Ribbon World map generation for Space Age is barely usable

[steelAgony]

Ribbon World map generation for Space Age is barely usable.

On Vulcanus, getting sulfuric acid and coal inside the starting area that isn't cut off by lava can take up to an hour and a half of re-rolling the map seed. And even after you finally land a decent Vulcanus start, you're not done — Nauvis often ends up with resources cut off by water, or Fulgora with resources cut off by deep ocean. You basically have to win the lottery on three planets at once.

On top of that, Ribbon Worlds narrower than 64 tiles are essentially impossible to generate a playable map for.

This needs a real fix, not just tweaking. The generator should guarantee a minimum viable set of starting resources — free of lava, water, and ocean — on every planet, instead of forcing players to burn hours re-rolling seeds.

[Rseding91]

Thanks for the report however I don’t believe we will be doing anything about this. If anything, I would disable the ribbon world preset when space age is enabled as it’s simply not compatible with the way space age was designed.

[steelAgony]

Thanks for the answer.

Sorry to hear that. In my opinion, Ribbon World is a great challenge for Space Age, and plenty of players are already using this mode — for example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_aQexro ... CRWKL3wBuZ

Sure, that example uses a width of 128 tiles, but it can be even more interesting on narrower ones.

[evanrinehart]

In my ribbon world experience you might have to build a long thin bridge of landfill to get a train to more resources. If it's lava, I guess you have to come back with a mechsuit.

[burninghey]

I tried ribbon world in space age and was surprised how great the map maker was in making sure there's always a path through lava mess.Had some issues ofcourse: my demolisher-free calcite patch wasn't near. It did exist but had to kill several big demos to get there. But i was able to drive my car there.

So after all, it *is* playable, please dont remove.

[J-H]

Thanks for posting this. It inspired me to give it a try. I think it only took a couple of minutes to generate a playable Nauvis and Vulcanus. Fulgora and Gleba looked fine, and Aquilo is always just one sole island anyway (has anyone ever found a second big island??).
I just got nuclear power up and running on Nauvis. The next step is electric furnaces so I can fix my copper supply chain. Lots of long belts and pipes, no trains yet.

[llanoraw]

I'll throw in my 2 cents.

I'm doing my first run through of a ribbon world in 2.1.17 (default settings per the ribbon world preset). I love the concept so far and its been a fun and refreshing challenge so I wouldn't want it disabled. That said, I'm stuck hard trying to get to oil. Currently about ~3k out on the X. I cheated a bit to just find where the oil would be by using console commands, but I cannot get to it.

I'm hitting biter densities that feel impossible to pass. I have max Red-Green-Black military but having to fight dozens of big worms that can all hit me well before I even get close is frustrating. The current strategy is bring up x20 defender bots, then chip at the edges with grenades, sacrificial turrets, and fish. Even with save scumming I'm barely making progress.

Some possible suggestions:
- Ensure oil is within some reasonable range of the spawn point for ribbon worlds
- Prevent Big Worms from spawning next to each other within some radius. Or at least until an evolution or tech threshold has been passed
- Have a setting that allows defender bots to fight in a radius where thrown, rather than circling the player

Cheers!