Dwarf Fortress > DF Suggestions

A way to prioritize mining jobs by miner skill?

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ShadowDragon8685:
This is something that just peeved me.

I was mining out the living quarters, and, hallelugha, Native Aluminum! Now, I tend to have every dwarf mine, (a) because I want everyone to be armed (and have some modicum of skill with that weapon) if the unthinkable happens (we did settle a Terrifying biome, after all), and (b) because it gets things done faster.

However, the cluster of native aluminum was attacked by unskilled miners only. Of five native aluminum wall sections, I recieved one native aluminum nugget. This is unacceptable.

So, I propose that you have a way to set priorities - so that only miners above a certain skill are allowed to mine out objects of a certain type, such as assigning it so that only Legendary miners are allowed to mine out Adamantine, Platinum, Aluminum, and Gold, whereas lesser miners may mine out economic stones, and all non-economic stones except Bauxite can be mined by any miner, even an unskilled one.

Also, have it set up so that if a mining job in a high-priority surface that only a high-priority dwarf may mine is discovered, a high-priority miner (the highest currently available) will rush to do that - IE, if I hit platinum, the Legendary miner on the other side of the fort will cancel their job to dig in sandy loam and rush right over to mine out the precious platinum.

(And yes, I did search. If this has been proposed before, it eluded me.)

Elvenshae:
I actually posted something like this ... uh ... a year or so back? ... and was told then that it was suggested in one form or another before, but that doesn't stop me from thinking it's a good idea! :)

I think babysitting miners is one of the few remaining "Must Babysit All Dwarfs" tasks presented to the player, and it generally bugs me.

When I suggested this before, I was thinking of an interface similar to the Workshop Profile screen, where for each type of rock (or category of rock) you could set a minimum skill requirement: only allow Legendary Miners to mine gems, Talented or better to mine ores and economic stones, no skill for normal rock, etc.

Alternatively, you could possibly set it at a rock-by-rock level, with each rock defaulting to the category skill (so that you could set Economic Stones and Ores to Legendary only, and then allow anyone to mine chalk, for instance).

I've somewhat gotten around this now through using Dwarf Foreman and custom job titles.  A miner who reaches Legendary is retitled as a Legendary Miner.  Then, when I designate something I want to preserve, I turn off the mining task on non-Legendary Miners.

[EDIT: Also, Toady's mentioned something about possibly allowing civilian dwarfs to carry daggers in the future, potentially solving your militia issues.]

Shades:
Can we tack a 'follow ore vein' option to wherever the proprieties will get setup too :) That way my legendary miner will not only be the only one to dig the gold but will also get all of it rather than one square then running back again.

Silverionmox:
Two great suggestions!
The "mine out this vein" order could probably have some in-game solution, like building a sign on the ore vein to signal that it should be mined all the way. Maybe signs of the same type could exist to notify dwarves to engrave the floor or the wall of a whole room, or clean a room from stone.

Relatedly, I would love a more irregular mineralogical setup. The patches of uncommon stone are a bit too oval, and too regularly spaced, while all the ore veins are of the same length and width. And both don't consistently continue on the lower or higher level.

Mephansteras:
Yeah, I'm pretty sure the "ore veins out" idea is already planned by Toady. And I've always wanted the ability to tell my less skilled miners to leave my platinum and gems alone!

Also, I'd like to see another cluster size of stone/gems in between the Large cluster and small cluster. Right now, your options are pretty much hundreds of stones or 1-7. How about just 50 or so? Or 20? I'd like to see decent gem clusters show up, so we could actually have a fortress dedicated to, say, mining out Emeralds. Right now, you might get 5 or 6 clusters of a given gem, and that's it. Kind of hard to have a gem mine theme that way.

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