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So, I was really excited about the new cliffs feature. I figured it would help with immersion, a feeling of more than a complete blank slate on which to put your blueprints, and of course as a way to make defending more interesting and possibly easier. I've just played my first hours of .16 and genned a bunch of maps (the new preview feature is fantastic, btw!). My thoughts:

1) For defense, they are great against (normal) biters as they allow for a lot of firepower to be projected in concentrated chokepoints, but imho they're not really that useful as soon as spitters are spawned. Since they are not straight you end up with a non-straight line of turrets, which means that you often get in fights of 10 spitters vs a single overextended turret. This might be a bit better with laser/flame turrets, but I like my gun turrets . Because of their relatively small size, they often don't really offer good choke points for concentrated defense either.

2) For immersion, it would really help if it would be coupled to an actual height map or have a better generating algorithm. Now it really gives you a feeling of height in some places, but in others it just looks weird and jagged

3) In general, I really don't like the gen options. I tried very infrequent plus very large in the hopes of getting a couple large cliffs, but instead I get cliffs all over the place. If I do very infrequent plus medium I just get either no cliffs at all, or cliffs everywhere. On normal+medium I get no cliffs at all in a couple gens, might be the same as infrequent plus medium. Frankly, to me it seems like frequency is ignored, and size is a kind of frequency: very large generates cliffs more or less everywhere, while medium generates them either not at all, or patches where they are again everywhere.

Some examples: In both cases, a region has either not cliffs at all, or so many that it is hard to build anything there.
Moreover, the cliffs in many cases just seem totally random (like a 'broken landscape'), or run parallel with water. The latter feels sort of natural, but is also mostly useless for gameplay.

What would I prefer?

a) it should be possible to actually vary size and frequency, and generate very infrequent but long cliffs, if needed with small gaps in between
b) in many cases, cliffs should follow terrain boundaries. This will make them perpendicular to the bodies of water more often, and give more immersion because of the terrain switch that goes along with the cliff.

For example, the cliffs I painted in below would IMHO be much more interesting, both from a defense/gameplay point of view and for immersion:
What are your thoughts and experiences?

Yes. I haven't played around much with 0.16, but from what I've seen on the forum there are a few major things they could do to improve this:

• 1. Make the top and bottom of cliffs have different terrain types
  2. Fix the mapgen
  3. Give things (the player, turrets, spitters, etc.) an attack bonus from the top of cliffs
  4. Make cliff somewhat (but not completely) evenly spread out

Some of those ideas came from my experience with Age of Empires II, which I think did that really well. There were some naturally chokepoints that helped a lot with defense, but there were also areas with very few. It also helped that they also had some hieght elements (though it is 2d). I might find some screenshots from there sometime.

vanatteveldt wrote:

contour cliffs

This.
Longer, fewer,  better, stronger
Very good idea that deserves considerations.
Would be better than the current cliffs we have, which are more like cumberstone rocks that you can't mine.

Cliff generation (along with ore) is broken in 0.16 ATM. the developers are aware and will try to fix it before 0.16 is considered stable.
if you look at the preview of a world, then look at the actual map after it's generated you will see what i mean.

FasterJump wrote:

vanatteveldt wrote:

contour cliffs

This.
Longer, fewer,  better, stronger
Very good idea that deserves considerations.
Would be better than the current cliffs we have, which are more like cumberstone rocks that you can't mine.

+1

... Just been experimenting around creating a new map and I agree to that.

Contour cliffs between the various terrain types would imho be a lot more aesthetically pleasing than just throwing them at random around the map with no rhyme or reason.


I mean I am not completely against cliffs within a terrain "plain", but they should be less common...

I like the idea of cliffs following terrain boundaries.. makes a great deal of sense.

Cliffs area nice idea, and they are very well implemented - however.

I have only just encountered them on my pre cliffs map as it has expanded, and I just find them annoying. I have set up a factory to make cliff explosives to destroy them, and they don't stack very well.

I can see how they may help defensively during the opening stages, or perhaps create a more organic feel. For me, they are just something that means I have to create loads of cliff explosives so I can remove them, and that's all. Well implemented though they are, they feel like an afterthought and a pest. Ultimately they exist only to be destroyed for me. I shall remove them from my next mapgen if its possible.

+1 Contour Cliffs! Great idea!

Cleany wrote:I have only just encountered them on my pre cliffs map as it has expanded, and I just find them annoying. I have set up a factory to make cliff explosives to destroy them, and they don't stack very well.

I can see how they may help defensively during the opening stages, or perhaps create a more organic feel. For me, they are just something that means I have to create loads of cliff explosives so I can remove them, and that's all. Well implemented though they are, they feel like an afterthought and a pest. Ultimately they exist only to be destroyed for me. I shall remove them from my next mapgen if its possible.

In my opinion the fact that they are only acting like roadblocks in the way of expansion is exactly why they also should have an additional benefit besides creating chokepoints.

I think there should be a chance that within cliffs infinite ore wells are spawned, which require additional, more sophisticated technology and specialized drift or shaft miners to be mined or something, and which have a much, much higher yield/output rate than the regular surface ore patches.

Then there would be at least some reason not to bomb all the cliffs away but to leave some intact for mining operations. It might even be enough reason to WANT to have a lot of cliffs to increase the chance of such infinite wells.

I just turn the cliffs off entirely. I'm amenable to the gameplay difficulty aspect of having immovable obstacles requiring a late-mid tech of explosives to remove them (and full disclosure: I haven't conducted an unmodded playthrough as far as achieving that stage yet) but with what I've read about cliff explosives being manual-only / no-bot usage, I think they're way more trouble than they're worth, ESPECIALLY on a two-dimensional map.

If the game ever evolves to incorporate actual height elevation (and I'm no software engineer, but I'd imagine that would require a complete game-engine change, likely something for Factorio 2.0) then I might reconsider. The engine behind Starcraft2 ("Galaxy?" -- a brief google search suggests that it incorporates elements of Havok as well...) does a fair approximation of pseudo-3D that I imagine would be insufficient for what Factorio would likely need if it were to incorporate actual rail-tunnels and elevation-crossings like we all want and need. In the other direction, SimuTrans has isometric elevation crossings, which might delve off into a different series of side effects.

Listen, as long as cliffs have an opt-out setting available in the mapgen screen, I'm fine. Un-navigable water is enough for terrain barriers, I think.

They are really annoying when building big stuctures. Which usually looks like placing blueprint. Figure there was a cliff in the way. Go there and destroy it. Repeat placement. Rework some areas. Figure there are still cliffs in the way. Repeat placement. Loose the reworked areas. Figure there are still cliffs in the way. Copy paste areas locally. Figure later that your copy-paste was faulty due a cliff. Figure out there are still cliffs! Keep going.. Yea nice.
I dont know but they are sometimes pretty invisible when there are trees, and hundred bots and other structures visible. When theyre the same color as the background. And its not only the blueprints with 40k items to build.

But then IMO they are essential in extremely difficult games, because of how water was reworked to be more scarse in areas. It would be considerably harder to defend the base if i hadnt have cliffs in the early game.

If there would be more visible.
1. Not be covered by trees.
2. More Contrast from the background
3. Less scattered
4. More logical flow

This would help probbably

Alternatively , have them minable by bots. Because they are pretty much rocks that arent minable right now.

aober93 wrote:-=snip=-

Yeah, it's for essentially this reason (prior to cliffs being in the game) that makes me flat refuse to use any blueprint that's larger than 70% of the screen at max zoom-out without using mapview. If something's so big that that's not enough, I'll break it down into overlapping sections. Then I just line up the overlaps between sections.

FasterJump wrote:

vanatteveldt wrote:

contour cliffs

This.
Longer, fewer,  better, stronger
Very good idea that deserves considerations.
Would be better than the current cliffs we have, which are more like cumberstone rocks that you can't mine.

+1 - This.

+1 Should be the way of 0.17

ive seen this thread like a month ago, but as i didn´t realy care about cliffs, i didn´t bother
out of boredom im browsing today, and as i´ve just finished a "spoon achievment" training, i spent some time in the map gen.

something in the OP just hit me

I tried very infrequent plus very large in the hopes of getting a couple large cliffs, but instead I get cliffs all over the place. If I do very infrequent plus medium I just get either no cliffs at all, or cliffs everywhere.

has noone noticed that

a) yes, you either get non or ALOT of cliffs, with the same settings. Even if cliffs are calculated with the same perlin noise algorithm that calculates ores (https://wiki.factorio.com/World_generator#Generation) this feels wrong, the chances of none vs alot are very high, with almost nothing in between.
b) even when turned down to low, like 50% or more of the starting areas are desert. and not small patches, at least half of the starting area.

??
i mean, you cant be happy with that, can you? I remember some FFF that was about map gen, and that it has improved, but i dont start new maps that often normally, so i didn´t care til today.

if i were a true speed runner and not only doing it for achievment, i´d given up on it, at least in Factorio.
Dont understand how you can click a button for hours.... (took me like 10 minutes really, im not after a world record )

I think it would be awesome if Turrets could get a bonus to range when on top of a cliff. And a penalty when below one. Like this:

Perhaps researchable bullet trajectory something or other. Coriolis research lol idk. But i think it would be a cool way to bring cliffs more into the game than just obstacles.

_shifty wrote:I think it would be awesome if Turrets could get a bonus to range when on top of a cliff. And a penalty when below one. Like this:

Perhaps researchable bullet trajectory something or other. Coriolis research lol idk. But i think it would be a cool way to bring cliffs more into the game than just obstacles.

+1

_shifty wrote:I think it would be awesome if Turrets could get a bonus to range when on top of a cliff. And a penalty when below one. Like this:

Perhaps researchable bullet trajectory something or other. Coriolis research lol idk. But i think it would be a cool way to bring cliffs more into the game than just obstacles.

I agree. It should also affect to spitters and worms so that player could choose tactics to attack from nearby hill. Maybe biters could also prefer higher areas when they found new nests.

_shifty wrote:I think it would be awesome if Turrets could get a bonus to range when on top of a cliff. And a penalty when below one. Like this:

Perhaps researchable bullet trajectory something or other. Coriolis research lol idk. But i think it would be a cool way to bring cliffs more into the game than just obstacles.

I agree that it would be cool, however at the moment the game cam't really distinguish between the top and bottom of a cliff - it basically considers them to be walls - but it would be cool, AoE2 did something like this.

_shifty wrote:I think it would be awesome if Turrets could get a bonus to range when on top of a cliff. And a penalty when below one. Like this:

Enough with the constant repeat of the same image for no reason

Perhaps researchable bullet trajectory something or other. Coriolis research lol idk. But i think it would be a cool way to bring cliffs more into the game than just obstacles.

I disagree.
Turrets are not actually limited by how far they can shoot. They are limited by their sensor instead.
This change makes no sense. I mean, these are gun turrets and there can be only one reason they can't reach far.