Retrofitting Checks could use some improvements

[Maxil20]

I want to start with a disclaimer that I don't mean capturing the full setpiece itself, with things like the turf and all. I understand if there needs to be some compromises to get the setpiece to retrofit in old worlds (especially since I know changing turf can be really janky). What I am specifically referring to is the setpiece itself properly retrofitting into a world.

DST's retrofitting system is fairly straightforward. The game will attempt to pick a location and spawn the retrofitted structure. If there are things that block retrofitting the structure (Ex: Player structures, invalid turf to generate on if it calls for it, etc.), the setpiece will attempt to pick another location and try again. There's nothing inherently wrong with this, but there's a pretty major catch: if the game fails to generate the setpiece enough times, the game will outright abort the chance to spawn the setpiece, permanently. To make matters worse, the game never tells you if the setpiece successfully generated into the world or not without looking at server logs (which is fine enough on PC, but good luck pulling that off on console!).

While normally there aren't too many issues with that occurring unless you do decide to world base insert comically large red arrow and circle on me here, it doesn't mean it's impossible for this not to occur on casual maps. I've had several of my friends have issues with the scrapyard setpiece retrofitting, even on worlds where they hardly based more than a biome in size, and people have already been having issues with the Jimbo one, which is much smaller!

I feel the retrofitting system could use a few simple tweaks, which I will try to cover:

• The first and arguably most important one is for instances where the setpiece failed to generate should have a check in place to not outright ditch the check forever, and instead attempt to retrofit the world once again on a reset of the server, and then remove the check once it successfully spawns. This especially applies to console, where you can't really undo something like a failed retrofit unless you catch it in time and rollback, or spend a lot of effort backing up your saves.
   
• In addition to this, adding a simple server announcement into the chat when loading a world to alert the player if the setpiece retrofitted properly or not would be ideal (with the Not successful message clearly telling the player resetting the world will make the retrofit try again). It's similar to how server announcements existed for things like pearl's island and the atrium retrofitting back when those required a server restart to fully retrofit, though in this case an announcement would be more than sufficient.
   
• The last one is less of a check and more of a QOL improvement, but it would be nice if the patch notes clearly stated when/where the retrofitted objects can spawn in which biomes, and on which turfs, where applicable. I mainly say this because it's difficult to try finding retrofits on a fully explored map, and being able to narrow down which biomes it may or may not have spawned in would be pretty helpful!

I think that's about it? Hopefully these changes would be easy enough to implement, and would help with long term players who do prefer to keep their worlds. I feel it would be appreciated!
 

[Cassielu]

One more thing. I noticed that although Retrofit has existed for several years, every time it is updated, there are still many players in the community asking whether these contents are applicable to the old world. Adding a prompt message like this in the game will be of great help to them.