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[Solace]

Alright, this suggestion's probably not gonna go over well, because while it doesn't require a huge coding overall, it would change the actual gameplay a fair bit. But, here goes.

So, you know how dwarves mine out a ridiculous quantity of stone. I generally pre-mine out about a quarter z-level in the first few years, so I can flood it and start up a nicely protected, underground forest. I also made a thin, trap-lined corridor of stone inside a 40X40X10 hollow to repel invaders, still within the first few years. Both, on top of hollowing out a sizable fortress, threeish mining areas, an underground farm, automatic watering systems for the farm and forest, and expeditions down into the lower caverns and below. If memory serves, I had about three miners.

Now, I know digging around is the heart of the game, but that's a bit ridiculous! And I'm not the only one to complain that one of the larger problems in the game is just what to do with all the frankly unnecessary mountains of free stone you accumulate for no real reason. For that matter, I might not have the made strongest metal industries, but my pile of precious metals is still growing faster than I can use it. Of course, I can also think of why the dwarves dig so fast in the game, and that's because you start out with two-or-three moderately skilled miners and no weapons to speak of. If you can't build up a functional outpost within the first few minutes of the game, you're probably screwed, and you're definitely going defensive, not offensive.

On the flipside, there's also a pretty easy solution. Underground geology and ecology is a big part of this game, so why not have a lot more natural caves and cave systems connected to the surface? Just starting out, you could find an area with 90% of the work done for you, maybe just add a door and widen a bit in the middle. Maybe emphasize walled-off surface areas in the early game a bit more. You could get away with a slower mining rate, so that it isn't trivial to add another five z-levels to your massive pit just because your miners have nothing else to do, or accumulate metals faster than you can actually use them, let alone stone.

[Draco18s]

Dig deeper.

Default worldgen has three layers of caves.  One would have thought that that would be enough.

[Solace]

My point is to lower the rate of digging so that you can't just do that in the first month. And use smaller caves attached to the ground so that your dwarves don't all die in that month.

[Starver]

There are of course cave entrances that lead into the existing caverns, already.[1]  Albeit irregular 1-tile-wide-tunnel drunkard's-walk affairs that don't always (awkwardly for adventure mode) give an actual walkable/walk-backable[2] transit between surface and underworld.

But you're speaking of larger cave-systems, right?  Like the existing subterranean caverns except poking out of hillsides, or the 40d crevices in the landscapes, but with better access?

Frexample, a bit like this place, at this surface?

Spoiler: Image from Wikipedia (click to show/hide)

(Not that a Fortress Mode dwarf with a pickaxe-couldn't deal with the details of fine-tuning the access/egress issues I've mentioned.  But you're looking for something quite open.)


Big 'trouble' with connection to truly subterrainean areas is the possibility of immediate or near-immediate FB appearance into the areas that dwarves will wander, but then that probably doesn't worry everybody to the same amount.

[1] Although while I was used to the complexly-ramped "outcrop" cave entrances in early .31 games, Adventuring in later ones only give me "hatches over a cave entrance, in more or less flat ground" versions.  Not sure whether that's a change in terrain/subterrain generation code or just me hitting upon different styles of landscape from what I previously did.

[2] i.e.  if you hit a point where you have to drop yourself a Z-level, there's no way back out by that entrance.

[ZioAnthros]

I have to agree with slowing down mining.
It's at the very coreof fortress mode, and as is, it's actually way easier to dig out a fortress than just quarry and build one.
That's back-ass-wards if you ask me, even for our bearded friends, which i always pictured fortifying the crapulance out of a cave entrance, instead of an actual castle.
As in, on the surface building with all the stone they mined out, growing more and more towers as the mines get deeper and deeper.
That's a proper evil fortress for the inevitable monsters to inhabit forever after your short stint as the smaller, preyish thing that originally built it. =)

[Max White]

I'm totally in support for more regular, and larger cave openings breaking into the caverns. Especialy when the river running thing is more sorted out, so that we could have a river running into a cave, that seasonaly floods. I mean dosn't that sound epic.

[noob]

i miss bottomless pits

[Solace]

@ Starver & Maxwhite: Definitely agree, although I think that probably cool terrain features are already planned.

I have to agree with slowing down mining.
It's at the very coreof fortress mode, and as is, it's actually way easier to dig out a fortress than just quarry and build one.
That's back-ass-wards if you ask me, even for our bearded friends, which i always pictured fortifying the crapulance out of a cave entrance, instead of an actual castle.
As in, on the surface building with all the stone they mined out, growing more and more towers as the mines get deeper and deeper.
That's a proper evil fortress for the inevitable monsters to inhabit forever after your short stint as the smaller, preyish thing that originally built it. =)

As much as I'd like that to be a viable option, I do think that most people would agree that at least eventually having an entirely-underground fortress is more "dwarfey". That said... I just think it should be, you know, a -project- to dig out a 100X100 area to build into a fortress, and while you're hollowing it out, you could use all the spare stone to build up the temporary housing on the outside.

I mean, a lot of the ennui I feel about fortress mode is how ridiculously easy it is to set up the actual fortress. I can build pretty much the whole thing before the first winter, and sure, I'll need to expand eventually, but I'm never pressed for time or space. Usually when I think about expanding, I seriously consider building an entire second fortress deeper down and better layed out. Epic? Maybe, if it took more than three dwarves to pull off.

Maybe digging could be considered a sort of basic skill, almost like hauling? I mean, aside from mining out delicate gems, you are just moving stuff around... just hitting it first. Takes strength, not skill (at least when you don't have to reinforce ceilings).

[zwei]

Can't we mod caves in ... just add veins/clusters of material that boils out at room temperature?

[Max White]

No, that will not work. The walls will be solid, and he stone you would normaly get for mining out the wall will instantly boil.

You will notice that stones that are not magma proof will not melt while in a natural wall and exposed to magma. This shows that the state of minerals is always solid reguardless of temperature.

Ask the modders for what the modders can do, and Toady for what only Toady can do. This is something modders can not do.

[penco]

Another option would be just to distinguish between "digging" and "mining." Digging could be faster and leaves no usable stone, and mining is slower but does leave stone.


My biggest beef with the current cave system is not that the caves are not the right size but that they drastically screw with your fort value.

[Silverionmox]

Simply make minerals have a different hardness, and thus require stronger picks to be mined out effectively. You can't dig through granite very well with a -copper pick-... This will automatically slow down players that are past the upper sedimentary layers and soft stone like chalk and marl, while still allowing to get a serviceable hiding place ready before spring ends.

(Although I thought that the post was about the style of the caverns. I could use some variation..).

[Ullallulloo]

I like this idea for the realism and possible fun, but have caves be more realistic than what you're suggesting. Idon't see much advantage gameplay-wise, but tbh I don't really think that an advantage is needed in that area.

[Untelligent]

I don't see any reason to just make mining slower, that would just make stuff take longer without adding anything to the game. I like the idea of making a faster mining that doesn't produce stone (or not much stone) and a slower mining that does, though.

[NW_Kohaku]

Actually, I've seen plenty of good suggestions involving making mining no longer a matter of miners holding up their picks and vaporizing the stone in front of them, and participated in several, as well.

They make the game fun in the same way that having tougher enemies to fight come siege time makes the game fun - the game already makes mining, supposedly the core competency of dwarves, so absurdly mindless and easy that you hardly notice it.  The game would be more challenging without the cheat mode speed hollowing of whole mountains that you can perform, and if you were forced to adapt more to what stones you could easily dig through, how much you had to remove debris from mining, and the simple limit to how much stone you could move in a given season.

How you dig should be a big part of the strategy of this game, and it's just not even worth thinking about.