TL;DR
Always give the player a Huge Rock to start out with.What ?
One of my favorite low-key new features in 16.x is the Huge Rock. 37.5 stone and 37.5 coal! Instead of chopping trees or planting your initial burner miner on coal, you can start smelting iron right away and get moving a lot faster....If you can find a Huge Rock, that is. Currently it seems to be very random whether one shows up near the player's start position or not.
The proposal: Always put at least one Huge Rock on the screen when the game starts. Or at least have an option for it.