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[Slackratchet]

In my current fort I have decided that the area around the volcano I call home needs to be much flatter and lower. To this end I am channeling a massive amount of land. The problem I am running into is large amounts of casualties doing this. Somehow dwarves are being crushed and regularly stopping channeling due to dangerous terrain and I have no idea why. The ground is completely flat and I make sure all trees and bushes are gone before hand. Does anyone have an idea what I am missing?

SR.

[nekoexmachina]

Dwarves are getting crushed by what? Check the combat 'r'eports.

[Slackratchet]

Wait. It's not rocks. They are apparently just falling.

[LordUbik]

Did you set up terrain to be channeled more than one z-level at a time? This cause a lot of cave-ins and/or falling rocks, could be the cause.

It's better to do one level by one, it takes longer but you'll see a lot less casualties.

[Slackratchet]

Okay. I think it figured it out. Apparently I had left upward facing ramps on the surface that were left over from the previous leveling. The 'r' reports just indicate that the dwarf took some sort of impact and not why are how which is why it was confusing. I removed all the ramps then began channeling and have had no collapses since.

[GhostDwemer]

Ramps aren't the problem, you can channel out ramps without causing collapses or risking falling. Were the dwarves actually crushed or injured in any way? If not, then what you've got is the Wile E Cayote digging behavior. Dwarves dig out the level below before figuring out there is no floor anymore, then fall one level (which doesn't cause injuries.) If they are being injured, they are either falling further, or getting caught in a cave-in. If you have dug out ANY tiles underneath where you are channeling, you have set yourself up for potential cave in. If cave-ins collapse onto dwarves, they die instantly, like anything else. Otherwise, they create clouds of dust that knock dwarves around, potentially pushing them off cliffs and things.

[utunnels]

Also, sometimes having more than one dwarves digging may cause accidents. It's like Urist1 saws off a branch while Urist2 is sitting on it.

[wierd]

Mass channeling a passage wider than 2 tiles is likely the issue, especially if there is no "walls" underneath. (EG, its been mined, THEN channeled)

This is because dwarves obey a rather silly (but I cant really think of a better one) algorithm that prioritizes "last defined tile" with a prerequisite of "reachable", and "not currently tasked by another dwarf".  The same algo is used for constructions and whatnot.

The problem happens when you have more than one miner, and you mass designate an area to be channeled. Rather than be sensible about this, and not channel tiles that other dwarves will need to stand on to complete their tasks-- dwarves will slavisly channel out the nearest, pathable, and not-already-active designated slot to mine. (there's a little more to it than this, but this is the basic algo)  This means that if Urist McMolasses-Ass picks the tile in the "middle" of the 3 tile wide channel, and SpeedyMcUrist gets there at the right time, Molasses butt dwarf will be standing on the tile that is being supported by speedy's tile, speedy will channel out his tile, which then removes the support for the tile Molasses butt was standing on, and there is a cave in with molasses butt at ground zero. HOORAY. Dwarf falls, has stuff land on him, he gets all kinds of buggered up.

To alleviate this problem, I do things this way:

1) no more than 2 miners. No, For real. This is necessary unless you want to seriously micromanage.
2) Designate channels no wider than 2 tiles. After the intial channel is cut, do it in strips 1 tile on each side, as needed, to widen the channel.
3) Pay attention to support!
4) Try not to "Mine, then channel"-- it causes many problems.

[Jebediah`]

For some reason I interpreted the topic name as a television channel, and I thought "Man, I would totally watch that."

Channeling can sometimes just be tricky like that. If all else fails, try just 1-tile strips of channeling at a time, there's...almost...no way for that to go wrong.

[Chevaleresse]

Yeah, you have to be really careful with channeling. It seems like dwarves will kill themselves out of pure spite while channeling. My current fort had one smooshed miner and another currently dehydrating in the makeshift hospital because of the channel behavior almost intentionally creating cave-ins.

[Slackratchet]

A bit more experimenting with it shows removing the slopes helps but doesn't eliminate the problem. Anytime I get more than about 6 dwarves channeling a big flat plain someone dies.

[mobucks]

In my experience designating upward ramps to be dug out works better than channeling. Only do one z-level at a time though.

[StagnantSoul]

...That's genius.

[arbarbonif]

Ramps aren't the problem, you can channel out ramps without causing collapses or risking falling. Were the dwarves actually crushed or injured in any way? If not, then what you've got is the Wile E Cayote digging behavior. Dwarves dig out the level below before figuring out there is no floor anymore, then fall one level (which doesn't cause injuries.) If they are being injured, they are either falling further, or getting caught in a cave-in. If you have dug out ANY tiles underneath where you are channeling, you have set yourself up for potential cave in. If cave-ins collapse onto dwarves, they die instantly, like anything else. Otherwise, they create clouds of dust that knock dwarves around, potentially pushing them off cliffs and things.

I have had miners die from channelling a single level.  He fell on his head, broke it and died.  He was asleep at the time (another dwarf channelled underneath him), maybe sleeping dwarves land on their heads...  Actually that would make a lot of sense given the combat rules.  I'm tempted to do some science...