You get three things of cement for one unit of each quicklime, sand, and water. These will go 'rotten' like food if not used - they will harden into a stone. Of course this means any job using cement would have to be a priority job.
Cement and a block makes a smooth wall. It could be treated like a statue for a season (not load bearing and destroyable until it properly hardens) but will then just be like any other smooth wall.
We'll have to wait until this request falls in Toady's short list.
The cement will take time and effort: uses up a thing of limestone, needs a kiln job, needs sand, needs a trip to a well with a bucket, and a mason job. Then you have limited time to use it so you can’t stockpile cement for mass building. Plus it makes logical sense to use cement as a mortar to stick stone back together to form a solid wall.
I think people will mostly use rewalling to replace areas where they mined out minerals or gems as well as to make a support that isn’t going to be destroyed by a tantrum, potentially causing mass death and destruction. Not to mention repairing the damage done by the (hopefully) soon to be implemented mining units of invaders.
The long cure period is both realistic (primitive cements take a long time to harden fully) and keeping people from abusing it in some way. Perhaps one year is too long, but 2 full seasons would be good - way too long for quick siege defense but reasonable for repairing damage done by a siege, to tidy up oddly shaped rooms, or provide a surface for an engraver to work on.
Edit: Since you might need a lot to repair siege damage it might be nice if you could then buy quicklime from the human caravan or something.
[ February 08, 2007: Message edited by: Entropy ]
Now all we need are metal plates for walls to slow those damn seige miners and we're set...
Having re-walling efforts take a lot of material (5 blocks) doesn't really make a lot of sense. When a dwarf is mining, there's only a /chance/ of getting /a/ stone from each tile of mining. I believe the implication is that the removal of small loose material is abstracted, and all that remains is larger, sound stones.
Requiring cement to build walls would only serve to emphasize the fact that it is NOT required to build other things that would logically require it, like bridges.
A different approach would be that you could make blocks from cement. These cement blocks would be made several at a time, and require time to cure, after which they are treated like regular "gray" stone blocks.
Rylen
Reinforcements should take a metal bar and a rock. Nothing too complicated; bear in mind you'll probably have to rewall huge areas.
When rewalling rolls around, I hope Toady goes for the full deal, including filling in channels and reclaiming land from the river.
If you reclaim land all the way across the river, he could even make it deadly. Damming the river would trigger an overflow event -- like a normal flood, but head-high instead of waist high, and any doors and floodgates the floodwaters touched would be destroyed. Ouch.
Walling across the river would need some sort of additional functionality to help water breach the walls, however...
[ February 12, 2007: Message edited by: JT ]