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[Lav]

At the moment, a higher-skilled dwarf produces items of increasingly higher quality in increasingly shorter time.

As the result, legendary dwarves can produce a dozen exceptional and masterwork items in the time that a newbie dwarf will produce a single base quality one.

However in real life the situation is different. A highly skilled craftsman cannot produce masterwork items in hundreds - time required to produce a masterwork statue, or cabinet is much greater because of all the consideration and effort involved. At the same time, a highly skilled craftsman can produce items of regular quality at a much higher pace than a lower-skilled one.

So I'd like to suggest to reconsider the four factors: Skill, Quality, Time and Price in the following fashion:

1. Any craftsman, no matter how skilled, may produce either regular-quality or top-quality items.

2. Top quality means the dwarf will contribute his utmost effort into production of the highest-quality item available for his skill. This will take a considerable time and may result in complete (nothing produced, resources wasted) or partial (quality considerably lower than desired) failure. Time spent on production is either fixed or very weakly affected by skill. However higher skill means greatly reduced failure risks (slightly reduced chance of failure and noticeably reduced failure effects).

  Skill 0: base quality, failure means nothing is produced.
  Skill 1-2: well-crafted, failure results in no production or tattered/base quality item.
  Skill 3-5: finely-crafted, failure results in tattered/base quality item.
  Skill 6-8: superior quality, failure results in base quality item.
  Skill 9-11: exceptional quality, failure results in base quality/well-crafted item.
  Skill 12-15: masterwork, failure results in well-crafted item.
  Skill 16-19: masterwork, failure results in well-crafted/finely-crafted item.
  Skill 20: masterwork, failure results in finely-crafted item.

3. Regular quality means that the dwarf is doing his regular job, trying to mass-produce items but not trying to make each produced item into a work of art. Mass-production always yields results, so no resource is lost. Production quality slowly improved with skill, but main advantage of the skill is faster production. In other words, this production mode works similar to current system but quality grows much slower.

  Skill 0: cannot mass-produce, for a dabbler every task is a daunting one requiring his utmost effort.
  Skill 1: 100% base-quality items.
  Skill 2-10: each skill level means +10% chance to produce a well-crafted item instead.
  Skill 11: 100% well-crafted items.
  Skill 12: 90% well-crafted items, 10% finely-crafted items.
  Skill 13-17: each skill level means +15% chance to produce a finely-crafted item instead.
  Skill 18: 100% finely-crafted items.
  Skill 19: 90% finely-crafted items, 10% superior-quality items.
  Skill 20: 75% finely-crafted items, 25% superior-quality items.

4. Dwarves with a high Excellence personality trait will sometimes (or often) work top-quality instead of mass-producing. Dwarves with a low Excellence personality trait may similarly ignore the top-quality orders and go for mass-production instead.

5. Quality price modifiers should be noticeably different using this system. Production of a masterwork item requires a dwarf with a Master skill or higher to spend a lot of his time, and even then the result is not guaranteed. Even finely-crafted items are difficult to produce in large quantities unless you have a legendary dwarf. So the price coefficient function becomes much more steep to compensate.

6. Benefits of high quality for weapons and armor should be buffed up as well.

7. Finally, production of top-quality items should result in much greater experience gain per unit of time than mass-production.

8. Interface-wise, there are many ways to skin a cat, but the simplest way would probably be to add another flag for a workshop order (Q for Quality, D for Dedicated or M for Mass-produce). Other options include a dwarf labour setting, or a workshop profile setting, or whatever else.

P. S.

Regarding (8), after some thinking I'm leaning towards making this a workshop profile setting for "Mass-Production" / "Quality Production" / "Worker Choice". Then the system could be reworked into a slightly more complicated system:

a. When there's no manager in the fort, all workshops are at "worker's choice" option.
b. When there's a manager, player can configure workshops in any way he sees fit.
c. Dwarves normally abide by workshop settings. However if their Excellence trait does not match workshop setting, they will sometimes choose to ignore the settings and start working according to their personal preferences.
d. After some time, manager will notice this. Higher managerial skill means that the manager will take notice much faster, maybe even immediately.
e. At that moment, manager will get a job to "Tell off" the insubordinate dwarf. Worker will get a negative thought from this, while manager may get either a positive thought, or a negative, or none at all, depending on his own personality.
f. Depending on manager's social skills, dwarf may switch back to prescribed working mode, or ignore the manager's telling-off and continue working as he likes. This may result in repeated telling-offs until the dwarf finally takes notice.

[Lord Vetinari]

I like the general idea, however there are a couple of points that I'm not sure about. Specifically:

Skill 0: cannot mass-produce, for a dabbler every task is a daunting one requiring his utmost effort.

Two main problems here:
1 - no training available (yet?). Too much trouble in the first years of your fort, when you may need to temporary assign an unskilled dwarf to a job for some emergency.
2 - Non totally realistic. I  am most certainly not able to make some complex mechanism, but I can put together some crappy piece of furniture (I know because I actually did, and I'm no carpenter). Same thing for cooking and sewing.

When there's no manager in the fort, all workshops are at "worker's choice" option.

Just no, IMHO. At work, dwarves are obeying orders, not working at leisure. I need beds, they do beds.
Also, it's too much hassle for your first year (that is, the only time when you most likely can't have a manager but you need a lot of things done ASAP).
Complexity under the player's control is good, complexity under the A.I. control is bad and potentially frustrating.

[Lav]

I like the general idea, however there are a couple of points that I'm not sure about. Specifically:

Skill 0: cannot mass-produce, for a dabbler every task is a daunting one requiring his utmost effort.

Two main problems here:
1 - no training available (yet?). Too much trouble in the first years of your fort, when you may need to temporary assign an unskilled dwarf to a job for some emergency.

Training is perfectly available. Dabbling dwarf just cannot mass-produce, so all his tasks are "quality production", which take noticeably longer time to produce a single item but yield higher xp per unit of game time.

2 - Non totally realistic. I  am most certainly not able to make some complex mechanism, but I can put together some crappy piece of furniture (I know because I actually did, and I'm no carpenter). Same thing for cooking and sewing.

Sure you can, but you will have to spend much more time on that than someone with at least basic training.

When there's no manager in the fort, all workshops are at "worker's choice" option.

Just no, IMHO. At work, dwarves are obeying orders, not working at leisure. I need beds, they do beds.

Seems there's a misunderstanding. You order beds, dwarf does beds. But if your fortress doesn't have a manager then there's nobody to tell him "Hey you Urist McCarpenter, I don't goddamn care about your artistic ideas, but I need SIX friggin' beds by next Friday, come hell or high water, and if you don't make them on schedule, then you're in trouble."

Also, it's too much hassle for your first year (that is, the only time when you surely can't have a manager).

Huh? You can have a manager anytime. I always assign someone to that position from day one, simply for the luxury of accessing workshop profiles.

[dwarf_sadist]

I think he means getting one of the starting dwarfs to stop working and write a corporate memo to order the six beds, then waiting for said memo to be approved. It would be easier if the excavation leader could simply order the production directly.

[Lav]

Ah that.

No, you don't need manager to assign tasks to dwarves.

You need him to access the workshop profile screen where the quality setting is located and then to make dwarves actually follow that setting (assuming their personal preferences are conflicting with it).

[dwarf_sadist]

So to clarify,

1. You will still be able to simply add an order to the workshop

2. The worker will produce items to the best of his ability (rather poorly at the start, requiring lots of time and material for said poor quality item)

3. Manager will unlock ability to mass produce a certain order, toggled in the workshop profile screen.

4. At high levels, the dwarf can choose America's quality over quantity or USSR's quantity over quality, depending on how lazy he is.

Anything missing? (or wrong?)

[Lord Vetinari]

Training is perfectly available. Dabbling dwarf just cannot mass-produce, so all his tasks are "quality production", which take noticeably longer time to produce a single item but yield higher xp per unit of game time.
[cut...]
Seems there's a misunderstanding. You order beds, dwarf does beds. But if your fortress doesn't have a manager then there's nobody to tell him "Hey you Urist McCarpenter, I don't goddamn care about your artistic ideas, but I need SIX friggin' beds by next Friday, come hell or high water, and if you don't make them on schedule, then you're in trouble."

No, it was clear. I didn't explain myself, sorry. Your last sentence is exacly what I ment. It's the first year that you need those six bed ASAP, it can become a serious mess if someone chooses to spend months on that thing that I need done now (and if he's dabblig, with the risk of doing nothing and waste the resources which at the beginning of a fort are more precious and rare than when is fort is established and running) and screw up all my timetable. What if the brewer won't make enough booze because of this feature (or the carpenter not enough barrels)?
Also, realistically, they are only 7 at the beginning. Do you really think that the expedition leader won't notice that his only Whatevercraftdwarf is not doing what he has been ordered or notice it and get along with that?

What I ment by no training is that you can't have your dwarf "study" to learn something before practice.

Huh? You can have a manager anytime. I always assign someone to that position from day one, simply for the luxury of accessing workshop profiles.

I guess that it's a metter of playing style and skill. I usually have all my starting 7 doing things for most of their time (well, at least all the time that they don't spend on break), I never found an occasion to have one of them spend time in an office untill the first migrant wave arrives (which, since I'm not the best player in the world, means at best the second year). And as far as I know, a manager must be at his desk to do his work (I guess that checking that the dwarves are doing their jobs requires even more time).

[Girlinhat]

Can't believe how much confusion there is here...  Let me try and clarify?

If you have no manager, then dwarves will work exactly as they do now, but at a slower speed for higher quality.

If you have a manager, you can let the dwarf create as default, OR you can specify to make things very quickly, OR you can specify to take his time and put detail into it.

Basically, leave things as they are, but also add quality vs quantity options.  I'd love this, when I'm dealing in adamantine, diamonds, and dragon bone, I'd like to have my dwarves do the best job they can, no matter how long it takes.  When I'm dealing with Shist Toys, I don't care about quality.  Higher quality garbage is still garbage.

[iron_general]

2. Top quality means the dwarf will contribute his utmost effort into production of the highest-quality item available for his skill. This will take a considerable time and may result in complete (nothing produced, resources wasted) or partial (quality considerably lower than desired) failure. Time spent on production is either fixed or very weakly affected by skill. However higher skill means greatly reduced failure risks (slightly reduced chance of failure and noticeably reduced failure effects).
 

I like this suggestion but I think its unrealistic if spending extra time and taking extra care with a project increases the chance of failure.

[Girlinhat]

Yeah, that seems a bit odd.  Taking extra time should garuntee something good, and it costs extra time to do it.

[Jeoshua]

Here's a concept: Building Points

It would be completely internal, no min-maxing necessary (but !!SCIENCE!! would be available like normal).  Basically, each item has a base cost in build points.  Quality modifiers multiply it.  And Dwarves can make so and so many build points of item based on their skill.  Now, in the (P)rofile section of a workshop, you could set some form of minimum/maximum quality of item to make.

How this would play out, in game, is that you make a workshop, and set it to produce, let's say, masterwork axes.  Any dwarf with the weaponsmithing labor enabled could normally come and work on these axes, but you want to set the (P)rofile to make sure it's only weaponsmiths with high skills that come and work here (this is already in the game).  But imagine you don't, for right now.

You have a Dabbling Weaponsmith.  No skill at all really, but he knows WHAT a weaponsmith is, so he gets to make 1 build point per "turn", or whatever unit of time.  Problem in this situation is that a masterwork axe takes, let's say 10 base points for it being an axe, maybe x20 since it's masterwork, therefore 200 point cost.  That Dabbler will almost certainly never complete the axe before he starves to death working on it.

So before Urist McUseless dies trying to make this axe, you set the (P)rofile screen to only accept legendary +5 Weaponsmiths, one of which you happen to have.  The difference between him and the Dabbler is immense, maybe something like 20 build points per "turn".  So instead of taking 200 "turns", it only takes this weaponsmith 10.  He can be done with this masterwork before the enemies get in to kill you all.

On the other hand, you could change the workbench to spew out useless crap, as well.  You want alot of craft items pawn off on unsuspecting idiot traders trade? Then set the quality to "base" in the new (P)rofile option.  And set your Legendary Craftsdwarf to make it.  Now, these base crafts might take only 1 build point to make... but what's this? Your Legendary Craftsdwarf has 20 build points per turn? Well then he makes 20 items in the time it normally takes to make 1.... maybe, depending on how it was implemented, actually a stack of 20 items per "round" of crafting.

And the beauty of this is, all it really takes to make this happen, that we don't have in the game already, is to add some way of keeping track of how many build points a worker can generate, and how many build points an item takes to make.  Interface-wise, it's just an option on the (P)rofile screen, and nothing more.

[Girlinhat]

Eh, then it's easy to get masterwork everything.  I like the "roll of the dice" of quality, but I'd like some extra control to weight those dice.  It's not nearly as fun when you replace the dice with a single number.

[Jeoshua]

As a counter-argument, with fixed production costs and labor force skill, it becomes possible to calculate for mass production more effectively.

Run a few calculations and find you need 4 workers (and WHICH 4 workers) to make $1000 dorfbux to get that thing from the caravan you want so bad in exactly the 2 months remaining before they pack up and leave.

Maybe they could get a random bonus on top of their fixed abilities...

[Lav]

If you have no manager, then dwarves will work exactly as they do now, but at a slower speed for higher quality.

Actually, I meant the following:

1. When you have no manager, dwarves choose to work USSR style or USA style depending on their "striving for excellence" trait (but still should go for USSR style most of the time).
2. When you have a manager, you can control how the dwarves work per workshop. However dwarves with high (or low) enough value in Excellence will sometimes try to ignore your orders. It's manager's job then to get them back on the right path.
3. Even without the manager, the player is fully capable to control how the dwarves work - it just takes a bit of more manual work to assign labours to dwarves with proper character traits.

And no, the goals of this suggestion are not so player-friendly as some might assume. :-) The ultimate goal is to drastically reduce the number of top-quality items in the game while making them much more useful and expensive. There is simply an excessive amount of top-quality stuff at the moment, with dwarves getting legendary too fast and producing too much of too high-quality stuff. Masterwork slate mug should be something a player would treasure - because it's costs will be in thousands, and because his legendary stonecrafter spent several goddamn weeks making the thing. Masterwork is just one step away from the artifact quality after all.

I like this suggestion but I think its unrealistic if spending extra time and taking extra care with a project increases the chance of failure.

That's actually perfectly realistic. When a master is making a top-quality statue, he's making a work of art. He's working on it... and then suddenly discovers his fantastic idea was not so fantastic after all. But the stone is already ruined. So the most he can get from it is some meager fine quality.

On the other side, if he's working like a robot on a conveyor, mass-producing items according to a predefined plan, without and freedom of creativity, there's very little that can go wrong.

It's the difference between working as an artist and working as a labourer.

[iron_general]

Sure but if I pay someone to make me to best battle axe s/he can make, I expect a battle axe to be made becaused s/he has been payed to do it. I don't mind if its exceptional rather than masterwork but it is only logical that a better than average battle axe will be produced as s/he intends to put extrar time and effort into it. If you can make a good weapon or chair one you are quite capable of repeating the process. If one put a lot of time into it and is extra carful his/her probability of failure diminishes. I'd assume some the extra time spent on quality works involves planning which could negate the situation presented in the previous post. While I agree that not every quality oriented order should always resault in a master piece it it should have a much lower chance of failure when compared to ordering someone to produce the most <x> in the least amount of time.