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Author Topic: Delayed mining and placeholder designations  (Read 1468 times)

Umi

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Delayed mining and placeholder designations
« on: May 12, 2010, 07:46:45 am »

I'm sorry if this has been done before, I couldn't find anything like it on search.

The delayed mining would be like priority mining.  There are ten levels of designations for mining (Normal like it is now for default 1).  You place level 1-10 mining designations somewhere.  All the miners will then dig out the level 1 mining.  Then when all currently reachable level 1 are gone they move on and do level 2.  When that is gone, they go to level 3, etc...

Then we could go ahead and designate a large portion of our mining projects at the begining of the game without having to wait for them to finish digging out the catacombs before getting to important farming areas.

The placeholder designation would just be a color.  That is all.  Maybe just use it to mark a large area as a do-not-dig reminder to yourself.  Maybe also have a feature to change it to another designation type, but it is primarily just so you can see what you are doing.

Yay, nay, old?
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Grumman

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Re: Delayed mining and placeholder designations
« Reply #1 on: May 12, 2010, 07:59:32 am »

This would be really handy. Even just two levels, high and low priority, would be sufficient.
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Ilmoran

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Re: Delayed mining and placeholder designations
« Reply #2 on: May 12, 2010, 08:02:43 am »

It might be kinda handy, but it seems like a pretty low priority improvement to me.  I usually do make designations for huge areas I want mined out early on.  Then I remove the mining designation from a convient acces point.  Don't have to worry about doing the designation later, dont have to worry about dwarves digging it out when I have other things for them to do, and don't have to worry about accidently digging into that area while making something else.
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onipanda

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Re: Delayed mining and placeholder designations
« Reply #3 on: May 12, 2010, 10:14:34 am »

Would definitely like to see both. Hate designating a big room and they go about it all retarded, and making a design but have it sectioned off so they go at in chunks and messing it all up cause designating all wrong because of walls.
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Zalminen

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Re: Delayed mining and placeholder designations
« Reply #4 on: May 12, 2010, 10:46:30 am »

Atleast the placeholder designation has been suggested before: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=53097.0 but it's still a good idea.

And designation levels are an even better idea. I currently use the method Ilmoran mentioned but it still requires too much micromanagement to be handy.
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Safe-Keeper

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Re: Delayed mining and placeholder designations
« Reply #5 on: May 12, 2010, 02:14:03 pm »

The ability to suspend designations the way you can constructions and other jobs would fix this nicely.
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Lord Shonus

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Re: Delayed mining and placeholder designations
« Reply #6 on: May 12, 2010, 07:28:38 pm »

The nice thing about a "placeholder" designation (might as well discuss it here since my thread didn't get much discussion) is that you could apply it in an area that's reachable, which would be nice when working in the caverns.
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MikeLemmer

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Re: Delayed mining and placeholder designations
« Reply #7 on: May 18, 2010, 11:23:34 pm »

For mining priority, how would setting the area around it to Restricted Traffic affect it?
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j0nas

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Re: Delayed mining and placeholder designations
« Reply #8 on: May 19, 2010, 03:32:56 am »

Right now that doesn't appear to influence anything.  The dwarves seem to choice something within their labors to do, mostly the most recent thing to be queued/added/produced, then get to it, only caring about pathing when determining how to get to the location.  They will even gladly stand in a restricted area to mine out a block, even if an adjacent non-restricted area is available.

At least this was the case in 40d, but I don't think anything has changed in that regard.
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Lord Shonus

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Re: Delayed mining and placeholder designations
« Reply #9 on: May 19, 2010, 03:37:38 am »

All restricted does is make the tile less attractive. If it's the only place to stand to build or dig or get to where they want to go, they'll use it.
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On Giant In the Playground and Something Awful I am Gnoman.
Man, ninja'd by a potentially inebriated Lord Shonus. I was gonna say to burn it.