Update to this: It turns out that my system variables for HTTP_PROXY and HTTPS_PROXY were the cause of this issue. These were set to some non-standard values (work related) and deleting both system variables at the user level fixed the problem. I tried both with the Steam client and stand-alone ...

When I go to multiplayer and press "Browse public games", I get the following error message and no servers showing:

Download failed (status code 520): failed to parse JSON response: Unexpected character (C) at ?:1

Other context information:
- Rebooting didn't help.
- I can reach https://auth ...

I'd also like to join the choir and state that a fix to the starting area, at the cost of some broken experimental saves is an absolutely must-make trade-off in my eyes. As stated, how could you even think of being able to declare 0.16 stable at any point if the starting area is potentially broken?

Could you try deleting the game (just factorio.app, no need to delete files in Application Support) and redownloading and trying again?

Sure, will edit this post with results when done.

EDIT: Right, download from factorio.com/download complete, and it changes the problem ever so slightly, in ...

Same here, full crash report:

Process: factorio [22019]
Path: /Applications/factorio.app/Contents/MacOS/factorio
Identifier: com.factorio
Version: 0.11.22 (0.11.22)
Code Type: X86-64 (Native)
Parent Process: ??? [1]
Responsible: factorio [22019]
User ID: 501

Date/Time: 2017-12-13 16:19:00.144 ...

I don't mind some randomness in natural entity mining. It's like that in real life: the amount of usable resource in a vein at first exploration is difficult to predict, e.g. how much gold you pan doesn't usually match the claim's yield.

But this doesn't really fit with trees always giving 4 raw ...

So should we take this to mean that the "Huge Rock 1" and "Huge Rock 2" that are unique to the red desert will also disappear?