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[gordy]

I did a quick search but couldn't see anything too relevant. I think some map terrain should contain some loose, free stone on the ground (like at the base of mountains and in stoney wastelands) that doesn't need to be mined to be collected. This could assist in pick-free embarks. Also, maybe certain terrains more likely to have loose stone pockets, loose stone in caves and caverns. Finally, it would be great if dwarves could see through stone one or two layers ... Increase their vision through rock to see clay and dirt layers. This particularly if you want to avoid digging into soil areas when you want to mine and keep your stone rooms made from stone instead of soil. I hate digging a rock corridor that suddenly turns to dirt, if i'd known I might have dug in another direction.  Thoughts ?

[weenog]

There are stone boulders on the ground in some places already, but it would be handy if those were genuine usable rocks.

I'm not a big fan of the penetrating vision thing.  It just makes no sense from a verisimilitude standpoint, and it makes certain things too easy.  I'm not one of those goofballs that thinks medium evil, high savagery should be the easiest the game ever gets, with everything else being increasingly close to omnicidal deathworld; I do think mistakenly digging into something you shouldn't and releasing Fun because you have no magical save-your-ass powers is an important and entertaining part of the game.

[gordy]

Of all races, dwarves should be able to pull this off. And maybe not necessarily to know exactly 'there's a microcline vein right behind this wall' but at least to know when rock ends and dirt, chat or sand begins. Maybe later elves get tree vision and do the same with timbers of multiple trees if heartwood or hardwood are more valuable. Am not taking about walking gold detectors but dwarves should have some preternatural stone sense besides hot or wet.

[weenog]

Why should they have this sense?

[gordy]

Well, dont even make it some sense that the dwarfs have in game - just expand the visible area by one extra square as an assist to the player. You could call it the experience of living underground, being the best miners, a gift from Armok - I just wouldnt mind being able to uncover a little more about my surroundings before committing a wing of my fortress to a soil layer I didnt realise was there.

EDIT: if you dont want the increase view screwing up the aesthetics of the fortress, allow dwarves some sort of surveying skill using mining or maybe architecture, to uncover insights beyond mined regions.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Once again, how would dwarves see through stone walls? ESP?

[Williham]

Once again, how would dwarves see through stone walls? ESP?

Clearly, their reason for their liver being oversized is that it needs girth to be able to fulfill its true function: helping dwarves interpret vibrations resulting from knocking on walls with picks or hammers. Their ability to more deeply interpret the vibration aids them in discerning the approximate consistency of the material beyond the wall.

Of course, some materials are so alien that they defy vibrational analysis, such as candy stone, but using a sort of innate penetrating sonar dwarves might very well be able to sense whether the other side of a wall holds clay, sand, soil or stone.

[IT 000]

Yeah I'm against the whole rock vision thing as well. Takes away the Fun and more exposed tiles = more lag.

[Williham]

Rock vision, if implemented, should certainly be tied to some manner of action, (Prospect, perhaps?) and tied to a skill (Prospecting seems sensible), and give a limited amount of information, perhaps dependent on level.

(A novice prospector would be hard pressed to tell fire clay from slade one urist behind a green glass wall, while a legendary +5 prospector can knock on an obsidian wall and find a a tiny cluster of native aluminum halfway across the map.)

[Itsdavyjones]

Once again, how would dwarves see through stone walls? ESP?

The dwarfs could make a probe, a little tube that can drill into the layers to get samples of what's ahead, but only works in nx1 vertically or horizontally, and would need a prospector skill, which improves speed of the sample.

[weenog]

Once again, how would dwarves see through stone walls? ESP?

The dwarfs could make a probe, a little tube that can drill into the layers to get samples of what's ahead, but only works in nx1 vertically or horizontally, and would need a prospector skill, which improves speed of the sample.

I'm pretty sure that's called a pick.

[gordy]

The regular game already inserts random looking underground ghosting of rock and soil, those pale artifacts that stop the unmined soil from being a solid black expanse (I play with graphics pack). Maybe a prospector skill could be deliberately used to uncover rock info without giving away too much. Was thinking, it might not go over too well, but could be interesting if dwarfs with high enough prospecting skill could passively uncover information about nearby rock just by passing by. But a way to deliberately poll an area by auger or core samples would be good.

Some more clever players might be able to anticipate where rock and soil layers intervene but I have trouble and it is frustrating when buildings are punched out of soil when it could have been rock.

Free surface rock would be great too, not for all terrains but those applicable.

[Nyan Thousand]

I like the prospecting idea. People do that anyway. They stick metal tubes down the soil and see what come up. Nowadays they do that for digging wells (looking for the water table, as it were), but I think an implementation of this sort would be neat-o in DF. You'd only be able to prospect a 1x1xz tile, the depth depending on how good the prospector is. That way, it's limited enough that it won't be gamebreaking/FPS killing, but it's still useful if you're looking for stones across z-levels.

I don't think prospecting is the right word though. I can't think of the right word, but I just don't think it's prospecting. Surveying? I don't know, but I like that idea. Rock vision, not so much.

[weenog]

I think the term you're looking for might be "core sampling", Nyan... didn't think that was a verb either but search finds it used that way.  Which I wouldn't mind a faster way of doing than the shaft digging we have now.  But none of this zero-risk, no water, no magma, no HFS x-ray vision stuff.  That's just weak.

[nanomage]

I think the term you're looking for might be "core sampling", Nyan... didn't think that was a verb either but search finds it used that way.  Which I wouldn't mind a faster way of doing than the shaft digging we have now.  But none of this zero-risk, no water, no magma, no HFS x-ray vision stuff.  That's just weak.

edit: spoilered because never know when a new player passes by

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

well, the ability to prospect a tile directly 1 level beneath without opening a path to it does really mean no HFS. Guessing the 2*2 tube already provides us with a way to mine most of adamantine securely, prospecting would mean that all the adamantine which is not directly confining HFS could be safely mined.
Unless raw adamantine is "unprospectable", of course, but why should it?