World Generation Frustration

[tsunami]

Not sure how many other people are running into this problem but no matter what I set the world generation as I get a stupid amount of tiny ore pockets in the starting area, or I get a starting area missing one or more of the main ores (not counting oil). I set the world settings to low frequency because even on normal I get tons of tiny pockets of ore all over the place and it disrupts building of the base if you have to mine up 30+ pockets of 200 ore.

Before you start telling me to try the RSO mod if I don't like the default generation style, I did! I did over 100 map generations and either got the same results in regards to missing resources or a huge body of water preventing me from reaching the last resource within any reasonable amount of time. Usually 5-10 minutes to circle the water to get to the coal just to start working on getting iron! I also spent a couple attempts walking in ever bigger circles for 10-20 minutes without finding any coal, iron, or copper.

My recommendation is to find a way to guarantee that at least the starting resources are there. I don't care if its only 20k of each to start! If you are missing stone, coal, iron, or copper before you start encountering biters you will not survive! I have a history of world generation problems on many games I play. Most usually take me 5-10 attempts to get a start that is at least manageable, not 100+ attempts without a single reasonable one. I like the game in 0.11 because at least the map generation was reasonable, ever since 0.12 I haven't been able to play without adding mods like Galactic Trade or Dark Matter Replicators to get me going.

It got so bad the other day I just gave myself 100k credits and started with no resources on the map! I used the 100k to get the basic resources to jump start Dark Matter Replicators. Defeats the purpose of the game but at least I didn't have hundreds of pointless resource pockets to clear out just to build a smelting assembly and I could guarantee I had just the base resources at least.

The map generation style is great in theory but absolutely a nightmare in some instances!

Edit: Was trying to some more world generation attempts and apparently Very Low frequency and Very Small for crude oil means I get a starting area with fields of rocks, crude oil, water, and nothing else. I give up and will play with mods that give me resources and just turn the resources off!

[orzelek]

I have no idea about vanilla generation tbh - not using it really.

But RSO should guarantee you starting resources. And it's specifically made to force you to travel when those are exhausted - maybe try reducing amount of water. A lot of water with interfere with RSO and might make it skip some resources. Making sure that there are certain resources outside of starting area nearby would be kinda to easy.. might as well set richness multiplier to something silly like 100 and live in starting area.

[TuckJohn]

I have not played around with the terrain generation in 0.12(I have been playing on .10 and .11 worlds) but I would recommend playing around with the terrain segmentation setting.

[tsunami]

I have no idea about vanilla generation tbh - not using it really.

But RSO should guarantee you starting resources. And it's specifically made to force you to travel when those are exhausted - maybe try reducing amount of water. A lot of water with interfere with RSO and might make it skip some resources. Making sure that there are certain resources outside of starting area nearby would be kinda to easy.. might as well set richness multiplier to something silly like 100 and live in starting area.

I keep water generation in starting area only on 90% of my maps especially if I want to focus on expanding further out. A common misconception of people is that people who complain about lacking resources in the starting area, not all of us want 2mil or more of each. I just want some of each in the start (minus oil). I generate low frequency maps to force me to spread out. I don't want tons of easy to reach resources, I want to have to travel. RSO is great at that but for some reason either my luck at world generation has just been garbage since updating or it actually got worse. That is why I asked if others were having that problem.

I updated to 0.12 and restarted so the RSO mod and Evolution mod were working properly. Now I regret it.

I have not played around with the terrain generation in 0.12(I have been playing on .10 and .11 worlds) but I would recommend playing around with the terrain segmentation setting.

If you were not looking forward to specific things that were only in 0.12 my suggestion is don't update. I love the content but had to find a work around to the hatred of terrain generation. I played Factorio daily until I updated, now it seems all my time is spent trying to tweak settings and balance early game access to Galactic Trade with long term expansion in mind. I hate trying to find a decent balance and tweaking the starting credits to provide both a challenge and a fair start. After several days of it I am thoroughly burned out of Factorio. Never thought I would be since I found it so addicting in 0.10 and 0.11, but here times change after all.

I took a break from it and switched to playing some Diablo 3 where at least I know the RNG hates me beyond a shadow of a doubt. I don't want to hate Factorio, I want to love it!

[TuckJohn]

If you really want to play factorio, you could always generate a map in the map creator of version 0.11, then start playing survival in the map in the latest version.

[Marconos]

You are 100% correct. The worst part of the current terrain generation engine is it does not apply different rules to the starting area. The RSO mod attempts to do this but not sure it does it quite well enough (haven't played with it enough to say).

They really need to make a starting area scale in richness / size based on your setting but always have something of each resource so you don't have any map that can't be started because the only copper is 100 miles away under a biter enclave.