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[bombzero]

actually... yeah lets not go insulting kind DZA... that could lead to a worse derail then anything else possible considering how long hes been here and his general history.

[Askot Bokbondeler]

@NW What I don't understand is why you seem to be against the rubble being useful?

as i understand, he is not arguing against rubble having benefits, rather against the idea that something has to be beneficial to have any purpose in game. i feel the same way, i wouldn't mind having mechanisms to make rubble useful, and i can think of an immediate benefit it would have: obstructing a channel from above simply by dumping material over it would be tremendously useful for diverting water and magma courses, but i'm also bothered by the mindset that anything that hinders progress is a bad thing

[bombzero]

not necessarily that not useful = bad, its just that adding a feature to the game that doesn't really create any depth is somewhat useless, panning/sluicing seemed like an acceptable way to add much depth to the game using rubble, roads and blocking water just don't seem like significant enough reasons to add it, neither does slowing down mining as that can be accomplished in better ways.

[Camden1990]

as i understand, he is not arguing against rubble having benefits, rather against the idea that something has to be beneficial to have any purpose in game. i feel the same way, i wouldn't mind having mechanisms to make rubble useful, and i can think of an immediate benefit it would have: obstructing a channel from above simply by dumping material over it would be tremendously useful for diverting water and magma courses, but i'm also bothered by the mindset that anything that hinders progress is a bad thing

Ah, I see. My mistake!
I agree that something doesn't have to be beneficial to the players to have purpose in the game, in a general sense.
I feel rubble may not be one of these things though, since I think it would simply not be very fun or engaging without something to use it for. It has a lot of not heavily interesting (at least for me) problems associated with it that don't require much more than patience to overcome without at least having something to use the crudrubble for. It wouldn't ruin the game - like I said, I am not against the new architecture that might be needed. But for the drawbacks I feel it would come off neutral to my enjoyment of the game without some benefit. In this case. So I'd rather time wasn't wasted for, what I would see as, no net gain.

Harder sieges (as an example) provide no benefit for the player, but certainly have purpose and I am all for them!

[ZzarkLinux]

Barber shop idea made me smile.
Set the workshop repeat process for "shave dwarves" would certainly make the game feel more dwarfy.
Tedious, yes, but would be fun to enable as a feature every now and then
That's my dream 2 cents, I like everything as options.

The game is a "Fantasy Simulator" yes, but "Fantasy" isn't as concrete and objective such as "Space Flight" or "Driving",
so the end-result simulator will most certainly not satisfy everyone. I guess that's how life goes.

Toady acknowledged this idea in one of his FotF when talking about "How should Magic System Work":
: Some ppl want magical dwarves, Some ppl don't want magical dwarves, some ppl don't want magic anywhere.
What will happen is what happens.

So I guess what will realistically happen is the same thing that other games do:
A) DF will go a "middle-of-the-road" approach for features, with a "little-bit-of-everything" for mass appeal (e.g. Nintendo marketing)
B) DF will go straight with an "Option A or Option B" approach, and the player base will fracture (e.g. Dungeons&Dragons edition wars)

Long Live Edition Wars

[vertinox]

not necessarily that not useful = bad, its just that adding a feature to the game that doesn't really create any depth is somewhat useless, panning/sluicing seemed like an acceptable way to add much depth to the game using rubble, roads and blocking water just don't seem like significant enough reasons to add it, neither does slowing down mining as that can be accomplished in better ways.

If you can block water with rubble and redirect it, the addition would be worth it.

[Buttery_Mess]

But, we do want barbershops. And, we do want complexity. That's why we play Dwarf Fortress. It's difficult, and complicated, and finicky. It's a challenge, which is what we like. And we like our dwarves to mine, because they're dwarves, and mining is what dwarves do. And mines have rubble. That's why they have minecarts in them.

Let's bear in mind here what clearing rubble using minecarts will involve. It will involve laying a one tile wide path to a place where you want to dump it. In other words, the same corridor you'd be making anyway. Using a wheelbarrow, you could probably have one dwarf clearing a 10x10 room into a cart in a tenth of the time it took another single dwarf to mine it out. Whatever the specifics end up being, the recent hauling changes will make the process quite quick. In addition, you've already got more haulers available to clear rubble because of the hauling changes.

I'd rather have a feature in the game that could be modded out than not being able to mod a feature into the game because the code isn't there, any day.

[NW_Kohaku]

I disagree with the idea the stone should be valuable.  These are dwarves who live underground all the time surrounded by stone all the time stone shortages should never ever ever be an issue only metals and ores should be facing that type of severe supply chain problems.

I solidly agree here, stone is abundant, face it.

however since ores are not as abundant, sluicing rubble from mining would be something dwarves would conceivably do, before packing the rubble into a storage area or something along those lines.

also NW, just for reference, you intend rubble as the rock that is not composing boulders right? as in there would be less rubble made when boulders are produced, and more when they are not?

Well, as much as I'd like to see every resource become scarce enough to make how to triage your resources become a serious consideration, it is unlikely that stone as a general resource will ever get to be rare, unless you are really short-changing the labor your are devoting to mining and/or stepping up the amount of masonry and stonecrafting you are doing to a significant degree. 

Rather, it's ore (and maybe gems, if we ever get to a point where gems have some sort of value beyond being decorations - Toady was talking about gem alchemy/lanterns a while ago) that would be the more rare material, as you say. 

The slower mining is in general, the less likely it is you're going to be able to find all those ore deposits in your first two, three years. 


As for the back half of that, that is one of the systems I've argued for before, yes. 

I don't think 7 is a proper number for it (3 might actually be best), but when I was arguing this before, we were talking about a system where each rough wall tile starts out as 7/7 stone.  When you mine, you deconstruct that wall, and remove 1/7 or 2/7 rubble or stone from that tile, into the tile the miner is standing on.  Any tile that has 7 of any combination of rubble or stone (or equivalent) in it will convert into a material-less amalgam wall and the items inside are deleted (to prevent infinite quantum dumping). 

This would also mean that outright landfills where you just dump into a valley or off a cliff or into a pit would eventually become completely filled, but at the same time, the items would be destroyed into the amalgam wall tiles.  From there, there could be some physics method applied like this sand flow suggestion to make additional piles of rubble "spill" like sand in these suggestions would to fill up lower-lying areas first. 

Mining cannot take place if the miner is already standing in 6/7 rubble, since it would cause the tile they are standing on to turn into a solid space of rubble when they mine things out.  The rubble has to be cleared a degree first. 

If a boulder appears, it counts as one of the units of material that was in that tile - so you might mine and get 7 units of rubble, or you might mine and get 6 units rubble and 1 boulder.  Or you might mine and get 4 units of rubble and a giant boulder that is three times the size of a normal boulder if we have that variable stone size idea. 

The conversation was already on the number 7 because of fluids, and the sand discussions, I believe, but for such relatively high numbers, it would be better to wait until stacking is at least partially implemented. 

If we are going without stacking, then either having a single rubble or single boulder, but not both and not having an amalgam wall formation rule might be applied, or alternately, you could have two units of material with at least one being rubble, and make any two "large stone sized" items form the amalgam walls in order to keep object counts low.

(Although it would also help if Toady could just move off of STL vectors and onto something which handles large numbers of items without lagging as badly as vectors do; A deque would be the least painful.)

[NW_Kohaku]

1. This point makes it seem like you are against the hauling overhaul.  What is the difference between what we have in the current version versus having rubble?

The major difference is in how you are much more likely to have to move it.  In the post above this, I talk about how one of the ideas discussed was to have a wall create as much combined rubble and boulder as it would take to fill up an entire tile, so that an excavated tile creates a tile-filling amount of material. 

Under these sorts of rules, enough of any item will create problems, but mining specifically creates a lot of rubble that has to be cleared.

2. How?  1 x 1 10 z levels down takes the same time to mine as horizontal 1x10 on the same z level.  As to how mine carts will work, i could just dig ramps to go down and have a long artificial hill.  I don't think dwarves get more tire going up hills. 

This point relies upon the idea that each time you mine, you have to clear away the rubble before you can proceed onto the next tile to mine.  If you are trying to just clear a single narrow straight path to a destination, then before every tile you try to clear, you have to wait for the rubble to be cleared away.  If you are doing something like clearing multiple rooms at the same time, however, instead of having to wait on a hauler to clear the tile the miner just dug, the miner can go on to the next room to mine the next tile of that room. 

Basically, multiple parallel jobs wouldn't suffer as much as a single linear job from the need to wait for tiles to have their rubble hauled away was the point.

3.  I am not seeing how this is different then having the stone blocks that clutter up the place now?  Why not have those block slow down movement?  Same effect as rubble but starts working on the quantum piling issues.

If stones are only dropped 1/4th of the time, then it doesn't slow you down if you can just side-step the boulders that do appear.  That's why, at the least, it would be good to have rubble appear any time boulders do not appear, if not have rubble and a boulder versus multiple rubbles. 

[hermes]

And, we do want complexity. That's why we play Dwarf Fortress.... And we like our dwarves to mine, because they're dwarves, and mining is what dwarves do. And mines have rubble. That's why they have minecarts in them.

Mines also have support struts, ventilation shafts, lamps, Cornish pasties and caged canaries.  Do you want to set all that up just to dig out your first dining hall?

IMO this thread would be better spent thinking about how stones/boulders could effectively recreate that rubble-feeling without the gameplay drawbacks.

Why not just make stones impassable and immovable by a single un-barrowed dwarf?  The clearing requirement is still there, the practical and economic use of the material is still there, and the useless rubble pile is absent.  Perhaps it would take a while of AI programming, but a freshly dug mine entrance with rocks strewn around outside and along the sides of the tunnel would be quite atmospheric.

[Gilihad]

There are three major differences between mining being slower and rubble:

1. The length of the hauling path increases the larger the mines themselves become.  This means the delay becomes greater the larger the mines become, making the game "easier" (or rather, one hauler can take away more rubble, requiring a smaller percentage of the available labor be used hauling) at first, and then gradually becoming greater as your mines increase in length.

2. It slows narrow/deep expansion more than it slows shallow/broad expansion.  That is, just digging a straight vertical central staircase straight down to the magma sea is going to take more time waiting for rubble to be cleared than trying to clear out a broad chamber, where a miner can go from area where rubble is cleared to the next area where rubble is cleared in mining. 

3. It provides a greater use for minecarts and gives a greater reward to players who use them to their fullest by letting them more greatly cut down on their labor needs for hauling by rewarding more efficient minecart tracks with faster mining and less dwarves needing to focus upon hauling as your fortress expands.

I can agree with this, especially number three. I would also be in favor of rubble having more uses than just a tool for delay, like creating walls when it fills up a square (looks like that is already an agreed-upon thing), which could be used for all sorts of fun scientific things.

[Sadrice]

not necessarily that not useful = bad, its just that adding a feature to the game that doesn't really create any depth is somewhat useless, panning/sluicing seemed like an acceptable way to add much depth to the game using rubble, roads and blocking water just don't seem like significant enough reasons to add it, neither does slowing down mining as that can be accomplished in better ways.

The more I read, the more I think that depth means something very different to you than it does for me and people like NW Kohaku.  To me, a logistics problem that forces you to rethink how you organize your labor force, supply change, and even rework your basic architecture adds a lot of depth.  Making the rubble processable through sluicing to get a small amount of a useful mineral isn't necessarily a bad thing, but adds very little depth.


I think the value of rubble would be similar to real life:  it is basically worthless, but you have a lot and have to do something with it, so use it as filler instead of using a real resource.  Fill in walls with it rather than using more expensive stones, use it to raise up a portion of land, fill in a valley to make a dam, mix it with cement to stretch your supply, etc.  The only use that exploits any real value in the thing itself is sluicing, which only makes sense if it is the rubble generated from ore mining.  Sluicing granite rubble is unlikely to give you anything of value.


I like the idea of ordinary stone producing generic rubble, with no tracking of source stone type, while ore and flux stone produce rubble of specific ore or flux type, and the hematite rubble is what gets smelted, rather than hematite boulders.  This might cut down on using economic stones as high value stonecrafts.  Limonite is valuable because it makes iron, not because things made from limonite are especially attractive.  Ore rubble could be stored for use in several ways: could be put in bins and stored in stockpiles, it could be piled up in a corner, and if the sand-flow suggestion is implemented, it could even be stored in big hoppers with an opening at the bottom that a small quantity flows out of to form a ramp.  If ore produces or rubble, it would be very annoying if default rubble hauling behavior caused your valuable ore to get dumped in the tailings heap.  It could be excluded from default hauling, and just be left in place until specifically moved.  If rubble blocks traffic or digging, this would be very annoying, and I think it might be annoying to set up separate storage of the rubble of different ores, so it might be better to leave ores boulder based.


A rubble based system would be different from just slowing mining because there isn't currently a real motivation to clear the rubble.  It doesn't hamper movement, it doesn't annoy dwarves, and it doesn't prevent the tile from being used as a stockpile.  It's just kinda ugly (but hideable).  If you were actually encouraged to remove it before work could continue it would add a lot of depth, compared to the current system, which doesn't really have any.


One way to make rubble less annoying for players would be to make a rubble tile passable with a speed penalty.  There would still be a strong incentive to clear the rubble, but if there's a sudden hauler meltdown, and everyone is busy bringing things to the depot or something, it doesn't put a complete stop to mining work, just slows it until someone can deal with the problem.  This could be avoided by having dedicated stone haulers.


Another way that rubble disposal would add depth is making contact with the surface more essential.  Currently the only real use for the surface is wood, which is plentiful below ground, and caravans and migrants, which can usually be ignored.  If you had to do something with your rubble, you would need to have some surface access, unless you arranged an alternate solution.  It could be atomsmashed, but if rubble were added specifically as a logistical challenge, it might be treated like a large creature, and prevent lowering of the bridge.  It could be dumped in the caverns, but if it were made to stack and flow, as per the sand suggestion, it would quickly pile up and clog the dump chute.  It could be dumped into the magma sea, which might be a good permanent solution, unless rubble turned into an equivalent volume of magma, in which case you might risk flooding your fortress with magma (unless magma flows off map edges in the magma sea, does anyone know about this?).


I personally do not understand the "lets try to recreate all the potentially annoying parts of rubble without the rubble".  Slowing down mining adds difficulty and tedium without depth.  Requiring stone boulders to be removed adds difficulty and tedium with only a tiny amount of depth.  Requiring space filling rubble to be removed adds difficulty and a small quantity of tedium (unless it's implemented well), as well as a huge amount of depth.  To me, slowing mining is just a side effect.  It's the rubble pile (and object piling in general), and how to deal with it that are the whole point.

EDIT:  Many players do want support struts, ventilation, and illumination to be necessary.  A common feature of the proposals for all of these things, as well as for rubble is that it would not be necessary for initial diggings, and it would only be as you expand your operations that things would start to become complicated.  No matter how many times people say "you just want us to have to set up rubble management and minecart systems before we can even start digging", that doesn't seem to be what anyone is proposing, and it's disingenuous to pretend otherwise.

[NW_Kohaku]

Mines also have support struts, ventilation shafts, lamps, Cornish pasties and caged canaries.  Do you want to set all that up just to dig out your first dining hall?

Actually, yes, I would like supports to prevent cave-ins, and ventilation shafts.  Cornish pastries might be more of a nutrition thing, though.

I actually think the more "logistics paths" you have to run through your fortress, the better.  You have your main walkways and hallways and rooms for your dwarves.  You have a second layer for water piping if you need it.  You now have another layer for carts and special hauling paths.  Add in ventilation shafts so that you can't completely seal a fortress in (without having some sort of farm for oxygen producing plants or something, at least), and you now have to add in much more complex vent pipes that have to mirror your other occupied areas.  Add in lighting that runs on something like natural gas, and you need piping for that, as well.  Add in sewers or other systems beyond even those, and you start creating increasingly more tangled balls of necessary support piping to your building plans that make the game more challenging to just lay out a fortress in general. 

The more layers you add on, the more each layer bumps into the last, so even simple changes can pile up.

IMO this thread would be better spent thinking about how stones/boulders could effectively recreate that rubble-feeling without the gameplay drawbacks.

Why not just make stones impassable and immovable by a single un-barrowed dwarf?  The clearing requirement is still there, the practical and economic use of the material is still there, and the useless rubble pile is absent.  Perhaps it would take a while of AI programming, but a freshly dug mine entrance with rocks strewn around outside and along the sides of the tunnel would be quite atmospheric.

I don't get these arguments.

When you make an argument for other things to fill the role that I've been arguing for rubble to fill, then what it seems like you are arguing is that it's fine to have the same gameplay effects I'm looking for, just so long as you don't call it rubble. 

[Arkenstone]

I don't get these arguments.

When you make an argument for other things to fill the role that I've been arguing for rubble to fill, then what it seems like you are arguing is that it's fine to have the same gameplay effects I'm looking for, just so long as you don't call it rubble.

If that's the case, why not?  Go ahead and let them keep their little fantasies, since you'll know better.

But, he does have a point: making single boulders impassible would force you to haul them out, and repurposing a currently existing feature would make for smoother transition than inventing an entirely new one.

[NW_Kohaku]

If that's the case, why not?  Go ahead and let them keep their little fantasies, since you'll know better.

But, he does have a point: making single boulders impassible would force you to haul them out, and repurposing a currently existing feature would make for smoother transition than inventing an entirely new one.

The idea that I just keep it to myself and try to "trick" them into giving me what I want would only work if they were the only ones I were having to convince. 

I'm really just curious as to why there is pushback on the notion of rubble itself.  Contaminants are items with no particular beneficial purpose, and they were added to the game without people complaining too much, but if people get a chance to argue about a material going into the game that has no particular beneficial purpose to the player, it's some sort of stumbling block that people can't seem to look past.  They keep coming to some sort of argument that "depth" can only be obtained by making the items produced from mining have a "use" that can't be the logistical feat of removing the item or the reaction from the player to solving the problem. 

This argument against rubble just hasn't really been satisfactorily explained to me, everyone just assumes its obvious that nobody would want rubble, or that it's automatically micromanagement or tedious or that only masochists would want to design minecart rails to ship it out. 


On a different note:
I don't think that having a material called "rubble" in and of itself is a terribly big deal to code.  The other things about filling up a tile with amalgam to prevent quantum stockpiling would apply either way, so it's really just about the rubble itself.

And finally, the major difference would be in the fact that a 25% drop boulder would not block passage by itself except when the RNG decided to spite the player.  Having an either-rubble-or-boulder system would apply the obstacles across all floors, so you can't just leave it as an obstacle course that only has to actually be cleared when you get an unlucky roll.