[Fixed - 3.80] Hired help timberwork too fast?

[Keriew]

I hired an adventurer who is a master in timberwork and has a handaxe as a help in felling trees. I expected to double our tree cutting output, however it seems that hired work works at a lightning speed compared to the player. For a player with decent skill and equipment it takes around an hour to cut down a tree, but NPC seems to cut down a mature tree in around ten minutes. This results in NPCs being able to produce 30+ logs a day, which feels excessive and trivializes house building.

Not sure if it's a bug, or a design decision but it felt weird enough that I decided to report.

Additional minor oversight is that hired help seems content to accept boards that they have made as a reward for their work, making the hired help essentially free.

[JP_Finn]

Have you checked how much equipment (in weight) the hired help carries?
NPCs generally carry very little, likely less than 10% of their weight in worn clothes for 0% penalty and some food and axe for 1% penalty.
Often players make their characters do all tasks carrying "incase Njerpez ATTACKS while I'm carving a bowl, got to wear full armor and carry 2 weeks food supplies".
You might notice your character's cutting speeds up and fatigues less if you drop excess weight.

e.g. 153lbs character with 40 timbercraft, masterwork woodsman's axe. Encumbrance 2%: fatigue between 9-12% per tree, 45-50 min. Encumbrance 8%, fatigue 25%-34%, time 65-80minutes.
e.g.2 229lbs with 75% timbercraft, MW woodsman's axe, encumbrance at 2%, fatigue 6-9% and 30-40min. At encumbrance 8%, fatigue goes up 24%-30% and felling takes 60-70min.

[Keriew]

No, there is differently something else going on. You can definitely make the tree cutting take longer with encumbrance, exhaustion, low skill or bad tools but you can't reliably cut down trees much faster than that.

I've created a new character, 98% starting timbercraft, extremely high starting attributes and a masterwork Woodsman's Axe. Fully rested, no items except the axe and cutting down the tree still took around 40-50 minutes on average. There were a few cases of it being closer to 30 min, but there's no way you can cut down the tree in ten minutes, regardless of circumstances. Best skill, circumstances, equipment and a very lucky roll can maybe get you a tree down in 30 minutes.

That's still a far cry from an NPC with good skill but substandard equipment (just a handaxe), chopping down tree after tree in around ten minutes each.

[Sami]

This was a clear bug, and fixed by now. There were flaws in NPC work timer calculations which made especially the timberwork to get performed far too fast.

Fixed - persists in 3.82.