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[irmo]

So tunnelers are a popular suggestion, and I can see how underground tidiness could be a big pet peeve, so I suggest a simple clean-up option: A "collapse tunnel(s)" function which fills up unnatural caves and tunnels created by tunneling monsters with the original stone/soil/what-have-you (and without changing the topography otherwise).  And having it not work when the relevant tunnel has an occupant.

Now that we have constructed walls, this isn't really necessary, and it would end up getting used (incorrectly) as a tactical option: once you drive all the bad guys out of a section of tunnel, you can instantly collapse it and they can't come back. Additionally, it doesn't make sense to "collapse" a tunnel if, for example, there's nothing on the level above it.

Besides which, I like the idea of rock tunneling (by monsters or dwarves) being irreversible. Not everything should have an "undo" button.

I doubt there's much danger of this happening anyway, but I'd just like to say that "for the sake of preserving annoyance" is a bad reason to remove a feature.

It's not "preserving annoyance", it's "game balance". Editing the RAWs is overpowered.

[Milskidasith]

I'm curious... how does game balance affect a single player game. Sure, it has to be playable, but honestly, if he wants to make the game harder for himself, it's not up to you to decide. It's all about fun anyway, and losing is fun. Right? 

On topic: I'm all for the idea, but as a non default option in the raws (instead of modifying goblins, just turn the "brings tunnlers" tag to ON, and they will bring some). That way we can have the best of both worlds.

[Earthquake Damage]

(That's also why Toady should encrypt the RAWs, but that's another issue.)

That defeats the purpose of using raw text data.  If he wanted modding to be impossible, he would have used binary data files from the start.

[Tormy]

Tunnelers in general I don't like.

..and? 
If it would be added, you could remove it from the RAWs easily.

Or you could learn to defend against them.

Yeah. The "problem" is, that some DF fans are "Sim City" style players. They mostly care about the look of their fortresses, they spend most of their time with designing awesome looking forts. These players are ususally "sitting behind" moats/countless number of traps/defense mechanisms. I can understand if they wouldn't like to mess around with diggers. Thus, if we gonna have diggers [hopefully], I am pretty sure that these kind of players would like to remove them from "their game". 

[i are not good with compu]

So tunnelers are a popular suggestion, and I can see how underground tidiness could be a big pet peeve, so I suggest a simple clean-up option: A "collapse tunnel(s)" function which fills up unnatural caves and tunnels created by tunneling monsters with the original stone/soil/what-have-you (and without changing the topography otherwise).  And having it not work when the relevant tunnel has an occupant.

Now that we have constructed walls, this isn't really necessary, and it would end up getting used (incorrectly) as a tactical option: once you drive all the bad guys out of a section of tunnel, you can instantly collapse it and they can't come back. Additionally, it doesn't make sense to "collapse" a tunnel if, for example, there's nothing on the level above it.

Besides which, I like the idea of rock tunneling (by monsters or dwarves) being irreversible. Not everything should have an "undo" button.

 I'm making a suggestion that does not interfere with your desires while also (hopefully) satisfying the other side, I think you should give it more thought than "I don't like it let's ignore it".  Can you at least try to understand that there are multiple people with different playing styles here?  If that's the way you want to play the game, nothing is keeping you from doing it.  There is no scoreboard in Dwarf Fortress, so there's no reason to feel like ignoring a feature for the difficulty of it (which many players do now) is less fair than taking that feature away for everyone.

If you have a race (or multiple races) of creatures that tunnel, breed, create more tunnels, etc. and those tunnels are permanent, you're going to end up with an irreversible underground mess within a few years, which makes no sense.   In the real world, gophers don't hollow out the Earth, no reason for it to happen in Dwarf Fortress either.  There is no reason to force the player to build wall after wall just to fill up gopher/worm/beast-of-the-ungodly/what-have-you tunnels. 

Also, if the player has the ingenuity to force whatever hell-monster is tunneling into his battlements back up onto level ground, why shouldn't he be able to collapse the tunnels it made?  That makes no sense and just serves to value difficulty over strategy.  If the tunneler isn't dead, it can start over, anyway.

I doubt there's much danger of this happening anyway, but I'd just like to say that "for the sake of preserving annoyance" is a bad reason to remove a feature.

It's not "preserving annoyance", it's "game balance". Editing the RAWs is overpowered.

Your problem with using the RAWs is more about making the game annoying than what the topic at hand concerns, i.e. making turtling less broken.  As for anything else, I will avoid getting further into it because it branches too far from what this thread is about.

[Jreengus]

(That's also why Toady should encrypt the RAWs, but that's another issue.)

That defeats the purpose of using raw text data.  If he wanted modding to be impossible, he would have used binary data files from the start.

Yep the whole point is move as much information as possible into the raws in order to make the game as easily moddable as possible. I doubt that more than a handfull of players who have been playing for any length of time play with the raws completely unmodded.

[TrombonistAndrew]

A good compromise seems to be to create a creature that only can permanent-tunnel through constructed walls. Natural walls would be off-limits.

Otherwise, the term "phasing" seems to be what you guys are going for.

[Skynet 2.0]

If it could tunnel only through constructed walls, then people would just use water + magma to make a 1-tile tall natural obsidian wall around their base.

[Neonivek]

Do we REALLY need elegantly perfect fortresses? Would being forced to change and alter your designs due to the actions of outside forces be that horrible?

[Skid]

Yes, we do. Or at least some motivation to build fantastic defense systems instead of just a mobile force to mop up after the enemy inevitably bypasses all your constructed defenses after a quick glance. 

[i are not good with compu]

Do we REALLY need elegantly perfect fortresses? Would being forced to change and alter your designs due to the actions of outside forces be that horrible?

No more horrible than setting up strawmen as opposed to constructive contribution 

I'd like to set up a concise summary regarding tunneler discussion here since the topic is lingering.

- Tunneling enemies and fauna, in some form, are needed.
- Tunneling should be toggle-able in the raws.
- Permanent tunnels pose problems - a growing (or at least sustained) population of tunnelers pose a lot of potential disruption any time their activities are being monitored for a long period of time (i.e., fortress mode).
- The best solution to this is to make tunnels in some way non-permanent.  How this is done is less important than the fact that it should be done.

Fortresses can be rebuilt, landscapes are more of a pain.

[Earthquake Damage]

If it could tunnel only through constructed walls, then people would just use water + magma to make a 1-tile tall natural obsidian wall around their base.

You make complex pump systems sound so trivial.  In reality it's a pain in the ass to do anything but fill a giant mold (one z-layer at a time) with obsidian.  Even that takes a lot more time and effort than I'm normally willing to spend.

[Silverionmox]

Make the token something like [tunneling:2], which would mean that the creature in question could tunnel through anything with a hardness of 2 and softer. This obviously requires hardness as a mineral (and metal, wood) property to be implemented, but it's worth it. Creatures that could dig through soft soil would still endanger your farms, while still allowing a fallback position deeper underground - but without a food supply, so you'll have to sally forth eventually.

[Granite26]

Do we REALLY need elegantly perfect fortresses? Would being forced to change and alter your designs due to the actions of outside forces be that horrible?

amen

[zagibu]

I like perfect fortresses. I wouldn't mind burrowing creatures, though, as long as they would be relatively rare, and their burrowing relatively slow (so that you could hunt them down before they breached important regions of your fort). Battling burrowing naked moles in some forts couldbe cool, but battling them in every fort would be a pain.
What I absolutely dislike is the idea of a giant burrowing lava-resistent and water-breathing creature that is brought in every siege by the goblins. That's just ridiculous. Also, it can be modded in for the freaks who like this, once we have the burrowing tag and functionality.