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[EnDSchultz]

So I've started two forts in a row now on the border of a scorching mountain and desert biomes, and both times I've ended up with these absolutely gnarly and not very aesthetically pleasing cave systems. They look pretty horrible and the patches of tower caps are so small scattered with crevices or water or Armok knows what else in between them for them to be easily exploitable sources of wood. First off, why are they apparently so common in scorching environments (or am I just unlucky?), and secondly, does anyone have any tips of where to start digging and how to tame this cave system?

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[Ovg]

Oh Armok, it's... it's so beautiful.

I say you could just send some steel-armed dwarfs down there, cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war.

[the great fool]

1: Unlucky i guess

2: my favorite thing to do is build a maze of catwalks above it, then have one central area were you can send dwarves down in groups to prove there manliness dwarfliness

[Max White]

SO AWESOME!!!

[sneakey pete]

You can have open air cave systems? to the labritories!

[Ubiq]

So I've started two forts in a row now on the border of a scorching mountain and desert biomes, and both times I've ended up with these absolutely gnarly and not very aesthetically pleasing cave systems. They look pretty horrible and the patches of tower caps are so small scattered with crevices or water or Armok knows what else in between them for them to be easily exploitable sources of wood. First off, why are they apparently so common in scorching environments (or am I just unlucky?), and secondly, does anyone have any tips of where to start digging and how to tame this cave system?

It's the World Gen settings; you either selected or wound up with a world whose caverns have high Passage Density and low Openness. That may not be the case for every cavern system in the world, but will generally be true of all caverns within the same region. So just about any of them within that particular scorching desert mountain region are likely to be this way. You might luck out and find one that isn't, but it'd have to be a considerable distance away from the other forts. At least a few tiles on the world map to be sure.

If you want wide open cave systems with lots of plants, then generate a world with high Min/Max Openness (95 or higher to 100). You can either have Passage Density set really low for caverns that are connected only at a few points or really high so that they'll connect to each other all over the place or directly overlap one another.

You might be able to regen the same surface world with different caverns. I can't recall if changing those settings changes the surface features or not; I don't think it does, but I'm not sure of that as it's been a while since I've regenerated the same world over and over again. It definitely affects your history though since your civilizations will have access to different resources and how often they're attacked.

[Quietust]

You can have open air cave systems? to the labritories!

It's not supposed to happen - whatever causes this to happen is probably the same thing that occasionally creates 2000 Z-level Adamantine spires and/or results in HFS being open to the surface upon embark.

Regenerate the world with the exact same seeds and the caverns will probably end up underground where they're supposed to be.

[abadidea]

The image seems broken from here. I'd really like to see it.

[EnDSchultz]

The image seems broken from here. I'd really like to see it.

I don't know what to tell you. It looks fine from my end.

I just used the basic worldgen tool. Only things I changed were the size, evilness, and savagery of the world. The two sites I'm referring to are probably upwards of a dozen tiles apart. I'm not even sure if they're from the same two biome areas. So does the basic worldgen tool randomize the unseen values in order to add more variety or does it just use the same template each time aside for that which you change?

[Max White]

I just noticed.
Your ramps seem strange and obscure.

[EnDSchultz]

I'm using the Anikki 10x10 square tileset. Do you have a suggestion to offer of a better tileset of similar style?

[Max White]

No, I just use ascii. I didn't even notice it was a tile set untill I saw the ramps.

[EnDSchultz]

That's why I chose it. Almost identical to the original but squared so no distortion.

[Max White]

DF vanilla comes with a 16 * 16 tile set, so nice and squair. I think Toady went to the effort of setting it up in the raws so you only need to change the init file to [GRAPHICS:YES]

[Ubiq]

I just used the basic worldgen tool. Only things I changed were the size, evilness, and savagery of the world. The two sites I'm referring to are probably upwards of a dozen tiles apart. I'm not even sure if they're from the same two biome areas.

If they're that far apart, then most of the caverns in that world probably look that way.

So does the basic worldgen tool randomize the unseen values in order to add more variety or does it just use the same template each time aside for that which you change?

It should randomize it each time you generate a new world since there's such a large range to work with. Of course, you could have bad luck and end up with the same situation each time.

If you like the rest of the features of that world and want large caverns, just use Advanced World Gen along with the world-gen info for that world and change the cavern settings before creating a new copy of it.