0.16 Map generation Feedback

[TerribleEngineer001]

Hi all,

I am curious of what people feel of the 0.16 map generation.

It will probably take a bit of time to explore further areas for everyone.
Also there is probably such a thing as the endless search for a perfect starting map which is borderline OCD.

Nevertheless, I am kind of frustrated by the starting conditions generated for now in 0.16 :
- resources are spread far apart
- resources are missing too often (stone I am looking at you)
- the generated map lacks character (I probably generated 200+ maps in preview and never saw a peninsula like map or approaching).
In the end I toggled back RSO.

Resistance to change is of'course a thing but what is your current impression of map generation in 0.16 ?

Have a merry engineering day to all.

[Serenity]

Far apart? There is still stuff everywhere even when frequency is set to very low.
And they said that you have to look a bit for uranium, but it's often just right outside the starting area

Starting area resources seem to be bit lacking though. Low amounts of coal and yes, often no stone.

Water generation is far worse. Previously you could get continents with oceans inbetween. Now that only works with very low, very big and even that not that great. Everything else produces only lakes.

[Zavian]

I agree with most of the OP criticisms.

I also think they went a little too far with removing trees. I had to run across 2-3 chunks to find wood to fuel the initial burner drill + furnace, And then found myself constantly needing to hunt for more wood for small power poles.

[TerribleEngineer001]

Far apart? There is still stuff everywhere even when frequency is set to very low.

My post was talking about the starting conditions if you read it again

[Lav]

Haven't yet had an opportunity to generate a lot of maps, but so far my impressions are:

1. I really don't like resource density change. Stamping down hundreds upon hundreds of miners was one of the most annoying features of Factorio, what with only a single tier of mining drill and exponentially increasing resource requirements as you progress. It was a primary motivator to play with very rich resource settings if only so I had to tear down and rebuild my mining outposts less often, and even then it was still bad enough to make me drop most my games after I got to high-tech science. Now even on very rich settings resource patches are extremely poor.

2. Uranium, uranium everywhere. It's extremely ironic that one of the lines in changelog specifically mentioned that "now you have to search for it" - and yet it was in 15.x where I had to truly search for uranium when it was set on very low frequency. Now on the same frequency there's plenty of huge uranium patches just a few steps away.

[impetus maximus]

can we agree that the new 'Generate preview' button is freaking awesome?

[zenos14]

I don't mind most of those things too much but I really don't like the starting areas in .16, they always seem to be lacking resources and most annoying of all to me there never seems to be a large body of water nearby, I always like building my starting base near a coast but even on water size big/very frequent I spent an hour regenerating maps before I gave up on it in .16 and if I set water size to very big the map suddenly jumps to become too full of water. Not to mention about a quarter of the time there's no water period near the start no matter what I set things to. If they could just make the starting area a bit more hospitable I'd be happy

[Lav]

can we agree that the new 'Generate preview' button is freaking awesome?

That would be offtopic as it's interface feedback, not mapgen feedback.

[impetus maximus]

how is a map gen preview not map gen related?

[MrHick]

Seams fine to me, I kind of like it.
.15 was way too many resources at the start I think that searching for them at the start is not a bad deal.

You would want to make new players venture out and search for what they need instead of having everything right where you start.

Experienced players know the game so they want it all at the start so they can jump the starter stage as soon as possible.

[Gnorok]

I have tried many map generations with different settings. I still have to get one with starting conditions which will get you past the first development phase. Especially coal seems to be a bit scarce.
(I really like that they have reduced coal in general, but in the beginning you need a lot of it.) Uranium seems to be still too frequent, even on very low settings.

Maybe you could scale the resources within the starting area with its size. Players who choose a big starting area like to build and research in peace for some time before they have to engage the biters.

[terror_gnom]

Yeah, it seems like the size setting affects frequency way more than actual size (at least for uranium), but in a reciproc way... (small size => high frequency or big size => low frequency)

[Serenity]

Seams fine to me, I kind of like it.
.15 was way too many resources at the start I think that searching for them at the start is not a bad deal.

Yeah, but it's a bit too far in the other direction. Like only having 30k or so coal and half a dozen a miners.

It's not even consistent. No coal or stone, but with the same setting you can get several gigantic oil patches

[doktorstick]

I do not like the patchwork maze of cliffs. Not that they impede me, mind you, but it looks and feels terrible. After many, many generations I think my main beef with them is how short they are. Imagine if you had 3x1 lakes everywhere. Yuck. Having long, unbroken stretches of cliffs seems like it would feel better. (This is with default options.)

The other perceived problem is the stacking of cliffs. When you have a cliff behind a cliff (behind a cliff), it really breaks the illusion.

[Sente]

I like how far apart the resources are in very low frequency. However, there is way too much uranium even on very low. On the other hand, stone seems to be as rare as uranium was in 0.15. I repeatedly generated maps and scanned a 2000 chunk radius looking at resources. Stone spawned smaller and less often than uranium does. Many times, stone was extremely far away. There is a general lack of large bodies of water, but I haven't really tweaked terrain settings. So far, my only beef is the severe lack of stone and way too much uranium. It feels that the resource spawning for uranium and stone were switched. At one point, I turned off all resources except for stone and uranium. That made it extremely obvious.

[Serenity]

Lacking stone may actually be a map coloring issue. In the minimap stone has almost the same color as certain terrains. Especially when you play on a desert-y map

[Celestial wings]

I feel like the new map generation sucks for the kind of game my friends and i play usually. we are like 5 to 20 people at the same time on the server where everyone finds their own mineral patches ( everything on max ofc so their is plently for everyone ) So the New generation of the Mod kinda disables us from doing it. I would love the option to have the old generation availble as well. Currently we try to send minerals to everyones base with trains but thats a real hazzle to do in the early game and kinda destroys the "race to the rocket" :/ .

[impetus maximus]

i like how the new map generation makes the zones of the map feel a lot bigger.

[Ohz]

I am starting a brand new Death World Marathon in total vanilla no custom, to see if it's doable, because even just changing map settings, not ores gen, is adding "custom" to the game type. Pure vanilla, I rolled up map gen until I get what look like 1.5M Iron and 1M Copper near my spawn.

I play factorio only on Marathon, even x10 science. I did a Death World Marathon vanilla in .15 and reached rocket in 120 hours (not a speedrun, I am a slowpoke).
I will tell you if it's doable or impossible in .16

[Sente]

Lacking stone may actually be a map coloring issue. In the minimap stone has almost the same color as certain terrains. Especially when you play on a desert-y map

I took that into account. First, I was actually looking in view, not minimap/map view. Then, I decided to turn off all terrain other than grass so I could just glance at the map to make it faster. The stone is still pretty rare on very low settings. I find it strange that uranium is very common on very low. However, with the generate preview feature, I think it doesn't bother me as much that stone is so rare. I just generate until I see at least a somewhat decent patch of stone somewhere (by that I mean at least larger than a tiny dot). What is bothering me more is all of the uranium. There is way too much.

Finally, I started playing around with the water generation. There seems to be too large of a jump between medium and big setting. I wanted something somewhat close to 0.15 default water generation. Occasional large bodies of water, some smaller ones here and there. It's been very difficult for me to tweak it to get that. It's usually extremely large bodies of water way too close together, barely any water at all, or a lot of (practically speaking) islands. I'm still going to play around with the map settings, but I am having a lot of fun in the game.