Factorio Forums

Hi,

after too many hours (1800+) in this game last year with version 0.16, I took a long break. Curious what changed in 0.17.*, I've tried it now. I've created many new maps in 0.16, so I knew what I could expect. Using the default startup settings in both versions, something seems to go wrong with the map generation in 0.17 (currently 0.17.14): Much too much water. In 0.16, so much water is only there when I drive far away from the origin. If this is "by design", then I do not like the new design at all, frankly spoken. Two screenshots showing the obvious problem:

0.16.51: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/ ... 1683841309
0.17.14: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/ ... 1683840933

In addition, the enemy spawners are much closer to the starting point than in 0.16.51. So close that I can not even exploit my first coal deposit without killing enemies first. This was completely different in 0.16.51 where enemies were much further away at startup. Again, using default settings in both versions.

So, which startup settings in 0.17.14 correspond to the startup settings in 0.16.51? What do I have to set to get the behavior back? For now, I'm reverting to 0.16.

These are the new default settings, all default maps look kinda like that.
But you can simply change the map options and reduce the amount of water, cliffs, trees, or increase the size of the starting area so no biters are there.

You can not make it perfect for everybody, so giving us players the options to set the map generation to our liking is the best solution, don't you think?

Water generation in 0.16 was a total mess. Even before that it was becoming steadily worse with each version. Either endless swamps or an ocean with tiny, snaking land bridges. I hardly played it because it was so bad. Many other people didn't like it either.
They finally fixed that you can now again have large lakes or oceans and real continents. It's awesome.

There are two settings. Coverage and scale. Coverage is how much of the total surface is covered in water. If you decrease that you obviously get overall a lower amount of water. And scale determines the size of individual lakes or land masses. So high coverage / low scale gives you smaller island for example. Low coverage / large scale gives you some large lakes, but mostly land. Low coverage / low scale results in more smaller lakes

Biter settings too were a mistake in 0.16. This is more how things use to be and now bases are larger and more dense on default settings. But as before you can just increase your starting area. And you can decrease the frequency and size of the bases. Just play around with the settings and reveal some maps with the console to get a feeling for it.
In any case early bases are small and easy to deal with

Serenity wrote: Sat Mar 16, 2019 12:01 pm Water generation in 0.16 was a total mess.

For me it was just perfect. So different opinions are. But it's not a problem as we can change startup settings.

There are two settings. Coverage and scale. [...]

Thanks. So there are no known settings that correspond to the old behavior. That what I was wondering. Ok, I will play around with it and will find "my" game.

I do know it's still in early access, but I was asking here as it was so different that I thought this must be a bug. But before reporting it, I really make sure that it is one. Even more that nobody else reported it as such before. Now I know it is none.

Thx