Better Than Wolves Forum

As far as I know the point of stratification is to limit your ability to strip mine while at the same time increasing the difficulty and changing the risk/reward of going caving in lower strata. Being able to just ladder out at any point in time from the very beginning somewhat affects the latter two points and feels like a cheat.
A small change not only makes this particular situation more rewarding, but also increases the sense of achievement of progressing further in the tech tree.
I am well aware that you can "tower" out of the cave in most (but not all) situations without ladders, but doing that comes at decent cost of hunger, which hurts especially early game, whereas ladders don't.

As the title of this sub-forum says: this is not the place for suggestions. In fact, you will find no such place on these forums.