(0.13) Disparity of starting resource generation

[Jackalope_Gaming]

On baseline medium/regular settings there seems to be a large disparity on whether a given resource is generated in the starting area. I heard one person say they didn't even have copper or stone in the starting map, though there might have been the newly minable stone rocks in their base to get started.

This is problematic for players since each of the ore resources is needed for the start, except maybe coal if there is an abundance of trees around to use as fuel. Sure, it's entirely possible to restart the game to get a better starting area, but it's still possible to get 5 or more games in a row without a certain key resource in the revealed starting area.

Is there some sort of fix in the works for this that would help?

And speaking of resources, are stone rocks being treated as patches of stone now? Hopefully not since they only give 20 stone on regular richness and compared to a tile of ground stone that's not much.

[5thHorseman]

I've noticed this as well. It seems more often than not that I am lacking one or two of the "big 5" resources (iron, coal, copper, stone, oil) anywhere on the starting map (not just in the starting area but the entire visible map at spawn) with default settings. I just generated a half dozen maps before finding one that was "only" short on oil (in fact it was nonexistent), and I figured I can train or pipeline that in.

Also it seems that I'm getting really thick forests far more often than before.

[roy7]

It seems like resources are spread out more like RSO... but you can't guaranteed a bit of every item in your starting area unlike RSO.

[Slayer1557]

I only had to restart a few times before I had an overabundance of every resource on default settings. Certainly not as bad as some people claim.

[Fushigidane]

I really wish there was a guarantee of at least a small amount of copper, iron, stone and coal in the starting area.

I wanted to start a vanilla game aiming to make a huge train network with low frequency resources. The problem was that more often than not there wouldn't be any resources at all in the starting area (visible area). After some 30 tries I don't think I once managed to get both copper and iron. So for now I will give up and return to RSO, which is a shame since I like achievments more than I should.

[lancar]

I had to restart over 7 times before I got an area with both iron and copper at the start. I finally ended up with a large iron and copper field, 2 medium coal, but no stone or oil.
I settled for that since oil isn't needed for a while anyway, and stone can now be obtained from rock formations.

I remember this was the case before as well when setting field frequency to low or very low (to increase distance between them, making trains more needed), so in a way I guess it was just never fixed.

[Lucius]

In the early game I've always found running around very boring and if you are unlucky with starting resources you need to run quite a lot or restart alltogether.
Personally, I see 3 solutions to this problem:

1) Put some Iron, Copper and Coal in the starting area by default. Maybe use the same algorithm that now regulates Water: "Starting Area Only"
Not much, just enough to get you to trains if spent wisely, then resource distribution basically becomes irrelevant.

2)In almost every game before 0.13, Stone has always been a pain for me to find in early game. Then Rocks have become minable and I've never run into that problem ever since. You could do the same thing with Iron and Copper, place some into Rocks so that players manage to build essential buildings even far from an ore mine. Coal in Rocks might be redundant, since you already have trees most of the time.

3) (most viable solution in my opinion) Put a minimap preview in the Map Generator! The area around character spawn point is already explored the instant you start, the preview just shows you that part before you begin to play. Most people just randomly try until they find a suitable starting point anyway, so why not ease the process? Just look at the preview and re-shuffle the random seed until you find a map that works for you!
Some other games already use this trick to avoid impossible/unwinnable/annoying situations, not to mention that this would (partially) get rid of the "I've spawned on a small island" problem. The downside is that beginners will probably choose a "difficult" map anyway, but it wouldn't be worse than now.