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[Aerie]

I think it'd be nice to be able to fill in tiles with dirt/sand/clay/etc to turn them into terrain-like constructions. Could also break a boulder down into gravel/pebbles if soil is unavailable. To facilitate this, make soil tiles drop "a mound of soil" that can then be picked up in buckets and used as material for the artificial terrain construction.

Essentially, it'd be like constructing a wall and have the same practical functionality and purpose, but it would blend in more with the terrain, improving aesthetics. It'd also make it feasible to fill in misconstructed channels, aqueducts, ugly-looking stagnant pools, unused parts of the fortress, etc.

Soil and gravel items could also be turned into mud bricks/cement mix that could be fired in a kiln to produce construction materials. You could also make building farms a bit easier by channeling out farmland and filling it with buckets of soil or gravel.

Cement could be used to fill in tiles like soil, but being made out of stone (and thus able to be smoothed and engraved.)

[aka010101]

I second this, I've been frustrated time and again by not being able to fill in stuff, , and i think it's going to be something that has to happen sooner or later, and with the recent and impending hauling improvements, now is a good time to tackle this one.

[Manveru Taurënér]

Been doing this myself using dfhack, but still makes me feel like a cheater. Would absolutely LOVE to be able to fill in stuff using my dwarf in a not quite so clunky manner. Most of the time it's been suggested people have objected to that it'd be too much of a nuisance to have mudpiles/rubble to have to move out when digging/mining. Would presonally love that myself, especially now that we have wheelbarrows and minecarts to ease up the process. This would also help mitigate the worst side effects of possible diggers in the future, as you'd simply be able to fill in the tunnels they create instead of building walls or having to suffer the travesty of having TUNNELS in the soil next to your perfectly designed fortress ^^

[CrzyMonkeyNinja]

-snip-
Most of the time it's been suggested people have objected to that it'd be too much of a nuisance to have mudpiles/rubble to have to move out when digging/mining.
-snip-

I would love to have to move rubble and dirt. I could finally make some peat-covered longhouses for a modded race of Nords to live in. It could also make me use minecarts for once. It might be a step towards better caveins too. Ooh, and I could make a Roman military camp where I begin by digging out trenches and then building walls out of the displaced dirt! Now THAT would be awesome. Me want.

[Hyndis]

Being able to make an artificial underground cavern would be fun. Import enough dirt to grow mushrooms and trees without the need for water. I dislike how mud turns everything brown.

I'd also enjoy being able to create pond tiles, which would interact with rain by making 1/7 water when a raindrop hits.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Planned, approved.

I'd also enjoy being able to create pond tiles, which would interact with rain by making 1/7 water when a raindrop hits.

Pause. How, in the real world, could one make a particular depression fill up with rain like a pond does?

[Hyndis]

Pause. How, in the real world, could one make a particular depression fill up with rain like a pond does?

In the real world you just dig a hole. It will fill up with water when it rains.

In DF rain doesn't actually turn into water unless it touches a pond tile.

[TheMrFlosch]

I guess it wouldn't work by simply "digging a hole" since much of the water would simply drain away in most kinds of soil.
On the other hand I could see this working Quite well with any rock costructs... you build a tower several z-levels high assign it so it collects water when it rains and will never have to worry about water again...
On the other hand this throws up the question how rain only gathers in murky pools anyway. Wouldn't it be Fun if a rainstorm in a mountain-area had the potential of flooding your fortress since the water has to flow somwhere because it cant get absorbed by the stone?

[Hyndis]

I guess it wouldn't work by simply "digging a hole" since much of the water would simply drain away in most kinds of soil.
On the other hand I could see this working Quite well with any rock costructs... you build a tower several z-levels high assign it so it collects water when it rains and will never have to worry about water again...
On the other hand this throws up the question how rain only gathers in murky pools anyway. Wouldn't it be Fun if a rainstorm in a mountain-area had the potential of flooding your fortress since the water has to flow somwhere because it cant get absorbed by the stone?

It only drains away if the soil is porous and the water can go someplace. If you dig a hole in the middle of a valley between mountains then the water will stick around. Also there is probably already a pond there to begin with.

If you dig a hole and line the hole with something such as clay or some other material water cannot easily pass through, then the water will remain in the hole. Hence, swimming pools.

Pond tiles are a gameplay abstraction. They don't make any sort of sense if you compare it to real world physics, but they exist purely for gameplay mechanics reasons. What should happen is that every time a raindrop hits ground it should generate 1/7 water, and this should happen everywhere. This would allow ponds or rivers to form naturally, depending on the shape of the terrain. I think water seeping through soil is a bit beyond what the game engine can handle, but sprouting up 1/7 water on impact is already in the game engine. If this was no longer restricted to pond tiles then you could get very interesting weather indeed.

Flooding could become a major issue, and fortresses in damp climates would need to be built with drainage. This means building an above ground fortress in a swamp biome would need a great deal of drainage. Or water may pour down stairs and ramps into underground fortresses, and this could be very hazardous if this isn't planned for.

IMO, pond tiles should be done away with entirely. Rain should be much more natural, and it should cause water to appear everywhere it hits. Ponds would behave just like they currently do, and they will refill when it rains. Artificial bodies of water could be made simply by digging a hole so water can't drain off the side of the map and waiting for it to rain.

But if pond tiles are sticking around, then being able to somehow create a pond tile through some sort of job involving a dwarf constructing something on a tile or manipulating something would be nice.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Pause. How, in the real world, could one make a particular depression fill up with rain like a pond does?

In the real world you just dig a hole. It will fill up with water when it rains.
In DF rain doesn't actually turn into water unless it touches a pond tile.

Precisely. A better idea of what makes a pond is needed before we can talk about making artificial ones.

What should happen is that every time a raindrop hits ground it should generate 1/7 water, and this should happen everywhere. This would allow ponds or rivers to form naturally, depending on the shape of the terrain. I think water seeping through soil is a bit beyond what the game engine can handle, but sprouting up 1/7 water on impact is already in the game engine. If this was no longer restricted to pond tiles then you could get very interesting weather indeed.

Flooding could become a major issue, and fortresses in damp climates would need to be built with drainage. This means building an above ground fortress in a swamp biome would need a great deal of drainage. Or water may pour down stairs and ramps into underground fortresses, and this could be very hazardous if this isn't planned for.

Oh Armok, the lag.
I agree with the general idea but not the details.

IMO, pond tiles should be done away with entirely. Rain should be much more natural, and it should cause water to appear everywhere it hits. Ponds would behave just like they currently do, and they will refill when it rains. Artificial bodies of water could be made simply by digging a hole so water can't drain off the side of the map and waiting for it to rain.

I'd also like this. Of course, "improved murky pools" is a fair bit down the line...

[fractalman]

tldr: I kinda posted this into the wrong thread.  only now i can't QUIT recall which thread this was meant for.

lets see.
Currently: I get rid of unwanted stone by running craft stations on repeat, thus cleaning up my fort over time...
even though I've changed my playstyle so that i DON"T actually NEED to clean it up for stockpiles-seriously. I embrace the cluttered workshop just to prevent my dwarves from hauling insanely-heavy statues all over the place.   What doesn't make sense is that i have to use CRAFTS to clean up "rubble".  Well, maybe it does make sense in a twisted, dwarfy way, but...

hm...
ahah!
stone, rubble, and dust.  stone is stone, rubble slows you down a lot, dust is potentially dangerous.

Three flavors of mining: quarry, fast mine, and pulverize.   (this has been suggested before to some extent, but...)
Quarrying is extremely slow, but never gives rubble, and almost never kicks up dust.
Standard mining may drop stone, or it could drop rubble, and it can also make dust.   mostly, this should be based on the mining skill.
Pulverize will *occasionally* drop rubble or stone, with a constant 5% chance of dropping stone, but mostly it kicks up dust, which can be very bad for your miners if you use this too much.  Actually, it kicks up LOTS of dust.  More skilled miners will do a better job of pulverizing the rock into infinitesimal pieces so that they can use the axiom of choice to annihilate it completely, producing less dust.   (yeah. it's usually used to turn a sphere into two spheres, but it can be run in reverse; it only works on continuous objects.)

In the event you *want* to do something with rubble, order some masons to crush rocks into rubble. 


Rubble will slow down any job that's too close, and will slow down anyone walking over it.  too much total rubble in a layer will tend to slow you down.

Rubble that has been placed in a floor may be called gravel, and will cease to act as semi-global clutter.  (bonus points for making gravel cause cave-ins via the old system...or maybe even make it act like minecraft gravel, and fall down, period.  )


Dust is a lot like miasma in spread behavior, and vanishes pretty quickly on reaching open sky. Dwarves won't complain about it anywhere near as much (as long as you don't make a dwarf who hates dust be your miner), but it can kill them if they breath it constantly for too long-something between a season and 5 years should do. 

Dirt cooperates a bit too well with efforts to eliminate it, and so vanishes when either "mined" or "pulverized" and will almost never create dust. 

The masonry shop can be instructed to pulverize rubble, taking a bit longer than a miner, but producing a lot less dust. 
Craftsdwarves may attempt to make something out of rubble, but they have no guarantee of success and may produce some dust in the process.