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[Almeric]

I see, by casual browsing, that I'm certainly not the only one who hates marking 18 Metric Assloads of stone to be dumped through the life of my fortress.

I saw something in one thread indicating that more experienced miners produce more by-products.  I'm not sure if this is true or not, but since I recently lost a Strange Mood to insanity when the one cluster of gems I found for him was mined by a scrub and I didn't get a single gem out of it, there might be something to that.

And so, I'd like to propose a small change to the current computation:
If mining rock, high skill produces less trash
If mining metal/gems/coal, high skill produces more delicious goodies

[GRead]

I have to disagree; I actually use allot of that generic rock and the idea that my good miners would always get me less rubs me the wrong way.

A counter-proposal: would it not be better to add a mining tasks section to the orders area that, like workshop restrictions, lets you designate what skill level of miner is allowed to mine what type of rock? split it into ores, economic, and other, much like the stone stocks, and then the players can set skill levels\allocations just like a workshop. This way if you only want proficient and less miners on regular rock you can keep the others away from it, while only allowing the legendaries to hit the ore veins and gem clusters.

[Derakon]

There are plenty of ways to deal with rock, but since it's ultimately helpful to have some around, I don't like the idea of better miners being worse at retrieving it. It's counterintuitive to me that, if you happen to need some more claystone, you shove a pick into some poor peasant's grubby hands rather than ask your reknowned-across-the-world miner to carve up a new tunnel for you.

If you need to clear rock, here are two ideas:

* Build a catapult and fire it point-blank at a wall. Builds catapulting skills and destroys the rock.

* Set up a craftsdwarf shop and turn it into goods, which can be stacked into bins and sold to merchants. Ups your created wealth and helps you avoid that lame "narrow giant cave spider silk loincloth for everything you own" trick while still getting the goods you want; a legendary stonecrafter generates bins that are worth about 1500 each, and each bin uses 25 rock.

To minimize hauling, you should build the catapult/shop right in the middle of the rock you want to get rid of, and in the case of the craftdwarf shop, set up a nearby stockpile too so that the goods get binned more efficiently.

Of course, you don't need to get rid of rock at all. I've just gotten used to there being stone all over the place; the dwarves certainly don't mind.

[Mikademus]

Regarding the nuisances of stone, I'd like to promote this thread.

[Othob Rithol]

Best option in my mind would be three types of dig designations: Dig, Mine and Quarry.

Dig: Remove whatever is here, with a low base chance of dropping and item.

Mine: Remove all ore, gems and coal in the selected tiles with current skill based drops. Non-ore tiles are canceled.

Quarry: Remove all tiles selected using the current skill based gains.

Under orders have the option (simplified digging) that all dig/mine/quarry designations act as quarry for those that like it just how it is now.

You can clear an area without clutter, you can guesstimate where a vein is going to go (less micro), as well as intentionally gather a stone type.

Dig Microcline and Orthoclase
Mine Gold and Iron
Quarry Obsidian and Flux

[Almeric]

Yep, that would indeed be good.  I was going to append to my initial post that some sort of option would be nice, though at the time I was going to suggest an .ini yes/no toggle to get more or less stone.

Full as the Designations menu is, I think a distinction between a "clear it" and a "save it" version of digging would be awesome.  I don't even think you'd have to go for a trio of options, necessarily.  When you strike something new, you get a notification, so at that point you could switch your designation for that area if need be.

[zagibu]

An easy fix would be a dump designation similar to the forbid designation.

[Areyar]

yes have the dig command set dropped items to dump ('tleast the non-economic stone types)
they can always be retrieved...unless you use a destructive waste disposal system.

...or only when no free space is available in stockpiles?

[Othob Rithol]

I added the middle one (mine) in because I have been thinking of suggesting that anyway. Your thread got hijacked by a stupid noble  :cool:

But yes, the two key ones (little stone/lots of stone) would be the simplest.

I also thought about (instead of an auto-chasm or less-stone feature) having a labor (unskilled) to whack unwanted stone with a warhammer.

If you think about it, the increased skill of a miner increases drops differently depending on what the miner is digging. A skilled miner working ore is being careful and using their exoerience to not waste anything. When ripping through useless rock, the miner is just making  only the necessary strikes to clear the path: they aren't pummeling the stone into oblivion. Thus they are carving the tunnel that much faster, generating more big chunks.

So mr.super-mole has a dork peasant following him whacking the stone with a hammer. Might be slower (whack whack whack whack) but then again might be much faster (since the dwarf is not making round trips hauling).

:: Imagines poor Urist Nimblecircles wearing black and white striped pigtail prison unifrom, chained to the mine wall, cracking stones ::
"We didn't even have any #$%!@# naked mole leather!"

[Lyrax]

Or... you could toggle "break rocks" as an action to be done by prisoners, under direction of the Hammerer and his goons, of course.  Using prisoners as free menial labor... it's not uncommon.

[Rozen]

The only problem I have with extra stone is putting up stuff that the stone gets in the way of, or smoothing out stone for a certain section (tombs, etc). Right now I have a stockpile with only certain kinds of stone in it (the nice kind) and everything else has to wait for me to (d)ump it before it gets hauled away. I don't mind this, since all the good stone is put in one place and all the limestone I don't need is put in a little 2x2 dump, but its the keystrokes that kill me. I would like to be able to select areas for dumping like we do for digging or other kinds of zones, where I could set an area for dump and unselect certain elements inside as keepers.

Just an idea... it comes up for me only once in a while but it seems like an easy solution.

[Belteshazzar]

What I would like would be the ability to simply dump my stone and refuse off a cliff and it pile up in the z axis. It would be cool to bury objects this way (those tiles become unmapped with items hidden.) Kind of like a landfill it could tap into the liquids settings to allow for rock/trash slides(bury those goblins in their dead), skull piles (every doom fortress needs at least one), and slag piles.

It would be cool to incorporate this into building by making ramparts (add spikes for menacing or flowers and shrubbery for hanging gardens) I could see the elves becoming even more upset as you twist even the surface land into an anthill of exploitation and vigorous labor (because all elves hate the man).

[Wolfius]

Just add a 'destroy rock' designation

Mine as normal, then select any scraps you don't want to keep - miner comes by and erases the rock for the cost of a quick task.

Should be easiest to implement, and minimises accidents - like erasing a huge part of a vein of gold because the tip was exposed in a cliff, or it loops around unexpectedly from where you've already uncovered it while mining earlier.

Also, on the stone management tangent, I love this mod; makes all stone economic, so you can enable or disable use of a given type at will. http://www.bay12games.com/cgi-local/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=13&t=000143

[Zironic]

IF I mine something - like granite - does the granite just magically disappear?

[I3erent]

Best suggestion i heard to deal with this was the ability to toggle on and off viewable stone.

>.<