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[GavJ]

Simple - in the designations menu have two options:
#1 (The current / classic version): Dig for a maximum # of boulders ideally. Higher skill = more boulders gained per tile dug.
#2: Dig for a minimum # of boulders ideally. Higher skill = fewer boulders per tile.

At zero skill, either option gives you the same baseline amount, which could be any number.

For option #2, possibly include a toggle to "exclude economic rock / ores" during actual designation. I.e., get maximum ores still as an option.



Sometimes you want a quarry, and sometimes you just want a dining room and don't plan on building much stuff, and the boulders are a nuisance. Surely legendary miners should be able to accommodate either wish.

[King Mir]

In the current version miner's skill doesn't influence yield. It was changed in 0.34.09. I doubt Toady will change it back.

[Xazo-Tak]

Mining is almost certainly going to stay exactly as it is until it is completely revamped, so suggestions for it are pretty pointless.

[GavJ]

What needs to be "completely revamped" about mining?

[Manveru Taurënér]

What needs to be "completely revamped" about mining?

Depending on who you ask, everything, nothing and all things in between.

It's hard to say how much Toady has in mind for it, I don't recall him ever going into any specifics on where he wants it to end up. There's this quote from around when minecarts went in, but he never got around to actually changing anything other than adding them and tweaking the stone drop rate, so I'd assume there'll be some manner of change making minecarts actually useful some way down the line. We should also be getting cave-ins back at some point.

I mean you have to think about, you know, if you want to do things like mine tracks and carts and things, and if you want to do wheelbarrows, how that's really going to be necessary, or what's the most ... because laying tracks and things is its own kind of work with its own hauling, and if it takes as much work to make a track and place carts as it does to haul stone back out then the most realistic use of mine carts, of mining with them, is not as important as having mine carts that go between two food piles, or something, and you fill the cart with food and send it down the line and dump it in the other pile, or something. One thing we were thinking of doing was actually making certain aspects of mining harder so that you'd require something like a mine cart or a wheelbarrow to moon a boulder that's large enough to make a statue with, or something like that. I mean there are certain things like that that when we're done with the hauling fixes all of it will be faster and more efficient if you use the tools we give you.

Personally I'd love to see a fairly detailed system with different sized rocks, gravel and dirt and not being able to dig further until it's been hauled out of the tunnels. Maybe not quite to the extent as detailed in the Realistic Mining suggestion thread (currently nr.12 on the eternal suggestions voting), but something along those lines at least. Obviously there's some disagreement among of the playerbase with that so it's hard to say how far Toady is willing to take it though.

[GavJ]

Okay, well... those features are probably years away if anything.

My suggestion in this thread would literally be UI + like 3 lines of code:

>> [UI code to add a keyboard key toggle during mining designation]
>> [allocating memory for flags and stuff]
>> [in the event code for deisgnation being confirmed:] If (toggle == 1) yieldflag = 1, else yieldflag = 0;
>> [in the event code for tile being mined successfully:] If (yieldflag == 1) yieldRate = (defaultYieldRate) + (1-defaultYieldRate)*skill, else yieldRate = (1-skill)*(defaultYieldRate);

[thobal]

Okay, well... those features are probably years away if anything.

My suggestion in this thread would literally be UI + like 3 lines of code:

>> [UI code to add a keyboard key toggle during mining designation]
>> [allocating memory for flags and stuff]
>> [in the event code for deisgnation being confirmed:] If (toggle == 1) yieldflag = 1, else yieldflag = 0;
>> [in the event code for tile being mined successfully:] If (yieldflag == 1) yieldRate = (defaultYieldRate) + (1-defaultYieldRate)*skill, else yieldRate = (1-skill)*(defaultYieldRate);

As someone who does a little hobbyist programming myself that seems very... optimistic.

[WJLIII3]

Gamewise, I get it. Simulationwise.... How on earth do you dig out a cubic meter of rock without producing a cubic meter of rock? They don't eat stone.

[GavJ]

Gamewise, I get it. Simulationwise.... How on earth do you dig out a cubic meter of rock without producing a cubic meter of rock? They don't eat stone.

...

Erm, do you play dwarf fortress (being facetious)?  Exactly what you described is what happens on like 80% of all tiles dug out, which. For whatever reason it is possible in the DF universe. That given, a better skilled miner should be able to influence whatever physics are involved more easily than an unskilled dwarf.

For example, let's say the reason not every tile has a boulder (and how you can walk around boulders) is that small pebbles evaporate for some reason in DF. If so, a skilled miner would know how to intentionally strike the rock so as to make lots of evaporating pebbles, OR how to strike it to make big usable chunks fall off at once, as desired. An unskilled miner would just whale away at the wall willy nilly and be aunable to influence it from the default baseline likelihoods.

If and when we get more realistic mining, then this is a moot point. But as long as some tiles do in fact disappear into thin air, skilled miners can logically influence it.

[thobal]

Gamewise, I get it. Simulationwise.... How on earth do you dig out a cubic meter of rock without producing a cubic meter of rock? They don't eat stone.

In theory rock in the DF universe could be something like Pumice. Mostly Hollow.