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[aka010101]

Okay, taking this one directly from the main page. Straight from the mouth of our illustrious leader, toady himself.

"I don't yet see a way to make something like rubble or different sizes of rocks a net positive for the game"

This thread is dedicated to finding those ways.

First off, i have a few of my own. Different sized rocks could be used for different things, for instance, small rocks, that of about the size of one's head or smaller, could be used for crafts, rock traps (or murder holes, if you prefer something a little more medieval), and perhaps be cut into bricks for use in construction.
Gravel is a lot harder, only use i can think of off the top of my head is paving roads, which would be not as good as a cobblestone road, but better than a dirt road. That one is all i've got for now.
Lastly, we'd need a new designation 'quarry stone'. Normal mining would be simply digging a tunnel, and generally get you more gravel and small stones as well as being faster. Quarrying would get you larger rocks more often, suitable for making construction stones, or whatever you felt like, but each individual tile would take longer to quarry into stones. Hopefully this would solve the problem of having SO much loose, worthless stone that you have to resort to quantum garbage dumps to get it managed.

Have at it guys.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Hm. IMHO, this would add the "bad" kind of complexity--it doesn't add anything kuch to the game. Still, it's an interesting thought, I guess...

[JohnieRWilkins]

I refuse to acknowledge the notion of the game becoming less fun through a process that makes it more realistic. I think the simple solution is a simple rebalancing of fortress mode:
Require all mined stones to be hauled to the surface before more mining can occur. (this will mandate the need for surface forts before the underground can be exploited)
Change the current construction rules to require stone blocks before you can build anything. Rough stone constructions should collapse immediately if possible. (you can build mountains of rough stone, but no fortresses, to make aboveground fortresses less desireable)
Reduce the pace at which migrants immigrate to the fort and invaders find it. (allowing you to play at an equivalent pace with higher FPS)

Impressive fortresses (the ones you currently build) should take dozens of years to construct rather than the current setup of a self-sufficient fortress in two years or less. It'll be less insane from a world-gen perspective. If fortresses were so easy to build, then why haven't the entire populations of dwarves left the mountainhomes and built themselves personal palaces?

[Jeoshua]

That's several suggestions at once there, Johnie, and one which makes no sense.

Why should stones need to be hauled to the surface?  I mean if you had to haul them out of the mine tunnel before you could dig any further since they blocked your way, that would be one thing, but forcing the Dwarves to take the rocks into the sun makes absolutely no sense at all.

Maybe having them hauled to a designated stone stockpile before they can be used, at the absolute maximum.

[JohnieRWilkins]

That's several suggestions at once there, Johnie, and one which makes no sense.

Why should stones need to be hauled to the surface?  I mean if you had to haul them out of the mine tunnel before you could dig any further since they blocked your way, that would be one thing, but forcing the Dwarves to take the rocks into the sun makes absolutely no sense at all.

Maybe having them hauled to a designated stone stockpile before they can be used, at the absolute maximum.

Misunderstanding. I think they should be usable as soon as they're mined. I mentioned the surface out of practical concern. (it follows in the spirit of giving the surface dwellers all of your unwanted crap so they can deal with it)

[King Mir]

I agree that it's a good idea to have a separate designation for quarry mining and tunneling.

I disagree that stone should not be immediately usable. Why should moving a stone around change it in any way? Stockpiles should be for convenience, not necessity.

I'm against having different size stone, because of the complexity in making dwarves choose the right size stone for a particular task, especially if there are few stones of a particular type and size.

I think gravel has potential to be a benefit. It's certainly realistic. But it would mean that dwarf fortresses all have big outdoor mound-walls that stand out, instead of the only prominent outdoor feature of a dwarf fort being an entrance.

[JohnieRWilkins]

I only meant that the stone should impede passage for all dwarves. This way you'd be forced to get it out of the way to continue mining.

[sockless]

I think that as you mine stone, you should get varying amounts of stone, and you just need a quantity to make stuff, requiring a size 7 stone when you only have size sixes would just be annoying. And if you use a size 8 where a size 7 would do, do you end up with a near useless size 1 left over, or does it waste it by using all the material? It would also make stockpiling a pain if storing several rocks on a square is implemented, since on a square capable of taking a size 10 amount of stone could take a size 10; two size 5; or one size 5, one size 2 and a size 3.

I can't say that there's really any use for gravel in this game. Its only use in real life is roading, which we don't do much in DF.

[King Mir]

There's not enough use for all the stone that is mined out anyway, which is why it mostly gets dumped. So turning too much stone into too much gravel won't change the gameplay much.

[Jeoshua]

Okay I see what you're saying, even if I still don't agree in any way about forcing Dwarves to come to the surface.

Mined stone SHOULD block one's passage.  That would mean that mining out thin veins of ore would be more problematic, since the stone would have to be hauled out of the passageway before mining could continue.  It would naturally cause people to use different techniques, and make mining more realistic, without any great need for changes.

The initial fort would need to have large amounts of rock hauled up to the surface, or otherwise moved out from the hole, this much is true.  The problem could easilly be solved by a creative player by creating the exterior "gate" structure or a small fortress right over the dig hole.  Once hitting the caverns or magma sea, however, the Dwarves would have plenty of room to throw their unwanted stone and would never need to see the surface again.

[King Mir]

I think that mined stone preventing mining may be a more consistent solution than mined stone preventing movement. For one, a dwarf hauling stone should not block movement, so neither should stone laying around. And secondly, having stockpiles full of impassible blocks would lead to the stockpile entrance quickly blocked. Fixing this would not be trivial.

[Jeoshua]

It would be possible.  You'd just have to not plunk down a huge room-filling stockpile, and instead break it up with access routes.  Same with mining.  Don't mine a 1 tile path, mine a 2 tile path.  Also there are some rocks that do NOT produce a stone, depending on one's skill.  This would mean inexperienced miners could dig deeper, and experienced miners would need many attendants to haul their stone out.

[Sadrice]

I like the logistics of having to make a tailings heap of all the stone removed in the delving of your fortress.  I don't like how a single downward stairway is all the surface evidence for a massive underground settlement.  This would pretty much require the use of a minecart system to transport waste stone/gravel to the dumping area, even if that ends up being in the caverns or magma sea as you gain access to those.  The only problem with this is that it would be a significant barrier in the learning curve of dwarf fortress.  At the moment, as soon as you figure out the d menu, you can dig yourself a small fortress, and get absorbed in designing it.  Sure, you may not have realized that your dwarves need feeding and boozing and some concessions to their safety and happiness, but you will have developed a real attachment to it, and are likely to go on to try and figure out how to do it right next time after your dwarves inevitably die before autumn.  If you had to understand how to get your dwarves to clear the rubble before you could dig further, a newbie would just be stuck on the surface, unable to get their dwarves to do anything interesting or useful at all, and they would probably just go play something else.  This could be circumvented by adding some default mine clearing behavior.  Toady implied that wheelbarrows will be automatically included on embark, or at least put in the list of items in the default embark.  Dwarves could have a default behavior (changeable in the 'set (O)rders' menu) of using their wheelbarrows to pick up rubble and dump it in the imediate vicinity of the closest surface tile, moving outwards.  Left unchecked, this might end up with your entrance looking like an anthill:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Personally, this would make me intensely happy, but I'm overly fond of ants, and already think of my dwarves as being very antlike, so your mileage may vary.  Once you decide upon a better dumping spot, whether elsewhere on the surface or down the shoot to the caverns/magma sea/hell itself, you could set a tailings dump zone, or something like that, with an option to use minecarts, so all future mining waste gets sent where you want it, and the rubble surrounding your entrance could also be moved to the new landfill, if your picky about aesthetics.  This would not be a major increase in micromanagement, but would cause the early delvings of your fortress, as well as any future large digging projects, to be a large combined effort of many of your dwarves.  It's always bothered me that the for a while, it's just two dwarves digging away, with everyone else just hanging out around the wagon.  Sure, they get moving once stockpile space gets dug, but it seems to be that digging a fortress should be a lot of work, for all of your dwarves (except for those that have stone hauling disabled), though not so much for the player.  As much of it should be included in default behavior as possible.

[King Mir]

It would be possible.  You'd just have to not plunk down a huge room-filling stockpile, and instead break it up with access routes.  Same with mining.  Don't mine a 1 tile path, mine a 2 tile path.  Also there are some rocks that do NOT produce a stone, depending on one's skill.  This would mean inexperienced miners could dig deeper, and experienced miners would need many attendants to haul their stone out.

You could add access routes if you need access, but for garbage stockpiles, including useless stone stockpiles, you want a large stockpile that fills from the back. But that may be hard to write rules for.

And the last devlog says that skill based drop rates are out.

[NW_Kohaku]

Well, the illustrious leader just quashed this idea, at least for now.

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

I'm leaning against impossible-to-move rocks as a short term goal because I'd need to change how all of the stone-based jobs work, which would require another smaller rock object for things like crafts (or a wheelbarrow for every crafts job, which is odd).  Theoretically you could have a boulder breaking job that creates smaller rocks when you need them without creating too much spam.  That leaves furniture and construction jobs -- having to use a wheelbarrow for every one of those is sort of a killer too.  The wheelbarrow-to-every-else quotient starts to get high and cluttered looking, similar to not having forks or other little tools for every little thing in fortress mode.  Having wheelbarrows used for just stockpile hauling seems safer.

Regarding rubble, I'm sure people that voted for hauling are all over the place, but it seems like it would create the exact problem I'm supposed to be fixing.  I don't think it would be fun to have to devote a lot of dwarves/infrastructure/anything to building a gigantic useless mound the same size as your fortress every time you play.  The current stone doesn't drop everywhere and it has uses.  I'm not sure what the rubble is supposed to be adding to the game.