Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[yarr]

Heya,

wouldn't it be great if we had different labor skills for smoothing and engraving of walls? I usually have (almost) my whole fort smoothing walls, because it takes such a long time, but for the engraving of walls I only want the very best to have a go at it, not everyone. So I thought about splitting up the "Stone detailing" labor into 2 sub-labors (like "Smooth walls" & "Engrave walls"). What do you guys think?

[zwei]

I have doubts about that tactic.

If you have whole fort smoothing, your main engravers will be "training hungry".

If only few desiganted engrave, smoothing will go actually pretty fast as legendary engravers are lightning fast.

Thou I do support splitting labors because it does make sense.

[yarr]

Never knew that they eventually become "lightning fast". At first it's pretty annoying to wait for that 10x10 room to be smoothed, that's why I designate a lot of people to do the job. Not sure how long it would take 2 legendary guys to do that job.

[vomov]

A single legendary engraver can do a 10*10 room in what, a minute? Smoothing, that is. Engraving... would take two.
I usually have two designated engravers who ONLY engrave, so they don't have any other tasks. They're quite slow when the fortress is young, but eventually they catch up with the two designated (legendary) miners easily. Might be unrealistic, but it doesn't say 'legendary' for nothing!

[Troopperi]

It's good to train your engravers by smoothing walls first, and after that begin to engrave, because smooth walls have no quality rating, but engraved ones have. Think that you have great throne room somewhere, and then you put your low-skill engravers to engrave walls. The result will be images of small quality images of vermins or something. And you can always remove engraving job from your low-skilled engravers.

[Sheb]

What we need is a way to engrave built walls. That way you can just destroy the wall and engrave it again if the quality don't please you.

[Troopperi]

I agree with that, it's annoying if you are carving a great hall and then somewhere there is ugly cluster of gypsum and if you want that weird yellow spot on floor away, you have to build floor over it and then you cannot engrave it.

And then, it would make sense, because in fact you can engrave almost wall made of anything clever building material in real life. Another thing is that is it clever? Of course built wall has seams or whatever they are (google translator go, I'm lazy and won't step one step to get my finnish-english dictionary) but it isn't a big problem.

[vomov]

While the ability to engrave built walls is a subject of some interest, it's easy to control the quality of the engravings with Dwarf Therapist: simply deactivate the 'engraving' task on all Dwarfs except that single legendary hermit, and designate an area as 'to be engraved'.

So, in my scenario's: a miner digs out an ore vein, going for months without seeing another dwarf, and gets his food from a small stockpile near the entry point to the vein, and sleeps in the bed conveniently provided besides the locked door, which limits his social interaction. When he's done (and I haven't forgotten about him) he gets hauled out of the vein and put in the next.
Next, the whole vein is designated as 'to be smoothed' for a single engraver, who is destined by a higher power (player) to become a legendary engraver. When a throne room is to be engraved, a set of around five novice to average engravers who have been busy smoothing the whole thing, are allowed to stand in awe (but not make eye contact) while the legendary engraver Urist McStinky is taken from his training-vein, and gently pushed into the room, and let loose with the words "Cheese would look good on that wall.".

But if engraving and smoothing are two different tasks, creating legendary engravers would be a whole lot more difficult, and engraving constructed walls and tearing them down would be a labour-intensive training. Also, I've always thought engraving built walls would either require engraving the blocks before building the walls, or changing the blocks to 'engraved' during the engraving of the wall. Deconstructing an engraved wall should not yield smooth blocks.

Alternatively, it could also be possible to un-engrave walls by smoothing them again, provoking the wrath of Urist McStinky who senses his earlier creations being defiled. Who will then serve some time smoothing a jail cell after thinning the herd of apparently expendable smoothers.

EDIT: spelling. Damn this new keyboard.

[Footkerchief]

As shown by a search for "smooth engrave labors", this gets suggested frequently:

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=75042.0
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=27560.0
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=34071.0
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=60057.0
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=23872.msg264571#msg264571
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=79657.msg2077904#msg2077904

It was also a dev item under the old system:

# Req567, SMOOTHING AND ENGRAVING SKILLS, (Future): They aren't closely related, so they should have different skills and professions, although having a skill entirely for smoothing stone seems like a stretch.

Spoiler: tags (click to show/hide)

smooth smooths smoothing engrave engraves engraving detail details detailing skill skills skilled labor labors profession professions job jobs task tasks mason masons masonry stonecrafter stonecrafters stonecrafting separate different minimum

[Ghills]

Actually, smoothing stone with 1400s technology was very similar to engraving (until you get into the whole stone-polishing industry, which wasn't very relevant to walls), relying on chisels, etc to remove pointy bits and mortar to cover up depressions.  Of course, mostly smooth walls were also constructed walls, so we're already at least a bit out-of-bounds in terms of historical industries anyway.

[Silverionmox]

All skill grouping ought to be changeable in the raws. Also, composite skills would solve the conundrum whether stonecrafting belongs under the crafting skill group, or under the stoneworking subgroup, and similar problems.

For the time being though: smoothing ought to contribute to the mason skill - even though it should be a separate job. Engraving is more a form of stonecrafting.

Other job couples that ought to be split up are:
weaving - collecting silk
making mechanisms - loading and installing traps
and, in general: hauling the material to the workshop - working in the workshop.
Most of these are annoying because they put your skilled craftsmen in the line of fire.

[zwei]

Or course, hapless weavers and mechanics deserve more attention than confortable engraves that never have to leave fort!

[Ghills]

Or course, hapless weavers and mechanics deserve more attention than confortable engraves that never have to leave fort!

Hear hear.

I don't necessarily agree with Silverionmox skill groupings, but having the grouping be controlled by RAWs would be awesome.

[vomov]

Or course, hapless weavers and mechanics deserve more attention than confortable engraves that never have to leave fort!

Like... replacing the weaver with a hauler in the getting-the-silk-scenario?
Like making an hauler get the silk, encountering several lizardpeople, and screaming his way back to the fortress just to find the door locked, versus the scenario where four of your fledgling military get butchered just to save one lazy-ass weaver?
I'd like that.

On the other hand, hauling mechanics doesn't seem realistic: you'd need some kind of tech support.
"I dropped the gear-thingy in the box, threw the logs at it, but the carpenter said it didn't work."
"I'll come look."
While gears might be simple, a dwarf that goes for a plump helmet in the middle of a set of goblin invaders cannot be classified as overly intelligent. Loading a rock into a trap should be possible for a typical dwarf, though.

and, in general: hauling the material to the workshop - working in the workshop.

I do that with the masons, in some cases; designate a stockpile of, for example, marble, letting the haulers haul, and locking the legendary mason in the room with a set of build orders. After a while (not much, legendary masons are also blindingly fast) the mason is released into community, which have all been provided with marble thrones and tables. I imagine that the dwarves aren't smart enough to distinguish between different types of rock, which can be pretty tough (chalk vs limestone), and just take what's near to do their jobs. An unseen force manipulates them towards a greater goal, which involved designating some rocks to be moved but not others, etc.

[Kipi]

Just throwing my opinion to the original suggestion:

First of all both tasks, engraving and stone smoothing, should use the same skill. This would keep it relatively easy to have legendary engraver (or even grand master). If those tasks use different skills it would be nearly impossible to have a legendary engraver outside the moods.

Now, what I suggest is to separate the two tasks in terms of labor; while the skills is same for both labors each one must be enabled separately. Do you want to have legendary engraver to smooth out that quarters dedicated to king while those who are still training the skill keep on smoothing the halls? Just enable the engraving labor for the legendary dwarf and disable it from rest of the dwarves. They still keep on smoothing stone as that labor is separated from engraving, thus disabling engraving doesn't prevent them to smoothing stones.

Another thing where this has some uses is when tapping to either underground water source or magma; currently all dwarves who have the stone detailing enabled are candidates to carving the fortification, thus risking their lives. If you want to avoid risking your legendary dwarves then just disable the smoothing labor from them and they can still keep on making those engravings.