Factorio Forums

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.