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[doctorspoof]

I just figured out a way to mine 2 levels at once, rather efficiently(although you'll spend quite a bit of time in the designation screen, your first Z level But it's a great way to find everything without mining every other stone out



So the Blue/purple(Porpoises are colorblind, or atleast this one is) squares are normal mined out sections. White is not mined, and the black bits are up/down stairs. I originally thought about channeling, but if your use an updown stair, and another on the level below,  It's considerably easier to get the goodies below, plus on every level subsiquent all you need toneed to do is dig another updown stair.

I anycase everything will be revealed.

Yeah, thats definetly the most efficiently way of revealing. Shame it's a bitch to designate though 

[Musluk]

I'd sacrifice eleven GCS's to have the line tool (from paint, duh) in DF

[RAM]

I make diagonal lines out from my main shaft, if I find anything good I will reveal it with parallel lines, if I don't find enough good stuff then I will make more diagonal lines...

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

#-wall
_-designate dig
L-previously dug
X-stairs
O-good stuff
start:

_######_
#_####_#
##_##_##
###XX###
###XX###
##_##_##
#_####_#
_######_

Good stuff:

####L###
###LOO##
##LO_O##
#L###__#
L###O_O#
####_###
########

Looking for more:

#_#####L
##_###L#
###_#L##
####L###
###L#_##
##L###_#
#L#####_
L#######

Diagonals are a pain, but they are much more efficient and are fairly simple at least. Also I like to reveal my victims before finishing them off. It feels a bit more like a battle against the mysteries of the rock, rather than methodically revealing every tile, which seems too much like work to me...

[Derakon]

Keep in mind that all clusters are at least 2x2 in size, so leaving one row unrevealed will never cause you to miss something. Thus, to find everything interesting while minimizing designation work, you should make parallel tunnels every 4 squares, like so:

Code: [Select]

###########
#.# #.# #.#
#.# #.# #.#
#.###.###.#
...........
###########Any clusters that are in the unrevealed squares will also be in at least one of the revealed squares.

[doctorspoof]

While i agree clusters are, at min 2x2, this can be shortened to 1x2 if it's at the end of a region tile.
That's highly unlikely though, so fair enough ^^

[Fedor]

I use several methods; the one I choose depends on what I'm looking for.

If I want complete coverage with minimal digging then I use the method several people have already posted:  That of making shafts of up-down staircases three grids apart.  The first time I did this on a large scale was when I needed to find gems for the windows of Mountain-Banners.  When he saw what I had done, my brother exclaimed in delight:  "You took CORE SAMPLES"!

The one problem with this method is that it totally messes up the underground.  I'm a bit of a perfectionist and just making walls and floors to clean up doesn't always satisfy my urge for unsoiled beauty.

 When I just want to locate ore, then I normally just dig parallel tunnels about 7-10 grids apart.  I'll occasionally indulge in crossways and diagonal connections for pathing efficiency.

Whatever method I use, I'm a big fan of AutoHotKey (see the DF Wiki, Utilities section, bottom of page), because it lets me designate an unlimited number of shafts with a single keystroke.

[kefkakrazy]

Depends on where it is.

For starters, the very bottom level of any fort is going to get opened WAY out. Whenever my miners aren't busy I send them to expand it-it produces huge piles of stone, so I set mason's workshops and craftsdwarves' workshops down there to make things out of the stone. It's also a good place for catapult practice.

When it comes to exploratory mining, I go for big rooms. I prefer to just designate a 40x40 area for digging rather than designate as little of it as possible. Why? BECAUSE, why the hell should I waste my time carefully designating an area when the miners can waste THEIR time? MY time is valuable, my miners are expendable.

If I need something in a hurry, my solution is quantity over quality. If I need to find out if there's loot in that 40x40 space, I set the labor force (unskilled peasants or useless immigrants) to mining as well. Brute-force approaches to labor=profit. Though I'll tell them all to drop the picks and go home when they strike something worth digging.

[doctorspoof]

It's also a good place for catapult practice.

Best place for catapult practice :
Facing a pathway over a volcano of one width, that leads to all the nobles tombs. That were still being built.
+5 points for hitting a pet.
-2 for hitting a dwarf.

I call it Clay Muskox Shooting

Besides random derailment, less player-intensive mining styles are good for high FPS comps, while vica versa for low FPS conps, as previously stated

[Tiler]

Considering all the uneeded space, I don't bother with any sort of sophisticated system of mining. I usually do, however, about a rough 10x10 grid to start with, and theoreticially, after I do that everywhere, I'd narrow it down to 5x5, 3x3, and so on, until it's all an empty husk of a mountain.

But usually I get bored and wipe out my fortress with an act of sheer pointlessness before I can get that far in my attempts to deft physics.

[Shoku]

While i agree clusters are, at min 2x2, this can be shortened to 1x2 if it's at the end of a region tile.
That's highly unlikely though, so fair enough ^^

With most of us playing on small maps you can further eliminate a good portion of those potential 1x2 clusters as they'd never be for for anything but expensive walls since you can't mine the very edge.

[Calessa Lynn Orphiel]

I too do the "mine shaft" method. It takes the least amount of dwarf work but I swear it takes the most amount of work me-wise.

Considering my dwarves are running at ~25 FPS, I figure I can spare more time then they can

Umm ... Why does it take a long time?  I used to do mine shafts insanely fast by simply selecting Up/Down Staircases, holding down LMB, and holding < or >.  Unless one of the more recent DF versions broke it (I think I last did a fort with this method in 39), holding down LMB while switching Z-levels designates each floor you come to.  The only floors that will need to be manually done is the bottom-most Z-level, because you cannot designate an up/down staircase there.

[worldspawn]

I just copy the save over to my laptop and use reveal

[Hamdinger]

I'm with worldspawn, I don't like to have my site pockmarked with horrible mineshafts. I'll use revealvein to find the ore that I need so I can avoid destroying all the z-levels in search of stuff.