Can't get tailoring past lvl 8, thread usage/repair chance is weird

[nameless_survivor]

So I’ve repaired and reinforced roughly a couple thousand pieces of clothing, varying from socks to chest rigs & MBR vests, to clothe my future NPC army; but my tailoring skill level is still stuck at lvl 8. Does repairing/reinforcing clothing not give skill gains? Or is it only for a very low level?

On a related note, I’ve repaired literally hundreds of T-shirts, boxers, etc and I still only have around a 30% chance of repairing a given pair of boxers by a level with each use of the tailoring kit. With that kind of practice, I should be able to repair simple clothing blindfolded, and not waste 10% of a full tailor kit worth of thread struggling to patch a hole in a stupid pair of socks.

We might consider:

• Scaling up the chance of repairing a given piece of clothing a little more per skill level than it does currently.
• Having a less RNG based approach to repairing clothing.
• Adding experience for repairing clothing/armor at higher levels, and have xp/repair just drop as your level increases.

[Mantar]

Yeah, that’s screwy.
I think tailoring is in need of a serious overhaul. It works strangely, and it’s a ludicrously valuable skill which can turn out custom equipment that’s far better than pre-cataclysm stuff. Only in CDDA would I say “when the apocalypse hits, I’m gonna get a tailoring kit and beeline to the library to find a clothing designer’s manual!”

[Tamior]

It’s mostly questionable that you automatically learn recipes for high-end armor by training tailoring and fabrication alone.
That is, you DON’T need any fighting (melee/dodging/etc) experience before you can craft functional survival gear. Or that you don’t need solid experience with ranged combat (marksmanship (4) or something) to craft highly efficient kevlar-based armor.

[Mantar]

It’s not just the armor, it’s like storage gear and stuff, too. Even regular clothing! The stuff you can make in a fire-lit basement with a wooden needle and some fiber stripped out of cattails and a few rags cut from bloody zombie tatters while high on cocaine is as good as or better than the professionally machined stuff you find on the shelf in clothing stores.
That doesn’t strike you as odd?

[Tamior]

To be honest, I’m not sure how exactly a home-made duffel bag will be significantly different from a factory-made one as far as carrying stuff is concerned.
The fact that wooden needle has the same quality as one from sewing kit is another question. That IS very odd, indeed.