Factorio Forums

During play, when I click "Restart", the game generates a new map for me, with the same settings as I initially chose.

That makes no sense. Instead, there should be two different options: Regenerate Map, which restarts the game and generates a new map from the original settings, and Restart which restarts the game but re-uses the previous map seed, so that the map is completely identical to the one the player has just played.

Not only would a true Restart option be very nice to have, but it's also not intuitive that "Restart" makes a new map different (RNG-seed-wise) from the one you've just been playing on.

Often I find myself wanting to start over, with the same map, the ores in the same places, because I think I have developped a better idea of how to make my factory. But as of now, whenever I want to do that, I need to have an early save-game state.

You can use the Map-exchange-string that you find when you want to load a save at the bottom of the screen of the save, when you copy that and use that in New game-menu, you get the exact same map.

example of a map string:
>>>AAALABYAAAADAxIAAAALAAAAYmF1eGl0ZS1vcmUDAwIEAAAAY29h
bAEDAgoAAABjb3BwZXItb3JlAwMCCQAAAGNydWRlLW9pbAMDAgoAAAB
lbmVteS1iYXNlAwMCCQAAAGdlbXN0b25lcwMDAggAAABnb2xkLW9yZQ
MDAggAAABpcm9uLW9yZQMDAggAAABsZWFkLW9yZQMDAgUAAABtYWdtY
QMDAg8AAABtZXRhbGx1cmd5LW9yZXMDAwIGAAAAcXVhcnR6AwMCCgAA
AHJ1dGlsZS1vcmUDAwIKAAAAc2lsdmVyLW9yZQMDAgUAAABzdG9uZQM
DAgcAAAB0aW4tb3JlAwMCDAAAAHR1bmdzdGVuLW9yZQMDAggAAAB6aW
5jLW9yZQMDAlJYwhfUsQAAi64AAAAAAAAAAAAAAABXTC4X<<<

I would understand under "restart" and "regenerate" a completely different thing.

There is also a daughter thread: https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... f=6&t=8735

Does the same thing, just a bit differently.

There's also the possible issue that a restarting the map may generate a completely different map even using the same map string, if the generator has changed, Due to new content, or just a slight change in algorithm, that will come with updated versions of the game.

The map-exchange string includes the version of the generator. So it is guaranteed, to generate the same map with the same map-generator, if you leave the seed unchanged and there are no mods, that generate also map.