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The new channeling is covered in awesome sauce, the old channeling smelled real bad.

113 (19.3%)

The old channeling was the best, we don't need two ways to make ramps it is just silly.

245 (41.8%)

Old channeling was the best, new channeling is also the best.  Can't we all just get along?

132 (22.5%)

You people need to get on with your lives, it's not a big deal either way.

96 (16.4%)

Total Members Voted: 583

[Lord Darkstar]

Length of tiime to build a defensive moat isn't a significant issue. You have more then enough time before the first goblin ambush to build a wall or create a moat around your fortress entrance. It just makes what was a one step process (designate a simple 1 width channel) into a multi step process.

[NRN_R_Sumo1]

my dwarves have a much harder time getting trapped, starving on a pillar, and dieing, causing a tantrum spiral in the fortress.

People just dont appreciate the gift of life I suppose.

[Tarran]

my dwarves have a much harder time getting trapped, starving on a pillar, and dieing, causing a tantrum spiral in the fortress.

People just dont appreciate the gift of dwarven life death I suppose.

Fixed.

[LegoLord]

Been away for awhile, so I don't know if this idea is already out there.  And frankly, I can't think of a way to do a search that would actually be fruitful, given the forum search engine's features.

What if the new channeling was what low-skill level miners do?  More experienced miners can do channels the old way.  The way of implementing it best goes along these lines:
1)Old channeling is back on the designations list simply as channeling.
2)New channeling is renamed "downward ramp" or some such thing (simply because some people like that feature).
3)When a channel is designated, the job of digging it will only go to insufficiently skilled miners if there are no minimum-level-skilled miners to do it.  When digging the channel, depending on just how far below the required skill level the dwarf is, there is a probability that it will make a ramp.

Ideally it would be a relatively smooth transition from unskilled to skilled.  Skilled in this context would be high enough mining skill that the miner no longer ever leaves ramps when doing channel designations.

What all this does is:
1) Make it so that a moat can't be instantaneously brought up with low-skill workers.  Basically, with work you can get channels easily, but lazy mining will have a penalty in how quickly you can establish effective defenses using channeling.
   -Note: this doesn't solve the difficulty of defending a fort (or rather the ease of turtleing a fort), but merely makes establishing
    defenses in dangerous areas (say underground) more dangerous if you don't have a dwarf of sufficient skill to avoid ramp making.
2) Make it is possibly to avoid the drowning in the channel issue with a single sufficiently skilled miner.
3) Adds extra motivation for having skilled miners.

The logic behind this system is that the method of a collapsible ramp does sound like it could be a little tricky.  I can't imagine you'd need much experience to do it well, but the minimum skill for getting a 100% success rate at channeling instead of making ramps doesn't need to be high, either.  Proficient seems good just because it means with good preparation you shouldn't have to worry at all at the start - barring the usual sorts of accidents, of course, but that's just how the game is anyway.

[CaptApollo12]

my dwarves have a much harder time getting trapped, starving on a pillar, and dieing, causing a tantrum spiral in the fortress.

People just dont appreciate the gift of life I suppose.

Never had it happen. Not once. Atcually the first day I played but after that... not once.

[Cotes]

Having both would be the best:

Downward ramp allows you to channel out large areas at once without without your miners trapping themselves by doing the outermost tiles first.

The old channeling allows you create closed pits without your miners trapping themselves in them. Removing this might have been a balancing/realism decision though, as it does not make a whole lot sense being able to dig out a hole that is so deep you couldn't climb up from it without some kind of ladder.

[NW_Kohaku]

Once again, this entire problem gets solved, though, if we could just remove ramps or stairs from above.  Especially since we can build stairs downwards (I.E. build stairs from above) now, not having the ability to also remove stairs from above is just silly.

[zwei]

Once again, this entire problem gets solved, though, if we could just remove ramps or stairs from above.  Especially since we can build stairs downwards (I.E. build stairs from above) now, not having the ability to also remove stairs from above is just silly.

Well, if you are lucky enough to be on freezing map, then you can pump water on ramp because when it freezes, ramp goes magically *poof*.

(I just discovered this when i realized that my river-exit ramps got destoryed by ice.)

It is of course bug, but rather nice one

(Untill dwarves start falling to river.)

[TaintedMustard]

Man up, people. Neat channels require dwarves to go down in them.

Then let dwarves build rope ladders that can be quickly deployed and then recovered. Give sieging armies the same equipment. Let them span gaps entirely, too, if they're allowed enough time. Ditches should slow the enemy, not stop them completely. Making ditches slightly harder to dig didn't solve the real problem.

[Lord Darkstar]

Cotes, you can dig a hole that is that is deeper than you are tall, and easily get out of it, without a rope or ladder, if you just make a couple of spots in the wall to climb up. As long as the material you dig in isn't mush, it isn't that difficult.

And if you have the tools, you don't even have to get into the hole to dig downward. There's many, many, many techniques that humans have developed since the days of sharpened sticks and baskets were the cutting edge of earth moving.

Toady decided that he wanted it to be more of a project to create a simple ground defense. For digging a moat, he decided you should do two passes--- either double channel, or channel and remove up ramps afterward. Of course, for a wall defense, you just build a wall. But then, you DO have a second step--- if you count the getting the resources to build the wall. Whether you mine rock or chop down trees, it is still a two step process--- get wall raw material, construct wall. So now, the moat defense ALSO takes two steps, making the number of steps to make ground defense the same. In that sense they are more similar--- but a dug moat still takes less time and effort than building walls.

[zagibu]

Double channels will still require you to remove up ramps. Any channels do that now, as every edge of a channel is ramped ATM. If you don't remove them, intruders can just walk down into the channel using the downramps, and exit the other side using the up ramps. In fact, the difficulty is not even having to remove up ramps, but getting dwarves out of a channel that blocks intruders. You either need a bridge or an unmoated second entry to your fort.

I still think it's a good change. Channels that block intruders can NOT be dug from above without heavy tools, and you can't easily escape from them. If you could simply dig some steps into the side, what would stop the intruders from doing so? I only accept the old channels back when intruders can cross them with minimal effort.

[Andir]

Define heavy tools.  Is a pick that can clear a solid stone wall in seconds a heavy tool?

Is a post hole digger that can dig a straight wall straight down without having to place yourself in said hole a heavy tool?  What about a corkscrew with two handles at the top for dwarf a dwarf to spin and lift the dirt out of said hole?  Why couldn't a dwarf throw a line up out of the hole and use it to climb out if he had to get in the hole?

I think you guys are over thinking this... it's a game and it's meant to be fun.  If you have to dig a hole twice, that's not fun.

[NW_Kohaku]

Double channels will still require you to remove up ramps. Any channels do that now, as every edge of a channel is ramped ATM. If you don't remove them, intruders can just walk down into the channel using the downramps, and exit the other side using the up ramps. In fact, the difficulty is not even having to remove up ramps, but getting dwarves out of a channel that blocks intruders. You either need a bridge or an unmoated second entry to your fort.

I still think it's a good change. Channels that block intruders can NOT be dug from above without heavy tools, and you can't easily escape from them. If you could simply dig some steps into the side, what would stop the intruders from doing so? I only accept the old channels back when intruders can cross them with minimal effort.

Again, what's wrong with the "remove stairs from above" approach? 

We have the ability to build stairs down from above because Toady had problems creating rope ladders, but that just gives us the ability to "put the ladder down the hole", the other part of that rope ladder was "pulling it back up when we are done".

If we can just have the functionality of being able to toss a rope ladder down (build stairs down) so that dwarves can dig away all the ramps and make a good pit, and then remove that ladder from above (remove stairs from above), we are not doing anything ground-shaking.  We're just not forcing a dwarf to remain behind to destroy the last way back up, or forcing him to dig a new path out, then re-walling the pit back in.

[Shades]

I still think it's a good change. Channels that block intruders can NOT be dug from above without heavy tools, and you can't easily escape from them. If you could simply dig some steps into the side, what would stop the intruders from doing so? I only accept the old channels back when intruders can cross them with minimal effort.

Why is it a good change? It fails to achieve its goal, a simple bridge and a single extra dug square will still block everything, and removes construction choice from the user that lots of people already used.

[zagibu]

I told you why. It doesn't make sense that a dwarf can easily climb out of the pit, but an intruder can't. I take the old channels back if intruders can cross them. Then you would have to dig 2 deep channels as moats, and everyone would be happy, except those that exploited the old channels to dig a simple moat.