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[Sizik]

Confusing title, I know.

What I'm saying is that you should be able to designate, say, a whole column of up/down staircases at once instead of have to build them one at a time. Basically, a construction should be designatable if there is an adjacent construction designated that would support it, similar to the way mechanical devices work.

[Vester]

I've also had thoughts about this, but build order logic would have to be put in first, because otherwise you'd have dwarves building walls on top of designated constructions and acting surprised when A section of the cavern has collapsed!

[Sizik]

The dwarf would have to have orthogonal access to the construction, which would provide support unless the dwarf is standing on a bridge or other non-supportive building, in which case the player should be more careful about how they designate these things.

[jseah]

You could just run the cave-in algorithm on the section before the dwarf builds it.  If building the section would cause a cave-in, the dwarf doesn't build it. 

Before doing this though, dwarves need to be able to find their own materials to build buildings.  Designate 100 granite floors and the dwarves will go find granite the build it with, instead of giving "item blocking site" errors because they can't move a granite block being used by another designation. 

[LordDemon]

I've also had thoughts about this, but build order logic would have to be put in first, because otherwise you'd have dwarves building walls on top of designated constructions and acting surprised when A section of the cavern has collapsed!

Could this happen at all? In order to build something, the builder must get to square next to it. If that can't be done, then the object can't be built at the time. If one can get next to it, doesn't the location builder is standing on support the new construction?
I think you can for example build stairs up,multiple levels, and then a wall around the stairs on the top floor, and this doesn't cause cave ins. Or am I wrong?

[jseah]

^

Build a wall on top of a wall on top of a wall. 
Next to it on z=3, put a bridge to the top section of wall. 

If the dwarf builds the z=3 level of wall first (before the bottom two) from the bridge, bam!  Cave-in.  (note: bridges do not support constructions)

EDIT: Sizik already explained this above.  >.>  I should read first before posting. 

[Vester]

I've also had thoughts about this, but build order logic would have to be put in first, because otherwise you'd have dwarves building walls on top of designated constructions and acting surprised when A section of the cavern has collapsed!

Could this happen at all? In order to build something, the builder must get to square next to it. If that can't be done, then the object can't be built at the time. If one can get next to it, doesn't the location builder is standing on support the new construction?
I think you can for example build stairs up,multiple levels, and then a wall around the stairs on the top floor, and this doesn't cause cave ins. Or am I wrong?

Someone said Toady is going to implement better cave-ins (and by better, I mean cave-ins that can't be prevented by a pillar of soap). I assume we'll have to be a little more careful about constructions in the future.

[Ethnar]

We partly have this sort of thing already - designating big floor area above nothing. I guess the biggest issue DF would have to face is pathing for materials (big floor doesn't suffer from this issue).

[Draco18s]

We partly have this sort of thing already - designating big floor area above nothing. I guess the biggest issue DF would have to face is pathing for materials (big floor doesn't suffer from this issue).

But it only works because of the mass construction code Toady put in, which only works in two directions: X and Y.  You can't do the same thing for stairs (well, ok, you can designate a 10x10 area of up-stairs, but they don't GO anywhere).  If you desigate only a 5x10 area, you can't immediately add the other 5x10 area that's out in the air.

Also, despite dwarves liking to build floors on the diagonal, I have never, never seen a floor collapse from doing these mass constructions.

[Derakon]

Generally you only get into trouble with bridges and other non-supporting constructions that dwarves can stand on. When you do have one of these, though (for example, wanting to put up walls along the edge of a bridge), though, the lack of a proper build order gets very annoying, very fast.

[Draco18s]

Generally you only get into trouble with bridges and other non-supporting constructions that dwarves can stand on. When you do have one of these, though (for example, wanting to put up walls along the edge of a bridge), though, the lack of a proper build order gets very annoying, very fast.

Admittedly, it does.  You're right.  But if we can get a supported designation for stairs and floors (skip walls and other items for now) then there would be no additional problems (the idea is that because constructed floors can be designated in large amounts with only a single supported tile, then you can do this as many times as you want and it'll all be safe to build* and stairs, being an upward building process and could never be built in another fashion would also be safe).

*At least, until a more realistic cave in system.  But that would effect all mass construction operations anyway.