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[Sean Mirrsen]

As the title says, kimberlite is broken. It will not appear ingame at all, which means no diamonds. I am very certain of this, but if anyone can confirm kimberlite sighting in vanilla DF, please do.

What led me to believe this:

- Despite Kimberlite having the same appearance chance, formation, and conditions as Garnierite, it does not appear where Garnierite does.

- Modding Kimberlite to appear as clusters instead of veins fixes it.

- Modding Kimberlite to be an ore of Nickel with a value of 2 and a "*" rock symbol(essentially copying Garnierite entry) fixes it.

- Modding Kimberlite to only have the value tag doesn't fix it.

- Modding Kimberlite to spawn no gems doesn't fix it, as well as making Garnierite spawn diamonds doesn't break it.

Something is wrong with the "specific material/non-ore/vein-formed" setup. Bituminous coal, another non-ore vein resource, works, but is not limited to a single material. I'm going to try some other setups to see what will work best (turning kimberlite into an "ore of useless" won't work good), and post here again. In the meantime, Toady, perhaps you could look into this? We want our diamonds!!!  

[Abyssal Squid]

Incidentally, kimberlite pipes would be better represented with a cluster than a vein anyway, as they're big vertical tubes.  Also diamonds should be present in alluvial deposits in small amounts, along with other hard gemstones (zircon, rubies, sapphires, topaz, etc).

[Sean Mirrsen]

The "slight" problem with that is that clusters are discontinuous between Z-levels. After revealing, clusters really look like oval-ish blots all over the map, randomly positioned on each Z level. Other then that, and the fact that purple stone would kinda freak me out, I don't have all that much against kimberlite representing as clusters. I'll need to lower its chance of appearance though (to some 10%), it's waaaaaay too common otherwise.

Edit: having read some more on kimberlite on the wiki, it seems a kimberlite pipe should be rare (so even 10% might be a bit too much, but we've got a fantasy world here), relatively large, and quite possibly not contain any (gem quality) diamonds at all. An idea deriving from this is to make a True Diamonds mod in hopes of it being picked up by Toady at some point.

The concept:
Make kimberlite spawn as large clusters, and far less frequently, thus making it more realistic, and fixing it in the process.
Make "non-gem-quality" diamonds, labeled simply "tiny diamonds" a lot more frequent in kimberlite, and reduce the chances of normal-size diamonds appearing a bit.
Also, up the value of all the diamonds for their rarity.
Add various "complementing" minerals to kimberlite in small clusters also, but it'll have to be tested more, because it may disrupt the spawning of diamonds themselves, and isn't altogether relevant to gameplay.

I also wonder, since kimberlite is an intrusive igneous rock type, if it can be made into a rarely occuring layer of sorts, but that would be Highly experimental.

[ November 24, 2007: Message edited by: Sean Mirrsen ]

[Abyssal Squid]

I guess you could pretend that the entire site is a kimberlite pipe, and the actual kimberlite clusters are just diamond-enriched sections of the pipe, for the time being.

Ultimately, I'd like to see kimberlite pipes abundant where they are present, but completely absent from most locations, requiring a prospecting adventurer or something similar to look for alluvial diamonds to find the vicinity of the pipes, but this is crossing pretty over the line from bug to suggestion territory.

[Sean Mirrsen]

I've made my little "diamond mod", you can find it in the modding forum.

I guess rock crystals are next, they could use more abundancy I think. Making them appear as veins should do it...