and players just need to produce tools from something like a crafstdwarf's workshop to be able to get by.

... Maybe there could be some sort of "improvize tools" ability, where you could fashion a very basic pick or tools out of stone so that you can literally bootstrap a fort up out of nothing at all?

[aka010101]

I am very much in favor of the improvised tools kohaku, Since adventure mode already has the knapping skill for doing just that sort of thing with rocks. I still lean towards more kinds of tools, but i think your argument for early simplicty has a lot of merit.

[Jake]

A "craftsdwarf's tools" item that can be used in any standard workshop (including chisel, hammer, saw, and a few other basic items) can be made into a fungible single item that would work for masons, carpenters, potters, and most other workmen without having to produce a glut of about 70 new tools to cram into each workshop.

I suggested something not dissimilar a while back, but with the option of customising how many kinds of tools you needed for each labour. I envisioned an item_tool raw with syntax along these lines:
[ITEM_TOOL:MACHETE]
[item details not unlike those in item_weapon]
[SKILL:WOODCUTTING]
[SKILL:BUTCHERY]
[SKILL:PLANT_GATHERING]
[SKILL:COOKING]

With the above, you could customise the selection of tools to be as simple of as complex as you liked, from a generic "carpenter's toolkit" or "metalworker's toolkit" that covered everything to ten or fifteen different sizes of hammer alone. A happy medium for vanilla would be two or three different sizes each of hammer, chisel and sewing needle, a couple of farming tools and a generic "knife" that covered just about everything else.

[Dutchling]

More than one tool per workshop is just stupid, even one is not necessary especially in workshop you'll want very early on

[Jake]

I am very much in favor of the improvised tools kohaku, Since adventure mode already has the knapping skill for doing just that sort of thing with rocks. I still lean towards more kinds of tools, but i think your argument for early simplicty has a lot of merit.

Alternatively, why not do the same as with hunters, and give any dwarf whose highest skill is in a particular labour that requires it the necessary tools for the job free with the skill points?

[NW_Kohaku]

I suggested something not dissimilar a while back, but with the option of customising how many kinds of tools you needed for each labour. I envisioned an item_tool raw with syntax along these lines:
[ITEM_TOOL:MACHETE]
[item details not unlike those in item_weapon]
[SKILL:WOODCUTTING]
[SKILL:BUTCHERY]
[SKILL:PLANT_GATHERING]
[SKILL:COOKING]

With the above, you could customise the selection of tools to be as simple of as complex as you liked, from a generic "carpenter's toolkit" or "metalworker's toolkit" that covered everything to ten or fifteen different sizes of hammer alone. A happy medium for vanilla would be two or three different sizes each of hammer, chisel and sewing needle, a couple of farming tools and a generic "knife" that covered just about everything else.

I'm pretty sure current token structure already exists to declare that different jobs or workshops use those tools, rather than the tools declaring the jobs that use them...

More than one tool per workshop is just stupid, even one is not necessary especially in workshop you'll want very early on

While it is perfectly fine to disagree, it would probably be better to articulate your reasoning a little more than that you think the idea is "stupid".


Currently, we have the vast majority of buildings take up one block-type material, so you have a "cost" for each building, but they are so negligible as to be meaningless.  To add at least a little sense of realism, we could have a single "craftsdwarf's tookit" that includes the tools for a large variety of different tasks.  Looking some things up, I think that kilnworkers and glassblowers may need a separate set of tools for that specific function.  Anvils can be expanded into some sort of "Hammer and Anvil" set of tools so that you have just one menu item that represents everything you need to start a forge.  There's nothing you use an anvil for that doesn't involve making a forge, so there's no point in building or storing an anvil without all the other materials it takes to get a forge running.

• Craftsdwarf's Toolkit is used for:
• Carpentry
• Crossbow Making
• Masonry
• Stone Detailing (they would have to carry it with them)
• Gem Cutting
• Gem Setting
• Leatherworking
• Woodcrafting
• Stonecrafting
• Siege Engineering
• Mechanics
• Architect (should have specialized tools, but I don't want to make a toolset for just one job)
• Knife Set (could be used as a last ditch weapon, and obsidian should be a high class material for this as well as metal)
• Small Animal Dissection
• Surgury
• Suturing (Just assume one of these knives is a needle?)
• Butchery
• Plant Processing
• Cooking
• Shearing
• Fish Cleaning
• Fish Dissection
• Bonecarving
• Kilnworker's Tools (A set of tongs and molds and those straws they blow glass through of at least fire/magma-resistant material for working with various kilns that don't take anvils.  Metal or stone raw materials to make these.)
• Glassmaking
• Potash Making
• Lye Making
• Glazing
• Furnace Operating
• Other tool using skills
• Fishing: spears or nets
• Farming: Planting seeds could use a pick (or a mattock) in place of a hoe.  Harvesting might need a knife set.
• Brewing: Can take a whole slew of different special equipment, although this might be best represented in having certain skills required in constructing on-the-spot buildings like stills that require copper and metalworking to make a copper still "building".
• Weaving/Clothesmaking: Same as above, they would need specialized tools that would just have to be special-built.  A spinning wheel and a loom are things you could just build on-the-spot with some extra labors to make the building take longer.
• Cooking: Maybe something similar for cooking, involving setting up big pots or stoves or other major cooking equipment for certain types of cooking.
• Strand Extracting: Maybe this takes tools? How should I know what this entails?!
• Cleaning: I kind of want to say a rag or something

Pottery is kind of hard to place, they would need a set of tools most like a set of knives, but I guess that ultimately, I guess we can say that they could work by hand or with improvised tools like small carved rocks to apply certain patterns to their work.

The other sorts of jobs already have some materials associated with them.  Milking takes a bucket, and cheesemaking takes the bucket the milk was in, so stuff like that are alright.

That... should be everything...


EDIT:
AH! I forgot.

There's also the entire "making these tools" thing.  If we can make most tools from basic stonecrafting or metalcrafting, then we can just mass-produce a whole bunch of tools without really needing to care about having specific tools for specific jobs.  That way, early on, you can just throw down an order to make 20 crafting tools and 10 knife sets and 5 kilnworker tools, and not really have to care too much about the requirements for one particular job or another.

Making a player have to micromanage whether they have a lathe or a particular kind of hammer as an upgrade to their carpentry workshops isn't going to be fun.  Remember, we're supposed to be the leader and manager of the entire fortress, and we can't be babysitting every single dwarf, telling him to make this specific tool to upgrade his own workshop.  If there are things like upgrades to a workshop, they need to be able to manufacture (or order the manufacturing and purchase) that sort of stuff on their own.   (Wait, didn't I already have this exact same conversation a few weeks ago?)


edited for formatting and typo errors.[/list][/list]

[aka010101]

Agreed , micromanaging in dwarf mode isn't fun if it's overdone, but having those tools for adventure mode WOULD add some more depth and challenge.
As For dwarf mode, perhaps tools could be part of shop stock for when the economy is fixed? Basic tools could be part of the workshop, and come with the buildings for it. Like a 'worktable' that comes with basic tools for say, wood working. Any additional things would have to be purchased by the dwarves, something useful for them to spend their money on.

Anyone have any thoughts on the suggestions for how workshops work and different types of furniture? this has kinda turned into a tool discussion, not that that isn't part of it, but... some feedback on the other two parts would be appreciated.

[NW_Kohaku]

Alright, well, honestly, I'm not particularly sold on why having a "workshop zone" is really any better than just having workshops.  Workshops give players some direct control over who works on what.  What's the difference between a workshop zone large enough for two worker dwarves and two workshops if we exclude the possible confusion about what sorts of activities you restrict one specific dwarf to.  (So that only your highest skilled mason makes tables and chairs for the dining room, while the lower skilled masons make doors and floodgates.)

Likewise, what's the advantage of a "long bench" that takes up multiple tiles?  Presumably, it takes up twice as much material to make a bench twice as long, and you could just be making two chairs for that price. 

[Solace]

Hm, you could have some basic tools as a requirement (IE, how the anvil is necessary now), but for better-made things (if better made meant more effective for more than weapons) you would need more tools, then better made tools. A master carpenter can't make masterworks with a kitchen knife.

As far as the suggestion in general goes, I think Toady mentioned that he wanted workshops to eventually work like this... I guess so that a thriving metal industry didn't mean array four smelters and four foundries together. Ooor... so you wouldn't have to repetitively build and deconstruct workshops if you wanted to share anvils.

[Granite26]

Hm, you could have some basic tools as a requirement (IE, how the anvil is necessary now), but for better-made things (if better made meant more effective for more than weapons) you would need more tools, then better made tools. A master carpenter can't make masterworks with a kitchen knife.

As far as the suggestion in general goes, I think Toady mentioned that he wanted workshops to eventually work like this... I guess so that a thriving metal industry didn't mean array four smelters and four foundries together. Ooor... so you wouldn't have to repetitively build and deconstruct workshops if you wanted to share anvils.

Also, it allows your fort to develop.  You can get crappy beds right away, but over time you replace everything with better quality than was possible at first.