Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Tarran]

I, personally, don't really like it all that much, but it simulates channels more realistically, have any of you ever tried to mine a straight hole with a pickaxe? Nether have I, but a pickaxe is round, so unless your dwarf can bend down and yet not fall in, it makes more sense to have ramps.

Here is an example:

Code: [Select]

###########
###########
###########
###########
###########
###########
###########
###########
###########

This is the tile undug.

#.........#
#.........#
#.........#
#.........#
#.........#
#.........#
#.........#
#.........#
###########

This is what it was like in 40d.

#.........#
#.........#
#.........#
#.........#
##.......##
###.....###
#####.#####
###########
###########

This is what it is like now.
See my point? There is only so much you can do from above, without having someone hold you, of course .

[Grocer]

What Locus said.  The old channeling stood in for two things currently not in the game.  A method for climbing out of pits and a safe method for breaching dangerous flows.  As I understand it, climbing is waiting for the pathfinding rewrite and (if we're lucky) breaching will arrive when mechanics evolves.  The new channeling stops abstracting out those two things* to become more realistic.  I just don't understand how it's more realistic when the other options don't exist yet but would be perfectly in line with a 'realistic' situation.  By all means change the behavior, but at least wait until other options are available.

*Yes, you can still breach but as has been detailed it is much more susceptible to fatal dwarven stupidity (especially if you want a breach more than one tile wide).

[Ultimuh]

I've been doing some investigating with this myself.

I think the new channelling system is less like digging a channel and more like digging a trench.

The only differences between building a ramp and digging a trench are:
A: The former is done from below, the latter is done from above.
B: You can use it to remove floor tiles that have no earth below them.
C: When digging a trench, the miner seems to avoid the trench, but when digging a ramp the miner is more than happy to stand in the trench and dig. Other dwarfs will have no issues stepping in the trench however, and once the miner is done digging, neither will he.

I actually lost a miner to C. And not in the typical "frozen in an aquifer" way.

I'd decided to build my fort into the side of a cliff you see. I'd started building from above, but I'd managed to dig out a room a little too close to the aquifer, and suddenly a every room below it was flooded. It was an inconvenience, but I worked out that what I'd do is I'd go to the room above, and mine out to the cliff face:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Then I figured what I'd do is I'd dig out a channel so that the water in the room below would be funnelled out, giving me time to get a wall up and block off the aquifer, so that I could then drain the lower levels:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

It was then that I discovered that I was not digging channels, but ramps. I was initially pretty confused, but it wasn't too big a deal. After all, the water was still draining, and everything was working as intended, more or less:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

That was, until my miner decided that the fastest way to get back to the stockpiles was through the channel.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Ok, that last immage made me laugh. 

[njero]

What Locus said.  The old channeling stood in for two things currently not in the game.  A method for climbing out of pits and a safe method for breaching dangerous flows.  As I understand it, climbing is waiting for the pathfinding rewrite and (if we're lucky) breaching will arrive when mechanics evolves.  The new channeling stops abstracting out those two things* to become more realistic.  I just don't understand how it's more realistic when the other options don't exist yet but would be perfectly in line with a 'realistic' situation.  By all means change the behavior, but at least wait until other options are available.

*Yes, you can still breach but as has been detailed it is much more susceptible to fatal dwarven stupidity (especially if you want a breach more than one tile wide).

Thank you, I was worried I'd have to quote my own post about abstraction.

I like comparisons, so:
Your engravers don't need a chisel to carve solid granite, your miners don't need a step ladder to hop out of their channel, or shoring deconstruction mechanisms to breach a pool wall. You're still able to engrave, you should still be able to channel and breach—two activities which are as old as sedentary civilization.

[Vastin]

I'll add my vote to revert channeling to its previous functionality plz.

Having that unavoidable ramp when breaching a flow tube is annoying, especially as Pickaxe Mcgraw will then classically take the opportunity to immediately run down it and drown himself for fun. Furthermore it now requires more steps to create a simple, clean channel than before, which is never a plus in my book.

If I want access ramps in my flow structures, I build them myself before breaching and provide hatches to avoid drowning/melting idiocy.

Oh - and don't try to think too hard about the actual geometry of ramps in DF. You will injure important mental faculties if you push it too far. 

[Ultimuh]

Maybe if you get two choices for channeling, one with ramps and one without.

[KFK]

What Locus said.  The old channeling stood in for two things currently not in the game.  A method for climbing out of pits and a safe method for breaching dangerous flows.  As I understand it, climbing is waiting for the pathfinding rewrite and (if we're lucky) breaching will arrive when mechanics evolves.  The new channeling stops abstracting out those two things* to become more realistic.  I just don't understand how it's more realistic when the other options don't exist yet but would be perfectly in line with a 'realistic' situation.  By all means change the behavior, but at least wait until other options are available.

*Yes, you can still breach but as has been detailed it is much more susceptible to fatal dwarven stupidity (especially if you want a breach more than one tile wide).

Thank you, I was worried I'd have to quote my own post about abstraction.

I like comparisons, so:
Your engravers don't need a chisel to carve solid granite, your miners don't need a step ladder to hop out of their channel, or shoring deconstruction mechanisms to breach a pool wall. You're still able to engrave, you should still be able to channel and breach—two activities which are as old as sedentary civilization.

This. For its detail, DF still has many abstractions. Digging sheer channels without ramps and without getting stuck isn't that hard to imagine.

I wouldn't have a problem with the new mechanics if
1) The AI handled it better
2) I could hide those ramps for aesthetic reasons.

As it is, I at least want the option to use the old style of digging, if not a total revert.

[Deathworks]

Hi!

Personally, I am in favor of the new way of handling things. However, I do have a suggestion for an improvement that would actually also help the aesthetically challenged who do not wish to use the stair exploit to save dwarven life:

How about allowing dwarves to build floodgates from one z-level above? This way, the floodgates could be placed within the target substance, the channel then completed and smoothed at the entry point as you like before things are getting flooded.

Anyhow, this is a decision Toady One has made, and there is really not much you can do about it.

Deathworks

[njero]

Anyhow, this is a decision Toady One has made, and there is really not much you can do about it.

Considering this wasn't a hyped feature, if it was ever even discussed at all, I'm sure he won't mind reverting or altering it if it is clear it causes significant gameplay concerns.

Concerns like the fact that you can no longer alter flowing channels without killing your dwarves. Oh yeah, I just had some fun with aquifer draining just now. I have six dead dwarves at the bottom of a canyon river, and one melancholy "survivor" being stalked by harpies. The stair method you refer to does not work when digging into flows, and neither does channelling one row at a time from a "safe" direction. I tried both those methods and a few others, and in all circumstances my dwarves would find their way down into the running water and launched into the canyon.

My objections go well beyond having a "clean looking fort," which, by the way, is a concept that doesn't stop at what the pixels look like.

[thelordberg]

Alright, 3 things to say here:

1. I liked the old channeling and I think a lot of other players have gotten used to it too.

2. Is this a bug or a feature? Oh great Toady or Threetoe, would thou give thy lost souls thy true word?

3. For those of you arguing realism, these are dwarfs we are talking about here Our simple human methods of digging are nothing compared to the majestic, elf hating, forest clear cutting, magma utilizing and breaking the laws of physics your regular dwarf goes through!

[Grumman]

Maybe if you get two choices for channeling, one with ramps and one without.

We already had these two choices: Channel and Carve Ramp. There's nothing stopping you carving a ramp from above.

[Name Lips]

We have a game where engravers smooth and carve rock with their bare hands (or perhaps teeth).

We have crossbows with a rate of fire that would make modern gatling guns jealous.

We have viscous carp that will leap out of rivers, snatch dwarves, and drag them down to a watery doom.

We have dwarves who happily live for ages on loaves made of minced eyeballs and minced wine.

We have the ability to make magma forges which are hot enough to function for smelting/smithing steel, but cool enough for dwarves to use without protective equipment.

We can pump lava through magmaducts made of wood.

We can depend on goblin sieges for a steady and reliable source of iron.

We can drop burning coal bars to the bottom of the ocean at a high enough speed to evaporate the sea, build a fortress of clear glass on the sea bed, lock our dwarves inside it, and allow the ocean to return.



.......
...
..
.
.
.


and to balance all of this insanity, we get deliberately-inconvenient ramp-channel tunneling and beds that can only be made of wood.


You know, at some point "because that's the way it is, just learn to deal with it" turns into a better and more logical reason than "because it's realistic and balanced."

[CaptApollo12]

I think we can do more with the game if channeling is back the way it used to be.
I never get my miner caught (okay I did once BUT I LEARNED)

[zilpin]

I like how Jiri Petru said it, way above, channels vs holes.
I like the way Name Lips explained it better.


Digging Channels should dig channels, digging Ramps should dig a ramp, and if you want to make a command for digging a vertical hole or Shaft, then make a new command for it.
Notably, vertical holes and shafts were previously easy to accomplish using other commands, but a convenience "shaft" command would be nice for new players.

As stated many times above, this change makes it impossible to effectively make channels of water or magma, even with good planning, without killing miners.
That's a Big Problem.

If Toady or anyone else wants a "shaft" or "hole" command, then make it.  But don't shaft the rest of us in our holes by breaking the channel command!

Until this "feature" is fixed, Toady lost this tester.
If it is not fixed, he lost a donor.
Plain and simple.

[Duane]

I like the idea of an option for channels and one for holes, the holes being channels without ramps, but couldn't you guys just make your channels, uh..
Wider?