Print

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

[puke]

so.. you're in favor of purchasing caged whales from the human caravan, and having the alchemist brew up a salt-water solution, and then having a blind legendary miner ride the whale through the salt-water filled channels to scan the mountain for ore vains?

i have to say, thats pretty awesome.  i also really like how it ties back to nethack, where things like ESP are only active while you're blind.  maybe it would be sufficient to tie a towel around the legendary miner's head, instead of actually gouging his eyes out?

also, will you have to blind the whale?

[Poil]

...

No that's not what I meant at all. Besides, whale sonar doesn't penetrate rock.

But I am in favor of digging underground salt lakes with whales in them.  

[ August 07, 2007: Message edited by: Poil ]

[Zhentar]

quote:Originally posted by Haedrian:
<STRONG>. . .

I doubt this is possible TODAY...</STRONG>

Clearly someone doesn't have any experience with the petroleum industry.

Seismic logs are one of the first stages of exploration. What you do is you make a loud noise at the surface, such as by detonating dynamite. Then, you use geophones to listen for echoes in the ground, and record them. Based on the time taken and the volume, you can tell a number of properties of the rock below. If you have a general idea of the formation in the region already, you can fairly easily map out the rock formations for 10,000 feet down or more.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reflection_seismology

This technology can be done purely analog. Interpreting logs without computers merely requires a firm understanding of rocks and their sonic properties. Some people still do it by hand today (though they find it increasingly difficult to get business). The only tricky part is the seismograph needed to measure the reflections; this puts the technology at late 1800's/early 1900's.

[puke]

maybe you could run water filled pipes from the pool where you keep your blind cave whales.  that way they could sound the deep parts of your mining exploration, while not having to continually move your salt water pond.

that does detract slightly from the imagry of a blind dwarf riding the whale through channels like on a waterslide.

[irmo]

Proposal: You have a noble.  Let's call him the Royal Surveyor.  (He might also be head of the Miners' Guild.)  He arrives when you've struck $MINERAL, or mined out some total area.  He goes around with his little hammer and stethoscope and taps on the walls to determine what's behind them.  Whenever he touches a wall, the rock behind that wall becomes visible to a depth of one space.  If he touches the same wall again (let's say he "touches" the wall when he moves into the space adjacent to it), the rock becomes visible to two spaces.  And so on.[0]

His job is to patrol all the corridors of the fortress until all the walls have been scanned once, and then again until they've been scanned twice, etc.  This means that you can't directly control his movements--he goes to the nearest wall that needs to be scanned.  However, once he's done a complete sweep of the fortress, any new mining will immediately attract him (since it hasn't been scanned at all).  If you dig a one-wide exploration tunnel, he'll walk all the way to the end (touching both walls), and then walk all the way back to get back into the fortress (still touching both walls).  So a one-wide tunnel results in a seven-wide swath of the mountain being explored.

This makes exploration much more efficient in terms of the amount of mining that has to be done, without making it much faster because it's limited by the Surveyor's walking speed.  So it's a nice perk but not overpowered.

• He scans walls only when he's on duty, i.e. not walking to the dining room, to his bed to sleep, etc.

[Vendetta]

Rather than the surveyor being a noble, I would suggest it should be a skill of ordinary dwarves (geology and prospecting is hard and dirty work involving actual physical labour, not very noble at all).  You should be able to designate walls and floors for surveying, and a dwarf with the prospecting labour on should potter along and do the surveying.  Their skill at surveying should determine the depth and accuracy of their report.  

The Prospecting labout could also be used for panning gold from the rivers, outside and in, giving you early access to small amounts of precious stuff for trade or moods.

[Genuine]

quote:Originally posted by Haedrian:
<STRONG>
Would need a MASSIVE dish to do that
[ August 05, 2007: Message edited by: Haedrian ]</STRONG>

What if someone hollowed out their entire fortress in the shape of a dish?   :p

[schm0]

This idea is dumb. Mining has always been about prospecting for certain minerals/ore (finding them on the surface, in surrounding river beds, terrain etc.) and then mining the area around in hopes of finding the correct ores. This is just a request for in-game cheating. I use a system of trial and error, and if my creation runs into some snags, then I reload and try again a few squares off or alter my digging pattern. Half the fun of building a fortress is planning for the unexpected.

Underground sonar and dishes and supercomputers sounds like a completely different game.

[PTTG]

Although I agree that having a sonar system would be out of genera for a fantasy game, I've always thought of the dwarves as masters of cave lore. If the much more acceptable prospecting abilities where to be integrated, I would think that the dwarves would have innate senses that training (skills) allow them to use. Naturally, they aren't the only ones, and so maybe goblins might have this sense (i.e. tag) as well, giving a reason for why those races started to live underground while others did not.

[ August 08, 2007: Message edited by: PTTG ]

[Capntastic]

The only thing I feel like saying about this is that divining would make a good magic.

[Angela Christine]

quote:Originally posted by Vendetta:
<STRONG>Rather than the surveyor being a noble, I would suggest it should be a skill of ordinary dwarves (geology and prospecting is hard and dirty work involving actual physical labour, not very noble at all). </STRONG>

Some nobles aren't actually of noble blood, in many cases "noble" actually means "professional," someone with specialized knowledge and training.  A geologist or diviner could be a unique professional, and therefore a noble.  Sure, during the gold rush there were lots of unskilled prospectors trying their luck, but most of them weren't very good at actually finding gold.

I'd like it if there were a legitimate way to get effects similar to that cheat that shows you the layout of the mountain.  Possibly with a much smaller area of effect.  I hate it so much when my hallways accidentally cross a spur in the river! Then I have to hurry to build doors and smooth the floors before it over-flows, or else I get trees growing in my hallway.    It would also be good for when some crazy noble starts requesting items made from materials you do not have on hand, but that may exist somewhere in the mountain.  A spell that would reveal where (or if) you can find granite, opals, or ****ing star sapphires would be helpful.

As a balancing force to keep magic use in check, give magic use have the potential to attract magical monsters.  The more you use magic, the greater the chance of attracting something magical.  What imp or dragon wouldn't want to eat a magic dwarf?  In addition to the magical menaces we already have, there could be new magical monsters that can travel through stone and so pop out anywhere in the fortress, not just at the wilderness, river, chasm, or magma.  Stone elemental, out of phase creatures, trans-dimensional monsters, that sort of thing.

[cavemanbob]

quote:Originally posted by schm0:
<STRONG>This idea is dumb. Mining has always been about prospecting for certain minerals/ore (finding them on the surface, in surrounding river beds, terrain etc.) and then mining the area around in hopes of finding the correct ores. This is just a request for in-game cheating. I use a system of trial and error, and if my creation runs into some snags, then I reload and try again a few squares off or alter my digging pattern. Half the fun of building a fortress is planning for the unexpected.

Underground sonar and dishes and supercomputers sounds like a completely different game.</STRONG>

Huh so based on that i'm going to take a guess that you have absolutely no idea how most real world hard rock mining works.  Finding actual minable ore on surface is pretty rare these days, more likely you're diamond drilling geophysics targets or even seismic stuff but that's still kind of new for hard rock mining.

[Rinn]

quote:Originally posted by schm0:
<STRONG>This idea is dumb. Mining has always been about prospecting for certain minerals/ore (finding them on the surface, in surrounding river beds, terrain etc.) and then mining the area around in hopes of finding the correct ores. This is just a request for in-game cheating. I use a system of trial and error, and if my creation runs into some snags, then I reload and try again a few squares off or alter my digging pattern. Half the fun of building a fortress is planning for the unexpected.

Underground sonar and dishes and supercomputers sounds like a completely different game.</STRONG>

It's not really planning for the unexpected if you're just save scumming. You're just doing the exact same thing except in meta game terms.

[Aquillion]

While I agree that sonar is silly, it's worth pointing out that the reason why people are asking for this is because the next version onwards won't guarantee any minerals anymore, and won't have the concept of "depth" for mineral value. (i.e. no diving straight right to get the good stuff.)  So there's probably going to have to be some sort of geological survey system at some point, just to keep the players from tearing their hair out.

It makes sense to me that dwarves would have a general sense of where to find good minerals.  Maybe they've just learned to recognize certain kinds of signs in the rock itself...  dwarven lore says that when you hit shale with specks of granite, you tend to find XYZ; when there's volcanic behavior nearby or you're near the sea and you see rock X, it's a sign you're probably near rock Y.  Maybe a dwarf could notice traces of a mineral in the rock (too small for other gameplay effects), and realize that proper deposits are nearby.  Maybe dwarves will occasionally take a pinch of rock powder when they dig, put it in their mouth, and taste what the nearby mineral content is.  And so on.  Dwarves aren't magic experts, but if they use any magic at all, they'd probably use some for this, too.

There could be ancient dwarven records, even, maybe passed down from legends of how the world was made, which indicate where good mineral deposits can be found.  It could be a religious thing...  the voices of their ancestors or the whispering deeps or something like that could tell them where to dig.

Perhaps there could be a noble who handles it...  the High Priest of the Whispering Deeps or the Scholar of Stones or the Keeper of the Mountain Lore or whatever.  Their mandates would consist of occasional demands to dig in a certain direction...  of course, they wouldn't always be right, and they'd tend to demand digging towards the things they like more.  There could even be more than one such dwarf, so your high priest is constantly arguing with your lorekeeper or scholar over where to dig to find the best metals.

Perhaps they could warn about impending collapses, too, and could try and forbid the player from digging in areas with weak stone that would be likely to cave in.

Probably they'd need to be more forgiving about demand violations than most nobles, since otherwise they'd be hugely annoying...  Although I can see the scholar flipping out if he warns you not to dig someplace, you dig there anyway, and a cave-in kills several dwarves.

[ August 09, 2007: Message edited by: Aquillion ]

[Lightning4]

Well, what would be nice is having a sort of prospecting feature. Your miners can prospect the walls and floors of the cave and any ore vein that is within a short distance will be noted. But not accurately, and it probably won't even give an accurate direction.

Like something like this

code:

#II#####CCC
#I######CC#
########CC#
#####.#C###
#SSS#.#####
#S###.#####

Using prospect at the end of that tunnel would tell you that there is silver, iron, and copper nearby.

Edit: Heh, would've been a good idea to read through the thread, this has already been mentioned at least twice. Well, it's still a good idea anyway.

[ August 10, 2007: Message edited by: Lightning4 ]