The Map Generator hates your guts, or dude where is my coal?

[roman566]

Seriously, where is my coal? I have to restart game dozen times to get all resources. One time I miss coal (most often), another time there is no iron or copper. There was this one map where all I got was a huge oil field and there was not enough of resources in the starting area to even RESEARCH oil use.
I understand that with 'low' and 'very low' frequency I should not expect tons of resource fields around me, but I actually hoped that the starting location will have enough to actually reach laser towers and attack aliens in something resembling uneven odds (I refuse to face an enemy on even odds, it's plain stupidity to do so). I did set size to very big to compensate for small frequency but it did not get things better, if anything - it made things worse.

But that's not all. I do not know what you understand by 'very small size' when it comes to water, but for me it's NOT having starting location look like Great Lakes IN SPACE! The 'water in the starting area only' still makes the map like someone dumped several buckets of different colors of paint on the map and called it a day.
Come to think of it, the more water, the less resources are available around, does that mean that the resources are underwater and I missed some super secret technology to access them?

The final random thing about random generator are oil fields... I always assumed that the size is the amount of the Crude Oil spots and richness is it's yield. I was apparently wrong because when I set richness to maximum I suddenly got an oil field with two dozen spots. Shame I could not sell all that oil to buy iron and copper.

Why I am writing this? I simply want to know if RNG hates my guts or is it the new standard in Factorio? Dump player on a map, surrounded by aliens and with no resources to fight those aliens? I heard about Nintendo Hard, do we have to rename it to Factorio Hard?

EDIT:

[kyranzor]

the game is balanced/mostly tested i assume on "default settings" for map generation. be prepared for silly crap if you play on different settings.

[ssilk]

See those maps as challenge.

[kyranzor]

Get the TreeFarm mod and pwn those aliens hardcore style who needs coal when trees can be your carbon-bitches?

[OBAMA MCLAMA]

the game is balanced/mostly tested i assume on "default settings" for map generation. be prepared for silly crap if you play on different settings.

that "silly crap" is what makes the game so much more fun.

Default settings is so easy, you can get over 30 oil deposits in your starting base, making it pointless to expand for more.
The starting resources are either so plentiful, or the expansion is within belt distance that it makes using a train, sort of useless. Because the amount of iron/copper in default setting near spawn is enough to get to rocket defense.

Settings on low make more use of trains, settings on hard enemies set yourself up for rapid defense production and compact base if you don't have much area to work with. (water)

on one of my deathworlds i had to set up my own assembly line, just for early game ammo.



And as ssilk said, its considered a challenge, Its something different than default settings. Different playstyle and more.

[GewaltSam]

The map generator isn't very good configured, though. I am very unsatisfied with the results since I began playing, and just the recently installed RSO mod (https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... =14&t=4761 - There are unofficial versions 1.0.3 and 1.04 in the comments on page 6) gave me satisfying results.

Try playing around a bit. Maybe set your starting area a bit bigger, so you have a better chance of getting all those resources. The map editor doesn't have a logic to spawn every resource in the starting area every time afaik, so you often get maps that are very different in difficulty, even with the same settings. It is not unusual to start a dozen different maps and to explore the starting area, to see if you like to play them.

[Canyew]

There is a reason why this game is still in "Alpha" stages. Aka. Still working on the core features of it. Give them time.

[kyranzor]

lels, I just used standard settings for a quick try at Hardcorio, and my spawn was had only a small amount of coal and a small amount of iron. Was terribad.

Possible it's due to the other ores from bobsmod that spawned and probably removed space for standard ores, but yeah..

[Align]

I guess you could use the Resource Spawner Overhaul mod and turn off the new generation scheme, and only get the guaranteed starting resources? Haven't tried that myself.

[cpy]

Resource generator needs HUGE tune up!
Spawn should ALWAYS have everything in it with different amounts, that depends on your settings, kinda like RSO mod use.

One more thing, oil settings is REALLY REALLY messed up!
number of oil spots:
very low - low - normal - high - very high
1 - 20 - 20 - 20 - 20 (in most cases)

[roman566]

Well, I got a nice map and decided to give it a try. The coal, if you are wondering, is the small black dot north of my position on the lower screnshot. Enough said that oil processing was priority...
This was my first 'low pollution' game, while it was much slower than 'screw the pollution, I have laser towers' it's much less annoying as I do not have to waste my time on running to every attack that happened and replacing walls with new ones.
After 2h of game I had enough laser towers to attack biters. Due to low pollution (I wasn't attacked even once) I was dealing with small biters only, unfortunately destroying their nests bumped evolution factor to ranged biters which are way to annoying.
When they were introduced I thought that they are an advanced version of biters, somewhere between medium and large ones, but apparently they are between small and medium ones. Live and learn I guess.

[kyranzor]

Roman, dude, those biter bases are fucking massive. You are never going to be able to expand - ever. I hope for your sake that the resources are on ultra rich and they never run out haha.

[roman566]

Roman, dude, those biter bases are fucking massive. You are never going to be able to expand - ever. I hope for your sake that the resources are on ultra rich and they never run out haha.

Been there, done that, bought the t-shirt. And I expanded while fending off biter attacks.
This map? Without biters ever doing anything? It's trivial. The biggest challenge is managing pollution so it doesn't reach biters. This and waiting, low pollution means not that many factories and that means waiting for everything.

[BrickVoidFCT]

I agree that the map generation is unbalanced: For instance, I ramp up the ore generation to max regarding size, etc, and I get tiny singular ore deposits that have a large amount of ore in them. The trick, I find, seems to be to leave most settings at Normal frequency and just ramp up your starting area size to max, and the aliens down to min, plus lower the water frequency, a lot! This gives you enough water that you're not going to have problems finding a place to put a power supply whilst not getting cut off from land by it, and usually will give you a decent spread of starting deposits so you can crank turrets out of factories to get to more deposits.

However, I do find it rather unbalancing that I have to throw away a lot of maps because there is no starting deposit in my area that's viable. If a starting deposit is already at the distance where trains would be needed to ship it to a processing facility economically, I usually toss that map and try for another one, the main reason being that it simply isn't worth the hassle to have to try and protect long lines of slow conveyor belts from alien attacks, or rebuild them constantly, whilst waiting for trains.

I am also appalled at the relative size of deposits. If I select very big, very large, and very good, I feel that I have a reasonable expectation that is what the map generator will give me, not some puddle of a deposit some dog left on my doorstep. Very big itself implies that you won't be given a 2x2 or worse, a 1 tile deposit that is rich and good. Yet Factorio seems to want you believe this is possible for a starting location with that setting. With very good and very large added in, getting that sort of tiny deposit means that I am simply going to toss that map for something resembling sane amounts of deposit generation.

I look forward to more sensibly balanced deposits that I can actually make work given enough time and the amount of time needed to prepare a base location also factors into this. I really need a faster way of clearing trees, oh there's the shotgun you say, well and good, but if my starting deposits are treed up, I have to go clear out 2-3 pickaxes worth of trees before I can even place the mining equipment down, and this eats into the time factor. Time to prepare resources is a heavy starting factor in determining whether a map is viable or not, as if you take too long to make your early deposits produce resources, you are basically screwed over by the aliens who will quite happily leave you dead and out of that particular map.

Lastly, the map generator is missing a setting for proximity, or distance of ore deposits from one deposit to any other: Close proximity could mean a really rapid starting base, while far proximity will mean spread out deposits, basically. Can the Factorio devs implement something like that?

Anyway all, I wish everyone on the Factorio forums a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year for those of you who celebrate those holidays. Enough rambling, time to see if I can find a deposit I like!

Cheers ...

BrickVoid

[Nova]

You have to understand this: The generator is random. On Stack Exchange you can see a nice graphic for this. The first graphics is random. The second graphic is not random, but would fit more what we expect. If we raise the amount, density or whatever of coal, iron, copper, ... then we get generally more of the resource, but we are not garantued that we will immediately find more iron ore on a map with "high" frequency instead of "medium". We will also memorize bad things easier than good things. You will remember nearly none ore on a high map better than plentyfull ore on a normal map.

We should still change the map generator to a more evenly distributed version as soon as the developers got time without other high priority tasks. Well, in the moment there's the multiplayer, and after that there's the belt optimization (no slowing belt corners!) and the smart logistic update (real storage and weighted distribution of items, energy and other resources!). Well, I can live a few month with a "bad" map generator. ^^

[roman566]

The sole fact that with 'very low' setting I do get more than one resource in my starting location is a proof that we are not talking about any kind of 'random' resources generation. Due to this I think that this semi-random generation is flawed as it does not guarantee all necessary resources to play the game. It also makes very annoying terrain layout when you choose 'water in the starting location'. That's definitely bugged map generation.

[Rahjital]

The sole fact that with 'very low' setting I do get more than one resource in my starting location is a proof that we are not talking about any kind of 'random' resources generation.

That is because the generator uses different settings for the starting area that make resources more likely to appear there. It is specially set up to give you everything, even oil, and yet it's fairly common having to restart because there's no coal or iron anywhere nearby.

[Lee_newsum]

if you do not like it you can use the mapediter to look for a good map/fix a ok map(by adding coal).

[roman566]

I've won on that map. It was quite boring, mostly due to low pollution gameplay. Biters didn't even attack when I placed Rocket Defense...
The starting resources would be enough if I did not build 50 lvl3 efficiency modules instead of speed modules, because of that I had to expand to grab coal in north. With PA MKII and a bunch of turrets behind me expansion was child's play.

[Zourin]

Postby -root

Oh look! An island!

Proof that map generation is, well.. wonky in general.