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[Tamren]

I suggested this a couple times before. But I think it could use a bit of improvement.

The basic idea is to add another type of mine command called excavate. Excavating is identical to mining except that it leaves no waste stone. In other words instead of trying to mine out a solid boulder of rock, you pulverize the whole tile into dust leaving you with an empty square. This would solve all of our problems. Don't need extra stone? Get rid of it on the spot.

To expand upon this there are other improvements that stack with both this and the normal mining command:
1. Excavate variant of all dig commands such as channeling and digging out staircases.
2. A control panel for what minerals to destroy (default all) and what minerals to ignore. (like the economic stones menu)
3. A bunch of toggle switches for stuff like "ignore economic stone", "ignore gems".
4. A "mine out" command which tells the dwarves to mine out a single type of stone until then run out. (automining ore deposits basically, or destroying those annoying microcline deposits)
5. a "mine no matter what" command for emergencies like flooding.
6. An escorted dig command where workers will be accompanied by idle soldiers.

And whatever else you guys can come up with. Anything new?

[Puck]

personally i dont really like this idea.

im not THAT much into fantasy so i dont know if dwarves usually got an ubar mining skill, that allows them to make stone go away, but normally, if you intend to carve a fortress into a mountain, youll have leftover rocks and will need to come up with some way to dispose of it.

[Naze]

I really don't think excess stone is a problem, because you can always dump it into a small pit for later use, what will happen once you run out of stone because you crushed it all?

[Exponent]

I have to say, I have a problem with stone dumping, how an infinite quantity can fit in a single tile.  I recognize that realism and entertainment value do not always coincide in games, but I don't like giving up either one when possible.  That said, the dumping stone process is still more agreeable to me than just eradicating the stone magically.  At least with the dump process, the realism of needing haulers still exists in some form.  Though to use the dump process more efficiently, we would need a dump designation, as others have requested.

Nonetheless, on a related note, one does have to wonder not just how miners would be capable of eliminating matter at all, but specifically how it is that legendary miners are less skilled at magically eliminating matter than unskilled miners.

[Silverionmox]

I already find it amazing how dwarves can turn the quantity of rock that comes out of a square into a single ring or bracelet... or even before that, turning it in a portable stone and vaporizing all the rest. If anything, there should be more stone left, and players should set up elaborate dumping mechanisms, forming huge mounds of waste stone outside the fortress, with the option to sort through it later for construction material, to make ramps, build roads etc.

Put those mules to work! And failing mules, giant ants could help too. Luckily, dwarves only need low corridors, that saves a lot of work.

[Derakon]

Unskilled miners take many swings of the pick to clear a space, and each swing makes a small chip of stone. Skilled miners carve out large swathes of rock with each swing. The point isn't that the unskilled miners are destroying rock; it's that the rock they generate isn't useful for crafts, and thus isn't shown.

[Exponent]

Unskilled miners take many swings of the pick to clear a space, and each swing makes a small chip of stone. Skilled miners carve out large swathes of rock with each swing. The point isn't that the unskilled miners are destroying rock; it's that the rock they generate isn't useful for crafts, and thus isn't shown.

Yeah, I've heard that explanation, and I'm sure it was the intention, but I just can't accept it; I can't suspend my disbelief in this case.  The fact of the matter is that the unskilled dwarves hack at the stone so much that it evaporates into the air, and the air manages to circulate it all out such that the dwarves don't end up getting lung cancer or something.  However, maybe that at least could explain why unskilled dwarves take so long to mine out a single tile.  It takes a while to turn rock into microscopic particles small enough to be picked up easily by air.  But by golly, those unskilled dwarves are stubborn and don't know any better, and actually think they're serving a good purpose.  And of course they actually are, in many cases.  Maybe legendary dwarves just get attached to the rocks too much to be willing to obliterate them, except in those rare occasions where they just accidentally hit the rock a single time so hard that it vanishes.

[Derakon]

Assuming the suggestion I made about chaining item qualities was implemented, you'd want legendary miners around for the consistent Masterpiece Felsites they'd make.

[LeoLeonardoIII]

In reality, when a miner digs out a 7x7 cube of stone, 343 cubic feet of stone are left behind in smaller chunks. Sure he breathes some in as dust, but that's hardly much at all.
For every miner you would need people to haul out stone, otherwise the miner would throw stone behind him and fill up his work space.

If we assume a single stone can wall up a single cube, it must be at least a foot thick and 7x7, so 49 cubic feet. This is equal in volume to a liquid at 1/7. It also means there was debris equal to 6/7 that magically disappeared, but let's not dwell on that.

So we have 1/7 volume per stone. It makes sense that a dwarf can scurry overtop 3/7, right? His movement would be slowed, of course, when passing through that square. Missile weapons passing through a stockpile that holds 3/7 or more stone should have a chance of striking the pile and breaking, such that 7/7 piles automatically block line of sight and missile fire effectively counting as walls themselves because they'd also block movement. Should they also block flows?)

Anyway, you could simplify it by just letting stone stockpiles hold 3 stones per square, and halving movement through the square if it holds more than one. The pile would fill up each square to 1/3 completely before filling up the next layer above.

I think Toady will eventually get rid of quantum dumping. So gird your loins!

[dUMBELLS]

There is a dump fix way, where you can make various dump zones around your fortress, either leading to ground several levels below or lava.

1) Dig a channel off the side of a cliff.
2) Press 'I' or whatever key you have for Zones.
3) Put your cursor on the channel and drag it to another tile your dwarves can stand on.
4) Hit enter and make it a dump zone.
5) Select the stones you wish to dump by pressing 'K' or whatever key you have for look.
6) Press 'D' to dump the stone, if there are multiple stones on the list then scroll down using '-' or '+' or whatever scroll keys you have and then press 'D'.
7) Your dwarves should carry the stone to your dump zone and drop it off of the cliff, no need to worry about it anymore.

I'm sure a lot of people know this from the wiki already. Taking the stone management out of Dwarf Fortress gets rid of the challenge of, well, stone management.

[Align]

There's no challenge involved, just a bit of tedium when scrolling through the stones and marking them for dumping.

[Tamren]

Dumping into an atom smasher is the most common way of getting rid of stone. But what you guys don't seem to know is how bad it gets when you are trying to build a megaproject. I mean huge. Digging a canyon BEFORE making a bridge.

I recently made a practice megaproject. The the shape I carved out was about 1/8th of the total project. At one point it got so bad that loading the stone tab of the stocks menu took 5 minutes. The total tally? Over 60 THOUSAND loose boulders of stone. And this was after literally hours spent previously dumping stone into a crusher before I simply gave up.

I have at the most 200 dwarves in any fortress and the average is more like 80. Imagine the time it would take to designate all that stone for dumping. And that time pales beside the hours of gameplay the dwarves would require to dump everything.

I know the whole excavate solution sounds a bit simple and easy. But simple is what we have. Mining stone has two modes, zero and one. Zero is nothing, one is a stone boulder of undetermined size.

Currently boulders, like wood logs, are only good for this one "unit" of stone. The size of the boulder doesn't matter, you can either get a coffin or a few toys, not both. Even though with the stone removed to hollow out a coffin you could carve hundreds of dice.

In the future this will get more complex. If you want you can search up an old thread of mine called wood 2.0. It shows what wood (and stone) could eventually become. But untill then why not give us a choice between 1 and 0?

[PTTG??]

Actually, it ends up being just short of 40 cubic feet of stone- that's assuming 1/7 of water is enough to keep someone alive for a month. I've talked about that elsewhere. Anyway, It still works out that for each tile you mine out of the mountain, there should be a new tile of debris filled in somewhere else.

[Tamren]

Im not sure how you would get rid of the waste though. You can spread gravel out, dump it into the river and such. For wood I suggested tracking the buildup of wood scraps, chips and sawdust and using them in different ways. Mostly as fuel for the furnace. But I can't think of anything that actually consumes waste rock. Other than dumping it into a volcano of course.

[zagibu]

I am with Tamren here. As long as no reasonable hauling improvements are implemented, an excavate option is mandatory for large building projects. Currently, even 200 haulers can't keep up with 10 legendary miners. And then there is the even bigger problem of the UI-tedium for the player.