So after waiting for the game to leave early access, I’ve finally started getting into it, and ran into a roadblock when it came to digging underground. They will not dig spots above them. Meaning it’s not possible to dig stairs from the bottom upwards, without some serious trickery with ladders that I have yet to figure out. I’m not trying to build anything too complex underground, but this is a pretty essential feature for digging multi-tier tunnel systems.
After some google searches, it looks like this issue was discussed a few years ago in this thread: Digging caverns
However, I was wondering if anything has changed on this front, or if such a thing may be moddable (perhaps with ACE’s planned dwarven race?) I’m not familiar enough with how much control modders have been given over these sorts of gameplay mechanics, but I would love to know if this is even possible to mod, or if it’s too far in the core game code.
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Yeah. The ai is super-… Stupid when it comes to mining. You have to build from the top down for the most part and only four layers at a time since that maxes out their reach distance. Add a new lyer every time they finish the topmost one. I’m hoping that there can be a fix in the AI at some point but, from what I can tell, the AI is pretty hardwired into the game, so it may be difficult to alter.
If it helps, they can move up ladders through 1x1 holes. 
Okay so you actually re-ignited my old passion for building a dwarf fortress.
So I realised a few things in my last game that might help out a little.
Firstly I started by digging a section that I would turn into a kind of spiral staircase but left the place filled in.
Then I cut out portion of it and left the rest for stairs.
After that I used the mine custom block tool, which can be resized verically by holding Alt + Scrollwheel
I knew that the tunneling tool made a 4x4x4 grid so I resized the tool to be 1x4 and started cutting the stairs out.
Using the hotkey for going up the slices (Ctrl + ]) I was able to quickly cut out the stairs.
By using the marked grid from the tunneling tool below as a guide I cut all the way up to 2 blocks above the previous level.
Once I'd hit the level that I wanted I counted out the blocks to figure how many more I had remaining before the new section was as wide as the previous.
Now it's worth mentioning that at this point the tunneling tool snapped to a block lower than the new floor, so instead of cutting 4x4x4 it cut 4x5x4, after a quick reload I decided to keep using the mine custom block tool.
After it that it was time to dig, for the most part the hearthlings performed perfectly, they had some issues with the blocks behind and above the stairs but nothing that a little fiddling with the tools and ladders couldn't solve.
Here's the finished result.
Below.
Above.
Tunnels are hard but with a little know how and a bit of jimmying totally possible to make multi-level ones.
Hope this helps you at all.
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Some good info here, thanks! I’ll have to try some of this out when I get home later.
I haven’t yet figured out how to use ladders to get them to dig directly upwards though. (Such as clearing space in a stairwell) They don’t seem to have any problem digging upwards if there is no ceiling, and they can hit the block horizontally, but with a completely flat ceiling, I haven’t yet figured out a way to chip out a single block to stick a ladder in there and give them a foothold in the new vertical space.
Glad my question was able to spark your inspiration though 
Yes, improvements to mining and building underground are planned in ACE.
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That’s great to hear! I’ll be looking forward to ACE even more now. 
