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Author Topic: Regarding .19 Site Finder/Present Features on Site List  (Read 463 times)

gamildum

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Regarding .19 Site Finder/Present Features on Site List
« on: February 16, 2011, 03:02:48 pm »

I do approve of it, in the sense that you really wouldn't know what's underground in detail if you were going some place. However, there are a couple of unlisted things that I'd like to see added and a few more things I'd like to see in more detail. For one, the lack of listed sand in the site feature list, and lack of an option to find it. I love glass. To the point where I am clearly insane the amount of glass things I produce. Obviously I could just go to a sand desert to find sand, but I tend to use a LOT (enough to get the elves angry at me every time) of wood for various purposes (pearlash for clear glass, and possibly charcoal depending on how I'm doing in getting magma things going, individual rooms for all dwarves, massive wooden aboveground forts, etc. etc.), so that's not an option either. Being able to see/search for sand in the same manner as clay appears is, in my eyes, rather important considering an entire industry hinges on its availability. Due to the way sand is acquired, this could be as simple as a presence/absence.

The second is more detail in the aquifer department. Is the aquifer thin, or thick? How relatively deep does it lie? I've seen aquifers from 1-3 layers thick and anywhere from right in the surface layer to the first layer of rock in a 4 soil layer embark site. How I deal with an aquifer is INCREDIBLY dependent on what kind it is. I personally like having aquifers in my sites (simple pump from a hole in the aquifer to obtain water and a second hole at the far end to drain the site, underground easy-to-get-to fresh water source provided I don't embark in a salty area, and in the case of a double aquifer, ability to create an artificial flow underground to power machinery). The depth is probably the less important of the two; however, those of us who primarily use the cave-in method to deal with aquifers are particularly negatively affected by not knowing just how many layers we're trying to pierce. If one makes the assumption that the aquifer is as thick as it possibly can be, you are wasting an area of 13X13 tiles just to have a single staircase able to pierce the three layers; by contrast, if you are dealing with it as if it's less layers than it actually is, you have to waste either a 5X5 area (think single, actually double), a 5X5 plus a 9X9 area (think single, actually triple), or a 9X9 area (think double, actually triple) of the layers above the aquifer (and, more importantly depending on the local fauna/goblin activity, time) to get through. A better idea of aquifers is, then, quite important.
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