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[Arkenor]

These are reusable? By as many dwarves as you want? Magicing your skill up to 5 or 10 instantly?

Honestly, it feels like it totally trivialises an important aspect of the game. And what makes it particularly surprising is that Masterwork defaults to Harder Learning, halving the rate at which dwarves gain skills through actual practise of their trade. Is Harder Learning creating the problem that magic instant skill pills is trying to solve?

Honest toil is how dwarves ought to learn. They learn through doing things, over time.

"Greeting fellow Master Smith! I'm looking forward to working with you this merry day!"

"Oo the 'ell are you? And what ye doing wi' me best tongs!?! Any'ows, yer no Master Smith. Where be the scars? The burns? The callouses? Also, yer 5 years old."

"Oh deary me. You are behind the times, old chap. I read a magic book, and now I'm a Master Smith too! I did get a nasty papercut though. Look! What jolly times we shall have, making fine, er, whatever it is we make here!"

"Get out o' me forge!!!!!!"

[Meph]

Ehm... but what you describe is the current system, dwarves can level up to legendary just reading books. The new system would limit them to lvl5, and make it later in the game then the current one.

[Arkenor]

Ehm... but what you describe is the current system, dwarves can level up to legendary just reading books. The new system would limit them to lvl5, and make it later in the game then the current one.

To level up a dwarf to legendary in a single skill through books under the current system would take a lot of books, and a lot of time, both for the reading of them, and the creation of the books, paper, ink, and glue. As it should. At least that was my experience when trying to improve my broker.

Whereas the new system described in this thread does this with basic books:

You think its balanced? After you have written 50 books, you can make every dwarf in the fort at least 4-6 levels proficient in all skills... for free, or almost free.

And goes to level 10 or 15 if you have a rare book. One system is massively more powerful than the other. Unless I have misunderstood what I've read here.

Anyway, it doesn't really matter. I imagine it'd be an option button in the settings.

[Meph]

An option to add or remove libraries, sure. Not to toggle between NO, OLD_SYSTEM, NEW_SYSTEM.

I will try to make it as balanced as possible, thats what the thread is for. If I make Masterpiece books have a 1% dropchance, you get one in 100 reactions. If I make the free-skills from a library to go to lvl 3, thats a big difference from lvl5. If I make the reactions require skills (reading or student, a social skill), then they would take time to run. If I make the reactions to only add +1, till a max of 3, instead of instantly to 3, then it would take trice as long. If I make the reactions need a journal, or ink+quill, or ink+paper, or a notebook, or any reagent, suddenly the entire balance changes.

If masterpiece books train to legendary, but are used up... thats different from "train to lvl10 in one skill, but are preserved".

I can do sooooooo many things. I just have to figure out which one is the most fair, while being useful in the game, and interesting to the player... as well as easy to understand. Real simple, 

[BoffoDorf]

I've never found a need to really use the library system since the last real bastion of vanilla angst has been deftly handled with the apothecarius and my fleet of free roaming mole weasels.

Though I would love a process to painlessly turn some new joker into a skill 5ish chemist!

[Linkeron]

This idea gets my official stamp of approval.

[fasquardon]

I've never used the library system (as it is) mainly because the complexity has put me off.  This proposed system sounds really excellent.  I would propose a library training cap of 3 or 4 - enough to get a useful dwarf out of, but not so big a boost that it overshadows the skilled migrants.  It also fits rather well with how book learning works in the real world.  Enough to start you out, before the difficult process of learning through practice of your skill.

And "migrant and child basic training workshop" is something I'd find alot more useful than "legendary dwarf training workshop".  Generally, I have more need for getting dwarfs with a moderate understanding of a skill, once they get that, it's easy enough to work them up to legendary standard.

fasquardon

[Meph]

Ok, I'll convert the libraries to this new system. Balancing will probably be this:

• 6 Library Section.
• 60 Books, you need 10 fitting per library as buildmat.
• Bookmaking will stay the same, with paper/vellum/papyrus + ink + glue
• Libraries are: Smithing&Engineering, Crafting, Farming, Philosophy (Socialskills), Mind&Body (Medical&Organizing, Bookkeeping, Researching) and Warfare.
• Skills will level to 4, using a single reaction for each skill. "Read about mechanics" => Mechanic lvl4.
• Studying in the library will require a journal, which is a craft from the Craftsdwarf Shop, already in the game.
• No quills, no additional paper, glue, books, ink, any of that sort, to stop stockpiling and micromanagemt issues for studying.
• Reactions will require the "Reader" or "Student" skill, a social skill. Use workshop profiles to select that dwarf you want to learn.
• Masterpiece books are no longer produced by random in the normal book writing.
• Masterpiece books will get their own reaction, with 2-4% successrate for a RANDOM skill book. Example: "Work on a Masterpiece". Run this 25-50 times, get one book, maybe "Masterpiece about Axe Combat" or a "Masterpiece about Surgery".
• Masterpieces train to level 10 instantly, but are used up. You still need the fitting library.

[BoffoDorf]

Sounds like a great change.

[Meph]

It is done. I got rid of Masterpiece books altogether for now, I'll keep the new system simple. All learning reactions are sorted alphabetically, so they should be easy to find.

I put Medical, Nobles and Sciences into the "Mind & Body" library. So its does all medical skills, organizing for the manager, bookkeeping for the bookkeeper, appraisal for the broker, as well as stuff like archeology, alchemy, sorcery, chemistry, poisons...

EDIT: Slight balance change:
Crafting, Farming, Smithing&Mechanics, Philosophy => lvl4.
Warfare => Lvl3.
Mind & Body => Lvl5.

Should be better from a gameplay and lore perspective (combat is less easy to learn from books, but medical skills and sciences are)

[dukea42]

I like it. Can't wait. Will fill in gaps I need migrants to do by getting them learned up and out to work.  Guilds can take it from there.

[Billy Jack]

I think the diplomacy book name should be "Diplomacy - How to insult people without them knowing it"

Cheese Making - "Who cut the Cheese? - the Guide"
Milking - "Teat etiquette"
Leatherworking - "Things to do with a Bull's Scrotum"
Woodworking - "The poor miners guide to woodworking"

Contest idea.

List out the names of each of your skill books and see if we can come up with funnier names.

[Meph]

All the names can be seen above. Reaction name character limit is hard... the names are as long as its possible with TTF, if played without TTF they are way too long. So the shorter, the better.

Write "Zombie Elephants" => This is max length without TTF.
Write "Zombie Elephants - The old enemy" => This is almost max length with TTF.

If people come up with better ones, sure, I'll add/replace some.

[zach123b]

crazy thought, what if you combined the library with the guilds? dwarf picks guild, guild gives dwarf lvl4 skills to start

[Meph]

Possible, but... what should I do with the libraries then? The guilds do skill-learn rate and attributes (military groups a lot more), and the libraries give basic skill training. If I add this basic skill training to the guilds, I could delete libraries, because they serve no purpose. And I do like them way too much for that.