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[Quatch]

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

[Owly]

About how long will it be until the hauling changes are released?

[Manveru Taurënér]

About how long will it be until the hauling changes are released?

He's said he aims at getting it done during May, so not too long ^^

[monk12]

re: new devlog

How does the lack of skill-based mining effect ore mining? I don't care much if there are fewer boulders around, but I normally mine around the ore/gems until I can get a 100% drop rate- it'd suck if I'm limited to random chance.

[Quatch]

I've dropped skill-based mining drop rates

As in lowered the drop rate?

[Urist McDepravity]

I believe it just means that even non-skilled miners will always yield a boulder.

[Putnam]

I believe it just means that even non-skilled miners will always yield a boulder.

It seems more like the opposite:

so I'm just going to stick with the larger intermittent boulders for now to keep things moving.

[Greiger]

Yea sounds like everybody's gonna drop boulders at about the same rate now.  And it will be lower than the legendary or near legendary values.  If I had to hazard a guess probably near the current proficient level.

Like monk said I'm a bit worried about ore.  But I guess once you have one vein you usually have a dozen more, and currently two or three iron veins is enough to do most everything one would want to do with iron short of building the titanic, so needing to look around a bit more because yer not extracting as much ore as you used to might not be as terrible as it sounds.

Even then Toady also said larger boulders.  Likely he was just talking about what we currently get as opposed to rubble, but it might mean that he increased size and bar yeild for one chunk of ore instead. Making it basically equal out to the same amount over a mining job, only more compacted.

But that does get me worried about the really small mining jobs, like gems, especially ones that are [CLUSTER_ONE].  Probably close to Monk's question, but what about gems?  Especially the ones that only show up in really small clusters like the colored diamonds?  Will those always drop a chunk?  Or are they subject to the same whims of the RNG as the normal stone, with a high chance of completely ruining that one tile of clear diamond even with a legendary miner?  Something in between?

[MrWiggles]

Toady, your recent Dev Updates seem to including language and at times, ideas, from the FotF. How much, if any is the FotF being an influence on Improved Hauling? Or are just using our language to help convey what you two are currently working on?

[HiEv]

I read Toady's comment in the dev log where he said, "I don't yet see a way to make something like rubble or different sizes of rocks a net positive for the game," so I thought I'd look up more on mining to see if I could figure out a reason.  I ended up finding out a bunch of other interesting mining stuff.  So...

There is a whole bunch of interesting stuff in the Mining article at Wikipedia, so now I'm curious.  Are there any plans to add any of the following: hushing (using water to flush out overburden and reveal rock and ore veins), fire-setting (to weaken rock to make it more easily mined, sometimes combined with water to further weaken it due to thermal shock), sluicing (using water to not only wash away overburden, but also to collect gold, black sands, etc.), reverse overshot water-wheels (which could lift water up multiple z-levels, unlike current "cochlea" pumps we have which only go up one z-level), hydraulic mining (using high-pressure water to dislodge rock and sediment, which could then be sluiced), or arrastras (simple mills for crushing rock to recover gold, etc.)?

[Caldfir]

Hmm...

After reading and re-reading the devlog, the wording is still ambiguous to me:

I've dropped skill-based mining drop rates for the time being.

Does this mean he's removed the feature of skill affecting drop rates, or that he lowered the drop rates?  It sounds more like the first one, but I'm not really sure what the motivation for doing that would be.  It is certainly a change, but I don't see how it is a benefit.  It isn't a disaster either, but it just seems like a change with no strong benefits or drawbacks.  There is probably something clever to do with drop rates, like having some way to toggle if dwarves are trying to mine out stone or trying to hollow out a region, but if that's going to delay the release, why bother changing anything at all? 

Toady, could you clarify the above quote's meaning?  Also, what is the motivation for this change?

Maybe there's some super obvious benefit that's just going over my head here?

[Urist McDepravity]

Maybe there's some super obvious benefit that's just going over my head here?

It seems to me that the point is that you cannot use unskilled miners to mine out region w/out any waste produced - now you will have to move these boulders around (and you cannot do that without wheelbarrows) no matter what strategy you employ. So it would give wheelbarrows some meaning at game start.

[Sean Mirrsen]

Regarding the latest devlog and skill-based mining: in a less rigid system, making this Raw-based would be a net plus. I.e. a mineral definition would have some entries for specific things the destruction of the tile would yield, with modifiers based on different things, skills included. You could use this system to, for instance, completely omit the CLUSTER_SINGLE placement of gems, instead using a ridiculously low chance of said gem dropping randomly from different relevant minerals, and allow ore and gem veins to produce common stone alongside their usual material, all based on relevant skills of the miner (i.e. if the miner is also a gem expert, he'll have more chance to get better gems, etc).

On dumping things from carts, you could have two kinds of "dump tracks". One would be a mechanically activated "tumbler", a device that turns a stationary cart over without having it leave the track, effectively dumping its contents onto an adjacent tile as defined during placement. Another would be a sort of a "tilted track", a segment of track with railings that keep the cart on while it is turned sideways, dumping its contents alongside the track without the need to stop. This would likely be a fixed length (3- or 5-long) segment with 4 selectable facings. No idea how to represent the tilted track in ASCII, though.

[thvaz]

I'm disappointed with the mining changes. I was expecting at least:

1)Heavy boulders too heavy for a dwarf to carry
2)Clutter in the floor slowing down movement

Mining skill should determine the amount of boulders a miner generates. Less skilled miners would generate smaller (with less volume) 4-5 boulders (maybe with some loss in mass), while skilled miners would more likely have success in mining full, single boulders. Of course, the industry of rock crafts and furniture and smelting would have to change for this to be fruitful. (Smaller boulders couldn't be made into statues, the loss of volume in ores would impact the amount of metal, etc).

As it is, I may as well just "h"ide the rocks, and use the minecarts only when I am bored, or as death traps.

[MaximumZero]

That may be coming. It didn't seem like the mining changes are finalized yet.