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[Tamren]

This is so simple and it makes so much sense that I can't imagine why I didn't come up with it earlier.

Stone blocks are a simple way of adding quality to stone used in construction. Bridges, walls, support, workshops and whatever else. The problem is they are annoyingly hard to make. Every mason must lug a boulder into his workshop, tinker with it and then someone else has to lug that block away.

What if instead, we could designate boulders the same way we designate trees for cutting? Designate an entire boulder stockpile and the masons will come along and chisel each block into shape ON SITE. After which those blocks can be collected and moved directly to the block stockpiles.

This would make running a quarry so much easier. You mine out the rock, make the blocks and cart them directly to a construction site. No back and forth fedexing, no middleman workshop. Its currently hard to make large construction projects out of smooth stone for those same reasons.

This also has the happy side effect of eliminating the problem of masons making blocks out of the wrong stone.

Make sense?

[penguinofhonor]

.

[Cosmonot]

This way you can't assign specific dwarves to making blocks through the workshop profile, unless Toady adds another labor option to the damned v-p-l thing.

[Draco18s]

I still like the idea.
I say that it should work both ways: designate a boulder AND workshops with all the hauling.

[Mikademus]

quote:Originally posted by Cosmonot:
<STRONG>This way you can't assign specific dwarves to making blocks through the workshop profile, unless Toady adds another labor option to the damned v-p-l thing.</STRONG>

True. And irrelevant, because you can still use the masonry workshop as usual. I'd LOVE the OP's suggested feature.

[ February 13, 2008: Message edited by: Mikademus ]

[Drunken]

OR, and bear with me here, because its a radical suggestion - you could just build your masons workshop right next to the stone stockpile, and leave toady to fix bugs which seems far more important

[MindSnap]

I like it. It makes more sense too.

[Puzzlemaker]

quote:Originally posted by Drunken:
<STRONG>OR, and bear with me here, because its a radical suggestion - you could just build your masons workshop right next to the stone stockpile, and leave toady to fix bugs which seems far more important</STRONG>

OR, you can let people make suggestions...

It's a good idea.

[Tamren]

Why not both? That bug needs to be fixed of course but its not so much a bug as a lack of a feature. Even once that is fixed we could still use another "mass" command like this. You could use the manager, but this way you could que up every single boulder in one specific area or room to be blockisized. Is that even a word?

[Mikademus]

quote:Originally posted by Tamren:
<STRONG>Why not both? That bug needs to be fixed of course but its not so much a bug as a lack of a feature. Even once that is fixed we could still use another "mass" command like this. </STRONG>

Indeed. Boulders and stones, especially in being such a critical games aspect, is a bit of a wart atm. The suggestion would help with alleviating it. Put it like this: the game is centred around stone to a very high degree, therefore it stands to reason, conventional, logical as well as interface and design-wise, that game functionality is attuned to this. And again, the OP's suggestion does address this very thing. Thus, it is a very good suggestion, and relative to some outlandish plans presented, one that is probably relatively very simple to implement.

[SirHoneyBadger]

An idea that comes to mind on this is:

You can assign your Dwarfs to turn boulders into crude stone blocks, on sight, but inside the Mason's Workshop, you can 1: choose exactly which type of stone you want made into blocks (which I don't believe you can do right now), and 2: get a much nicer finished product. So, you can have your rough stone blocks for like bridges or roads or whatever, and the nice finished malachite flagstones that you can't fit a knife-blade in between, for when you want something special. And then, maybe, you can assign your Engravers directly to the finished stones, whereas they'd have to smooth the stone to engrave rough blocks. Finished stone would also make dwarfs happier than rough blocks, and be worth more (x7 instead of x5 materials, and since you can choose the type of stone to use, it would have that economical value.) The time to make finished blocks of this type would be double what it is now.

[Tamren]

That raises the interesting possibility of engravers pre-engraving stone blocks which can be used to make pre decorated walls.

Even better, you could tell them to engrave something specific on each one. So if you want to tile a room with pictures of dragons and lions alternating, you can get the walls premade instead of getting a random mix of flaming dwarves and gesturing humans.

[Tamren]

quote:Originally posted by SirHoneyBadger:
<STRONG>An idea that comes to mind on this is:

You can assign your Dwarfs to turn boulders into crude stone blocks, on sight.</STRONG>

Sorry for the bump, but I forgot to ask. What do you mean exactly by "on sight"?

[JoRo]

I think he meant "on site."