Vanilla seems to have richer ore

[Aoz]

So I did a vanilla game and an RSO game with the same settings (very low freq, very large size, very rich for everything except biters were very low). I'm not sure if the vanilla generate dialog has any effect on RSO or if I have to modify the config file.

The result of both of these games are here:
http://imgur.com/a/NoaV7

Vanilla:


RSO:


I used the resource monitor mod to monitor patches and I was really surprised to see the "richness" of the vanilla game much much more rewarding.

Starting area:
Vanilla: 4M
RSO: 1M

2000 North:
Vanilla: 38M
RSO: 4M

~6000 North:
Vanilla: 115M
RSO: 8M

The patches in RSO are more sparse, that's desireable for sure, and the biters are non-existent which is also great (the Vanilla game has them almost overwhelming). However I don't really understand what's up with the richness in RSO. Have I done something weird here?

[orzelek]

Thanks for very scientific test

I noticed this some time ago and haven't corrected it yet - I think it's because in 0.14 they added resource range scaling thats much more generous then current RSO. On the other hand RSO creates resource in much sparser pattern they might need to increase slightly slower.

I'm planning to buff the scaling speed - I upped it in 2.3.4 and I forgot to add it to release notes. Which version did you test with?
It might need to to be upped more or I will change the way it scales. Currently it's on exponent based on region range so it will end up slightly lower then vanilla because regions are big.

But that kind of disparity is to big and I'll need to correct it - not yet sure how exactly. I would estimate that for megabase builders distances of 10-15k should be where huge deposits lie. I might do some distance gated discrete increase where it would jump every 5k tiles from start in very visible way.

[Aoz]

Ugh, of course I was using 2.3.3 I'll retest.

[Aoz]

http://imgur.com/HCDYHtg



So I redid the test on RSO with the latest version. It did seem to increase things. But around ~6000 N, I'm still seeing a 10x difference which seems really substantial.

The other thing to mention is that the ore patches are very small, I was able to fit ~150 drills on the patch to the very north in the screenshot, but in our Vanilla Low Freq / Very Big / Very Rich game we have copper almost right next to our base (2 large patches) that have upwards of 260 drills. There's a really big disparity between the richness & size of the ore patches. In RSO's current state I'd almost prefer vanilla ore + RSO biters over one or the other.

[orzelek]

Size of patches is a bit of a problem atm due to issues with off-chunk generation that happen when it gets bigger.

I could increase size scaling easily with range but it might get buggy with patch spawns past certain size. And to fix this I would need to do a lot of additional coding to make proper delayed spawning functionality.

I will play around with coefficients and see how simple changes to both factors work out.

[Aoz]

I've noticed you've mentioned patches becoming buggy due to size. I'm a coder, can you humor me and explain the challenges that would come with making it more vanilla-like?

What's an off-chunk generation?
Why do patches become buggy after a certain size, what is that size, what's the bug?

Just curious really, just getting into mods in this game, might even have to make a few myself one day

[orzelek]

I played around a bit and I can't decide. In RSO size is also affecting richness so if I go and up the size they get much more rich - to the point where I think it might be to much. I'm starting to dislike current scaling system with exponent more and more.
I might need to figure out new nicer way of scaling that will make RSO surpass vanilla at certain range significantly but won't make it so that resources nearby will increase that quickly.

Generation is tricky since map is not generated instantly but with a time based scheduler that limits generation speed to keep game speed decent.
If new ore patch hits a spot where alot of chunks do not exist parts of it that are outside the map would not spawn since chunks are not there.
Bigger patches will trigger this more often since they potentially contain more chunks. Only way to fix that would be to check if chunks are there, if not request spawning of them and then wait until game actually generates them. This would required lots more code and some changes to the way that current system works especially with collision avoidance.

PS.
You can try to boost the distance scaling to 0.3 but it seems excessive for me atm. Ore patches are getting interestingly big around 5k tiles mark. They also degrade YARM's performance due to sheer size.

[orzelek]

Just posted 2.3.5 with richness and size boosted a bit. Lets see where this one goes.

[Aoz]

The results are in!

I'm still seeing about 2x disparity between the vanilla game for distance vs richness (7801 N for 51M ore). The size now is REALLY REALLY big. In the screenshot there's a drill, you can barely see it haha.
It seems a bit too tilted in terms of size and still not enough density. How do you feel about it?

Also - I've been meaning to ask you if the Vanilla map generation settings do anything to RSO at all?

[Aoz]

I should also note that I haven't used the RSO configuration at all. This is out of the box settings for everything. Not sure if that matters.

[orzelek]

I should also note that I haven't used the RSO configuration at all. This is out of the box settings for everything. Not sure if that matters.

Thats what I assumed - if you'd change config files you would have different setup.
All the map settings work for ore and size/frequency works for biters.
Frequency works differently then in vanilla - it's relative to other ores. So if you set for example copper to very low you will have proportionally less copper fields then others.

Size and richness go in hand - so very big fields will tend to be a bit more sparse then smaller ones. Thats how it currently works - there is a chance thet they simply end up to big right now. A lot of this is quite random so it's hard to tell definitely - you can end up with large variety of fields with same settings.