It's no secret that many of us use "spreadsheet" labor methods like Dwarf Therapist and DFhack's Manipulator, and are concerned about the "autolabor" style promised for DF Premium and Classic.
I'm regularly asked about it on reddit, on the Discords, Steam forum, and so on. I'm pretty sure we're not going to change Bay 12's mind on this (and of course, they are world renown game designers whereas most of us are not.) This is already a great step forward from checking (v)iew (p)references (l)abors on every migrant, of course!
They've always shown a willingness to listen to concerns and make adaptations where they can. Let's put together a list of concerns for them to be aware of.
I worry about:
Mass assignment and unassignment of labors, like turning on 50 dwarves to smooth a newly mined out area, but then reducing it to a handful of skilled stone detailers for the engraving. Many hands make light work, and there are a great number of low skill and no skill jobs that can be handled this way currently with a few clicks, things any dwarf can do equally well, if not equally quickly. A master miner is fast, but a whole crowd of unskilled dwarves handed picks for the first time will quickly learn enough to outpace them, and so on.
How will we even know what sorts of dwarves we have? Profession names are great, but it's the same profession name for every dwarf from a peasant with rusty Novice weaponsmith to the cherished fortress elder who made the first pick on site, and has hammered his way to Grand Master without ever quite getting a Strange Mood to push him over the edge. With a spreadsheet, skill levels can be seen at a glance. I believe we've been told that we'll be able to assign certain dwarves to certain workshops, which is great, but if we have to look through dwarves one by one like now, it's still going to be a big task.
Jobs we just don't want done like hunting for example, since they have to be manually turned off to get them to sleep in a bed, (and can be a nuisance for other reasons.) Fishing can likewise cause trouble as they run off into the rain while the goblin siege is incoming. It's easy to run down a column and turn off all the hunters and fishers in Therapist.
Some of these things will almost certainly be taken care of circumstantially. You can already set (o)rders for fishing only in zones, and never set a zone, for instance. If we can give them good examples of things we enjoy being able to do with Dwarf Therapist, perhaps all our concerns can similarly be swept away!
This began as a reddit thread, which can be found here and is still active as of 3 August 2021. I hope this will be counted as part of this thread too, for Tarn and Zach's attention.
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Topic: Specific concerns about labors for the Premium and Classic versions. (Read 1960 times)