Moria was not built Overnight!
Realistic mining would change one of the fundamental principles of Dwarf Fortress ; that you're eating through solid rock like a mole!
At the moment, smoothing stone is a lot slower than actually mining out the space to be smoothed!
When improvements to the world generation, the introduction of soil and the ability to progress and survive in the outdoors without mining at all took place, we need to make mining itself harder, just as we need to make
outdoor farming harder.
The fortress should be the culmination of a long well-played game, not a birthright carved out and trapped in the first year!Code for cave ins and supports for different kinds of material is requested. A tunnel through sand should be very hard (if not impossible) to maintain. Creating supports could be made similar to smoothing, but would require wood.
Pockets of methane and carbon dioxide and seepage of the same into mined tunnels should be implemented. This would perferably only happen in the proximity of coal.
The effects could spread like miasma, and could seep from pockets of gas through mountain into tunnels like aquified water is currently implemented(albeit with a limited source).
The effects of this gas could be akin to drowning when immersed in water. The effects would perferably be invisible at first and cause winding, unconsciousness and death as the ratio of the deadly gas to air is increaced.
Methane should also be easily flammable and cause horrific explosions when exposed to an open flame or a spark. This can be implemented in a lighting mod, which could provide illumination in the form of torches or lanterns.
Real mining practices like setting fires to heat and soften the rock before mining it should be implemented. Mining should be slowed down considerably. Mining through soil shouldn't be barely twice as fast as mining through rock.
Mining should give rise to all the waste material the space contained in the form of dirt or gravel.
One could discard dirt and gravel by packing them into new, solid spaces, or taking them off-map for dumping.
Implementing
the hauling suggestion in the form of lifts, carts, rail, stacking and animals of burden would also be a requirement.