How to generate a trains focused map?

[RaviorMetal]

Hello

I want to generate maps where its an absolute must to use trains through expansive railways to gather the basic resources. I want resources to be at least 5000 tiles apart or so.

Is there anyway to do this with the current ingame map generator? Or is there a modded map generator available?

Greetings,

Ravior

[Rockstar04]

https://mods.factorio.com/mods/orzelek/rso-mod

Resource Spawner Overhaul is pretty much made to promote train usage. You can play with the config within the mod to get the resources as far apart as you are looking for.

[garath]

As the previous person said, RSO will do this. Before using this mod, I found it entirely too easy to find all the resources I needed within belt range. Thus, I never needed to ever build a train. After RSO, it was pretty much a necessity to build trains everywhere. I highly, highly recommend RSO. There is another mod you may want to look for as well called something like 'RSO Radar' that quadruples the range of radar. This is needed so you can find the faraway resources.

I think this may be the radar one:

https://mods.factorio.com/mods/kingarth ... 0for%20rso

[RaviorMetal]

Hey thank you both for this info!

I installed the newest rso-mod on my 0.13.17 installation of factorio and activated the mod (restartet the game afterwards).
When I now generate a map, theres no resources or enemies anywhere. Do you have any configuration tipps for me, also?

Greetings,

Ravior

[orzelek]

Hey thank you both for this info!

I installed the newest rso-mod on my 0.13.17 installation of factorio and activated the mod (restartet the game afterwards).
When I now generate a map, theres no resources or enemies anywhere. Do you have any configuration tipps for me, also?

Greetings,

Ravior

You should have starting resources around.
Others will be outside area that is discovered by default - scout a bit to see. Biters are made less frequent by design so if you want to have more of them increase the frequency and/or size on map gen settings.
There are a lot more options in config.lua file.

[RaviorMetal]

Thanks for your reply.

Sorry I didnt express myself in enough detail.

I generated a map in the map editor with this mod on in 0.13.17 and there are no starting resources. I scrolled to the left until I reached like tile -20.000 (just to kinda make sure there really is none) and I cant find any resources nor enemies there.

I've a screenshot attached for proof. At the top of it you can see the coordinates where this screen was taken in the world and that theres nothing on there, neither aliens nor resources. I scrolled to there at this zoom-level and have seen nothing on the way.

[orzelek]

Mods don't fully work when in map editor.
You won't see anything spawned by RSO while in there since mod is not actually running.
Start a new game normally or in sandbox mode and resources will be there.

[RaviorMetal]

Ahhh thank you. I somehow thought I could try it out that way. My fault!

Ive played around with the settings of the mod now. I wish it was somewhat more documented, but I guess Ive found a nice balance.

Thank you guys!

[orzelek]

What did you find not documented enough?

[RaviorMetal]

Well theres just those comments in the config file, and when trying out on your own its hard to find out how the settings actually work. For example, the absolute_enemy_chance lets one to three nests spawn in a region if its set to 100 but not more. I want to fight them when Im working towards my resources. I shouldnt always be able to just drive around them without them unable to noticing me at all. I figured that theres a switch to turn the vanilla enemy spawning on, which I dont think is too bad when setting the size of the nests to very small.

I also found it hard to figure out how the configure the distance would have. I raised the region size for this and also set multi_resource_active to false. Mabye a documentation with precise examples on how the most important settings would behave would be nice, with screenshots of maps where you can see how much ores and enemy bases there are and how distant they are when setting the appropiate values to different settings. The ultimate thing would be a live view where you can see on your screen how your settings behave directly (wysiwyg style). But well I hope they improve their included mapgen and its settings so that one can make maps like this directly in the game.

But hey, heres my current settings file, mabye you can give me some tips on how to tweak it so that I get what I described?

Code: Select all

debug_enabled = false
debug_items_enabled = false

region_size = 15	-- alternative mean to control how further away resources would be, default - 256 tiles or 8 chunks
				-- each region is region_size*region_size chunks
				-- each chunk is 32*32 tiles

use_donut_shapes = false		-- setting this to false will remove donuts from possible resource layouts

starting_area_size = 1         	-- starting area in regions, safe from random nonsense

absolute_resource_chance = 0.60 -- chance to spawn an resource in a region
starting_richness_mult = 1		-- multiply starting area richness for resources
global_richness_mult = 1		-- multiply richness for all resources except starting area
global_size_mult = 0.5			-- multiply size for all ores, doesn't affect starting area

absolute_enemy_chance = 100	    -- chance to spawn enemies per sector (can be more then one base if spawned)
enemy_base_size_multiplier = 1  -- all base sizes will be multiplied by this - larger number means bigger bases

multi_resource_active = false			-- global switch for multi resource chances
multi_resource_richness_factor = 0.60 	-- any additional resource is multiplied by this value times resources-1
multi_resource_size_factor = 0.90
multi_resource_chance_diminish = 0.6	-- diminishing effect factor on multi_resource_chance

min_amount=250 					-- default value for minimum amount of resource in single pile

richness_distance_factor=0.7 	-- exponent for richness distance factor calculation
size_distance_factor=0.1	   	-- exponent for size distance factor calculation

deterministic = true           	-- set to false to use system for all decisions  math.random

-- mode is no longer used by generation process - it autodetects endless resources
-- endless_resource_mode = false   -- if true, the size of each resource is modified by the following modifier. Use with the endless resources mod.
endless_resource_mode_sizeModifier = 0.80

disableEnemyExpansion = false		-- allows for disabling of in-game biter base building
use_RSO_biter_spawning = false    	-- enables spawning of biters controlled by RSO mod - less enemies around with more space between bases
use_vanilla_biter_spawning = true	-- enables using of vanilla spawning 

biter_ratio_segment=1      --the ratio components determining how many biters to spitters will be spawned
spitter_ratio_segment=1    --eg. 1 and 1 -> equal number of biters and spitters,  10 and 1 -> 10 times as many biters to spitters

useEnemiesInPeaceMod = true -- additional override for peace mod detection - when set to true it will spawn enemies normally, needs to have enemies enabled in peace mod

useStraightWorldMod = false -- enables Straight World mod - actual mod code copied into RSO to make it compatible

ignoreMapGenSettings = false -- stops the default behaviour of reading map gen settings

fluidResourcesFactor = 20 -- temporary factor for calculation of resource %-ages for fluids

useResourceCollisionDetection = true	-- enables avoidace calculations to reduce ores overlaping of each other
resourceCollisionDetectionRatio = 0.8	-- at least this much of ore field needs to be placable to spawn it
resourceCollisionFieldSkip = true		-- determines if ore field should be skipped completely if placement based on ratio failed

-- Angels Ores section
infiniteResourceSpawnThreshold = 0.7	-- should be between 0 and 1 - 0 means all nodes are infinite, 1 or more will result with no infinite nodes
infiniteResourceInStartArea	= false

[orzelek]

I see you got most of this crrectly.
One thing that needs improving is the fact that enemy chance is 0-1 and setting it to one means that there is at least one enemy base guaranteed per region. If you want bigger bases then you can use size map gen setting for enemies. Being able to drive by to scout is the intended behaviour by default.

Screenshots with setting differences are quite a bit of work and won't show you that much because it's random and variety can be quite big.
Region size should be quite straightforward. It's enough to pause the game with option to show grid enabled to see the actual chunk size. Some short description of how map gen actually works at the beginning would work.

In general config file is pretty big and some of the settings might be a bit over the top but I didn't find any nice way to reduce the amount without removing features. I'm waiting for in game ability to configure mods so that config won't be that needed.

There is also quite long description of most of the settings available here:
viewtopic.php?f=79&t=12709