That's not necessarily true. There are still things like magma pipes to consider, and wanting to have a larger number of biomes on a single map, plus greater map surface is good for, say, trees. Of course, more underground layers means more rock, in general, so you don't have to worry about that.
It IS true, however, that you won't need to worry about the "special features" as much, because those won't be confined to specific areas like they are now.
Like stone was ever in short supply.
Excellent, I was hoping that there would be little magma pockets on every map. I realized the other day that I'd never been in a jungle or desert because they don't usually have the features I want, and I've been playing for a while.
Oh yeah, in the next version, is there a way to put certain barrels away for brewing only? My fortresses are always dry because plump helmets fill up the barrels faster than I can make them.
Burrows would make it easy but right now you've got a tool for it. While making a stockpile adjust the reserved barrels and then disable everything but drinks for it.
I'm not sure if reserve barrels works in a way that give an actual reason for us to not get to adjust this after the stockpile is placed but either way after this release I'd like to see that become an adjustable option- people could actually find it~
So the implication is that you can always dig down far enough to hit magma. Is there a point, far enough down, that you would find nothing but endless magma, like reaching the planet's mantle?
Almost certainly not. Fundamental assumptions of the game's engine would have to change, and there's little benefit there.
Indeed, such an area would cause an instant cave-in.
Also, it's several miles of crust before you hit the mantle, and you'd die from the heat long before you reached it. In order to accurately represent that you'd need like ten thousand z levels or something atrocious like that.
You're also assuming an earthlike world, since DF is fantasy with a magical base (that will grow stronger when properly implimented) it's entirely possible that DF worlds are in fact, flat sqarish 2d planes of arbitrary depth.
People would make fairly quick moves to dump water into it for some obsidian. (If there is empty space between the magma and last layer of stone they could engineer a situation where water and falling magma contact to produce useful walls.)
Wat
Just an obscure reference that I doubt anyone will get. This does bring up an interesting point though. Where are the polar regions in such a world?
The on a sphere are icy thanks to the angle that light hits them. With a large distance to the star rays of light are effectively parallel so they end up further apart on the sphere in areas angled away from them.
For a cylindrical surface you can get the same effect by instead having a close source of light. Directly beneath it the light would be very direct but at the far end of the world it would come in at a low angle but mainly have a wider spread due to distance. Unfortunately the cylinder described was probably more like a top hat with creatures scurrying about on the brim rather than along the vertical wall.
ERAU QSSI DLRO WEHT
I see what you did there. It goes quite nicely with your avatar.
Oh yeah, Isn't that the secret password in FF6 to get... something in the cave with the second airship?
One of the Greatest games of all time, and THE greatest villain of all time. (also, their world is not square, it is a toroid, the map is square)
I'd call it a torus with there not being any hard corners to walk over but then again with the four sides of the map having equal width that isn't really possible either.