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[codezero]

One has to remember that the main characters are dwarves, traditionally fantastic miners. So why should they suffer from the constraints of human miners?

That said I don't mind the idea of rubble. Maybe mining rubble could take the same amount of time as mining does now, whereas getting a useful stone out  of the tile could take longer.

[catpaw]

If someone can find a fun way to dispose of 14 million dwarfpounds of gravel, I'd be all for it.  Requiring it be hauled to an ever-growing mountain of debris is not fun (though less fun than dumping it in a pit or in magma, neither of which are all that entertaining).  Same applies to night soil, giving it a use (fertilizer) isn't really enough.

How about roads for a start, instead of using by rock chunks for it like the dwarves do nowadays?

[Silverionmox]

I want to start off by saying, "Thank you for supporting my position."
Second, "unfinished development objects" and "refuse items" aren't one and the same.

Refuse ceases to be refuse as soon as there is a use for it.. There are very few games who track animal fat, ash and chunks.

(Refuse, however, will always be with us and we'd better start thinking of fun/useful ways to dispose of it.. Realism as well as easy disposal requirements would be satified with a growing pile of slag and gravel somewhere at the bottom of a cliff.)

If someone can find a fun way to dispose of 14 million dwarfpounds of gravel, I'd be all for it.  Requiring it be hauled to an ever-growing mountain of debris is not fun (though less fun than dumping it in a pit or in magma, neither of which are all that entertaining).  Same applies to night soil, giving it a use (fertilizer) isn't really enough.

I would find it pleasant to see the extent of my mining activities mirrorred in that mountain. I repeat, hauling must be revised first. After that waste could be dumped off-map even.

Setting up a nutrient cycle is an essential part of farming; and farming is in need of rethinking. In practice it would just mean that biowaste decomposes in a compost pile, destroying all the items in the process and turning them into piles of compost, which is fertilizer. Sawdust and straw in a stable would just turn into manure when animals are present. Sewage can be flushed away or treated the same as manure, if soil fertility is dwindling. That's about it.

What happens with "waste" products is an essential part of production planning. If DF tracks flavor elements like vomit spatters and coin temperature, why not these?

[baby_peacock]

I just want to voice my support for Dwaref's suggestion. In this case (and indeed in most cases, I would say) realism doesn't detract from the fun, it adds to it!

I've never understood the average gamer's aversion to realism in games. Why do people automatically equate realism in games with less fun? IMHO, commitment to realism and detail is one of the things that make Dwarf Fortress stand out from the rest.

Hauling gravel byproducts of mining doesn't have to be annoying if we get rid of the micromanagement. Clearing the rocks that resulted from mining used to be very annoying when we had to designate each rock for dumping individually. It was made slightly less annoying when the ability to mass designate them was added. If dwarves designated as gravel haulers automatically took on the job of hauling freshly mined gravel to the landfill, using the best available method, it would be even less annoying than the way it currently works.

[Dwaref]

Maybe mining rubble could take the same amount of time as mining does now, whereas getting a useful stone out  of the tile could take longer.

I've been thinking about that as well. See, i don't see how any byproduct stone from mining could be usable as sculpting material. Since that's what dwarves do, masonry isn't pottery.
IMO, masons should get their own stone, much like how weavers go out and find webs.
You could set up a zone for it, so you only get the kind of stone you want, kind of like how sand collection works. Also to keep your masons from tunneling into the fortress. Then maybe within that zone specify what rock you want cut.

That way we'd get rid of scattered stones from mining(not in itself a benefit if we have rubble), and also have the benefit of more efficient rock-workers.
The idea is that the rock squares have stages of completion before being mined out.
It goes from having its default graphic, to go 75% coloured, to 50% to 25% to being mined out.
It goes through four stages. I reason that rock-cutters may be able to have one attempt per 'step' of degradation to produce a block of stone. Each rock cutting attempt would take maybe half long as a miner to mine out a square(effective rock removal speed of x2 compared to producing rubble).
Two masons could cut a block each from a 50% square that a miner earlier half-finished before going to have a drink(or failing to produce a block, create rubble).

That way you could get the material from closer at hand, produce real BLOCKS instead of generic 'stones', and make sure the rock lasts longer(may be important if it's flux, but i guess flux rubble'd still be useful for smelting ; but flux is also a more valuable craft material).
Even ancient catapults(romans i think) used square-cut blocks coming from quarries. It's not like they dug around to find some ice-age rocks rolled round from fields for every piece of ammo(even though maybe english trebuches etc did have those). I guess rocks would disappear from DF then, but meh.

[Dwaref]

masonry isn't pottery

Also, i'd like pottery. It'd be great that ; if stones disappeared, clay bricks- and craftsmanship replaced the 'stones'. Since blocks have material value 5, and stones have 1 - then one could gather clay(clay is treated as generic 'soil' at the moment), and make crafts much like how sand is currently collected. Clay items would be material value 1, and effectivily replace stone.

It wouldn't require much effort collecting and can be performed with few tools. It could even be sun-dried, so no worries about furnaces.

Pottery could fill a niece between glassmaking and stonecarving. A crude one, but hey.

[codezero]

I think getting a useable stone has more to do with mining (quarrying) than masonry (in effect, sculpting). I think miners would know all about different methods of stone extraction. Did Michelangelo quarry his own marble?

Pottery sounds like a good idea, could be used as vessels and trinkets. Maybe only humans could work clay though (would be better IMO).

[Draco18s]

I want to start off by saying, "Thank you for supporting my position."
Second, "unfinished development objects" and "refuse items" aren't one and the same.

Refuse ceases to be refuse as soon as there is a use for it.. There are very few games who track animal fat, ash and chunks.

Refuse also disappears after a season of sitting outside, all suggested "rock waste" proposals do not have that.  Hence it's a waste product that NEVER GOES AWAY.  60,000 stone is a freaking killer on FPS.  At least it can be gotten rid of by turning it into trade fodder, but gravel won't ever make it that far.

[Dwaref]

I think getting a useable stone has more to do with mining (quarrying) than masonry (in effect, sculpting). I think miners would know all about different methods of stone extraction. Did Michelangelo quarry his own marble?

Well, maybe. I'm just thinking that miners know how to break rock, while masons know how to work and extract it without chipping it. There's a difference working with sledges and picks over working with hammer and chisel.
I can't imagine that you can even accidentally produce sculpting material from just normal mining, which more or less focuses on chipping the heck out of a solid wall of rock and keep going. Heck, in real life only some types of rock are even workable like DF stone is, and they require careful extraction.

That said, i believe that maybe you're right. But i again stress that the designated tasks should be different. Extracting rock versus tunneling through it may demand the same skills, but have entirely different intentions behind them.

I'll not get into skillsplitting...
Ex. 
mining - rockworking(100)
masonry - rockworking(50), furniturecrafting(50)
stonecrafter - rockworking(50), craftworking(50)
woodcutter - woodworking(100)
weaponsmith - metalcrafter(50), weaponworking(50)
smelter - metalcrafting(100)
bowyer - weaponcrafting(50), wood/boneworking(50)
Well crud.

Anyway.. tasks could use two skills, half exp from both. One for the material used, and one for the category of item. A lot of similar professions could be made redundant this way.
Materials: Wood, bone, scale, metal, leather, cloth etc.
Category: Furniture, crafts, armor, weapons etc.

That way, miners would know a great deal more about masonry than just another peasant, and your armorsmith can fill in for the blacksmith easier whenever that thing happens that kills him.

[Draco18s]

Now you've gotten into one of the other revamped skills suggestion, such that there are two categories: material and type of job.  Each job has a job type and a material type (stonecrafters make OK metalcrafters because both are crafting, they also make OK masons because they were working with stone)

[Dwaref]

Yeah, well i came up with it independently, so it's bound to be a good move, right?

[Mephansteras]

Refuse also disappears after a season of sitting outside, all suggested "rock waste" proposals do not have that.  Hence it's a waste product that NEVER GOES AWAY.  60,000 stone is a freaking killer on FPS.  At least it can be gotten rid of by turning it into trade fodder, but gravel won't ever make it that far.

That's the advantage of a rubble floor tile, as opposed to actual stones lying around. It shouldn't take up any more resources then a sand floor does, and only takes up space if you want it to. It also has a use, road building.

I do kind of like the idea of the difference between quarrying and digging a tunnel. Quarrying is slower, but gives usable stone. Tunneling you're just trying to get somewhere. Mining, depends on what you're mining. Coal & Ore, you don't care how much it gets broken up. You just end up throwing it in a smelter anyway. Gems require a little more care, so should probably take longer to mine out but not as much as trying to get a single solid block of marble should take.

[Neonivek]

Here is something... what if the threw dirt... Outside the fortress area?

Thus it would cease to exist!

[Draco18s]

That's the advantage of a rubble floor tile, as opposed to actual stones lying around. It shouldn't take up any more resources then a sand floor does, and only takes up space if you want it to. It also has a use, road building.

Already stated that would be mildly acceptable.  I haven't quite figured out how to explain that I'd like to be able to clear the tile/have the tile cleared automatically without needing to SMOOTH it, but I haven't come up with a solution.

I.E. there's a difference between a pile of gravel in your room and a rough floor and a smooth floor, I just don't know how to handle it interface/gameplay wise.

[Mephansteras]

Designate it to be cleaned, perhaps? Or designate it as a tile to be used to fill a rubble stockpile for use later.