Factorio Forums

I find myself rerolling 10 or 20 times before finding a decent map. This is frustrating, so here some changes to improve this part of the game:

1. Reveal a larger area around the player in the beginning.
2. Change the map generation so that it doesn't have a strong preference to create several lakes and put the player right in the middle where there isn't enough room to actually build a factory.
3. Terrain segmentation is ugly and doesn't have any function. Let's replace the terrain segmentation option with "world type" setting that defines the terrain of the planet. You can have a desert planet, forested planet, plains planet, etc. On a desert planet, all or most terrain is desert, etc.
4. Change the map generation so that it doesn't create tiny lakes.

i actually enjoy all of those 4 points. It simply adds on the difficulty. You never know what kind of terrain you start on, is the water working in my advantage or disadvantage. How much room do i have to build, will i have to focus on clearing out some biternests first or can i build in peace for x amount of time.

What you propose makes every game play the same in my opinion.

While you can use the console to explore as much of the map as you want, /c game.forces.player.chart({lefttop = {x = -1024, y = -1024}, rightbottom = {x = 1024, y = 1024}}), I agree the map generation should be buffed.

1. I think the entire start area should be visible to your when you start, but no further.

2. I'd also prefer the start area to have a lake, rather than a circle of water all around the player with a few gaps. Possibly also an option for starting zone type: Lake vs Moat. (Moat is how I'd describe what we get now)

3. You're wrong that terrain segmentation doesn't do anything, it create distinct biome areas, it's just that you usually start in the middle of one of them, so it apears to be a world type. I think an optional "Starting area biome type" would be a good thing, it's actually still possible (and I saw it in a 0.11.1 multiplayer) to start on an island in the middle of the ocean. Options might include "Random", "Temperate", "Desert" etc... these should probably be defined in a Lua somewhere, so that it's possible to add to them via modding, such as F-Mod's Red Desert.

I think my most interesting map so far was when I started on the border of a terrain segmentation, the left half of the map was a temperate zone, and the right half a desert.

4. What's wrong with Tiny lakes? it is capable of creating anything from a puddle, to an ocean. as I've pointed out earlier, there is an ocean biome, that includes nothing but water, or at least I presume so, since there's no way to cross it to see if there's anything in the middle of it, and it can often take a while to get around the other side.

Zentay wrote:2. Change the map generation so that it doesn't have a strong preference to create several lakes and put the player right in the middle where there isn't enough room to actually build a factory.

The surrounded-by-lakes things could actually be nice, if the area was about 5-15 times larger. But as it is now, I find it claustrophobic. I prefer building large factories. So the lakes just get in the way, for me, whereas if they were farther out, I could make good strategic use of them.