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[Footkerchief]

Would it be terribly difficult or time consuming to add a line to descriptions of creatures that went, 'He/she/it is facing N/NW/SSW'?

But that's pretty minor, I'm just curious.

Old but relevant:

I'm always wary of a strict facing.  I dislike vision cones and having to change direction manually.  It just doesn't seem that realistic, especially if you are in an alert state.  You have a neck to see all around you, which shouldn't take a turn to move and therefore you shouldn't have to control at all, the ability to use a stance that's more complicated than simply pointing in one direction (for example, how you position your legs can help determine whether you are more prone to being knocked over from the front or from the sides), and the ability to walk in all directions, not just the direction your head/body is facing.  On the other hand, you should be able to sneak up being a lazy guard that's facing away from you (rather than just using a magical sneak mode like we've got now).

[drvoke]

Or in other words, do the people who oppose rubble oppose having to clean it up, (and hence, would not be opposed if cleaning were almost totally automated,) or oppose it for other reasons? 

How many are opposed to just plain anything that slows mining down for any reason, and like the fast burrowing speeds?

Your ideas might be within the scope of the hauling overhaul, so while I'm personally not opposed to an economical way to clean up useless rubble, we've already got a literal fuckton of garbage with very little to do with it outside of quantum stockpiles, atom-smashers, and the magma sea.  There should be a focus on getting this system together to efficiently export garbage out of our fort first (or getting useful materials to our shiny new stockpiles tied to workshops), before what amounts to a total mining overhaul.

In other words, I think Toady's right for putting it off for now, at least while he hopefully sets up the groundwork for efficiently moving that crap out of the miners way.  It's not a desire for an easy game that makes me say, let's have all the tools in place to potentially solve it before we add another problem for the player to surmount.  Laying tracks and building carts and setting up an even remotely efficient rubble hauling system won't be a free or easy task, without even asking the question of what you do with it after.  I hope that this hauling overhaul covers at least some of that with maybe some kind of improved dumping or whatever, but who knows?

[NW_Kohaku]

Your ideas might be within the scope of the hauling overhaul, so while I'm personally not opposed to an economical way to clean up useless rubble, we've already got a literal fuckton of garbage with very little to do with it outside of quantum stockpiles, atom-smashers, and the magma sea.  There should be a focus on getting this system together to efficiently export garbage out of our fort first (or getting useful materials to our shiny new stockpiles tied to workshops), before what amounts to a total mining overhaul.

In other words, I think Toady's right for putting it off for now, at least while he hopefully sets up the groundwork for efficiently moving that crap out of the miners way.  It's not a desire for an easy game that makes me say, let's have all the tools in place to potentially solve it before we add another problem for the player to surmount.  Laying tracks and building carts and setting up an even remotely efficient rubble hauling system won't be a free or easy task, without even asking the question of what you do with it after.  I hope that this hauling overhaul covers at least some of that with maybe some kind of improved dumping or whatever, but who knows?

Your concern is fair enough, but at the same time, the ability to discuss solutions to problems while waiting on Toady to implement things is one thing we have in nigh limitless quantities.  This isn't a "he must do it in this release" discussion, it's an ideal solution discussion.  (Toady basically only listens to the ideal solution discussions, and ignores the quick fixes, anyway.)  If we need better means of disposing of garbage, we can just discuss that too. 

I find this newfound idea that we somehow have to "use" something before it goes in rather strange.  What "use" is there for dwarves needing to sleep, and hence, requiring the player build beds and bedrooms?  What "use" are evil clouds that spread contaminants that cause dwarves to vomit their internal organs?  What "use" are sieges (not counting the side-consequence of goblinite) that challenge the player's ability to defend themselves? 

When we've grown accustomed to these things, we don't mind them, but when they are proposed, we ask what's in it for us. 

Spoiler: making a point that goes just a teensy bit long (click to show/hide)

Setting up a hauling system isn't supposed to be a free or easy task - that's the value it has.  Players here laud the challenge in this and other games. 

Further, I believe that if you are actually forced to clean up the rubble before you can continue mining, and leaving trash strewn about has in-game consequences (not counting the meta-game consequences of FPS loss to a bloated vector), then it may cause the reaction in players to actually start working on cleaning up their trash.

There already are suggestions on how to deal with trash items, from dumping them "off-map", to consolidating "amalgam" walls that delete all items in the compacted trash walls, to the old stand-bys of just atom-smashing or magma-dumping everything. 

More realistic suggestions include composting items (which would be more important when we have farming changes) or incinerating them, as well as the aforementioned "just make a solid wall of rubble at the entrance to the mine like an anthill".  So long as they consolidate/compact into walls that delete the items, and there is an in-game incentive to eliminate them (your mining cannot continue until you clear the workplace), then you side-step the FPS drag problem.

I actually see that as a positive, not a negative.  It makes the game "harder", so to speak, as the game goes on without the player actively having to micromanage the rubble.  First tiles you strike into the earth?  You only have to haul rubble a couple tiles away.  Digging straight for the magma sea to try to set up a magma forge early?  You're going to have to haul that stone up 100+ z-levels to find the dump site.  When you are just starting out, it's easy, but the larger and more ambitious your mining becomes, the more you have to negotiate the logistics problem. 

Further, it's a very serious problem that stone is a "free" resource in this game, in the sense that we always have limitless supplies of it on hand to accomplish any task we can use stone to fulfill.  Most city-building or strategy games derive their challenge from the fact that resources are meant to be scarce.  Almost all resources in DF besides maybe wood and iron, depending on embark, are available in such huge quantities that you never need to worry about scarcity, and indeed, the problem is overabundance of resources.  We don't worry about how we are going to feed our dwarves, we worry about how to get rid of the excess food. We don't worry about if we will have enough stone to supply all the walls, mechanisms, doors, tables, chairs, etc. we need for defense and infrastructure, we start building walls and roads to just eliminate excess stone. 

I wrote a pretty massive thread on farming specifically about how we need to make organic resources more scarce and something that can either be available with scarcity if you put little effort into it, or can be available in greater degrees of abundance for greater degrees of effort and understanding of the system, but we need the same thing for inorganic resources, as well.  We need to make mining slow enough and hard enough to give workable stone actual value to a dwarf. 

There's something very wrong with the notion of a game about dwarves that see stone and even gems and precious metals like gold as nothing but trash that they need to get rid of for their excess. 

In fact, I'd actually like to see stone become less useful overall - clay and ceramics were added to the game, but are nearly useless because clay doesn't do anything the excessive stone you are trying to find ways to get rid of isn't already capable of doing.  Glass doesn't fare much better.

We have come to accept and even enjoy elements of the game that don't give us a "benefit", like dwarves needing to sleep and have bedrooms, and incorporate it into our game, and we enjoy the need to solve these problems the game forces upon us. 

The fact that stone and ores and gems are going to be in the landscape isn't going to change, and without making caverns even crazier, the only real changes to them will be the 3d ore veins.  If we are to impose a scarcity of stone, it must be through making the act of mining itself more slow. 

Only then can we have the benefit of the challenge of trying to make a temporary shelter for our dwarves while the slow process of excavating the "true fortress" takes place.  Initial constructed wooden or stone shacks might get buried in rubble amalgam walls, and become "underground" as the fortress below expands. (Of course, hopefully, this goes hand-in-hand with the conservation of soil, and end of limitless sand and clay from floors, as well...)


For those who make megaprojects, do you know how the ancient Egyptians made their giant temples and obelisks in an age without cranes and powered machinery?  They used sand.  They carved the obelisk out of one giant piece of stone at the quarry, floated it whole down the Nile on a barge, built a sand ramp to get it up above the podium, and then dug the sand out from under it until it was sitting right-side-up on the podium.  They engraved the columns of their giant temples by piling sand up to the top as a scaffold, and then digging their way down as they completed their engravings...

Making a pyramid in Minecraft Creative Mode is easy.

What the Egyptians did was impressive not just for lasting so long, but for what they accomplished in spite of their limitations.

Likewise, Wieliczka's cathedral is impressive because it was mined out using "realistic" physics models where you had to actually remove the stuff you excavated.  No speedy stone vaporizations for them.

[DG]

For what it's worth, NW_K, I'd like to see mining go more toward what you envision. I think part of the problem is that people restart fortresses constantly (worlds for that matter) and typically stick to the same plan every time. That would make delving a fortress tiresome after the umpteenth time so you'd want it to be quick. But I don't think making it quick and simple is a good solution. Making fortress building challenging and interesting (in ways that you touch on, amongst others) is the key. But even then it won't mean much until such time as you have more incentive to keep a fortress for a long time. Toady has already stated that as one of his major goals (or maybe more specifically worlds) so I can see support for "difficult" mining changes growing in the future.

As part of the flying minecart physics, did you decide on a tile size?

Assuming gravity works like real world gravity and you can invent a time unit (obviously not linked to the dwarf mode calendar, which moves too fast for this), then a choice has been made.  It wouldn't make any fewer dragons fit in the tile though.  I think for the purposes of the minecarts it turned out to be 2m x 2m x 3m with 10 clicks / second, but it isn't that important or far-ranging in effect.

This is a missed opportunity to define the dimensions of a tile once and for all, in terms of the speed of a dwarven minecart (fully laden), rather than metres; which would seem nice and dwarven to me

I think it depends on how many coconuts the cart is carrying and whether it's running on African or European gauge rails.

[NW_Kohaku]

Making fortress building challenging and interesting (in ways that you touch on, amongst others) is the key. But even then it won't mean much until such time as you have more incentive to keep a fortress for a long time. Toady has already stated that as one of his major goals (or maybe more specifically worlds) so I can see support for "difficult" mining changes growing in the future.

Speaking long-term, there's already plans for "end-game content" of sorts. 

Currently, there are no ways for a fortress to really interact with the world, and you may as well just play a pocket world with 5 years of history every time.  As world events start to continue on after worldgen is over, and fortresses can do more than just delay the amount of time before they crumble, we'll have a reason to keep a world on after a fortress, rather than genning a new world per fortress. 

We will have reasons to keep fortresses on past when we've actually established a fortress once we have Army Arc changes to go and change the world around us, and Barony/County/Kingdom powers over other settlements. 

Further, there's the potential for new reasons to be emotionally invested in the world with Personality Rewrites.  If the game can actually make dwarves into more than just tokens differentiated only by their color-coded professions, but real personalities that don't take just players forcing their imaginations onto the tabula rasa the game offers up, and continuing villains that aren't just going to bump into your first cage trap and make forts more interesting and unique, then players will be less likely to drop fortresses from boredom or dropping worlds so that they can keep rerolling until they hit the embark with the waterfall they like.

... and now, I've gone from wanting to write about mining to remembering how I need to finish rewriting the Class Warfare thread...

[Hanslanda]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Would it be terribly difficult or time consuming to add a line to descriptions of creatures that went, 'He/she/it is facing N/NW/SSW'?

But that's pretty minor, I'm just curious.

Old but relevant:

I'm always wary of a strict facing.  I dislike vision cones and having to change direction manually.  It just doesn't seem that realistic, especially if you are in an alert state.  You have a neck to see all around you, which shouldn't take a turn to move and therefore you shouldn't have to control at all, the ability to use a stance that's more complicated than simply pointing in one direction (for example, how you position your legs can help determine whether you are more prone to being knocked over from the front or from the sides), and the ability to walk in all directions, not just the direction your head/body is facing.  On the other hand, you should be able to sneak up being a lazy guard that's facing away from you (rather than just using a magical sneak mode like we've got now).

Thanks Footkerchief.

[bombzero]

-snip-

well the main point people have is adding rubble, seems to add nothing to the game but time consuming disposal, it is not interesting, it is drudgery just to dig out a room, something you will do 20000000 times while playing dwarf fortress.

are you considering the long term value of this NW? how will this mechanic feel after you have played with it for a year? will it still be "oh neat, i have to clean up after mining" or will it become "ARGH FUCKING RUBBLE!!!!!"?

so I would be strictly against anything that doesn't ADD to the enjoyability of the game.

evil clouds: deadly and sometimes frustrating, but creates fun.
less stone next update: no more buying caravans with eight million stone crafts, may actually have to work for something.
sieges: dangerous and badly timed, deadly. but add a purpose for the complex combat mechanics, keep in mind sieges are unfinished atm.

we still need rebalances in farming, mining, combat, and a few other minor things to balance out the industry. these changes to mining are one giant step in that direction.

however, what does adding rubble, add to the game, that cave-ins, economic rebalances, farming changes, and whatever else is planned over the next decade doesn't?

and also didn't you do some testing a while back that found out that number of individual items = lag? so rubble would create thousands of individual items replacing the removed excess stone.

I simple don't understand your fascination with adding clutter and extra useless items to the game.

[greenskye]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

-snip-

well the main point people have is adding rubble, seems to add nothing to the game but time consuming disposal, it is not interesting, it is drudgery just to dig out a room, something you will do 20000000 times while playing dwarf fortress.

are you considering the long term value of this NW? how will this mechanic feel after you have played with it for a year? will it still be "oh neat, i have to clean up after mining" or will it become "ARGH FUCKING RUBBLE!!!!!"?

so I would be strictly against anything that doesn't ADD to the enjoyability of the game.

evil clouds: deadly and sometimes frustrating, but creates fun.
less stone next update: no more buying caravans with eight million stone crafts, may actually have to work for something.
sieges: dangerous and badly timed, deadly. but add a purpose for the complex combat mechanics, keep in mind sieges are unfinished atm.

we still need rebalances in farming, mining, combat, and a few other minor things to balance out the industry. these changes to mining are one giant step in that direction.

however, what does adding rubble, add to the game, that cave-ins, economic rebalances, farming changes, and whatever else is planned over the next decade doesn't?

and also didn't you do some testing a while back that found out that number of individual items = lag? so rubble would create thousands of individual items replacing the removed excess stone.

I simple don't understand your fascination with adding clutter and extra useless items to the game.

Not to speak for Kohaku, but I believe the suggestion was that a "rubble wall" would delete the items that made it and just be a "wall". So basically you trade 7 item pointers for one wall pointer. And I personally find the idea of dealing with logistics to be fun, but I realize that many other people prefer combat or some other aspect of DF. I imagine how you deal with the stone would change from fortress to fortress. Sometimes you might prefer to be mostly underground, other times you might build ginormous towers. However I believe the ideal solution would balance the need to clean up with automation, so that with sufficient inital effort, your mining becomes largely micromanagement-free.

[bombzero]

well but why add the rubble in the first place? we can already build walls.

[Caldfir]

The reason people are interested in rubble is that we just got the whole minecart/hauling thing, and it doesn't seem like it will be worthwhile to set up unless there's a butt-ton of stuff to move around. 

I haven't actually played the dev version of the game, so I can't know for sure, but right now it sounds like Toady just added in the minecart system, but nobody's going to bother using it because it is simpler to just set up industry near the mines and have dwarves carry the products away by hand.  I personally just don't want this whole big cool system to sit around without anyone using it. 

I don't know if some kind of rubble is the answer or not, but I would point out that in the real world, gravel is an important construction material, which would fill that role. 

Again though, it's really hard to make a call on this stuff without the current iteration of the game in my hands. 

[ag]

well but why add the rubble in the first place? we can already build walls.

Well, for one, constructed walls don't remove the items in any way - they are still kept for the case the wall is deconstructed back.

[NW_Kohaku]

well the main point people have is adding rubble, seems to add nothing to the game but time consuming disposal, it is not interesting, it is drudgery just to dig out a room, something you will do 20000000 times while playing dwarf fortress.

...

I simple don't understand your fascination with adding clutter and extra useless items to the game.

What Greenskye and Caldfir are also correct, but there's something else that is important about what I am arguing for:

At a basic level, we need to throw sand in the gears of mining. 

Spoiler: longish argument (click to show/hide)

Hauling itself is not a really tedious problem for players.  There's a big difference in game-costs and player-costs.  It just takes time and the mere effort of designating the place you want the junk to go.

Instead, it is a problem when you can designate a whole mountain, step away from the game to go make yourself a sandwich, and when you come back, a single dwarf has completed a mountain-top removal project. 

What we need is for mining to have some in-game cost that makes it not so easy for players to vaporize whole mountains in an afternoon. 

And to go back to your own quote:

evil clouds: deadly and sometimes frustrating, but creates fun.
less stone next update: no more buying caravans with eight million stone crafts, may actually have to work for something.
sieges: dangerous and badly timed, deadly. but add a purpose for the complex combat mechanics, keep in mind sieges are unfinished atm.

I don't think you make a good case, here... Evil clouds have one real purpose: The surface is deadly - dig down, dig down immediately, and never come back up.  All caravans and migrants are done for. 

Less stone next update affecting caravans?  Why? Who bothers making stone trade junk, anyway, when Large Serrated Steel Discs and Dwarven Syrup Roasts can single-handedly buy whole caravans?  (And right now, caravans are more effort to scroll through their lists of junk than their goods are actually worth, anyway.)

Sieges, meanwhile, do have a definite fun element: They force players to build their fortress with an eye towards defense.  But you aren't showing how this element is in any way really different from mining, as handling sieges typically is about altering the lay of the land and mining.

Water has a fun element: You cannot directly manage where water is going, you have to work with water in dry environments, and use floodgates or pumps to control when water will be in a given chamber.  The indirectness of control makes it more fun.

And yes, there are definitely other systems I want to see added to the game as it becomes more complex that would also be fun, such as sewage systems or ventilation systems which will be fun for the logistical management that we already need to have in managing siege defense and water or magma management, but to say that we should stop at just these things because, arbitrarily, we consider designing the minecart/logistical systems by which we remove rubble not to be fun while designing the systems by which we move water or manage sieger progression are fun. 


The reason why we need rubble is, counter to your expectations, it should reduce the number of junk items being generated because it slows down the pace of excavation considerably, as each time you mine a set amount of stone, you have to deal with the excess material generated.  By the time that you are mining again, that rubble should be dealt with and out of memory in some manner or another. 

This isn't the only thing, we should eventually have better cave-in mechanics and requirements for supports or reinforcing walls. 

The ultimate goal should be that mining should no longer just be assumed, that every mineral in a given embark is your Armok-given right to haul out and do with as you see fit - you have to work for your stone, and make do with the resources you can manage to get, rather than simply sitting on tons of waste stone you can ignore forever and probably will never use. 

We, as players, should have to look at the geology that we can see, and start sitting down and trying to guess, as real miners do, where the ideal places to mine will be, and where the physical limitations of their ability to mine and set up the support and safety infrastructure will make mining less of a priority or too dangerous to carry on with.

Further, you can't act as if mining is somehow a separate issue from concepts like sieges or evil clouds or or cave-ins or water management or farming.  Mining is how we deal with all those problems - making mining less fast and easy makes every problem we face more challenging and complex.  If you can no longer just dig down to the magma sea while carving a labyrinth into a mountainside as your only entrance to your fortress and magma drown the first siegers you face because that much excavation becomes a serious obstacle, then suddenly, you've made not just mining harder, but sieges harder, as well. If you can't just burrow underground immediately and stay down there forever when facing an evil cloud, but must either come to the surface to dump excess stone outside, or else face severely cramped conditions as you try to find ways to get rid of stone, (although, granted, currently, this will only matter until you get your atom-smasher running,) it makes evil clouds harder.

DF is a game where the systems are all inter-connected, and the game is only so simple and easy because all the systems are simple and easy.  Make one more complex, and it doesn't mean all that much, but when you make all of them more complex, even slightly, you've introduced a resource and problem-juggling game where you have to triage what problems are most likely to kill you next.

[Geb]

Instead, it is a problem when you can designate a whole mountain, step away from the game to go make yourself a sandwich, and when you come back, a single dwarf has completed a mountain-top removal project. 

What we need is for mining to have some in-game cost that makes it not so easy for players to vaporize whole mountains in an afternoon. 

I don't see why it's so important to prevent players from mining out vast amounts of stone. Digging out rooms and corridors is fun at the moment. It's very satisfying to be able to be able to draw out rooms and corridors and watch them being mined out. Preventing oversized mines is not enough of a problem that it is worth adding tedium to a very basic aspect of the game.

[NW_Kohaku]

I don't see why it's so important to prevent players from mining out vast amounts of stone. Digging out rooms and corridors is fun at the moment. It's very satisfying to be able to be able to draw out rooms and corridors and watch them being mined out. Preventing oversized mines is not enough of a problem that it is worth adding tedium to a very basic aspect of the game.

Not tedium, delay. 

You not only will still get to designate excavation sites, but also, the "watching it happen" part will become a more intricate dance, as well.  The only thing this really does is make mining slower, and require players to deal with their problems without the infinite secure space and resources they have immediate access to from the start.  All of that is a step in a positive direction.

Besides, by that same logic you are using, I can say that sieges are just ways to add tedium to my collection of iron, or dwarves sleeping and needing bedrooms is a way to add tedium to my creation of a fortress. 

[Phibes]

I'm glad that Toady is taking a cautious approach to mining changes. It's unavoidable that any given feature or design decision will delight some players and irritate others, but mining is such a basic and fundamental part of the game that it would be a mistake, in my opinion, to turn it into a chore.

I don't want mining to turn out like pastures, a feature that's too irritating to use on a large scale. DF is a complex game, but some balance has to be struck between complexity and playability. This game is already a tough nut to crack for newcomers, and convoluting the most basic game play mechanics isn't going to help.

I'm not opposed to more advanced mining features, as long as the basics remain simple and accessible for players who just want to get on with it. For example, I don't want mine carts to become a de facto requirement for a functional fortress. They seem perfectly suited as a mechanic for improving speed and efficiency, but the player should be able to completely ignore them without catastrophic consequences, especially in the early game.