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[Tehran]

Who among us has not lost a miner to an unfortunate cave-in accident because the miners were behaving like complete idiots, channeling where they shouldn't be, trapping themselves or others miners on a ledge (akin to painting yourself into a corner), channeling away the outcropping supporting them, etc? These kinds of problems might be able to be avoided with better and more complicated AI, but things become difficult when you have several miners involved, all with minds of their own.
Well, I present to you all, a solution for easy priority mining in animated form:



Basically, the way to designate this would be with "d, h, 1." You then designate all the tiles to be mined first. Then, still in the channeling mode, you press "2," and designate all the channeling to be done second. And so on. It's very simple.
Regular, non-prioritized mining could still be accomplished as usual, you just don't push any of the number keys.

The animation shows all the numbers changing once the 1s have been mined out... the 2s are now 1s, the 3s are now 2s, and so on. I strongly believe that the system should work this way if it is implemented because... ...well, I can't really articulate it very well. But I think things would just be a whole lot easier and simpler that way. You wouldn't have to wait for that pit to be finished before you priority-designate other projects... you would always know where your miners will dig next... etc...

I feel like this method of mining would be useful for many things. For example, here's how you would designate a hallway to be mined out before the rooms:



You could also make sure that, say, your drainage ditch is dug out before your quarry.

I know that you can just designate a project completely, wait for it to be finished, and then designate the next thing, but this method doesn't work for everything. With smaller, more precarious, more dangerous things like channeling a large pit, numbered priority mining would be a great alternative to the current system, where you have to hold your miners' hands and pause every few seconds to designate the next thing to be channeled, so that your idiot miners don't get themselves killed. (Or is there already a clever solution to that?)

Thoughts?

[Fourdots]

Been suggested before, I think, but hurray for animated graphics! The easily push a suggestion over from "eh, whatever" to "yes! Must be implemented," as well as making them really easy to understand. I hope it catches on more ...

Though it wouldn't make sense to change all priority Ns to priority (N-1)s once all the (N-1)s were done; doing so prevents having emergency mining orders, which would be the 1s, and then using 2s or lower for all normal stuff. If my miners are mining out bedrooms, I don't want that to be the same priority as am emergency trench.

On the other hand, more than 9 levels would be needed for really complex stuff ... adding a level 0, which tasks would not drop down to, and could be used for priority/emergency mining jobs without undesignating all of the 1s, would be a good idea.

[Tehran]

On the other hand, more than 9 levels would be needed for really complex stuff ... adding a level 0, which tasks would not drop down to, and could be used for priority/emergency mining jobs without undesignating all of the 1s, would be a good idea.

That makes perfect sense. After all, in the current version, your emergency trench and bedrooms are already at the same priority anyway, so you have to cancel the bedrooms. A "0" priority would be perfect, and you wouldn't have to cancel anything like you do now.

And yeah, the numbers could only go up to 9, so you would indeed have to pause the game and designate more stuff once all 9 designation numbers are used up.

[Mir]

You could also avoid using 1-9 keys to designate the priority, and have an on-screen counter instead.
Use -+ or some other key pair to increment/decrement your priority as you place.


This would add significant flexibility.
If you default your counter to, say, 100, it leaves you excessive room to drop down to a lower priority level for 'emergency' digging, or even simply getting something else to dig earlier without being forced to re-designate everything, etc. and you can keep going up to, who knows, 255? more? giving you a ton of room to control dig order.

The problems are:
It would be more work to implement...
It would be more cumbersome to use.


I don't know if it's worth going this route, but I thought I'd toss the idea out there.

[Pilsu]

Tiles changing priorities when dwarves finish digging all lower tier areas seems like it'd undermine the whole mechanic.

[Warlord255]

I am totally okay with this.

[culwin]

I support this 100%
In fact I was just playing a new embark and thinking of this, just moments ago.
If I want my new workshops/furnaces put down in a certain order, it is so annoying to have the miners dig ALL BUT ONE block of rock and then move on to the next area, so I can't put my 3x3 workshop down.  It is equally annoying to tell them to dig one area at a time, with all the waiting.

[Hugna]

I've been wanting a flexible version of mining myself. I've wanted to be able to prioritize what they should mine first, but even they walk AROUND to mine on the other side. Lets say they do that in the middle of a cavern. Boosh, he dies before he can make it away.

So yes, more mining priority, but at least an ability to also, TELL THEM WHERE TO STAND WHEN THEY MINE! *hits MinerMcUrist's dead body with branch*

[Silverionmox]

0-9 is sufficient to indicate priority: one number has the advantage of needing only one keypress.

The standard priority should be 5. You can then choose both a higher or a lower priority as needed.

[Morrigi]

Best idea ever, thank you!

[Zalminen]

The numbered mining is a great idea

I'm not totally sold on the automatically decreasing numbers though...

What if you want to start with 'medium' priority designations (like basic hallways) and add higher priority designations (like workshops) a little later?
Automatically decreasing numbers would make this a bit difficult...

[Starver]

Noting that you no longer can get 'trapped' by channelling orders (over undug berock, at least) because of the down-ramp creation (although I'm so used to defining the digging of a 'skylight' into "sub-level aboveground" farming plots by the following 'dig order' micromanaged template of order...

Code: [Select]

13331
31213
32123
31213
13331
...to prevent cave-ins (when pre-removed, at Z-1) or strandings (before the ramp change to channelling) that I continue to do these days, but these days exclusively after I tunnel out the underside) my biggest demands would be related to sensible pathing (aforementioned in threads long gone: a tunnel through a mountainmass can send the miner all the way round to dig out the square she's just exposed at her current side) by considering the to-be-mined square as a valid destination, not designating the to-be-mined-from square as the first available from the set N,S,W,E,NW,NE,SW,SE (or whatever order it is) and then pathing to there...

But having a current game where I'd like to get some of my easterly rooms dug out (room for a mechanics workshop, to be precise) without completely de-designating the strip-mining of useful ores and economics located in the slopes of a a hollow in the western area of the map, I'm forced to consider implementing burrows, at the moment, to get one miner in the mood for room creation.

But some kind of priority system that overrode cardinal directions would be interesting.  And/or construction-job priority (LIFO, and if you wanted to 're-priority' a superseded dig-designation, just re-apply the dig job over the top, like you can cancel and re-suggest a construction to do so).

And add that to "dig a vein" mining options (automatically spawns dig-a-vein continuation jobs on identical stones (at least those that are non-damp, non-warm, non-dangerous_terrain) that get revealed by the original/subsequent dig-a-vein job completion, without the need to micromanage...) and I'd be very happy, although I'm not entirely sure how this latter would fit with the LIFO designation system.  (Given they are spawned from completed dig designations in a job-list that might have been given newer jobs since that time, perhaps they get inserted into the queue at the point the just-dug square vacated... would need a placeholder item in the job data structure, if the dig was removed upon starting, or the background code that knows what stone leads where could pre-insert them in a hidden form into the queue, even before they become visible to the player, in synchronisation to the square of ore that is revealed on the player's map.)

But a lot of that has been suggested before, I know.  I'm just reiterating as part of my comments.

Manually prioritising could be awkward.  Although I do like the +/- option, similar to the designation of 'clan' number for new creatures created within the Arena (which might provide at least a little bit of useful cross-over code, for ease of integration).  I'd find it interesting to designate certain strip-mining operations as priority 9 (frexample), a select amount of exposed gems as priority 5, some rooms I need cutting out now could be level 0 with widened corridors to these perhaps given priority 1.

But I do also feel that this is a bit prescriptive.  The 'joy' of Dwarf fortress is that ones suggestions are made, and the dwarfs bugger them upcarry them out accordingly, right?

[PTTG??]

This would require expanding the tile info again, which increases save size, and on and on... but I like the idea.
 
One way I might use this is to immediately lower the priority of gems discovered by mining, so that my miners get a little bit more experience before taking them out.

[Mir]

But I do also feel that this is a bit prescriptive.  The 'joy' of Dwarf fortress is that ones suggestions are made, and the dwarfs bugger them upcarry them out accordingly, right?

There's a fine line somewhere between "the game playing itself for you", and "spending every second doing micromanagement".
I don't know where this line is... but I can tell you from experience that large-scale digging projects can be a royal pain in the ass under the current system.

Depending on what I'm doing, I've run into situations where I have to channel a row at a time, and even sometimes a tile at a time, to prevent Fun (cave ins, etc.) from happening. This is really frustrating. Changing the channeling mechanism to dig ramps has helped, but it still isn't perfect. If you've already dug out a space on a lower z-level, and you're trying to remove the z-level above it, you get stuff happening if you aren't careful. ALWAYS digging top-to-bottom isn't helpful, either... some times I want to carve lower things earlier while the fortress is small, and then expand above later when I have more miners and hauler and the fort is self sufficient.

channel-to-ramp is also frustrating when you're expanding a moat, since you can't go down into the water to remove the ramps at the edge... but I digress.

[Kilo24]

The suggested variant without the automatically changing priorities is definitely a good idea. 

You could also avoid using 1-9 keys to designate the priority, and have an on-screen counter instead.
Use -+ or some other key pair to increment/decrement your priority as you place...

But you wouldn't be able to display the number on the tile, then.  That's a pretty large problem.  Having 9 levels of priority should be enough for all but the most elaborate of digging plans, IMHO.