Sorry by the way for the wall of text, I hope it's an interesting read for some anyway. I thought a lot about my arguments here.I played around a lot in freeplay so far and experimented a bit with the map generator. I know that some changes are coming, and I also heard you dev guys saying that the map generator is some kind of "black magic" from time to time
But I think those changes are pretty important. Most of my experiences are based on low and very low frequency settings; I haven't even bothered trying high settings (I tried that with resources once, but it got boring pretty fast), because even on very low there is too much of everything (enemies as well as resources).Just to clarify one thing at the start of my post: I am not complaining about difficulty; my point is that I am not happy with the way you (need to) build your bases at the moment.
So far, I like the building aspect of the game a lot more than the fighting. This has of course to do with the fact that combat just isn't fleshed out like other parts of the game; it's going in the right direction, but isn't quite there yet. While creating maps, I noticed that I pretty much prefer setting my starting area to very big, biter nest frequency to very low but also, resource frequency to very low too. The reason for this is the arising need to build outposts and trains - or at least i hoped so. But even on very low settings, there's too much stuff right around the corner.
With most maps I created I got LOTS of resources around my starting area, even with ore frequency set down. There was no need at all to go for a nice train setup or heavily guarded outposts, because it was literally right there in the neighbourhood. And, to be honest, that wasn't even possible for the most part; you don't need to look for long if you wanna find biter nests. And lots of them in most cases.
If you go and explore the map a bit, you enter new biomes (like, forest, a desert behind that, and so on). In Factorio, I get the same need to explore my surroundings like in Civilization. It's just great wandering around and discovering the continent you're on; suddenly you stand in front of an ocean (or is it just a gigantic lake? What's behind it?), or there's that huge iron deposit right behind the desert you wanna grab, but there's also this gigantic biter nest besides it... Point is, exploration is fun. Right now, you can't do that much. At all. At least not on standard settings. And even when I modify the standard settings like I described, it's not enough at all.
The problem in the current version is: Even with ore and nest frequency set to very low, there is SO MUCH of both of them around. I can't walk more than a few seconds in a direction without discovering a new nest, or more ore. On very low, it feels more like "normal" or "high" than "very low". And this takes away a lot from the game. I think nests - if not set to high or very high - shouldn't be on every square inch around your base. Sometimes, it feels like I landed in Biter Manhattan... I even ask myself why humans bother settling on such a Starship Trooper like planet
I don't need to think of a bigger train network right now, because resources are just around the corner. Even if I build some stations, it's rarely a trip longer than a few seconds with a fully loaded train. Even train routes as long as in the third or fourth campaign mission are practically impossible (and also unnecessary). I want to build an epic factory with different outposts for different things that are not just around the corner - sure, i can do that right now, but I don't need to. ssilk wrote another post about his savegame where he fools around a bit with building a train network that stretches VERY far. If I remember correctly he wrote about outposts that are one or two minute trips (with trains) away, and that this is lots of fun (he also wrote that farther than that doesn't work too well, but 1-2 minutes feels right - please excuse if I don't quote you completely accurate here ssilk
). But the gameplay doesn't enable you to do this right now. It's even not that simple to accomplish a network of a wider span - you first need to kill a lot of nests, and for that you better get to endgame content... Why even bother with building outposts at this point? Spreading out into further regions should be a mid-game thing, not something you do after you practically finished the content.Oh, and for the guys who want to be in the middle of hostile territory with the need to build small and compact, there's always the other generator options, like high and very high.
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Bottom line: I think you guys should really think about frequency of spawning practically everything on the map for the sake of gameplay. Leave the player MUCH more space than is the case right now. Balance wise, it wouldn't even change the difficulty much if done right. Less nests means less aggression, but you could change the pollution system a bit so it reaches farther nests. But you really, really need to change nest frequency, so it's possible to spread out more and explore farther. That of course also means resources need to become more sparse, so you got a good reason to move out. If I have everything around the corner, why even bother with a train network? Of course, maybe you should also make sure that there's always at least some of everything in the starting area; at least enough to build a basic setup, and maybe your first train route. But I have a very, very strong feeling that this would help with multiplayer (you can build different factories and outposts a lot more spread out), as well as endgame content (bigger bases, bigger infrastructures, more stuff to handle and plan).
Some opinions would interest me very much
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