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[Silverionmox]

...

Just because none of those combinations are usable together doesn't mean that you can't have a multi-talented, jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none dwarf.  After all you can have under the current system an Talented Carpenter who is also a Novice Brewer, Weaponsmith, Mechanic, and Glazer.  Or a High Master Milker and Competent Fish Cleaner.[/quote]Yes, but that will never arise naturally. The player won't let their dwarf gain skills in so many skills, because that's not efficient (and he'll likely die before gaining them anyway); so if such a dwarf arrives by migration he seems like a RNG fluke, not real. On the other hand, composite skills might mean that a dwarf starts as metalcrafter, but you run out of metal so you let him stonecraft and then your mason dies so you let him make furniture because he has skill in stone meanwhile and then your carpenter gets a failed mood and said dwarf is the only one with furniture experience, so he's the natural choice for replacement carpenter. And after all, it's just the random generator here that makes this difference, not the skill system.

Those are two of my latest migrants.  There's no synergy between their skills right now, without multiplying the places at which the RNG can screw you over, which is what your proposal suggests.

It's the other way around, you can always find some synergy in the skill matrix, unless you are searching for a rare three-category specialization... but the equivalent to the current skills are a combination of two categories (material + tool, typically), while a combination of three limitations would be rare, but would also be faster to train because of the focus. So dwarves would typically do a row or column of jobs in the matrix, not a single x-y(-z) combination.

Or to put it another way, said armorer has half the experience that one who didn't need a separate materials skills would have towards making quality goods.  Rather than either being good at making a useful product or not, you've got more hoops to jump through.

No, the material skill is an essential part of the armorer skill. Getting a "leather armorer" is not cheating you out of an metal armorer; a unique skill system might have given you a novice armorer, or a leatherworker (if it didn't give a lyemaker). The skill matrix just ensures that, if you need someone to make metal armor, you can use any metalworker or any armorer you're stuck with and still get decent results; that leatherworker from the unique skills system is about as useful as a peasant in that regard. Especially given the tendency of dwarves to have accidents, it's a good thing to have skill flexibility.
If you're worried about the hoops, we should have a binary skill system anyway...

No, I get the idea of having a matrix of skills leveled at the same time for synergy.  I'm not disagreeing with you because I don't get the idea.  I just think...

• It adds interface confusion and complexity, partially thanks to incomplete material/job grids (Leather Furniture?) and partially thanks to one-material skills, like Mechanics.

For the (as yet hypothetical) job interface, it's as simple as putting an x on the matrix where an exclusive combination of skills does not have any jobs defined with them. Anyway, the job selection of most dwarves will, especially initially, be rather broad (anything with wood, anything with stone, anything with the oven, anything with engraving, any hauling, etc.) Specialization will follow later, as the need arises, and we may assume the player knows what he is doing by then.

One-material skills don't exist, I think. Even mechanisms are already made at the forge too. Skills that don't require a material, or for which a material doesn't matter (diplomacy, hauling, etc.) simply ignore any material skills and distribute their xp over the other skills. (Making mechanisms ought to be crafting or smithing, while installing them ought to be mechanics proper, anyway.)

• It makes some skills less useful than they already are.  (e.g. Glassmaking, Leatherworking.)

On the contrary: if you have two glassmakers in a unique skill system they are useless for anything else; with a skill matrix they're still decent crafters, and can eg. be quickly reoriented to stonecrafting if you run out of glass. The same with leatherworkers: in a unique skill system, a leatherworker, even though he has made a thousand leather helmets and armour, is still an absolute noob if you want him to replace the recently deceased armorer; with a skill matrix he'll have skill in armoring, even if not in metal, and will produce decent stuff.

• It focuses mostly on breaking up skills which produce items with quality, complicating leveling them.

How so? You limit a dwarf to the jobs you want him to train. Then he goes off and trains them. That is true for both systems.

• It fails to address most low-utility, quality-less skills like the excessively fine-grained farming skills.

That last one is important to me.  You completely ignore the quagmire of useless skills for farmers, rangers, and fishers (e.g. the widely hated Fish Dissector.)  The material system does little to fix that, and proposing another incompatible, independent matrix of food skills on top of that would only produce more confusion.

I've taken the need for a simplifying revision and redefinition of skills for granted, really. We can use a general "food" category, make a basic distinction between meat, fish and plants, or (theoretically) have a different skill for each tissue type of each species (lamb chops are not the same as pork chops, I tell you! :p ). That is all a matter of making the right associations between jobs on one hand and skills and tools needed and trained on the other hand, and it should be possible to do that in the raws.


In addition, there will be many future additions to the game and we don't want to have to debate again and again to determine each time which skills ought to be scrapped and which not. If for example a new material is added in a matrix system, that will automatically combine with all furniture, items you could make of it and we won't have to consider whether to add a <material>crafting category too or only a <material>weaving category too.

[Valdrax]

Yes, but that will never arise naturally.  The player won't let their dwarf gain skills in so many skills, because that's not efficient (and he'll likely die before gaining them anyway); so if such a dwarf arrives by migration he seems like a RNG fluke, not real.

Yes, and neither of our proposals eliminate RNG flukes.  However, my proposal is intended to make RNG flukes more manageable by eliminating bad rolls from the skill table.  It's also intended to make "bad" rolls on the Strange Mood table less frustrating by having single skills cover more ground.

Your alternative proposal adds more bad results to the skill table by divying up existing skills into more fine-grained, lower utility individual combinations.  You get dwarves that are more broadly mediocre at a wider variety of tasks unless they repeatedly train doing the one thing you wanted them to be good at.  (And don't hold your breath that a Strange Mood is going to get lucky and boost that unless you've already trained that combination higher than all others.)

Sure, you can more easily cross a dwarf from one task to the other without having to start from dabbling, but a good fortress economy thrives on highly-focused specialists, not on jack-of-all trade generalists.

Those are two of my latest migrants.  There's no synergy between their skills right now, without multiplying the places at which the RNG can screw you over, which is what your proposal suggests.

It's the other way around, you can always find some synergy in the skill matrix[...] [D]warves would typically do a row or column of jobs in the matrix, not a single x-y(-z) combination.

And they would do them poorly compared to someone who was already skills in all the aspects of the job they needed to do.  You don't want a Leather Mechanic -- you want a Stone (or Metal*) Mechanic.  You cares if he can both half-ass leather bags and mechanisms?  If your fortress is working properly, you're going to want him to specialize in one of those skillsets and let someone else cover the others.

(* Yeah, I forget you can forge metal mechanisms because I've never had a use for them.)

Basically, I see no more advantage in a Skilled Leather (Material), Skilled Mechanic (Product) under your system than I do in a DF2010 Adequate Leatherworker, Adequate Mechanic.  You're just half as skilled in two unrelated areas.  If broad mediocrity is your goal, then fine.  It's not mine, though.

(Making mechanisms ought to be crafting or smithing, while installing them ought to be mechanics proper, anyway.)

For the love of Armok, why?  You just actually proposed keeping the mechanics skill around and then making it less useful for no discernible reason.

It makes some skills less useful than they already are.  (e.g. Glassmaking, Leatherworking.)

On the contrary: if you have two glassmakers in a unique skill system they are useless for anything else...

That's fine.  If I have a Legendary Glassmaker that I leveled up from Novice through churning out raw green glass for my Jewelers to practice with, then I want him to be just as good at making large, serrated disks as coffins, tubes, or vials.  I don't want to spend several evenings getting this dwarf to churn out each of those products to get high quality ones.

I also don't want a jeweler who achieves mastery by leveling up on said glass gems to be only semi-competent with the rare, irreplaceable, dug-from-the-ground gems in my fortress.  I want him to be a legendary jeweler, not a legendary glass jeweler (and middling anything-else jeweler).  The system you propose would ensure that you have to consume rare, valuable materials to get good at them.  No practice using cheap "training" materials; no practice building "simple" goods to get ready to build expensive ones.

It focuses mostly on breaking up skills which produce items with quality, complicating leveling them.

How so? You limit a dwarf to the jobs you want him to train. Then he goes off and trains them. That is true for both systems.

Well, for one thing, depending on your interface, it can become very hard to limit said dwarf if they're enabled to work on all jobs with a particular material and all jobs producing a single type of good.  If not, then I imagine that fiddling with new migrants' skill selections will be a common and irritating chore.

You completely ignore the quagmire of useless skills for farmers, rangers, and fishers (e.g. the widely hated Fish Dissector.)  The material system does little to fix that, and proposing another incompatible, independent matrix of food skills on top of that would only produce more confusion.

I've taken the need for a simplifying revision and redefinition of skills for granted, really. We can use a general "food" category, make a basic distinction between meat, fish and plants, or (theoretically) have a different skill for each tissue type of each species (lamb chops are not the same as pork chops, I tell you! :p ). That is all a matter of making the right associations between jobs on one hand and skills and tools needed and trained on the other hand, and it should be possible to do that in the raws.

Good Lord.  You're actually proposing that a system in which a dwarf might only be good with handling a single type of creature out of hundreds is an improvement over the current quagmire of useless farm labor?

Okay, let's ignore that moment of (holy crap I hope) hyperbole and just go with fish, plant, meat.  Now you've got a grid full of even more pointless, empty selections.  Do leatherworkers and bone crafters have to treat fish & meat differently?  Is there a point to being a good Plant Milker?  Do we still separate Herbalist & Grower?  Where do bees come in?  Are there actually any skills outside of butchery/dissection/cleaning that have enough overlap to justify a grid?

Will I want to kill a Fish Armorer any less than my fifth Presser migrant?

In addition, there will be many future additions to the game and we don't want to have to debate again and again to determine each time which skills ought to be scrapped and which not. If for example a new material is added in a matrix system, that will automatically combine with all furniture, items you could make of it and we won't have to consider whether to add a <material>crafting category too or only a <material>weaving category too.

Yeah, that's great, except that you have to decide:
a)  Does this combination make ANY sense?  (Which, we've decided with many existing combinations is not true.)
b)  What workshop does it associate with?

It's hardly automatic, and you'd have to add tags in the entity, workshop, & reaction raws for each combination anyway.

[zwei]

Okay ...

1) Eliminating "bad rolls" is highly subjective.

Most players simply learned to tough it up and not wait for that Legendary X to come in migration wave. Not to mention that you rarely, ever get dwarf that you want to use right now (how nice, grand master gemsetter came. Too bad we are in need of mechanisms for traps right not.) even if he is actually usefull.

Good fortress economy is pointless line: Not everyone cares about minmaxing and major point here is training new dwarves or replacements - where any boost comes in handy. You are always in risk of more suited dwarf immigrating and you either have to have backup plan for him or retire your current one. Not to mention accidents and whatnot.

Besides, your highly focused dwarf has to start somewhere. And people actually tends to make jack of all trades on which they turn off labors as candidates for more focused tasks come.

This is thing that you seem to ignore - half assed anything is better than nothing. And stories of current RNG giving people just the right dwarf for job at hand are quite rare. And half assed that means widly versatile is way better than highly focused that is worthless at the moment.

You should of course like your leather/mechanic. first, that is a bit hyperbole. I would imagine sane implementation would give you mechanic/stone/metal skillset or leather/armor/clothing skillset. or both if migrant is generated as both leatherworkers and mechanic. (which would actually make him decent at making metal armors...)

Moods are intereting problem to bring - I would assume best implementstion that everyone is going to like would be to give experience to each skill linked to job that would make base item from which artifact was derived. Dwarf making wooden picolo - woodcrafter equivalent - would become legendary crafter and woordworker. Making him legendary woodcrafter and 1/2 legendary carpenter or bonecarver.

I can imagine this feature to be quite usefull when your peasant happens to get mood - instead of yet another (useless) legendary x-crafter hauler you get fair chance of salvaging him as whatever he would be suited for.

[TantrumTime]

We could just take the exact same migrants as before and 'split' any skills they start with into the matrix. A master mason would become a master stoneworker and a master builder, an adept weaponsmith would become an adept metalworker and an adept blade forger. There would be no 'fish armorers' as every armorer would come with metalworking EXP.

[Xen0n]

Hi!  First off I think a lot of great ideas have come out of this thread; honestly if any one of them were implemented I think it would help with organisation / migrant usage a lot. 

That said I think some of the descriptions of the ideas may be difficult to visualise and in the hopes of clarifying I used my Competent: Spreadsheets skill to throw something together.  Sorry if this is repetitive / unecessary, I just thought it might help explain things to people who, like me, may have had trouble grasping some of the concepts here.

Also, this does not include Medical, Military, Social, or Hauling Labours.  I figure those are pretty well handled by the current system and could continue to use the same structure.  I also counted "Siege Operator" as a Military Skill, "Architecture" as a Social Skill, and "Pump Operator" as a Hauling/Unskilled Labour, but that's beside the point.

Below is what I envisioned when reading about the Skill Matrix Idea.  The Columns are materials handled, and the Rows are Actions performed.  This is independent of any reorganisations of Labours/Jobs and workshops; this example could use exactly the same Labours/Tasks and Workshops as in current DF.  I.E. you could enable "Carpentry' but disable "Woodcrafter" and "Siege Engineer" on a dwarf. (Although adding a few new Labours, the ones in brackets "()" might make thing clearer.)

Spoiler: Example Skill Matrix (click to show/hide)

EDIT: Oops, ignore any mention of "Blacksmith"

Spoiler: Smaller version (click to show/hide)

In the example the 'Detailing' row could easily be merged with the "Crafting" row.

The main idea behind it is that, for the displayed Labours, you do not actually earn experience points / levels in that Labour, but in the appropiate Row and Column.  To determine the effective skill level for a Labour, you just average the Row and Column together.  (Again, this is more of a conceptual tool, so if in practice it's bit unbalanced, you could instead multiply the Row and Coulmn together, or take the average of the square of the Row and Column etc.)

So for any cell containing multiple labours, all the labours draw from the same values.  For example, "Carpenter" and "Siege Engineer" could still be two separate Labours (Or not, however you want to organise things), but they will always be done at the same level by a particular dwarf.  E.G. if a dwarf draws on the "Wood" Column and "Construction" Row for both Carpentry and Siege Engineering, so he will perform both tasks equally well.

What this does is limit the number of effective "Things to level up in by performing tasks" to the number of filled Cells in the matrix.  There are 51 filled cells, where there used be 52 (I think?) separate Labours in vanilla DF.  Even with the "Detailing" Row included, there is the same number of possible items that you could spend time training in, as in vanilla DF.  (Since any Carpentry task also trains the same values for Siege Engineering, they count as one "thing to train in").  The X's are just cells where there are no current tasks.  So no matter what, this does not increase the number of available skill slots / increase the chance to get a crappy skill on a migrant.  If you combine the Detailing Row, it actually reduces the number of options.

So, onto practical examples.  The situation of the dreaded Lyemaker Migrant.  In this case, let's say what your Fortress really needs is glassmakers, not lyemakers.  Here is an example a migrant who would be a "Level 5 Lyemaker" in vanilla DF, upon arrival, and then after a few seasons of making green glass blocks.  (I'm assuming, for the way I'm calculating skill levels, any action that gives, say, 30xp to "Glassmaker" in vanilla DF, instead gives 30xp to the "Gems/glass" Column, and also 30xp to the "Processing" Row.)

Spoiler: Urist McLyemaker (click to show/hide)

The difference from vanilla DF is that he normally would still only be at level 5 Lyemaker and Level 4 glassmaker, but with the matrix he is at level 6.5 Glassmaker.  Also, he is an even better Lyemaker (Hooray?), and partly skilled in a bunch of other areas, if flexibility is a concern.

So, this does mitigate getting migrants skilled in areas you won't use.  Also, having multiple Labours in the same cell helps, since someone with 10 levels in "Processing" and "Animal Products" isn't just a good (useless) Cheesemaker, they are equally skilled at Cooking, Soaping, etc.

As has already been mentioned, it would be extremely simple to just hardcode it so that migrants do not arrive with a Row and Column skill that converge on an "X" (No Labours.)  But even if, for some reason, that wasn't done, it wouldn't be a big problem.   Here's a migrant who by all appearances would be just great at making Leather Swords.  Somehow:

Spoiler: Catten McUseless (click to show/hide)

Since he's already pretty good at "Weaponing," he can get to level 8 Metal Weaponsmith in the same time that an otherwise useless (legendary Milker) migrant would get to level 4.

Again, it's still reasonable to assume that migrants just wouldn't come with a Row and Column that don't synergise.  (Since there's no labour to train "Leather" and "Weaponing" together, the migrant should never be able to get that skill level in the first place.  If the migrant behaviour is smart enough to know that a footless migrant should come with a crutch and already have skill in Crutchwalking, this is a snap.)

Finally, I was just using a single Row and Column to simplify things.  Since we get migrants with varied skills now, it may make more sense to just limit them to a single cell in the matrix (like my first example), but if we want randomization like in vanilla we could migrants like this:

Spoiler: Urist McMultiskill (click to show/hide)

At any rate, this alleviates two problems:
1. All migrants will have at least some skill in something you can use
2. You won't have to go out of your way to train, say, "Presser," at the expense of something else, since it also trains Cooking etc.  Even if you did, you'd still be getting skill increases in other areas that will be useful.


tl;dr Wow this is huge.  Hopefully I didn't complicate things even more...

EDIT: Forgot Architecture.   ALSO, forgot Blacksmith and Metalsmith are the same thing.  Anyway this is just an example of how a Matrix system could work.  The actual merging of skills, which rows / columns to use etc. is up to you guys.

[zwei]

I have one minor thing to add and make clear:

It does not necesarily have to be matrix.

Some labors can still be dervied from single skill (for example, Architecture and underlying construction skill)

While some other can consist of three or more skills (Butcher can be linked to processing, animal products and bone)

[Xen0n]

I have one minor thing to add and make clear:

It does not necesarily have to be matrix.

Some labors can still be dervied from single skill (for example, Architecture and underlying construction skill)

While some other can consist of three or more skills (Butcher can be linked to processing, animal products and bone)

Yes, that's exactly right.  As in my above example, all the Military (Including Siege Operator), Medical, and Social skills are left untouched, to function as they normally do, just as you say.  (Come to think of it I left out Architecture... I guess I'll roll that into Social)

Also, my above example tries to simplify things but only having at most 2 linked things (Row and Column.) So for example Leatherowrking-(Armor) and Leatherworking-(Clothes) would essentially be two disntinct "skills" now. (Though you could make it two different "Labours" or a single one, either way the matrix still works, just produces leather armor gives you "Leather" XP and producing leather clothes gives you "Clothes"XP)

[kaenneth]

If I may refer to my post from a while back about an alternate skill system:

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=85495.msg2304886#msg2304886

Some of the ideas, including overlapping skills, are included in this proposed implementation.

[marvalis]

Great idea's. Splitting skills and jobs seems to be the right thing to do in the long run. Looks like this would be a major overhaul of the skill system, if it ever gets coded in (lots of code work?).

I would like to point out that the skills should have multipliers and not be the sum:
wood (4) + crafting (2) should be woodcrafting (4*2=8) and not woodcrafting (4+2=6)

If, for example, you have a legendary carpenter, and you want him to make stone crafts, then he would have
stone (1) + crafting (10) for a total of 1*10=10 masonry instead of 1+10=11 masonry.
Once stone is leveled up, it will be:
stone (2) + crafting (10) for a total of 2*10= 20

Jobs that require one skill would be between 1 and 10 (for example)
Jobs that require two skills (for example stone and crafting) would be within range of 1 and 100
... 3 skills = 1-1000
... n skills = 1-10^n

So that means that a 10 stone 10 crafting mason would become a carpenter:
addition (average): 1 wood + 10 crafting /2 = 5.5/10 = 55% carpenter
multiplication: 1 wood * 10 crafting / 100 = 10/100 = 10% carpenter

As you can see there is a lot less benefit with multiplication if you are untrained in one skill. But a system with multiplier allows you to effectively 'learn' new jobs faster when they overlap, and I think this is what we want to achieve.
You can also provide a bonus to one skill if the other one is maxed out so that our mason (see example) would gain more levels in wood faster since crafting is already at max level.

[Silverionmox]

*snip*

Most of this seems to boil down to problems with the random skill generation. I'll state it clearly: skills should not be randomly generated by enabling a skill at random in each category (material - process - tool).

Instead, the game ought to check the origin of the immigrant, pick a random product (weighted according to production) out of all the stuff that is produced there (including services like guarding etc.), and give him the necessary skills to reflect experience in making that product. That way, a relevant combination is guaranteed... as well as reasonable proportions of them.

Then there may be lesser skills added then via the same method, and then maybe a few random picks to represent hobbies, odd acquaintances and personal fascination (eg. Urist likes nickel -> gets a level or two in "metal").

In addition, there will be many future additions to the game and we don't want to have to debate again and again to determine each time which skills ought to be scrapped and which not. If for example a new material is added in a matrix system, that will automatically combine with all furniture, items you could make of it and we won't have to consider whether to add a <material>crafting category too or only a <material>weaving category too.

Yeah, that's great, except that you have to decide:
a)  Does this combination make ANY sense?  (Which, we've decided with many existing combinations is not true.)
b)  What workshop does it associate with?

It's hardly automatic, and you'd have to add tags in the entity, workshop, & reaction raws for each combination anyway.

a) See above why that won't matter.
b) That depends solely on the tool skill, I'd imagine. If that tool is available in the workshop, then that job is possible there. (I'm assuming the rooms-functioning-as-workshops here. One could associate workshops to tool skill, if the skill revision were to be applied first.)

We'll need a raw to associate skills, products, materials, tools and workplace anyway. They're just hard-coded for the moment.

I'd say we have a raw list of Tasks. Each Task has one or several combinations of Material+Tool/Process. If the task is eg. Making Bucket:
[task:Making bucket]
[any wood:1][carpentry]
[any metal:1][forging]

All Tool/Process skills should then be in their raw, with their required tools and ability scores. Eg.
[process:carpentry][hammer][agility][strength]
[process:forging][hammer][anvil][furnace][agility][strength][endurance]
(A distinction could be made between essential and optional tools. Optional tools would still be able to add their quality modifiers.)

The quality of the bucket can then be calculated as follows:

(material skill+material quality)*(process&tool skill+tool quality+relevant ability scores)*product skill

Skill gain and attribute gain is distributed between the used skills and attributes.

Marvalis: I don't think extra skill gain for dwarves with a maxed out skills is necessary, since their legendary skill will boost their production speed anyway, making them train the other skill faster automatically. Plus, it will reduce skill rust.

Xenon: the military skills are easily fit into the paradigm: weapons can be considered tools, the enemy the material, and the action the product (attacking, parrying, etc.). Social skills could benefit from tools as well, eg. your diplomacy rolls as a king can be positively influenced by the use of a scepter, throne and throne room, or for materials eg. your broker might benefit from his extensive experience in trading with humans, etc.

Zwei: indeed, an absent skill requirement could default to 1, so it has no influence on the calculation but we can still use the same system for all jobs.

(Come to think of it, it would be perfectly possible to mod in the current system by erasing all material and tool skill requirements that way...)

[Forumite]

There´s an easy way to make dwarves get skills that make sense, just use the exp mechanic on them. If making tables train rock and constructing, then instead of giving the immigrant 2000xp in Rock, give him exp as if he made 50 tables.

[zwei]

There´s an easy way to make dwarves get skills that make sense, just use the exp mechanic on them. If making tables train rock and constructing, then instead of giving the immigrant 2000xp in Rock, give him exp as if he made 50 tables.

I like it. Simulate his "lifetime experience".

When we are getting immigrants from real-population pool and have working worldgen economy, we would be able to actually know that this dwarf produced those 50 rock tables (and 8 steel crossbows and 14 wooden chairs), so he would get real experience.

[Valdrax]

I just wanted to propose a simple change to the existing skill system to get rid of things like Fish Dissectors.  Instead, I find myself having to fight to get the thread back on topic away from a proposal which is pretty much the opposite of what I suggested.

It is obvious which proposal carries more support.  As I am outvoted, I concede and withdraw my proposal.

[Silverionmox]

I just wanted to propose a simple change to the existing skill system to get rid of things like Fish Dissectors.  Instead, I find myself having to fight to get the thread back on topic away from a proposal which is pretty much the opposite of what I suggested.

It is obvious which proposal carries more support.  As I am outvoted, I concede and withdraw my proposal.

Don't be dejected, cleaning up the skill list is the common thread here. It's just that the decluttered skill list sparked other ideas.

[Bohandas]

I prefer this suggestion