Early game should require less tree removal from ore patches

[wpirobotbuilder]

Clearing trees in the early game, especially if ore patches are created with a forest on top, is busy work which is impossible to automate away until significantly later on in the game with grenades and bots. I would like there to be less focus on tree clearing and more of a focus on harvesting trees for wood (for fuel and power poles) as needed, at least in the early game.

One way to achieve this would be to thin out trees which share a tile with a resource patch. After map generation, but before game start, the resource patches in the starting area would have some large percentage of trees removed. However, trees would still be present in other parts of the starting area, which allows the player to create wooden power poles and chests.

Resource patches further out from the starting area may not need the same treatment -- by this point the player can create grenades, use flamethrowers, or bots to clear forests en masse.

[BlakeMW]

Grenades are not high tech . They are 20 green science, you can make it by hand without much trouble, and they only cost iron and coal.

And if trees on resources bother you there's nothing stopping you restarting to reroll the map.

The game can sometimes give a strongly biased perspective in the first new (non-campaign) game. Maybe it's practically a desert and trees are this scarce resource and the pollution spreads crazy fast and the biter's are popping over for lunch before you know what's happening (IIRC that was my first couple of games, I thought trees were like gold). Or you can be stuck in this quagmire of seemingly endless forest and the biters don't bother you until four hours in.

But eh, the different challenges of different kinds of starts is part of the charm of the game. A consistent experience is what the campaign is for.

[Cribbit]

IMO resource patches in the starting area should have something done to them in map generation to remove or reduce trees on them. Especially if it's a player's first map.

[Koub]

Luckily, my first game ever, I generated a map, and it was perfect. Not too many trees, the right ressources at the right place, just a little short regarding oil patches.
Then I discovered with my 25 next ones that map gen wasn't always so nice

[JohnyDL]

I think that tree generation should just be one of the controls in the map gen panel some like more (cause pollution and biters) and some would like fewer maybe even only in starting area like water has that option and of course there are different challenges associated with those things.

Since everyone has different wants/needs with regards to this it makes 0 sense to try and hard code a Map Gen that's perfect for everyone.

[Zavian]

The player has just crashlanded in a ship right ? So before spawning the player in to a new game, just clear a circular area around the player similar to an impact crater.

[Cribbit]

I was thinking about it more and realized that this is much more of an issue for brand new players.

I think a better solution would be "suggested maps" for new players to start on. Most issues with maps are resolved by the artificial requirements of the starting zone but for the rare case that RNG screws a new player I think it would be worth it.

I think simply removing trees in the starting area can be a disadvantage for players that want the pollution reducing impact of trees.

[JohnyDL]

not to mention that 1 power pole to start off research having to brave the biters, maybe one of the solutions is a "tutorial" with Grenades can be used for clearing trees since those are all getting an update anyway and might be more useful for new players.

Some players don't want mixed patches so that's probably a thing to consider too (I actually like mixed really early game, 1 miner mining both the coal and ore necessary to furnace, yes please

[Zavian]

I was meaning an area of about 15 tiles radius. And you could even leave the any fallen trees. Just enough that you aren't buried in the forest when you spawn.

But you could also clear a larger (irregularly shaped) area, and then spawn a small patch of coal (eg 50k?) with similar sized patches of iron, copper, stone and water nearby. Then add back a scattering of standing and fallen trees. If you also raise the land underneath the starting area so that the only water within 30-40 tiles of the spawn location is that lake we are deliberately adding you could probably eliminate most of the unplayable island starts.

[wpirobotbuilder]

Since everyone has different wants/needs with regards to this it makes 0 sense to try and hard code a Map Gen that's perfect for everyone.

Does anyone actually want to clear dense trees off of resource patches when the only way is to mine them, one at a time? I partially dislike starting new maps because of how often the map generation puts my resource patches in dense forests, and new players will definitely be frustrated by it when they try and expand their starter setups. I don't think players want to re-roll the map generation to avoid starting in a forest or an inescapable island.

Players should not have to deal with little things like this, if at all possible. All the quality of life improvements that have been funneled into the game delight the veteran players who know how unpolished the game used to be. For newer players, all the QoL effort results in a good customer experience. Having to clear fewer trees off of ore patches in the early game would be a great QoL feature. Whether it's hardcoded or behind a map generation flag, is up to the devs. Personally I would like to see it be natively built in, or at least on by default, to give new players a good experience.

[JohnyDL]

I find early game really slow and tedious, chopping forests down really keeps me engaged, I'd much rather be working on that than setting up oil (God I hate fluids)

[eradicator]

Wouldn't a simple "Starting Area Biome" setting for the map generator work for this? It could default to "plains", which would make 90% of the starting area plains biome. And more hardcore players could opt to start in desert/forest/random instead.

[mrvn]

The Resource Spawner Overhaul mod has an option to avoid trees on ores.

That even makes sense in RL. Most metals are poisonous to trees in high concentrations so trees would never grow on ore patches. And stone is a bad grows medium too. Not sure about coal but lets chuck that in there too as "no trees" area.

[Koub]

I like this idea of "Starting area biome" (that could have more immersive names, like "Crash biome", "Crater biome", ...).
The size of this biome could be set to fit "Starting Area", and would allow the map gen to control the starting zone generation (water, wood, ...) separately.

[JohnyDL]

Yeah and crash and crater biome types could be unique to starting area and have the ship crash entities in them with maybe random starting items you have to find and what you get depends on the difficulty you set (so a steel pick might be an 'easy' option along with maybe a stack of each red, green, blue science while hard would be nothing in the ship what so ever and you have to even hand mine and hand craft those first few things like stone furnace)

[sarcolopter]

just get the fewer trees mod; alternately, remove trees from the game and replace wood with iron in all recipes

[mrvn]

just get the fewer trees mod; alternately, remove trees from the game and replace wood with iron in all recipes

Then what would eat up all your pollution?

Lately I have been planting trees like crazy (from seedlings from a mod). Putting belts of trees around your industry really cuts down on pollution spread and keeps aliens docile.

[sarcolopter]

Then what would eat up all your pollution?

Nothing, that's the point.

[JohnyDL]

Then what would eat up all your pollution?

Nothing, that's the point.

That makes death-worlds unplayable, 2 machines in the same chunk = biters, so burner miner and burner furnaces need to be on average 32 tiles from each other before you have any sort of automation of defences or you're dead.

[sarcolopter]

lmao speak for yourself