Factorio Forums

TL;DR:
Make ores highlight-able in the world preview, like they are with the in-game minimap.

What:
When generating a preview for a new world, it can be hard to see ores. Stone is virtually impossible to see in deserts, and because the map is so zoomed out it can be difficult to see other ores too.

The simple solution would be that, when you mouse over them, ores are highlighted like they are in the minimap.

Why:
It would make the preview much easier to understand.

Example:
In the attached images, the areas in the blue circles look like coal, but they aren't. Making this change would make it much easier to know that, in addition to the issue with stone in deserts.

I totally +1 this one.

Definitely agree. I love the new map preview, but for my last game I was tweaking the resource frequency / richness to generate an ideal train world, and I ended up still having to manually start the game, use the console to explore around the starting area, and check the minimap for resource patches to see how much was in them. Having this information on the preview window would have saved me a lot of time.

Definitely! It's virtually impossible to know if a map you've made is a starter or not without knowing the ore sizes. Also, the stone and coal can be very hard to spot, so ore sizes on hover would help with that also.

+1

I would also like if you could see your starting area, or spawn. Now it is "somewhere in the middle" and therefore hard to find as well. Especially since my screen is to small to show the whole preview at once.

Needs an option to switch off terrain colors.

TL;DR

Make the highlighting of resources on mouse hover (possibly with indication of their quantity) for the map preview in the dialog of creating a new game

What ?

Just do the same logic as when you open the map in the game itself: when player hover its mouse over a resource patch, it is highlighted, and the number of resources in that patch is shown next to it. Make the UI/UX for the map preview dialog (when creating a new game) the same as for the map UI within the game.

Why ?

For players with a large number of resource types (mods), and with a large number of tile types, resources merge in colors with regular land tiles. If the game highlights resources on mouseover, such resources will be easily distinguishable from regular land tiles. If the game also displays the number of resources (optional), it will be also useful for those users who carefully plan a landing site and/or for speedrunners.