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[ravaught]

The short version of this suggestion is:

Let's separate the labors from the skills, and expand the skills so that they become more generic abilities that have cross-over effects, while  labors represent an overall efficiency and use of a specific skill set for a specific task.

Wall-o-text:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Under the current version, there is a spilt between labors and skills as defined in the raws, yet there exist little in the way of functional differentiation between them. For example you have the labor [ANIMAL_TRAINER] and the skill [ANIMAL_TRAIN]. The problem I see with this is that the skills are too generic and they do not behave in a way that allows a dwarf who is skilled and knowledgable in one thing to apply that skill and knowledge to a related but different task. For example, an engraver should have enough skill at working stone to be able to work with some degree of proficiency as a mason, and certainly should have an advantage over the carpenter attempting to work as a mason.

This suggestion would tackle the topic of labors and skills separately, by viewing them in different lights. A skill would be viewed as the basic building block of performing an action, while the labor would be viewed as the sum knowledge and proficiency of taking all of the known relevant skills and applying them to that specific application.

There is already an example of how this is done in the way that the military and social skills are handled. For a combat dwarf, there is a generic class of combat that they are being pigeonholed into, such as spear dwarf, mace dwarf, etc, and a broader group of skills that are applicable to the combat in general, such as biting, armor use, shield use, biting, kicking, and dodging. We also already see crossover application between civilian and military skill usage in the cases of woodcutter, miner, and hunter. This suggestion would expand on that functionality, and extend it to include all labors and skills within the DF world.

For example:

There would be a base set of skills, for instance:(You will notice that many of these exist in some form already)

• Engraving
• Carving
• Sculpting
• Smoothing
• Designing
• Hammers
• Chisels
• Punches
• Axes
• Hatchets
• Husbandry
• Short Blades
• Long Blades
• Spears
• etc etc etc

From these, your classic job assignments would have skill sets based on the item being crafted or the job assigned. For example, creating blocks in the masonry shop would increase the masonry skill as well as chisel use and smoothing, while building a chair would increase the masonry skill along with designing, chisel use, and scultpting. Engraving a wall would increase chisel use, designing, and engraving.  The net effect would be that a dwarf who is used for Engraving your halls and smoothing your floors would be able to apply some of that same knowledge to learning how to craft furniture for your fort. The same would be applied to any number of things. A dwarf working in the farmer's workshop milking cows would get bumps to their Husbandry skill that would carry over if you decided to use them as an animal handler or trainer.

This would, if implemented correctly, have several far reaching effects in the game. First, it would change the dynamic of how dwarfs are trained. While it would be possible to get a legendary mason by having him make doors for five years, better results would be achieved by spreading his time around between various tasks. This more accurately reflects the vary real difference between a person who has made doors for five years and a person who has spent those same five years learning every aspect of stone and how to work it. By having different reactions use different groups of skills, you also make it so that being Urist McAwesomeDoorMaker does not equate to being Urist McLegendaryMason.

The same could be done for practically every skill in the game. In short, I am looking to create a fundamental shift in perspective by differentiating the atomic skills from the broader implementation and use of those skills. This is very similar to, for example, mathematics, in real life. Mathematics is a specific skill set(you could argue that it is a collection of skills itself, but that is beside the point), it doesn't directly dictate that you would be good at anyone thing other than mathematics. Yet, the more skill you have in mathematics the more skill you will have in any profession or trade that relies on mathematics(Architecture, business, navigation, engineering, etc etc etc). More to the point, each of those professions uses the same skills in slightly different ways. So the profession, or labor in this case, becomes a measure of how well the dwarf can apply a set of skills to a specific task.

As an additional note, this would also open the door for a much greater variety of skills without a necessary increase in the number of professions. For example, Mathematics could easily become a skill that is used by Architects, Managers, Book Keepers, Jewelers, Masons, Seige Operators, Mechanics, and Engineers. Any number of skills could be added in this way to add more depth to the civilizations and individual members of the civilizations alike. Bonus points if the overall level of skill is measured by civ as well as by individual, so that the higher the civ level the higher the cap on the individual and the faster the individual progresses. This would be akin to what has been implemented with Animal Training already, but applied across the board to all skills.

What it would mean to the player:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The vast majority of this suggestion would be handled in the background. It is not something a player would directly interface with. What it would change is the way the players allocate resources. It would be much more difficult to have your Legendary Carpenter become a Legendary Mason then it would for your Legenary Engraver. It also has the potential to moderate some of the damage done when a Legendary craftsman dies or is killed in battle because a person from a related industry can move over into his position and, while perhaps not perform at the same proficiency as the legendary, will perform at a higher proficiency than a dwarf who has no experience whatsoever.

This would also assist in the games military system, particularly if all dwarven weapons were linked to the tools of their various trades. This, as mentioned earlier, is something that we see already to a limited extent, and it makes perfect sense.  Much like with mining, wood cutting, and hunting, this would allow dwarfs that rotate between military and civilian jobs to gain some synergistic benefit between both skill sets.

Interface/Interaction Issues:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

This would, of course, necessitate a slight improvement in the way that DF displays information to the player. This is a much needed overhaul to begin with. My personal suggestion would be to split it into three components.

The first component would be a better system for displaying the relative strengths and weaknesses and skill levels of the Dwarfs, similar to what is currently done by third party utilities such as Dwarf Therapist. A single menu item that allows you do see some indicator of skill for every dwarf simultaneously, or segregated by certain parameters such as squad, profession, migration wave, skill level, or burrow assigment. This is a much needed component at any rate, and would tie in nicely with the overall theme of this suggestion.

The second component would be a labor screen that operated similar to the military screen. Instead of squads, you would be designating professions to your dwarfs. Ideally, the menu would be customizable, but for the base version, simply allowing the user to toggle through the predefined labors and assign dwarfs to those labor groups would be a major plus for the game. Particularly if the list on the right sorted itself by the relative skill levels of the dwarfs for the associated labor, similar to the way they are sorted for your noble selection screen.

The third component ties in more directly with tool use, and would be rolled in to an equipment function similar to the one on the military screen, but for the civilian labor counterpart. It would allow you to assign specific tools and equipment, or generic classes of tools and equipment, to dwarfs within a specific labor group as you do within the military. As different tools would have different affects on each profession, this would allow players to customize how they wished to develop their professional infrastructure much the same as they can already do with the military. A fortress economy built around slower production of high quality crafts might use one particular toolset, while an economy built around mass production of  somewhat lower quality goods might use another toolset. This, in combination with burrows, selectable materials, and assignable workshops makes a large degree of fine tuning available to the player without making it mandatory, and simultaneously reduces the overall amount and difficulty of micromanaging a large fortress by centralizing the process.

For a finer level of control/scalability, a noble position could be assigned without which none of this would be possible, or at least without which it would have a greatly reduced efficiency or success rate. Your labor noble would be the counterpart to the manager position. Where the manager handles what items are produced, the labor manager would handle who produces them and under what constraints.

As always, I am looking forward to comments, concerns, criticisms, complaints, and free dwarven ale.

Related Links:

Skill Meaning/Requirements: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=76280.0
Improved Farming: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=76007.0

[Silverionmox]

- So the core idea is this: track experience in component skills, define overarching skills by summing up component skills.
In the raws that would translate to something like this:
[labor:carpentry]
[material:wood:any][tool:hammer][tool:saw][tool:plane][product:toys:any][product:furniture:any]

...meaning that the carpentry labor potentially gives experience to woodworking, hammer, saw and plane skills (if that tool is used), toymaking and furniture making skills (if that product is being made) and the ability of the dwarf doing the labor is determined by taking into account the relevant composite skills as well. The reaction in reaction.txt defines the labor needed, in any case, as well as the actual ingredients, tools etc. if not the default as defined here. If a player were to make a reaction that uses the carpentry labor with bar of metal, it wouldn't yield xp to neither the woodworking nor the metalworking skill.

If one wanted to add a specialized labor, eg. coopery:
[labor:coopery]
[material:wood:any][tool:hammer][tool:saw][tool:plane][product:furniture:barrel]

That's it.

In the case of expanded workshops, I also suggest to add tags that tell the dwarves what kind of furniture they could use. (I've also added a support skill, geometry, here: always used.) 
eg.
[labor:carpentry]
[material:wood:any][tool:hammer][tool:saw][tool:plane][product:toys:any][product:furniture:any]
[skill:geometry][furniture:workbench][furniture:table][furniture:sawmill]


Qualifiers (optional): one could conceivably add modifiers to the relative importance of the skills involved (eg. [skill:wood:50]), but I think splitting it equally between the actually used skills is ok for now.
Also, the different tools used could give different bonuses (eg. [tool:plane:quality:1][tool:saw:speed:2] if we want to differentiate that way.

Question: how to track object skill? It's all or nothing IMO, because subcategories that encompass several objects (eg. chairs and tables) would introduce arbitrary distinctions, and require more raw administration for each item that one adds. Whereas just taking the list of items in the raws one by one needs no extra step, introduces no inconsistencies and requires no extra raw bookkeeping.

- This can, but doesn't have to, be accompanied by interface improvements. It could just as well function under the hood with the current system, awaiting a big labor and manager interface rewrite.

- As for the military system, one thing I'm sorely missing there, that would also be essential in work crews, is the ability to direct the dwarves to train a certain skill. For example, when I add a swordsdwarf to my archer squad, that doesn't mean that I want all my archers to train in swords. I just added him because he already has some dodge but I want him to become an archer.

[slothen]

skills and jobs are already separate in terms of display to the player and tracking.  What would need to change would be support for jobs to use multiple skills.  I believe the support for this is already in place, with chatting training multiple skills, combat actions training both weapon and fighter skills, watching demonstrations training and benefiting from several skills.  The system here needs to be expanded for civilian labors, which enable a class of different jobs, but which all train the single skill linked to that single labor.

[ravaught]

Side Note: **Tools, for the purpose of this thread, refers to any item that a dwarf can use to accomplish a task, including weapons and such**

skills and jobs are already separate in terms of display to the player and tracking.  What would need to change would be support for jobs to use multiple skills.  I believe the support for this is already in place, with chatting training multiple skills, combat actions training both weapon and fighter skills, watching demonstrations training and benefiting from several skills.  The system here needs to be expanded for civilian labors, which enable a class of different jobs, but which all train the single skill linked to that single labor.

That was exactly what was suggested, except that the suggestion applied equally to all skills, not just civilian. The basic infrastructure is already in place, which only serves to make the suggestion that much more feasible.


@Silverionmox

Ideally, the abilities used for any given task would be defined in either the reactions(in the case of crafting), the building definitions(in the case of constructions), or by what is equipped(for combat, which is already in place). XP would be split equally among the skills used, and, as you said, the Labors would essentially be calculated based off the sum relevant skills. It could be simply implemented by increasing the XP needed per level of labor skill drastically, and its value being the average of the raw xp sum of all of the skills that it encompasses.

To use your example of carpentry:

carpentry xp=(scultping + carving + designing + planing + Geometry + Hammers + (insert skill here))/number of skills

The net effect of this would be that a) all of your skills would increase slower, and b) the rate at which legendaries are trained would be dramatically decreased. In other words, in order to max out your carpentry you would have to max, or nearly max, all of the skills that fall under its umbrella. That system could be changed somewhat to allow some skills to way more heavily than others, perhaps by assigning some skills as secondary or support skills and some as primary, with the secondary skills comprising a smaller portion of the overall labor skill value.

Object skills are can still be lumped together categorically. For example, an adz , a planar, sanding brick, and sand paper could all come under Planing as a skill, with each tool having some requisite skill necessary for use. +1 if there is a way to define a modifier for xp gain per tool. This system is already in place to a limited degree in the military I believe.

[Silverionmox]

I actually meant the experience with producing certain items, even if they otherwise use the same labor (and therefore most likely the same skills), eg. chairs, chests, tables, beds; stone crowns & stone bracelets etc.. I'd say track all raw-defined objects separately. Maybe another kind of grouping in the raws can be used, but requiring groups to be defined just for this purpose isn't necessary.

I'd not go as far to include image and statue variations, because those consist out of very specific scenes etc. that emerge from the game... that's an infinite list.

[ravaught]

@Silverionmox

actually meant the experience with producing certain items, even if they otherwise use the same labor (and therefore most likely the same skills), eg. chairs, chests, tables, beds; stone crowns & stone bracelets etc.. I'd say track all raw-defined objects separately. Maybe another kind of grouping in the raws can be used, but requiring groups to be defined just for this purpose isn't necessary.

Yup, exactly what I meant. Sorry if I was unclear on that point. Groups would not be defined just for this purpose. I am sure that as the game continues to grow and expand being able to select things individually or as groups would be quite handy, and would be extensible into other portions of the game engine. The problem, as I see it, is that as things stand at the moment, things are fairly rigid, whether you are talking about workshops, skills, labors, tools, or anything else. If we can abstract these out it will give toady a lot of breathing room in the code, and players a lot of room to create their own brand of FUN. Having the groups is much like having Castes, they provide a broad definition that can be refined to minimize the amount of code needed to accomplish any given task, while the single entries provide the method for fine tuning and flexibility.

Images and Varitations could remain as they are, really, particularly as far as the descriptions for them. All that would need to change would be the reaction. A simple [IS_STATUE], [IS_IMAGE], [IS_ENGRAVING] could link the reaction back to the current code for determining the what images are produced. This would also make it possible to expand the functionality to include different material types, such as leather.

[Maklak]

I'd like some sort of skill synergy, because the skills are already too fragmented. A there-level system would make sense (stats(agility) influence skills(cutting) which are used for labours (woodworking)), but seems complex and hard to balance.

It would be much simpler if training some skills gave resudual XP to related skills, so for example using 'masonry' skill would increase 'engraving' and 'stonecrafting' by 20% of XP gain for masonry. Maybe even give teriary 10% experience to yet more skills.

[Silverionmox]

I'd like some sort of skill synergy, because the skills are already too fragmented. A there-level system would make sense (stats(agility) influence skills(cutting) which are used for labours (woodworking)), but seems complex and hard to balance.

It would be much simpler if training some skills gave resudual XP to related skills, so for example using 'masonry' skill would increase 'engraving' and 'stonecrafting' by 20% of XP gain for masonry. Maybe even give teriary 10% experience to yet more skills.

While possible, it requires a roster the size of (totalnumberofskills)² entries to be kept upt to date. Composite skills would automate a lot of that functionality: if you would add a new type of woodworking skill, your carpenters and woodcrafters would automatically be somewhat capable to learn it, without having to add anything more. The same goes for Toady, as the game progresses and new skills come into being.

@Ravaught:
Those item groups might be useful for the AI later.

[ravaught]

According to Wikipedia, the meaning of skill is the same to labor because it give the word "labor" in the bracket behind "skill"

Spoiler: Labor (click to show/hide)

la·bor   [ley-ber]  Show IPA
noun
1.productive activity, especially for the sake of economic gain.
4.physical or mental work, especially of a hard or fatiguing kind; toil.
5.a job or task done or to be done.
9.to perform labor; exert one's powers of body or mind; work; toil.
10.to strive, as toward a goal; work hard (often followed by for ): to labor for peace.
**Removed definitions referring to birth, bodies of people, and government offices**

Spoiler: skill (click to show/hide)

skill1    [skil]  Show IPA
noun
1.the ability, coming from one's knowledge, practice, aptitude, etc., to do something well: Carpentry was one of his many skills.
2.competent excellence in performance; expertness; dexterity: The dancers performed with skill.
3.a craft, trade, or job requiring manual dexterity or special training in which a person has competence and experience: the skill of cabinetmaking.

Spoiler: knowledge (click to show/hide)

knowl·edge   [nol-ij]  Show IPA
noun
1.acquaintance with facts, truths, or principles, as from study or investigation; general erudition: knowledge of many things.
2. familiarity or conversance, as with a particular subject or branch of learning: A knowledge of accounting was necessary for the job.
3. acquaintance or familiarity gained by sight, experience, or report: a knowledge of human nature.
4. the fact or state of knowing;  the perception of fact or truth; clear and certain mental apprehension.
5. awareness, as of a fact or circumstance: He had knowledge of her good fortune.

From this you should be able to see that skill arises from knowledge, and is applied to labor. So this sets up three distinct categories. What you know, what you are capable of, and how you can apply your capabilities to the task you must perform. So, you possess knowledge of the alphabet and language. Using that knowledge, you have developed the skills of reading, writing, and typing, and using those skills, you are able to perform a job or task done or to be done, such as responding to this post. Those same skills can also be applied to a wide variety of other tasks, just as writing reports. When you combine those skills with other skills, such as the skill of calculation based on a knowledge of mathematics, then you can perform new jobs, such as tracking inventory and tabulating fortress wealth.

[Silverionmox]

According to Wikipedia, the meaning of skill is the same to labor because it give the word "labor" in the bracket behind "skill"

That's because currently, skills and labors are identical. They don't need to be.

Labors should be tasks, that you can turn on or off for your dwarves.
Skills should be a measure of how well a dwarf can perform a task. They are improved by doing labors that involve that skill.

Currently, there's a one-on-one relationship between skills and labors. The suggestion is to couple several skills to one labor/task, so it becomes possible to have skill synergy depending on the similarity of labors.

For purposes of convenience, the relevant combined skills ought to be displayed at each labor. Looking at the raw component skills would mostly be useful out of curiosity or to decide the long-term career prospects of a dwarf. You'll notice the effects at the labor assignment screen or part of the screen.

[ravaught]

I am not certain how Dwarf Strength/Stamina is formulate(if anyone has a link to some info like that I would love to read it), but I reclaimed a fort today and struck on an idea that ties in with this thread. Currently, we have hauling labors, but no associated skill and hence no benefit for using manual hauling as opposed to autodump. What I am proposing is that manual hauling actually do something to affect a Dwarf's strength/stamina. With the new hauling upgrades, that would make an interesting choice between labor efficieny(carts) and unit building(manual hauling). It would also provide a logical reason NOT to use the autodump utility. I'm watching my Dwarves move 2k units of stone by hand at the moment.