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[Zalminen]

Well, thinking logically...

When someone is mining stone, it's not like the whole wall just vanishes or crumbles straight away even if there's a cavern behind it. Before that point there would usually first be a small hole (when the pick first strikes through).

At this point it would still be simple and quick to just plug the hole with a loose rock and anything on the other side would probably be none the wiser.

If we still want to keep the danger of digging into HFS, the simple solution would be that either the wall would always crumble when the first hole is made or that the HFS inhabitants could destroy the half-dug wall.

[existent]

If we still want to keep the danger of digging into HFS, the simple solution would be that either the wall would always crumble when the first hole is made or that the HFS inhabitants could destroy the half-dug wall.

On this note, if your dwarf is digging down into a cavern (for example, building a down stairway that breeches it) I feel that he should fall in. This is less from a realism side of things, and more that it would just be funny. At least, it would the first time. After that, it'd just be Fun.

[Shurhaian]

The 2D version also didn't make it a guarantee that breaching those features would cause a flood. (There was the spring flooding, but you could prepare for that.) You might cause a flood, or you might not.

As it stands, if you dig into the side of the river, you will flood. Period. The warning can be a bit of a pain when you're digging under a watercourse and know it won't cause a problem, but it's still entirely possible to flood your fort because you read the signs slightly wrong. But you can learn from that. You can't learn a damn thing from losing your miners to utter randomness.

[Rex_Nex]

We currently get warnings when we're about to dig into magma or water of the dwarves hitting warm or damp stone. While a cavern isn't as immediately dangerous to dig into as magma or water, it still would be nice if there was a similar warning when I get near an unexplored tile of open space, lest I expose my fort to cave creatures and forgotten beasts.

I must admit I don't know much about real-world digging and mining. Would a miner be able to tell by the sound of the pick hitting the rock whether he was close to digging into an open space? If so, maybe there could be some sort of warning of the dwarves hitting hollow-sounding rock.

No. Instead all such warnings including being warned about warm/damp stone should be removed, or at least moved to an init option that's off by default. Wussies can turn it on. The old 2D version didn't have any such warning, and it was Fun. Nothing like the risk of a flash-flood to keep you on your toes.

/data/init/announcements. You already have your init option, just remove D_D and P, and there you go.

[NW_Kohaku]

I'd have to say that the entire "Fun" of caverns is not knowing they're there until you actually hit them.  Think of them as low-threat HFS - they're a minor danger of Digging Too Deep before the REAL threat of Digging Too Deep. 

The threat of caverns are fairly small, regardless, especially as you can fairly easily wall off entire segments of cavern, or simply seal it back up.  (Or just make caverns not there.  Or just avoid digging deeper than the first 20 or so layers, which is more layers than you usually got in 40d, anyway. Or just make the FPS hogging creatures not exist.)

There's an understandable reason why you don't want people breaching an infinite water source from below without warning (you know, except for aquifers...), but caverns are things you really can say "oops, didn't expect that", and seal back up, and the surprise of the caverns is really the entire point of them.

[existent]

There's an understandable reason why you don't want people breaching an infinite water source from below without warning (you know, except for aquifers...), but caverns are things you really can say "oops, didn't expect that", and seal back up, and the surprise of the caverns is really the entire point of them.

What I would prefer would be a handful of smaller, random caverns, as opposed to the three, embark-wide caverns we've got. Would make unexpectedly hitting them that much more common/surprising.

As they are, it's just like digging through and hitting a giant shopping mall. Instead, you could breach a wall and open a 15x15 "pocket cavern", the contents of which now have no reason not to run at you with violent intentions. Especially if it's like a little Bronze Colossus carrying case. That isn't to say these couldn't be connected in some way, but I'm really getting off topic, so I'll shut up now.

[Shurhaian]

We currently get warnings when we're about to dig into magma or water of the dwarves hitting warm or damp stone. While a cavern isn't as immediately dangerous to dig into as magma or water, it still would be nice if there was a similar warning when I get near an unexplored tile of open space, lest I expose my fort to cave creatures and forgotten beasts.

I must admit I don't know much about real-world digging and mining. Would a miner be able to tell by the sound of the pick hitting the rock whether he was close to digging into an open space? If so, maybe there could be some sort of warning of the dwarves hitting hollow-sounding rock.

No. Instead all such warnings including being warned about warm/damp stone should be removed, or at least moved to an init option that's off by default. Wussies can turn it on. The old 2D version didn't have any such warning, and it was Fun. Nothing like the risk of a flash-flood to keep you on your toes.

/data/init/announcements. You already have your init option, just remove D_D and P, and there you go.

In fairness, this isn't quite the same. The dwarves will still remove the designation - which can be even more frustrating when they cancel their ordered digging job with no warning or explanation.

I don't agree that it should be off by default, given the stiffer consequences(everything below that point will permanently flood, instead of maybe temporarily doing so), and it makes some degree of sense that the dwarves could tell something was amiss before they broke into such a feature. It's also much easier to guard against flooding when you know roughly where it will happen, than to build every single new mineshaft with it in mind - and I mean in this sense the willpower of going slowly where you need to be concerned, instead of forging ahead.

Perhaps there could be a range of options for such things. On the one hand, does the player get the warning, either told that the rock is damp/warm/"thin"(or whatever) when examining the tile, or by a flashing indicator when designating? On the other, do the dwarves stop: reliably, based on mining, not at all? The people who most benefit from the warning are the ones that might still be daunted by the complexity of the game, which is why I don't think it should be off by default(negotiable, though - invaders and economy are on by default, and the former especially can be hard for new players to deal with while part of the expected challenge for veterans) - but having the option to disable that function seems entirely reasonable to me. As for the flash-flooding, that may return when watercourses aren't an automatic and perpetual 7/7 in every case. Smaller waterways may be shallower, and there may be occasional flooding, seasonally (especially for the ones that lead up into the mountains - spring thaws in the foothills, anyone?) or randomly - but that will need an overhaul of the fluid system. Right now, even if it could be done, it would bring many players' machines to their knees.

I agree that more, smaller caverns would be more like how I envisioned the caverns in the first place, more realistic(not that I want to automatically lose them entirely just because "in the real world, there aren't caves everywhere"), and would make them probably more fun. If the creatures below can be made to just plain ignore any region they don't have a path to, only checking on tile passability changes if this is no longer the case, that might(?) help with the FPS issues, especially with the creatures that really want to attack the fortress rather than doing so at opportunity or defending their territory. On the other hand, there's a valid point that any but the clumsiest miner should be able to tell they've breached a wall, peek through the hole, and seal it back up without needing to construct a full-on wall. (Soil perhaps not so much - if you disturb it to that point, it makes sense that soft materials would crumble away.)

But if there was something deliberately sealed down there, it might notice even that small breach, and might not give them the time to do so. Yes, it makes digging up the caverns more hazardous to put such "cells" around - the things that can be thus entombed and survive to ~greet~ your dwarves might not always be colossi, but they're probably not biological in the normal sense, and probably going to be active and instantly hostile. But it is Fun in the spirit of DF. On the other hand, if you're going to put that much risk into the caverns(and not have it be a tuneable option in the worldgen) would make it all the more punishing to then not give dwarves a way to know that they're about to hit them.

It would make insta-cavern challenges a matter of luck. Do you hit a sprawling mostly-empty cavern with space to settle in and plentiful resources? Or do you hit a bare stone cell containing a monstrosity that will slaughter your starting seven without the slightest difficulty? Even more than forbidden beast attacks, it would be a luck factor that players simply cannot prepare for within the scope of that challenge.

[NW_Kohaku]

Real-world caverns aren't a globe-spanning Underdark, but at the same time, they generally aren't just air bubbles in the rock, either.  (Unless we're talking about a methane deposit or something, although that's just an entirely different kind of Fun Surprise...)  Caverns tend to be long, contiguous series of tunnels and chambers where the same water that carved out one chamber will continue on and carve out another a little further down the way, and the large ones do extend for miles, and have multiple branching paths that are difficult to ever fully explore.  They're formed by the layers that can be eroded by groundwater being eroded by water, and as such will form a path that follows the shape of the layer of stone.

[Shurhaian]

True - and unless the waterway that made them has eroded a different course entirely(which happens, if it cuts into softer rock for instance), that water will probably still be around somewhere. Underground rivers are not unknown, and their return would be welcome.

That would be one compromise between the vast caverns as in DF now, and the way underground features were in 40d. Bring the underground rivers back, but here and there along their length, have shelves where the river cut away the rock before settling into its current course. Possibly connected by narrower dry shores. Dry caverns can exist, certainly(as can those with still water at the bottom), but the rivers would give some more variety to the underground.

As for the pockets - there's already precedent for dangerous entities being entombed deep underground. Buried cells(sometimes made of worked stone, which would be a giveaway; sometimes just hewn, which, from the other side, would not) could be a sort of mini-HFS. If you encounter worked stone underground, it might be a prison, or it might be a forgotten vault - and the treasures of the latter(a few artifacts, especially useful ones like weapons and armour, or otherwise high-cost goods) could give people reason to ready a military and breach them.

Of course, even if they weren't built as prisons, such ancient vaults might have their guardians.

...This is drifting off topic, though, and I'm going to guess that cleverer people than I have already thought of such things in the various threads that have come about re: the underground.

[mLegion]

I have no problem with hot/warm stone warnings i just wish it paused and focused only instead of removing the designation. Digging large areas underneath/above water/magma is hell