Spawn on a small island: Can't progress mid-game.

[RooSalad]

I didn't realize until about 5+ hours of gameplay that I was actually spawned on a small (impassible) island. I noticed that I was getting a curiously low amount of attacks (a total of zero), so I went out exploring, and that is when I came to the conclusion that I was actually stuck on the island, with no way of things getting in, and no way of getting out.

Some may call this a great seed, I would not however. The lack of alien attacks made the game far too easy and boring.

EDIT: I'd just like to add that this game is fantastic so far. I'm really enjoying every minute of it. Finally a game where I can use applied logistics in a creative way.
EDIT 2: If anyone was wondering, my plans were to eventually use that whole island as solar energy and energy storage (that's what all the purple is... solar panels, and accumulators), but after realizing that I actually cannot get off the island, I gave up.

[Smarty]

Not a bug
viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3492

This mod should help
viewtopic.php?t=4973

[RooSalad]

Not a bug
viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3492

This mod should help
viewtopic.php?t=4973

How is wasting 5+ hours not a bug? It's a case by case basis. You saying that spawning on a very tiny island isn't a bug because it wastes no time is true, but not when you waste over 5 hours on a medium sized island, with JUST enough resources and space to produce you to the mid-game where you will be stuck permanently. This is a problem. This is an unforeseen artifact of world generation. A bug.
Simple as that. Hate to say it, but both you, and that poster are completely wrong.

Edit: Also making assumptions about how players should/will play their game is simply wrong. Don't do that.
Some players explore massive areas around the starting location. Others don't. Don't assume we will explore x-amount-of-space just to be sure we arent stuck on a medium sized island, and surely don't attempt to tell others how to play their sandbox game.

Edit2: I don't use mods. Ever. For any game.

[RooSalad]

Not a bug
viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3492

This mod should help
viewtopic.php?t=4973

I want to send you a new notice, so I'm not editing my other post again for this.
I request you move my post back to Bug Reports, it does not belong in Not A Bug forum/thread.

Edit: I will continue to send you notices about this until it's resolved, or until you give me a reason why my specific report is not a bug.

[jarcionek]

I agree with RooSalad. If you spawn on the very small island that you can immediately see, then it's not a problem, you will just restart. But if the island is so big that you can spend 5 hours on it without noticing, this is a bug.

[daniel34]

Moved back to Bug Reports, pending an answer from the developers.

[RooSalad]

Moved back to Bug Reports, pending an answer from the developers.

Thank you, Daniel.

[Smarty]

as i said
not a bug

read this
viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2941&p=21738&hilit ... awn#p21738

[RooSalad]

as i said
not a bug

read this
viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2941&p=21738&hilit ... awn#p21738

"A software bug is an error, flaw, failure or fault in a computer program or system that causes it to produce an incorrect or unexpected result, or to behave in unintended ways."
"...error, flaw, failure or fault..."
"...flaw...".

It's a bug. I disagree with you, and I still would like a response from the devs.

References:
https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=c ... g+computer
https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=c ... efine+flaw


Edit:
Interesting that a forum mod would rather stubbornly argue semantics (and be wrong the entire time) instead of contributing to the completion and polish of such a great game. If the devs are looking for forum moderators, send me a PM, I have a history of successful moderator status', as well as a firm understanding of software development (attempted a few game projects, and failed/gave up).

[kovarex]

I agree, that this is a problem, and it is obviously stupid that the player can't continue anymore.

It would be actually pretty simple to make a recipe for landfill tile that can be applied on water and creates dirt or something.

[Hakusho]

I don't want to be rude or anything, but does the game state anywhere that every map in a custom generated scenario must be winnable?
This might be a bit of a question of definition. But i do not think that this is a bug, the map generator is working as intended, i would even say it is intended to generate 1 square islands. It does not make that much sense gameplay-wise, but i would not call it a bug in that sense.
I do understand that it is no fun for a player to be stuck on an unwinnable island, but it is up to you to start a new RANDOM-generated map, to use a winnable map-seed or to use a mod to make your map winnable.
If there would ne scenarios that would not be winnable cause of unusable items that are not intended to work like that i would be fine with that argument, but in this case i would call it "bad luck".

Edit: also it would be nice for both sides if you could bridge/landfill etc. in vanilla pre endgame

[RooSalad]

I agree, that this is a problem, and it is obviously stupid that the player can't continue anymore.

It would be actually pretty simple to make a recipe for landfill tile that can be applied on water and creates dirt or something.

If a recipe like that were a part of the base game (and not a mod, I don't use mods), that would solve the situation completely. I'd love that.
Thank you for taking time out of your day to give a response <3

[RooSalad]

I don't want to be rude or anything, but does the game state anywhere that every map in a custom generated scenario must be winnable?
This might be a bit of a question of definition. But i do not think that this is a bug, the map generator is working as intended, i would even say it is intended to generate 1 square islands. It does not make that much sense gameplay-wise, but i would not call it a bug in that sense.
I do understand that it is no fun for a player to be stuck on an unwinnable island, but it is up to you to start a new RANDOM-generated map, to use a winnable map-seed or to use a mod to make your map winnable.
If there would ne scenarios that would not be winnable cause of unusable items that are not intended to work like that i would be fine with that argument, but in this case i would call it "bad luck".

Edit: also it would be nice for both sides if you could bridge/landfill etc. in vanilla pre endgame

- I think getting into what defines a flaw/bug delves into philosophy, and forums->bug report has no place for philosophy, so we can simply use what we know (i.e. the references i posted before this) to determine that it is a bug, and move on from there.
- World generation working as intended, giving you a rather large chance at having no chance at victory conditions? I don't understand. How is that intentional? Bad luck? I completely disagree.
- I also agree that a base-game landfill option would be very very useful!

[Klonan]

Its not a bug,
The random noise/terrain generation is pretty random, and there's no way to check or make sure situations like this wont occur.
Its a unfortunate and unavoidable rick with any system that procedural generates content

But i have a script if you'd like to spawn a square of land:

Code: Select all

/c local p = game.local_player local s = p.surface local l = p.position
for x = -5,5 do
for y = -5,5 do
s.set_tiles{{name = "grass", position = {l.x+x,l.y+y}}}
end
end

That should help you escape

[RooSalad]

Its not a bug,
The random noise/terrain generation is pretty random, and there's no way to check or make sure situations like this wont occur.
Its a unfortunate and unavoidable rick with any system that procedural generates content

This is the only game I've ever played that immobilization, and randomly being given a chance to not have a shot at victory conditions is acceptable.
Every other game I've played with random world generation has a way to circumnavigate such problems (swimming, boats, airships, wings, gliders, etc).

I think that it is technically a bug, until players are given a way to deal with the random generation of the land.
Once a feature is implemented that allows us to fight the chance that we have no possible victory conditions (no matter how long we've played on the map), then it will no longer be a bug. It will be a completely different issue.

Edit:
I really do appreciate the script, but do you see why this concerns me? I have to use a script to continue playing the game. That's a flaw, and by definition a bug.
I mean no harm by any of this, I just feel like there's a lot of misunderstanding going on.

Edit 2:
Anyway, none of the semantics really matter to me. I'm just very happy that this issue is on your radar, and hope to see the game be polished up in the future. So far, amazing game! Minimal complaints, and lots of fun!

[Hakusho]

...

even if we do not agree in every point, i think we can agree on the landfill part.

Remember the game is still in alpha state and people are suggesting things like bridges, landfill and boats all the time.
I do not think developers are just sitting and letting people stand on islands in the future.

[RooSalad]

...

even if we do not agree in every point, i think we can agree on the landfill part.

Absolutely!

[daniel34]

- World generation working as intended, giving you a rather large chance at having no chance at victory conditions? I don't understand. How is that intentional? Bad luck? I completely disagree.

I completely agree with the 'Bad luck' statement. It's pretty unlikely to spawn on an island and only discover that fact hours later. I think you are only the second or third person I saw complaining about that on the forums.
The probability of having no chance to win the map with the default settings is really, really low, not 'rather large'.

You can force the issue by changing the map generation settings, e.g. changing the water to 'Only in starting area' makes sure that you only start with a few lakes, the rest of the map is landmass.

However, other players like playing on isolated islands with mods like the landfill mod, with map settings like very big water and very small starting area, giving you an island spawn most of the time.

I think to satisfy all players, either (1) a method to create land bridges is required (like kovarex described/Landfill mod) or (2) a checkbox on the map generation screen, which forces the map to be connected to the starting area.

(1) would be easy to implement, but may be too overpowered for some players
(2) requires changing the map generation as a whole, not sure if that can be done with the current implementation, especially given the case where the generator would generate islands otherwise

[roy7]

I don't like Landfill mod myself because I like the challenge of dealing with the terrain as I find it and not just fill everything in. I think a good vanilla game solution might be a type of train track you can lay over water that takes extra stone to build. You can't build on it other than the track, and if you remove it you're back to water. So you can't just turn lakes into land to build on, but you can also get over water for travel purposes to enter/leave islands.

Edit: Or similar to laying stone paths, maybe just use the new v13 train track laying tool but dropping tracks onto water takes track + stone blocks from inventory.

[TN_Creator]

I'm relatively new to the game, but i'm really surprised that we can't build any kind of bridge.
We can send things into space but not cross a few meters of water, that's silly