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[IndonesiaWarMinister]

They might, but at the level of a novice dwarven miner at best, making it hard enough to avoid it if possible. We don't want all races to act the same, do we? Let the humans have their strenghts as cavalry and sailors.

I agree!
Humans may be able to outspeed Elves when they have horse [Arabic] horse. Now those are fast!
And out-tough Dwarves using Knight-in-Metal variation.

Using rafts to trade using rivers, hmm...

[SirHoneyBadger]

I'll second the mattock. I have one that I use extensively in my garden, and it's probably the handiest thing you can use for actually breaking soil, and digging small ditches. Puts shovels entirely to shame, except for actually scooping out the dirt. It's nearly as good as a hoe, infact, and better for some tasks a hoe can perform well. Indeed, another name for them is the "grub-hoe". A strong back is recommended, though, as the mattock is a *bit* more labour-intensive, and slightly more dangerous, than a shovel.

I wouldn't mind if the pick were the all-purpose tool of choice, but adding spades for soil, and then sledge-hammers plus long metal spikes/chisels for very hard rock. Picks could then retain their popularity and necessity, but you could give a certain number of your miner dwarfs spades and increase their soil-digging speed (or, minus a pick, just give them the ability to dig soil), and then issue sledges and spikes for tunneling through hard stone.

In both cases, a pick would still be a handy thing to have, but you could perform each activity, more slowly, with *just* a spade/shovel, or *just* a sledge and a spike.

That would give you the option of faster productivity (or cheaper, in the case of just issuing spades, sans picks.), at the price of a greater expense of resources.

[Guy Montag]

Well humans would have to have some sort of way to mine out ore. Its not like they didn't know how to mine through rock historically.

Just make some racial modifers to change their style of play. Giving them unhappy thoughts for not seeing the sun or prolonged periods and potential reverse-sun sickness. IRL people don't like living in caves or hanging out in the pitch black, which Dwarves are implied to enjoy. Could attach it to a personality trait. A human with the tag "terrified of the dark" would be pretty miserable living in a dwarf-style fortress.

Give humans some bonus to constructing outdoor structures or to masonry carpentry.


Or make them dig slower. Halve their default dig speed or something. Could do something like that for Kolbolds. If the material quality of picks was a factor in dig speed then Kolbolds with their copper-only technology and Humies with their Iron technology could put they at a disadvantage to dwarves, sorta.

I'm really trying to figure out what possible fun playing as the elves could ever me... They don't seem to mine or build ANYTHING, and the one sole material they seem to like using is a cultural taboo to harvest. These guys would be extincted pretty quickly unless they have something decent to compensate with.

I hate to draw game-mechanic differences between races like some sorta crappy RTS, but the way it stands now all the races are pretty much alike and you can use them in any style you like all to roughly equal results.

[Erom]

Once the cave-in code is improved, that would make more sense to be a limit on human mining.

Dwarves can mine out 6x6 areas without them collapsing.
Other mining races (Humans, Goblins, ect.) can mine out 4x4 areas without them collapsing.
Primitive or non-mining races (Kobolds, Elves, ect.) can mine out 3x3 areas without them collapsing.

Or something. You get the gist. Maybe most races need to build wooden supports throughout their tunnels like in real life, and dwarves don't have too because they're _so awesome_.

[Silverionmox]

Dwarves are smaller, that helps. The problem: then we'll have to distinguish dwarvish and non-dwarvish tunnels, which might prove overly complicated when there are several races digging on the same map.
A combination of small physical advantages (cave adaptation) and large cultural preferences will probably suffice to push everyone in the right direction, and it doesn't exclude the possibility to get a human civ that lives like dwarves from time to time.

[nordo]

In addition to shovels, how about a special tiny pick that is only for digging gems.  Also, war picks.

[dwarfed one]

We still want shovels! To dig soils, furrow the ground, clean the mud and goo, collect sand faster, move the stone dumps (if realistic mining would be introduced), and beat enemies with it!

[ungulateman]

Dude, 18-month old thread. Don't necro it please.

[forsaken1111]

Dude, 18-month old thread. Don't necro it please.

If he had started a new thread about it, someone would have yelled at him to use the existing old one.

[ungulateman]

It's a trap, yes. Posting a new thread would still be a better idea.

As a rule of thumb, don't necro threads more than 6 months old, unless it's something classic like Cacame's thread.

[NRN_R_Sumo1]

It seems sort of pointless to me to start a new thread rather than necro unless you wanted a clean slate to build on.
by necroing old ideas and thoughts come back to the surface.

I agree with 90% of this thread, except for the tiny pick to dig gems with, that would just be a waste of time.

[NW_Kohaku]

We want to encourage the necroing of old threads in the Suggestion Forum - why would the thoughts of someone from six months before no longer matter, excepting if Toady specifically addressed the problem they were suggeting a solution to? 

If nothing else, we want to discourage flooding the forum with new suggestions that nobody wants to bother reading or putting thought into that occurs when we encourage people to throw down their every stream-of-consciousness thought on the game down willy-nilly.

Regardless, a shovel as a low-grade alternative for a pick seems a little silly.  For 1 metal, you can just make the pick in the first place, anyway.

If we do something where we actually need to move large amounts of soil, however, like when we get wheelbarrows, maybe the shovel could be a part of that.

[zagibu]

I agree with 90% of this thread, except for the tiny pick to dig gems with, that would just be a waste of time.

Maybe not if you shifted the job from miner to gem cutter. Let's face it, miners rock the rock, they can't extract gems without destroying half of them.

[Pilsu]

Extracting stuff from the ground is kind of the entire point of mining.

[forsaken1111]

Doesn't modern gem mining involve dumping hundreds of tons of rock through crushers and then sifting out the gems?

Anyway, as far as the 'how large can an area be without collapsing' idea, I think it should be the same for all races for a bare stone chamber. 6x6 max, any larger will collapse without support. You can leave natural stone pillars, build supports, etc.

There should also be an option to reinforce or brace an area with metal or wood, like the wooden bracing you see in real mining tunnels.