Ok, here is my idea.
Alchemist renamed to: Sorcerer. Used in magic buildings.
Miller renamed to: Archeologist. Used in Archeologist workshop.
Tanner renamed to: Diplomat. Used in Embassy and Expedition workshops.
Presser renamed to: Researcher or Scientist. Used in Researchers Study.
Potter renamed to: Reader or Student. Used in Library workshops.
Soapmaker renamed to: Runesmith. Used in Rune Weaponry/Armory.
Wax Worker renamed to: Toxicist. Used in Toxicist.
Thresher renamed to: Miller. Used for threshing, milling and pressing.
Animal Caretaker renamed to: Animal Armorer. Used in Warbeast kennels.
Clothier renamed to: Tailor.
Woodcutter renamed to: Lumberjack.
Bowyer renamed to: Gunsmith. Used in Ranged weapons shop and gunsmith.
Bowyer (workshop) renamed to: Ranged Weapons Shop.
Beekeeper renamed to: Hivekeeper
Strand Extractor renamed to: Apostle of Armok. Used in Altar, Shrine and Temple.
Building Designer renamed to: Architect. Used in Architects Study.
Grower renamed to: Farmer
Lye Maker renamed to: Chemist. Used in Chemistry Laboratory.
Potash Maker renamed to: Alchemist. Used in Alchemists Chambers.
Wood Burner renamed to: Oven Operator. Used in Wood Oven, Clay Oven and Brick Oven.
Wood Furnace renamed to: Wood Oven.
Kiln renamed to: Clay Oven.
Possibly seperate reactions for clay/earthenware/porcelain and glazing.
Possibly add a seperate oven for glazing.
Pump Operator renamed to: Machine Operator. Used in Machine Factory/Gnomish shop/weather control. Still does pumps, too.
Fish Dissector renamed to: Fish Farmer. Used in Fish Pond, for indoor fishing.
To make it short:
Miller would do milling, threshing and pressing.
Wood Burner would do wood burning, pottery and glazing. Now called: Oven Operator.
Leatherworker would do leatherworking and tanning.
Alchemy would do magic buildings, now called Sorcery.
The rest is just usage of unused skills so far, or renaming skills I already use for other puproses. Like strand extraction = religion, or wax working = poisons.
Ideas, feedback?
Edit: bloody hell. Meph just posted and invalidated some of my thoughts. >.< Blah! Oh well. Sorry Meph - you beat me to it.
First off, THANK THE GODS! Finally, we can remove half of these bloody, useless skills! Argh. pet peeve of mine, but seeing glazers and potash makers arrive with 10-15 skill, I would want to hang myself and wonder why they weren't generalized like you've done!
Now, for feedback on that.
Miller/Archaeologist - Sounds nifty, but Archaeology has limited uses right now... if you intend to expand the system a bit (add more things to find, or more function) - this would be perfect.
Tanner/Diplomat - entirely agree. Leatherworking should do the tanning, never understood why they were separate. Diplomacy is a very intriguing addition as well, and I'm curious to see where it goes.
Presser/researcher - I ponder if you should instead merge chemist and Researchers into one. Maybe too homogenized... just seems a very limited scope for Researchers doing a single function, but not a major issue over-all.
Potter/Student - Perhaps you should merge them so one 'profession' relates to written material. Library materials, research, etc. Scribes perhaps? Just spitballing here.
Soapmaker/runesmith - seems fine to me. Runesmiths seem to have a large role at this moment, though, I ponder if rolling runesmithing into one of the other four metal crafting professions would be better (blacksmithing/Metalsmithing both need some love over all).
Wax worker/toxicist - I wonder again, if this wouldn't be better mixed in with a chemist or Alchemist role. Similar principles.
Thresher/miller - no real input. Has just enough use to remain a 'profession'. Name fits fine.
Animal Caretaker - why not merge animal training, and animal care taker instead of making 'animal armorer' which has a singular purpose?
Clothier: Name sounds more accurate. They don't only make cloths - but other goods, aka, a tailor. Agreed entirely.
Woodcutter/lumberjack: Meh. Tomato, tamato.
Bowyer/Gunsmith: They makes crossbows though. So gunsmith isn't really accurate. Though, I can't think of a more accurate name...
Beekeeper/hivekeeper - Perfect. More accurate. Hopefully we get improvements/additions on hives soon, too.
Strand extractor - pretty much all he was for prior - accurate name.
Building Designer - Pretty much accurate. I wish architecture skill actually had some use/impact on buildings, though...
Grower/farmer - Correct name, nothing to add.
Lye Maker - Already voiced my thoughts on chemist/alchemy.
Potash maker - Already voiced my thoughts on chemist/alchemy.
Wood burner/oven operator: Perfect. Wood burning was damn near pointless, this expands his utility, and removes a bunch of useless professions elsewhere refining it to a singular one.
Pump Operator/machine Operator: seems fine to me. Perhaps a merger with Siege Operator could be viable too, though, I can see them being different enough.
fish Dissector/Fish Farmer: If you keep 'fishing (the profession)' for out doors wild fishing, then balance indoors 'fishing/farming' with this skill, I'd say it would work perfectly.
Sorry for the rambling and 'conflicting views' - just thought i'd toss my 2 cents out there. Now, to add a real wall of doom about the general difficulty of the mod!
One massive issue I've come across with Dwarf fortress, and even Masterworks, is how damn easy the game can be once you're a veteran at it. This is of course, true for most games, yet I've done dozens of challenges and almost nothing can even make me so much as bat an eyelash at it!
There's two key, fundamental problems I see in general that make almost any challenge, moot.
~ Well trained, steel armored dwarves using the library system, the 'abusive spear trap room', or similar tricks to speed up training of dwarves and making them legends, are freakin' GOD MODE. Slap a iridium(orchicalum now?) weapon with all the runes on them, send 5 of them vs 100+ siege, and watch them slaughter 50-60 of the buggers without even a bruise on their body (even against archers). This is speaking of even Frost giants, who just keel over laughably easy. And this isn't using volcanic, 'power armor' or 'candy' either! x.x
I would argue this issue comes down to the lack of difficulty of the sieges in general. Your proposition for a 'hard mode' setting, with a variety of settings to make enemies harder, would remedy this – if the sieges came with level 10-15 skilled fighters instead of 1 skilled fighter and 30 weaklings per squad (give or take) – it would likely make a more dangerous scenario to do this in.
~*~*~*~
~ If you decide to challenge yourself and use only traps, turrets, and such constructions to fight, well... discounting the code that cannot be improved (like walls and locked doors generally being god mode for you, a vanilla issue), with a bit of ingenuity you can setup trap halls that MASSACRE anything. Even bloody demons from my testing!
How so you ask? Quite simple. Add web turrets. Make a 3 wide 'hall' with a 1 wide drop off on each side, that drops say, 30 floors onto spikes (kills nearly anything that tries to dodge the traps), add a mixture of spear-and-weapon traps (with serrated discs for weapon traps – extremely effective), and you got yourself a hall of death.
'but trap immunes won't trigger it!' - sure. Web turrets will web them though, and they'll fall onto the discs, and get turned into 50 little bit-sized chunks.
If that fails? You just rig all the spear traps in the hall to a lever near your main staircase, and giggle like a evil child burning ants as a dwarf spam pulls the spears, skewering and slaughtering EVERYTHING that is still alive in that hall. Add in some intelligent 'bridge' setups to funnel in entire sieges, then lock them in to avoid them fleeing and you can annihilate entire sieges without lifting a damn finger. Even Hell Demons fall pray to this from my limited testing, and I've not encountered anything that could stop this. Add in a few hellfire turrets at the entry of the hall with the web turrets to fry any archers (they can't wear shields), and that removes any risk to your web turrets. Whalla. God mode killing machine. Funnel hell up to your hall entry, same for caverns, and just laugh evilly.
A few issues cause this. First off, doors and walls are super effective at totally blocking all but a few foes out. Building destroyers can be a pain, but an artifact door or hatch totally negates them. Adding the ability/option for most sentient races to 'picklock' (maybe they gain harder and harder traits as sieges as your wealth grows?), would help negate that if this works on artifact items and encourage people to not just slap a door down and laugh at the 120+ man siege outside. Walls, well... we need Toadie to fix that issue by the sounds of it. >.<
Trap-halls-of-doom is harder to fix. Yes, it takes a good bit of work but for a 120 dwarf fort, it's quite easy to mass produce the materials needed especially with slade, since Slade only takes cut blocks – and stone is bloody everywhere. (I can't recall if this as changed in recent versions – so correct me if wrong). Slade makes awesome spears/serrated discs – so the actual cost to make the trap components is the cost of a block in the end. Web turrets take down flying enemies/trap immunes, and force them onto the traps to get bi-sected into little giblets. Spears, hit any foe immune or not as they're triggered by lever, meaning even if web/trap immune, you can still skewer them!
The only way I can see fixing this, is to remove the 'cheap slade' process, so making good metals that can take down harder foes, much more costly to mass-spam. I know I could never do this with anything above steel, and even then, it would take eons to make enough steel to do this as Iron/flux is NOT infinite nor anywhere near as common as stone is!
~*~*~*~
Over-all, I think negating the over-utility of doors, making stronger sieges 'evolve' and become immune to various measures like traps, webs, etc, as well as having them 'rank up' over time and become nastier and nastier as your wealth goes up would make for a very solid change as an option for those who seek greater challenges.
As well, some superior forms of 'internal' threats would help stop the 'super turtle' issue of hunkering down in a near untouchable fort. Like what? Ask and I'll ramble about some ideas – though, you seem to have a good grasp on what you want!
P.S
Is it now possible with dfhack's update, to alter the function of undead and such things? I love the challenge deadly rain and undead add – but undead are not really dangerous, but a pain in the ***, with infinite reanimation etc etc. Runes do help alleviate that, but I was hoping we could actually maybe focus making the game harder, by where you settle – aka, evil biomes...
P.S.S
Would you now be able to change the caverns appearances and such? We spoke ages ago about 'evil' caverns and such concepts, but they were not possible. Dfhack's update seems ot have made a ton possible, and I wonder if this is one of those things?
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Topic: ☼MASTERWORK-DF☼ V.3 - New release and old post. This will be locked later. (Read 1858805 times)