Geologist and Engineer for President and Vice President, 2014!
Bigger macerators for a better future.
(There is my two cents lmao)
(( I still don’t think im spelling macerators right. 
))
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Quite a spirited debate!
I’m a big fan of strip mining if only because it goes hand in hand with world-sculpting, which offers up tremendous gameplay potential; carving grand structures out of rock formations, digging defensive trenches, smoothing out rough terrain, etc. However, I can see the value for resource nodes - it gives you something to design your town around, in a way.
A good compromise might be to make ores take much longer to mine out so that they would be the best of both worlds; long-lasting resource nodes and fully removable terrain. Then you have a hard choice to make insofar as where to devote your mining labor; dig at the ore while making little “terraforming” progress, or set your miners to work on a landscaping/quarrying project while your ore stocks slowly run dry?
Or offered this ore over a another ways like a mechants. I still say resources nodes of some kind are nessary to keep the city up i mean you need to craft stuff like steam maschines/trapes and so on. (when the engineer get add he need iron)
I agree with you good sir!
It’s spelled right, but the plural form looks wierd.
macerator
As a little heads up, I’m currently working on a little simulation of my mining idea. It will be a 2D, Unity3D based, DF-like browser thing.
The feature list:
- 2D, DF-like. One layer visible at a time.
- About ten layers, including the surface that can be “mined”. The deeper you go, the more ores you will find, but the slower mining will be. Or so.
- Limited map size of about 100x100 tiles or so, I think
- Something to ascend/descend through layers
- “Resource counter” that counts the amount of ore/rock mined (aka “managed to get to the surface”)
- Ability to mark areas for digging (similar to DF)
- Simple miner AI that will just dig and haul stuff
- Very likely a geologist and two commands (“broad survey”, “precise survey”) which will fill the resource overlay
- Some overlay thing that can show you where resources (likely) are.
This is actually going to be somewhat tricky, at least if you want to have some sort of “real” ore distribution (i.e. veins or similar).
What if we just asked @Tom if they have finalized their plans for mining, and if so, can they be disclosed?
And don’t do veins if they’re a pain, it’s okay if it’s plain, unless you think it’s a worthwhile gain. (Freestyle rap by the one and only @DinoD123)
They are still developing and fleshing out the concept. I doubt that there is any even remotely final plan of mining. Their priorities are, currently, completely elsewhere. They have to live up to expectations that went, after all, through the roof.
I’m terribly sorry that it took so long, but I was a bit… distracted. However, I’ve finished the first “draft” of this… combined mining system. It requires the Unity WebPlayer and is available on my Dropbox.
So basically what this allows you is to see how I imagined it, minus the ore generation which is just a simplex noise at the moment. Not pretty, but it does its job.
Features:
- Little AI workers that do your stuff. They’re not very bright however. Let’s pretend they’re some sort of homage to Alpha 1.
- Surveys allow you to “uncover” a resource map (available by pressing space).
- Ladders allow access to higher/deeper layers.
- Solid blocks (grey) can be dug. The resulting ore will be brought to the surface. You can see your currently mined ore in the “options” window.
- Somewhat vein-ish ore generator (alright, it’s just a simplex noise. Not a very sophisticated approach.)
- Each block can be worth up to 10 resources.
- The first 10 layers hold less ore. In theory, every layer after that could hold more, but you’d need a better ore generator for that.
What I thought should probably be done too:
- Surveys uncover a smaller area in the layer above/below.
- Digging a block will also drain resources from neighboring blocks - that way you don’t need to necessarily dig all those little blocks.
- Ability to concentrate ores: An action that would effectively take resources from the 8 surrounding blocks and focus them into said block. By digging that block, you would therefore dig all the little bits too.
So, if there’s interest in developing this idea further… We would have some sort of sandbox now that we can tweak as we please. It’s horribly coded, as in, the bigger the map gets the… worse the performance becomes. But I think the 30x30x30 map should suffice for all possible scenarios and it works… acceptable in the web browser. In case you prefer a standalone version, here’s the Windows x86 one.
Edit: Screenshots.
Also, there seems to be some bug in the AI where one worker is trying to do two tasks at once. Huh.
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Wow! Lots of minds at work here, it seems ourxommunity is very educated. 
I really don’t have much to offer here, but here are my thoughts:
I don’t like infinite mining nodes. While they might ease the burden of getting into mining, it takes away what I think this game is about: strategy. Like most people who commented above, infinite nodes take away from the excitement and strategy of sending geologists and miners to hunt for ores. Mining shantytowns can be established, gold rushes commenced, and history made with the search of finite ores.
Or, y’know, you could just trade with dwarves. 
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Is it possible to download it? 'Cause I would like to see about improving performance, and other stuff.
Yepp. Unless you mean the source, in which case the answer would be no. That could be arranged, but I doubt it would be much use - it’s C# after all.
Yeah, I meant the source, didn’t realize it was in C# though.
If I may just give my two cents on this topic, I personally like the idea of magic being utilized. We have a Geomancer class who can control earth and stone, why not have some form of resource growing like @Heilari is doing in the map game? It can be balanced so that there would be serious risks tied to it too. Just picture the following:
You set out to found your own little civilization in the wilderness. At first, you only use wooden and stone tools, and only really ever dig for stone. Then, upon finding metals deep in your mines, you advance to iron then steel tools, uncovering more and more ores. As you dig deeper and find different metals and such, you start to notice how you aren’t mining up as much iron or steel anymore. Thankfully, you find and establish another mine on the other side of the town.
This is where the situation could split, taking either the Minecraft style of keep pushing mines further and further out either bringing the supplies back or moving homes to match the mines, or the more magical style.
Amazingly, during her studies of the earth and it’s bounties, your wizard Tilda Iron-Leg found a peculiar magic flowing through every bit of metal and gem we dug up! She noted how, once stimulated, this magic rapidly expanded, causing the accompanying metal to expand and grow as well!
This could start off simple, as just a boon that allows for double the ores to be dug up, or it could just go ahead as a method to provide infinite resources to a late game civilization. However, these resources could have several terrible consequences on the world…
From the Journal of Fraum Stormbrow
Curse that geomancer Iron-Leg, curse her very name! She did something to the silver today, said she was trying to make it grow faster, and changed something about the metal. Aye, it grows faster, that’s true, but now the metal is ALIVE, and eating our people! It keeps growing and growing, and none of our adamantine arms seem to harm the beast!"
There could be tons of different risks for this, from your town becoming a beacon to dragons, to once weak goblin armies being able to buy enough cheap adamantine and mythril to supply their whole horde.
I know this post is rather long winded, but what are your guy’s thoughts?
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I just wanted to state if a player wants a challenge the world will give them one if they appear to not want one, the game will give it to them, that is the point of the GM. The ENTIRE point of the gm.
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In a game i played on my phone (something like the settlers, but only building, no combat), they had a really smart implementation of mining. There you build a mine building, and assign one settler to mine for minerals (you could choose between stone, iron and gold, and stone was infinite (also, you could only get gold/iron on certain places)). The thing is that iron and gold where limited with a certain number of ores left, and when the mine was dried out, you could assign your miner to search for more, and in that way it was infinite.
A smart way of implementing this (not exactly the same way though), would be good
From the most recent video it looks like strip mining is the order of the day. Don’t forget though, that Stonehearth maps will be effectively unlimited in size (think Minecraft / procedurally generated stuff, etc), and not limited to the little square we have to play on ATM.
I personally like the combination of strip mining and nodes people got to in this thread. Instead of just having one of the options.
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Yes this is true but in Minecraft you have other ways to deal with the loss or exhausting of local materials. I always use a Minecart system with some simple automation to get resources. Since after playing the game for a while you can understand where most of the resources are you learn to establish a comfortable base and move out. I usually will only build near a Gouge so you can get down low fast and work your tunnels in finding the best stuff. In most cases you might be lucky to even turn up a mine intersecting…