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[Squirrelloid]

Have you actually seen a raw channel? One that hasn't been engineered into a proper canal with smooth walls?

Spoiler: Hint (click to show/hide)

Digging out vertical-wall pits is usually more work than a sloped hole in the ground. To represent that, the double-designation is the best way.

And if I ever hear about the "make ramp" designation again... for flails' sake people, if anyone proposes that "to safely dig out a patch of land, you need to go to the lower z-level and designate upward ramps; and beware of falling trees" be the game's official modus operandi on the matter, you may as well make a new page on TVTropes, titled "Crowning Moment Of GuideDangIt", and put your name up as the trope maker. It does not make sense when there's a channel designation that should do that. Ramped channels are functionally the same as the non-ramped ones, they simply look different and allow moving through them. You don't get a different liquid throughput because of ramps. Aesthetics and dwarf safety are not a good enough reason to reduce the game's accessibility to common players, and slightly offsetting the channel's status as an easy impassable defence is a good enough excuse to make the feature stick.

The proper fix is to make designate ramp work like the new channel if that's your complaint.  I've never had a problem with trees - you'll need to cut them anyway.

And the new channel 'feature' does nothing to prevent trenches from being uber-defense structures.  Please stop dragging out that chestnut, its already been disproven that the change is at all relevant to defense considerations, its tiresome, and its the worst sort of sophistry to pretend it accomplished anything in that regard.

The only actual change in capabilities has been removal of clean liquid breach digging.  Which annoys me so much I may go back to .40d for any serious fort playing.

[Riloki]

I adore the utility of the new channel, but abhor the eyesore when trying to breach any kind of liquid. An additional problem is with that is path-finding issues. What issues? How about the fact that a dwarf, among other things, will attempt to waltz through a river of magma/lava, should they be on the 'wrong' side. And stow the 'realism' carp until rooms bigger than 7x7 collapse without supports again, or even better, you don't have to micromanage the DIRT that comes out of these holes! And besides, these are *dwarves*! Just because we measely humans can't dig a straight channel to save our lives without heavy machinery (actually we can, I believe it's called a mattock) doesn't mean they can't.

To be perfectly honest, I'd be supremely happy with a construction option like 'breach wall', where you pull a lever and it collapses. Better yet, a remove ramp designation working from above (which IS doable, with the right tools)

Or, like all good things, give us a CHOICE! Would it really be that hard to make a new flag in the init?
[CHANNELS:RAMP] for current functionality, [CHANNELS:SMOOTH] for classic -.-

And while I'm griping, it'd be nice if you could install floodgates from above :/

[Grocer]

Ramped channels are functionally the same as the non-ramped ones, they simply look different and allow moving through them.

Lollerskates.  They're functionally the same, except that they behave differently!

I fully support a carve downward ramp designation.  I used to think (3 days ago) that it was redundant and silly, but it clearly makes some things easier that were annoying some people and it is a reasonable adjustment for a specific use (despite that not being the intended purpose).*

I also support a revert to the previous channeling functionality that's nerfed to prevent impromptu defenses.  I don't see why you'd need a double designation - just make it take 5 times as long to dig out the channel.  The initial problem this was intended to solve was apparently the speed with which such a defense could be erected sub-rected un-rected sub-structed dug out, not the digging of channels from above.

Attacks by ninja trees would probably be handled well by a Cancel dig: tree-bearing floor tile announcement.

And hey, I'm totally behind channels that look like that picture you posted.  Those don't appear to be easily accessable ramps.  A channel doesn't need shear vertical sides to deter attackers - that thing (minus the road-ways) looks like it'd be a pretty effective defense against gobbos and essentially useless as an access ramp.  Any dwarf told to cross that channel to go fishing is gonna go Attend Party.  The game is an abstraction, the actual area of a tile is indeterminate, the actual shape of the landscape is indeterminate.  A channel is only a square-walled hole in your mind, it needn't be viewed as such for it's function to remain a valid supposition.  Once this stuff:

* Ability to get to upper level without having to construct permanent building (ramp or stairs). Ladder that worker can pull up when he is done or just ability to grab edges and pull himself up.
 * Ability to remotely breach wall (rig wall to collapse, link lever and pull it.)

makes it into the game, by all means, remove channeling completely (I also eagerly await smarter enemies and seige towers, that's gonna be awesome).  I don't mind a bit of extra work to get what I want done done.  But until then leave appeals to realism out of it.  In order for them to be valid you have to ignore all the other reasonable abstractions the game already makes.  Doors for instance.  You don't need mechanisms (hinges) to hang doors.  And for good reason - it'd be a huge pita.  It's far simpler (and much more fun) to assume that dwarves got crazy 'stone-fu'.


*I will say that part of what I love about this game is figuring out how to do things like strip-mine safely.  I guess a lot of those sorts of things are bugs or technical issues that are yet to be resolved, but I always enjoyed figuring out the work-around even if it meant mining the wiki.

[Lord Darkstar]

Channeling into ramps adds realism and balance to dwarf fortress.  If you want to channel, you need to get into the pit you dug and dig it out yourself.  It prevents you from quickly digging a trench to block an enemy from approaching.  It also makes channeling out a large area easier as you have ramps to move up to a spot you missed. 

That's false, actually. You can work from above digging a pit. Anyone with experience digging can tell you that.
 You can also dig a deep pit from inside the pit, and as long as you are willing to cut a couple of small dents into the sides of your pit where you want to get out, you can get out easily. Ramps aren't ever needed by people digging--- but they make it easier to haul out the tailings by wheeled vehicles or sleds, and it allows large wheeled equipemnt easy access. Note that dwarves don't use any of that--- sleds or wheeled assemblies. They leave the tailings where they fall, as it isn't close to an equal mass to the area mined.

You can quickly block the advance of any enemy. Just build walls. You just need stone or wood, and you can turn all your dwarves to making walls if you need. It's faster than digging a moat early on, AND you don't need spare picks to do it. Added bonus: The dwarves can't even get trapped until the final piece is put into the wall and they end up on the wrong side. AND you can remove the walls after the attackers are gone, without any damage to your landscape!

The new channelling is useful for digging out an area from above, but it is bad for breaching water and magma. It leads to unnecessary dwarf death, lost equipment and ugly, ugly scaping. Remember, this is the game people mass dump the rock leftover in making their fortresses just to make things tidy in their hallways and rooms. So asthetics are important to many of the dwarf fortress player base.

Except the change doesn't stop the exploit - anyone using channelling for defense can just remove the ramps and build a floor over a ramp set just inside the moat.

Hence my claim that saying it fixes the exploit is the worst sort of sophistry, because it does nothing of the sort.

If you have time to build walls over your ramps, then you can just build walls and skip the channel. Only something that flies can get over a wall. Attackers coming? All dwarves to making a wall--- and that's faster early on then making an unclimbable moat.

Until siege gets put in, there isn't any answer to the "exploit" of making a fortress safe by tossing up 4 walls and hiding in your dug hole. Or if you dug into a hillside, just walling off the entrance until they lose interest and leave.

[Grocer]

Poll is here, let's see some numbers.