How ya diggin'?

[unmerged(497946)]

There seems to be considerable ahh... disagreement about the proper way of digging. =)


Complete strip mining


All your mineral are belong to us.
The effort is minimal. A single dig order for an entire level - assuming your military can handle anything that moves here. =)

Of course you need a lot of storage capacity if you don't want to waste anything but what's the point of not building storage items... from free wood?
Alas, stone-based storage only offers about 50% of the storage space of wood chests. This game was written by hippietreehuggers!


Probing shafts and tunnels


To even "light up" the mineral locations, you end up excavating 33-40% of the level without intentionally mining anything.
Much higher likelihood of you having to "fix things" like tunnels hitting a hole in the ground.
With strip mining, the dwarves dig around any obstacle, leaving the problem spots highly visible when they are done.

Of course, you can avoid "mining the wrong things" by carefully navigating a single miner around every resource block. But then you won't be doing anything else because you have to be watching every single dug-out block.
Seems like an awkward way of doing things.


Building a single shaft down
I did the math in another thread (where it was way off topic =) and the chance of finding any resource block at all (even if it's just stone) is about 30%.
With a layer having maybe 6 different types of resources (type depending on depth), your chance of finding the thing you're looking for is 5% per level dug down... or zero when it doesn't exist there.

Stumbling around into random directions like a drunken dwarf isn't the most efficient way to go about mining. I would expect more from a dwarf. (Is there such a thing as a stoned dwarf? Does that mean something entirely different?)

 

[Xerkis]

First off – thanks so much for starting this thread.

Below is a photo of a One Shaft technique (since you didn’t have one)
You can see the single shaft going straight down in the middle foreground and has the corridor leading to the only event room in this area.
The rest of this digging is purely from finding a resource – digging it out – and finding another one.So you can see that yes maybe mathematically the one shaft doesn’t make sense – it obviously works well and is the only method I ever really use. With awesome success, I might add.




I think a three methods have their good and bad points – and their better times to use them or not use them. I also think it is greatly determined on how you want your Dwarves’ home to look. and what you might want to do with the area after you are done mining.

If you are building a big hall with large pillars – then strip mining would obviously be the way to go. If you aren’t going to use the area for anything afterwards and just after some precious rock – then drop to the bottom with one shaft and follow the rocks.

 

[unmerged(581785)]

I usually dig to the very bottom and just start strip mining there two levels at a time -the main level and the one above.
I've never even seen the probing shaft method. Seems like it would take a lot of upkeep having to go bag and putting new dig orders in for the ore.

 

[ShadowTani]

I use the same method as Xerkis. x3 Downside is that you will need a dedicated wood farm and keep selling wood to buy any lacking resources.

 

[Xerkis]

I use the same method as Xerkis. x3 Downside is that you will need a dedicated wood farm and keep selling wood to buy any lacking resources.

Wood farms help. But I just looked - only 5 log trees and all of my food plants use wood not gold to keep them running. So not too bad.
But again - it all depends on what you are doing with that game. one time you might do it totally different.

 

[unmerged(497946)]

I also think it is greatly determined on how you want your Dwarves’ home to look.

That's just the thing.

Nothing obstructs the view below because a completely dug out layer is invisible. =)

a

 

[Xerkis]

That's just the thing.

Nothing obstructs the view below because a completely dug out layer is invisible. =)

Good point.
In my photo - it doesn't obstruct any view simply because once I'm done there, I never go back. I don't use that area so it is out of the way and I have more than enought resources by the time I'm done with that to last me until I'm done with that map.

So again - since strip mining seems to fit all your needs and the way you want to play the game (quick, easy, get's resources fast, and get's an unobstructed view) . . . . . then go for it.

 

[ShadowTani]

Wood farms help. But I just looked - only 5 log trees and all of my food plants use wood not gold to keep them running. So not too bad.
But again - it all depends on what you are doing with that game. one time you might do it totally different.

Yeah, it's not a big downside - would helped with an autosell feature though, then I wouldn't called it a downside at all. xD

 

[City Builder]

So far I've really never felt the need to go mining for resources. Usually wood is in such abundance in my settlements that I can just buy whatever I need. However learning it in Minecraft, I will eventually do the Probing shafts and tunnels method just as we used to do in Minecraft since it shows every single possible ore where you have the proper tunnels dug out. Plus with wood being so abundant once you hit a certain research tier (I think it's the research that causes log trees instead of only log plants) then wood is so tremendously abundant that I can buy what I want faster than I would be able to actually dig it up, especially with only 31 dwarfs maximum, I have to at least keep some of my staff tasked on other jobs, would be nice if I had a whole small army of just 31 diggers then I'd likely do a lot of explatory tunnels and dig out the entire map with tunnels like in the Probing shafts and tunnels method.

Back in Minecraft when ever we wanted to find diamonds, we'd always use the probing shafts and tunnels to ensure we didn't miss any single possible block in the area that we were digging, it would be the same thing here if I really wanted to go mining for resources.

Personally though I find it a great deal more fun to just stumble upon some resources every now and then just by chance mining.

 

[ImpalerWrG]

I notice in the parallel exploratory tunnels your spacing the tunnels every 3rd tile, a 2:1 ratio of mined/revealed. This is an inefficient hold over from DF ware the tile below the one dug is NOT exposed. In AGoD 5 block are revealed around mined tile, the 4 around and the one below, in a linear tunnel that drops to effectively 4 new tiles for each one mined (as the next mined tile is of necessity one already revealed. Because we can not easily 'see' the tile above a vertical shaft is more efficient then a horizontal one but even a horizontal tunnel can be more efficient then 2:1. By spacing the tunnels every 4th tile and then making a parallel tunnel one level above/below which is offset 2 blocks, this allows the offsetting tunnels floor to reveal the center of the gap left between the first tunnels, this pattern gets an improved 3:1 ratio.

Further more if you consider the fact that most resources are occurring in small lumps that will be 2 tiles wide in at-least 2 dimensions they can not hid in a linear strip of 1 none revealed tiles, they will still get found at their edges. So it's possible that you can create a pattern that leaves such strips. Vertical tunnels that are in a checkerboard grid with 3 tiles between them on the horizontal and 1 between them diagonally directly reveals half the tiles and leaves nearly the other half in the too-narrow-to-hide in lines. The effective exploration efficiency ratio is effectively 7:1 a huge increase over the simplest design.

 

[unmerged(497946)]

You are right of course. I didn't think 3D... again. =P
The issue with the parallel tunnels is that I still have to rotate and zoom every which way all across and up and down the map to find the bits I actually want. Then be careful about the sequence of dig orders or the dorfs can't reach half the spots without micromanaging bridges and ladders.
Pretty big hassle and you end up with an ugly warren of a level anyway.

I don't object to micromanaging in principle but it should be on features that have a bit more lasting effect than one strike of a digger.

Further more if you consider the fact that most resources are occurring in small lumps that will be 2 tiles wide in at-least 2 dimensions they can not hid in a linear strip of 1 none revealed tiles, they will still get found at their edges.

Ignoring shiny and valuable ores? What kind of dwarf are you? Or were you adopted?

In random sample of one layer I had "veins" of
1 tile: 21
2 tile: 1
4 tile: 9
5 tile: 1
9 tile: 1

The single tile spots made up 28% of all resources but they are worth more than that percentage because they are typically the rarest ones... that you don't have in abundance.
I wouldn't just ignore them.

 

[Fargham]

Strip mine all the way.