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[GreatWyrmGold]

First off: Engravers can go moody. They create mason-type objects, but gain engraving skill.

I didn't say "there should be artefact engravers" but "there should be artefact engraving". what you say is different from what i say.

For the rest, you're true, smoothing is the only way to improve engravers

I suppose I misunderstood your statement.

..you're true, smoothing is the only way to improve engravers

Not sure this is true.  But I haven't done the SCIENCE.

Like the new cut gems skill, that cuts stones.. IE.  cut say, granite.  Cutting granite doesn't produce jeweller xps.  Nope. It doesn't.  Only cutting gemstones does.  Ever notice that about Cut stone?  Did you spend an evening trying to level up your jeweller on that huge pile of Gabbo?  I did.

So like that, I imagine the same can be said about engraving cart rails in unsmooth hallways?  I haven't done the science, have you?  Did he forgot to improve the dwarf engrave skill this time around, too.  It's the engravers who cuts the rails from unsmoothed halls, as opposed to the fella who builds the rails in the craft menu.  Sincerely, Knutor

...Hold on, cutting stone doesn't give XP?
Also, he means that smoothing stone is the best way to train engravers. Engravings have quality, and minecart tracks look kinda dumb when they're in the middle of nowhere.

[King Mir]

You could train your engravers by engraving more. There are plenty of unimportant walls and floors in any fort to practice on.

[Manveru Taurënér]

I personally don't think a seperation of the skills is justified, logically the techniques used would be quite similar and we probably don't want to add more skill clutter than necessary. What could be done to help with the issue of which engraver does what would be to just improve how engravings are made. There was a thread recently (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=109930.0) touching this where it was suggested that we could specify what to engrave and also to make larger connected engravings to show actual stories, and if this was added an option for which engraver should do the job wouldn't be much of a stretch. I think this would overall solve the whole thing much better ^^

As for the skill merging suggested,

Yes, this.

A separation of 'work at mason's workshop' and 'build wall' as well as 'construct mechanism' and 'install mechanism' would also be nice, but can be more or less done by restricting workshops to high skill levels.

I also support merging of some skills...
snip

A lot of these skills are set for additions in the future, such as siege engineering getting more kinds of and improved siege weapons and wax working for making candles for lighting, or having their products being made more useful such as fertilizers from potash making when farming gets reworked, so changing them too much beforehand would probably be a lot of unnecessary work.

[knutor]

...Hold on, cutting stone doesn't give XP?

Right.  Even though we get the choice to, Cut Granite, and even though a crafter is wasting time doing Cut Granite, the game yields 0 xps towards that.  Spend all night on Cut Granite /R with a managed station and gemcutter.  He'll still be at novice 3hrs into it.  Only gems grant xps.  Kinda stinks, doesn't it?  Makes sense, but stinks. 

I'm thinking samething happens with engraving rail as opposed to smoothing walls. 

I think the gripe here is that no legendary results occur for smoothing, so its a hardknock life for any dwarf doing smoothing to advance up to 'engrave' something limited in number.  They muck around smoothing, then perform a legendary engrave on an engraving, at which time they don't benefit from a burst in skill xps.

This is all perfectly fine to me, but illogical from a gradual progression standpoint.  Knutor

[GreatWyrmGold]

You could train your engravers by engraving more. There are plenty of unimportant walls and floors in any fort to practice on.

Brilliant! "Oh, no! My legendary engraver died! Urist McSmoother, go smooth the caverns so I can train a new engraver!"
To say nothing of the jump in created wealth.

As for the skill merging suggested,
...
A lot of these skills are set for additions in the future, such as siege engineering getting more kinds of and improved siege weapons and wax working for making candles for lighting, or having their products being made more useful such as fertilizers from potash making when farming gets reworked, so changing them too much beforehand would probably be a lot of unnecessary work.

There's still A. a lot of skills that have one, clearly-defined use (like Milking, Lye Making, Potash Making, Soap Making...mostly farming skills), and B. a lot of skills with similar techniques (like animal/fish disscection and maybe fish cleaning and butchery) or which would logically be used together (lye/potash makers could be rolled into "ash proccessors," cheese makers and milkers could be rolled into "dairy farmers," etc). Unless lye making is going to have enough new uses in the future that are distinct from the new uses potash making is going to have, they should be merged.

[Manveru Taurënér]

...

As for the skill merging suggested,
...
A lot of these skills are set for additions in the future, such as siege engineering getting more kinds of and improved siege weapons and wax working for making candles for lighting, or having their products being made more useful such as fertilizers from potash making when farming gets reworked, so changing them too much beforehand would probably be a lot of unnecessary work.

There's still A. a lot of skills that have one, clearly-defined use (like Milking, Lye Making, Potash Making, Soap Making...mostly farming skills), and B. a lot of skills with similar techniques (like animal/fish disscection and maybe fish cleaning and butchery) or which would logically be used together (lye/potash makers could be rolled into "ash proccessors," cheese makers and milkers could be rolled into "dairy farmers," etc). Unless lye making is going to have enough new uses in the future that are distinct from the new uses potash making is going to have, they should be merged.

It's still important that the skills make sense. I don't really see how a dwarf would learn how to make cheese from milking a cow etc. Better to have a few skills too many than too few imo. And there's nothing stopping a person from assigning a dwarf several professions really if they have a small fort without sufficient labor for each skill individually.

[ivanthe8th]

It's still important that the skills make sense. I don't really see how a dwarf would learn how to make cheese from milking a cow etc. Better to have a few skills too many than too few imo. And there's nothing stopping a person from assigning a dwarf several professions really if they have a small fort without sufficient labor for each skill individually.

I would agree with this. It would be better to have more labors (skills are an entirely different debate), and let players customize their dwarves, than to have fewer labors and leave more to the AI.

Obviously, having too many labors would be tiresome, but we could do with a bit more customization.

[GreatWyrmGold]

I don't think reducing the number of skills is a priority, though some of that could be re-evaluated.

The point was that having a couple dozen single-use, no-quality-product skills means that a large proportion of your workforce will be useless. High skill in, say, threshing shouldn't mean that you're useless, nor should it mean that you can't work a millstone better than a child.

...

As for the skill merging suggested,
...
A lot of these skills are set for additions in the future, such as siege engineering getting more kinds of and improved siege weapons and wax working for making candles for lighting, or having their products being made more useful such as fertilizers from potash making when farming gets reworked, so changing them too much beforehand would probably be a lot of unnecessary work.

There's still A. a lot of skills that have one, clearly-defined use (like Milking, Lye Making, Potash Making, Soap Making...mostly farming skills), and B. a lot of skills with similar techniques (like animal/fish disscection and maybe fish cleaning and butchery) or which would logically be used together (lye/potash makers could be rolled into "ash proccessors," cheese makers and milkers could be rolled into "dairy farmers," etc). Unless lye making is going to have enough new uses in the future that are distinct from the new uses potash making is going to have, they should be merged.

It's still important that the skills make sense. I don't really see how a dwarf would learn how to make cheese from milking a cow etc. Better to have a few skills too many than too few imo. And there's nothing stopping a person from assigning a dwarf several professions really if they have a small fort without sufficient labor for each skill individually.

The idea behind linking the dairy-based skills is that A. those skills would be naturally learned together (how many medieval dairy farmers knew how to milk but didn't have a clue about how to make cheese?) and B. they're really useless as it stands. Making milking and cheesemaking into one skill would make that skill somewhat less useless, and also reduce the number of worthless migrants around.
Maybe a solution would be to put skills in the raws, so modders could merge those skills.

[zwei]

Maybe a solution would be to put skills in the raws, so modders could merge those skills.

That would be mine solution (And suggestion) too.

Modders could use ability to add completelly new industries (since we can have custom workshops and reactions, custom labors and skills are last piece of puzzle).

[Viking]

Personally I kind of like using smoothing to train engraving. I don't care to have fifty billion pictures of shapes and crude stick figures of animals and sentients all over the fort. Usually when I have a lot of engraving to do and I don't care I'll give the job to a bunch of dwarves. Often enough I try to train up a select group though and will even limit the job for noble rooms to the very best engravers.