Ore generatios is broken.

[H_Sage]

Ore generatios is broken. I cant create the game with the desired settings. Right here viewtopic.php?f=16&t=42402 i write about oil but this problem Is also relevant for ore.
The problem in the interaction of ore frequency and ore size. For example, with the "rare" and "small" settings, the ore will be less common than with the "very rare" and "standard" settings. So when "very rare" and "standard" I get several large deposits in my own area and in the district. But with "rare" and "small" very often I do not find ore even very far from the starting zone. With mods adding new ore, this becomes intolerable - I spend many hours creating a game that will have all the necessary ore in an accessible radius, and not for 5000 miles.
Often when adjusting the size of the ore "small" I see oceans of ore that do not fit on the screen.

All I want is a game with rare ore of small size. But because of this game generator it is impossible. I spend in the game a whole week to find one of the main ore veins in the Bob's mod. After that I open this card in sandbox mode and I do not find this ore anywhere! And this when setting up "rare" and "small". After installing the "very rare" and "standard" I got a game with three loud oceans of this ore in the starting area!
Why the size of ore affects the frequency of ore? The logic of this generator is completely broken. It has a very curved interaction of ore frequency with size. Please fix it as soon as possible. Let me remind you that in previous versions of the game there was almost no such problem.

Screenshots-examples are here: viewtopic.php?f=16&t=42402

[Frightning]

Welcome to random is random. Sometimes you get lucky and you have a nice patch of x in your start, other times you don't. That said, the mapgen could use some improvements imo. Right now, I find that frequency seems to have an overbearing amount of influence on overall ore availability (total ore/map area), and richness does have enough impact imo. (Try comparing Very high frequency and very low richness with the reverse (normal size, or really whatever size you want to use to compare). Frequency makes an order of magnitude more difference than richness.

[BenSeidel]

It's not that the generation is random, it's the interaction of the "frequency" and the "size" settings. Many people (myself included) would assume that they have no effect on each other: You increase the size of a patch and the size increases, so if one is generated there before a size change, one will be generated there afterwards, with a different size. A similar thing would intuitively happen with frequency, you should still get a patch of size X, but just less frequent.

But this is not the case. Due to the 2d probability function they use (name escapes me), increasing the size will cause additional patches to appear, while decreasing the size will cause less patches to appear. This gives the impression that patches are either less or more frequent. This causes issues because you end up with two extremes, either too much ore or not enough ore. This is compounded further by the resources in the starting area being tied to the generation.

The whole issue could be quite easily fixed by changing the generation function such that the size and richness of an ore patch don't affect the threshold of the probability function (as it does now). Just pick a value, then use the volume above the threshold to determine the "base" richness, and use the area above the threshold to get a "base" size. Then use a frontier expansion/contraction method to expand/contract the area of the resource based on the "size" map setting, and multiply each resource tile based on the "richness" setting of the map.
If you change the threshold then you are going to get these counterintuitive results.

[Engimage]

I support this.

Currently the generator seams to balance the whlole map richness instead of individual patches. I think it is not a good idea.

The more intuitive would be so the parameters would be independent. This would much more likely end up with desired results.

[Frightning]

It's not that the generation is random, it's the interaction of the "frequency" and the "size" settings. Many people (myself included) would assume that they have no effect on each other: You increase the size of a patch and the size increases, so if one is generated there before a size change, one will be generated there afterwards, with a different size. A similar thing would intuitively happen with frequency, you should still get a patch of size X, but just less frequent.

But this is not the case. Due to the 2d probability function they use (name escapes me), increasing the size will cause additional patches to appear, while decreasing the size will cause less patches to appear. This gives the impression that patches are either less or more frequent. This causes issues because you end up with two extremes, either too much ore or not enough ore. This is compounded further by the resources in the starting area being tied to the generation.

The whole issue could be quite easily fixed by changing the generation function such that the size and richness of an ore patch don't affect the threshold of the probability function (as it does now). Just pick a value, then use the volume above the threshold to determine the "base" richness, and use the area above the threshold to get a "base" size. Then use a frontier expansion/contraction method to expand/contract the area of the resource based on the "size" map setting, and multiply each resource tile based on the "richness" setting of the map.
If you change the threshold then you are going to get these counterintuitive results.

The name you're looking for is Perlin noise (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perlin_noise). Before 0.13 mapgen changes, frequency used to have no real effect on total resources per map area, but would control how scattered or clumped those resources were. Now it seems to have a significant effect on total resources per map area.

[BenSeidel]

name you're looking for is Perlin noise (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perlin_noise). Before 0.13 mapgen changes, frequency used to have no real effect on total resources per map area, but would control how scattered or clumped those resources were. Now it seems to have a significant effect on total resources per map area.

Thanks. It's amazingly hard to find something if you can't remember what it is called, especially when all you can think of is Poisson.
Just had another thought, maybe it could be worth changing the perlin noise generator from a purely white noise generator to a more red noise generator at the start area and shift it back to a white noise generator the further you move out. Not sure about the exact scaling factor for the shift, but it would allow a more natural starting location feel.