Factorio Forums

Can anyone tell me if cliffs can be off by default? I find them annoying. They were intriguing at first, but really, they just get in the way and it'd be nice to not have to remember to turn them off when making a new map. The way you turn them off isn't exactly obvious either in the current UI.

/c game.players[1].insert{name="cliff-explosives",count=1000}

dog80 wrote:/c game.players[1].insert{name="cliff-explosives",count=1000}

That's not a viable solution. Especially for those playing vanilla w/o cheats.
The question is about making it a default map option to have cliffs off.

Well in terms of changing the default in a stock vanilla install, then there are two choices, either default off or default on. If they default on, then players who don't like cliffs will probably notice the option to turn them off. If they default on, then some players who would like them, might never even be aware that cliffs are a map generation option. Additionally people who like cliffs can make an even stronger argument for them being on by default, because you can always use cliff explosives to remove any unwanted cliffs, whilst there is no equivalent stock way to add cliffs if they are disabled at map generation. So I think the right default value for the game cliffs on at some sort of moderate level. Possibly the best remaining option for you would be convincing the devs to make the game remember your last used map generation options across sessions.

It is not too hard to change map options before generating the map.

Buuuut... perhaps you indirectly hit what could be a powerful - and probably easy to implement - suggestion for enhancement:

- In the map generation options screen add two buttons:. "Save these settings as the default" and "Reset default to factory settings". (With better names of course)

That would not only let you save your Cliffs preference as the default but all of the options configured to exactly what you want as the new default, plus go back to "just as it came from the download" if you end up completely messing up the options and can't remember how to go back. And from the perspective of coding it, it should be as easy as saving all the values to a properties file to be read later... Just a few hours of coding and a few more of testing. What is usually called "low hanging fruit".

Instead of saving it as default save it under a custom name. There already are settings for default, Railworld, Marathon. No reason why the user can't add more. And map generation already defaults to using the same settings as the last time.

The ability to create custom presets for new maps has been requested/suggested, especially in the relevant FFF topic (viewtopic.php?f=38&t=60870 if I'm not mistaken, I lack the time to double check).