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[Aquillion]

I noticed, in a recent post, someone complaining about how they don't get warned when their dwarves hit an ore again on the same Z-level, often resulting in low-skill miners mining it out.  In the same thread, others were complaining about the spam of constant warnings!

So, why not just do this:  Allow the player to set it so only dwarves above skill level X (or the best available dwarf, if there are none above that skill level) will mine ores, gems, or economic stone (which can be set seperately, since it's often more common).  That'd solve a lot of problems at once.

[Armok]

Seconded.

[Eagle of Fire]

Thirded. I actually suggested this in the past too.

[Grek]

Perhaps "Head miner" should be an appointed noble. Then have a "Head miner dig this out" designation. Once guilds go in, the head miner would be the leader of the miner's guild. Other ones could be done for other trades.

[ December 26, 2007: Message edited by: Grek ]

[Helmaroc]

Fourthed. I hate it when those novice miners destroy my platinum! Once I even lost some adamantine to the 'Unskilled Miner Diasease' or UMD.

[Draco18s]

Fifthed.  I just had a boat load of trouble with my miners.  Had designations all over the place, everyone but my legendary are mining out there, the legendary is mining marble.

What happens when one of them whippsnappers finishes digging?  Does he look for a nearby tile?  NO!  OH GOD OF BLOOD, ARMOK NO~!  He F*cking went and decided to mine the f-ing marble!  Took me a half hour of constant supervission to keep ONLY the legendary miner down there (fortunately, even with a red left lung he doesn't pass out ever, though he isn't "agile").

Have to do the same thing with my ores, I'm on a very ore-poor map.  Though I did just find about half of a z-level full of marble more recently...
I think I have enough now to completely deconstruct my screen-sized fountain and rebuild it in marble blocks.

[penguinofhonor]

.

[sphr]

it would of course be very nice to have this feature.  But I think it would take a while.  In the mean-time, this is a more tedious workaround, but still better than trying to manage your miners one by one.

1. Get foreman.exe (see wiki).

2. Give your legendary/highest skilled miners a custom profession to make them stand out (e.g. "Expert Miner")

2. When you see precious stuff, remove mining designations for them.  

3. After you are ready to mine the goodies, use foreman.exe to switch off mining for all other miners with one click, and leave it on for your "Expert Miner".

4. After the goodies are mined, click another time in foreman.exe to turn on mining for all regular miners again.

Edit: btw, I think you get warned once per "cluster" or "vein" of different rocks/gems you get in the main rock type, so to avoid accidental mining of the same vein without warning, you should consider mining out the whole vein when in "expert mining" mode to settle it once and for all.  If you get another "warning", it'll be a new vein.

[ December 27, 2007: Message edited by: sphr ]

[Ookpik]

Yes, and I'd like this to go for engravings too.

[Eagle of Fire]

quote:this is a more tedious workaround

This is about 5 times, perhaps even 10, more tedious that what I'd ever bother with. Using another program alongside DF?

C'mon...

[sphr]

quote:Originally posted by Eagle of Fire:
<STRONG>
This is about 5 times, perhaps even 10, more tedious that what I'd ever bother with. Using another program alongside DF?

C'mon...</STRONG>

Have you actually used foreman.exe before?

[Troas]

As a followup suggestion on implementation of this idea:  expand the z-stones menu to include non-economic ores.  For each ore have a P for digging profile similar to workshop profiles - where you can set a minimum/maximum mining skill to dig the ore.  This way you can reserve common stone for training new miners and useful ores for your more talented miners.  

As a side effect you'd have a hook for purists to specify that no furniture/walls be made of a certain stone in the fortress.

[Fedor]

quote:Originally posted by sphr:
<STRONG>

Have you actually used foreman.exe before?</STRONG>

Word.

Dwarf Foreman is truly Armok's gift to DF players.  I use the same method sphr describes; once you finish renaming your dudes it takes only a few mouse clicks to get the right dwarves busy on the ore.  It's like having the best of both worlds; Santa Toady gives us an amazing game and the dwarvish hackers help out with the interface.    

But back to the topic.  Here's another vote for a way to control miner and engraver minimum skill or some other handy way to prevent newbs from wrecking the platinum nuggets.

[ January 06, 2008: Message edited by: Fedor ]

[rkyeun]

If "You must be of this skill to dig this material" options are implemented, I don't think it should default to "best miner" if said skill isn't available. If you wanted someone of lesser skill to do it, you would have set it to the skill you had. Having a higher skill requirement to me implies that even the best of your six dabbling miners (left after the dragon suddenly ate your legendary miner) should keep digging elsewhere in the fortress until he's skilled enough to carve out the clear diamond.

[Thallone]

Amen! The other side effect is the ability to tell it : no miner over skilled should dig out schist, for example, leaving less stones to clutter things, while still extracting all the ore in a most meaningful way.