overgrowth Trees set on "few" = vegetation overgrown?!

[MostMerryTomcat]

Do you remember when setting earthquakes to less actually increased the "default" of it - like A LOT? I think this is happening now with vegetation. Story short: I made a server with all things set on "few" as a challenge, picked Wig and set out to conquer the dark forests supposed to be glades or something. To my surprise a couple of seasons later I encountered the growth best illustrated in print screen below:

 

That's happening in inner Ruins, Military biome close to Ancient Pseudoscience Station (the complete one). So now growth happens - aka evergreens, lumpy, mushtrees, birchnuts - in all the wrong places resulting in Ruins, Swamps etc being overrun by dense forests of said tree variants. And this happening, again, when setting trees on "few". My question: is this normal?

 

If it's a bug, pls an admin move present topic in the bug threads. Thanks in advance!

 

PS: all 4 seasons are set on "very long", in case it counts.

[minespatch]

That's... Weird. Never heard of this before.

[Donke60]

Less is more though I don't think you take it literally 

[Donke60]

@xxVERSUSxy did you make sure to set the caves shard to less just asking because they do have their own settings so it can be an easy oversight

[MostMerryTomcat]

I've attached the print screens of my world setting below, in spoiler, forest and caves (and, @Donke60, that weird overgrowth isn't just in caves, outside too - my marsh is now full of lumpy and birch trees, same with savanna etc).

Spoiler

 

Also I have 5 server mods enabled (namely Storeroom, Path Lights, Health Info, More Sculptures, and Trash Can) in case it may be some conflict between those and regrowth.

[MostMerryTomcat]

More pictures of the overgrown madness happening on my, ironic, scarcity server (this happens in both Caves and Forest alike, as I've already mentioned in previous posts):

Funny-and-yet-annoying thing, I even cut all the trees (mush, birch, lumpy) in the place from first print screen attached here and they grew back EVEN DENSER (as seen in image).

So.. no one has any clue about possible cause or if it's indeed a bug?!

[Lumina]

3 hours ago, xxVERSUSxy said:

So.. no one has any clue about possible cause or if it's indeed a bug?!

I have a clue about possible cause. As far as i know, when you put something on "more" or "a lot" or whatever are the setting, the default rules of spawn are ignored. Meaning, you have clockwork monster everywhere, beefalo outside of savana and all this stuff.

Maybe when you set something on "few", the default rules of spawn are also ignored, hence why you have tree in place when no tree are usually. In ruins and in mushrooms biomes and all.

It always worked this way when you set things on "a lot" or "more", and it's sad because it means that you don't have a natural option, only a chaotic one. Maybe it's also the case here. Anyway, i would report it as a bug, because it could be understandable in one case (more) but not in the other (less). "Less" should still follow the spawn rules. I would prefer that "more" too, but at least people could like having ton of tentacles and bishop everywhere.

[Quyzbuk]

The only thing that really comes to mind is how they said regrowth is supposed to work for DST, particularly with trees. If I were to hazard a guess, since you are starting with less and the code wants a certain amount of something to exist or else grow at any given time, the code is just filling in parts of your world to meet the quota set forth within. In which case, I would definitely classify it as a bug, one independent of the mods that you say you are using, which, at a cursory glance, likely aren't affecting any of these variables anyway.

 

The fact that you are seeing things that normally wouldn't be in certain areas leads me to believe something is being overwritten or setting an important value in Klei's code to something it shouldnt be. Given that I don't think trees are ever really set to anything other than "default" on 99.9% of worlds, I think it is safe to assume that the "less" setting is putting the variables for the trees into negative (or at least non-zero) numbers for your cave shard... which is in turn, causing them to grow everywhere. And since the tree setting handles the lumpy & birch trees too, that is what is causing those to show up down there. Think of Civilization's infamous case where Gandhi is your nuclear nightmare because his coded aggression gets set to out-of-bounds levels on certain difficulties, I believe that is what is happening here too. 

[MostMerryTomcat]

There is one other strange thing, regarding speed of regrowth. I and a friend cut all trees in base vicinity, ALL of them, in a Wilds biome; that, theoretically, should have hicked in the Desolation Regrowth mechanism. 2 or 3 days later they already started to repopulate.. from nothing. All 3 types of trees (evergreen, lumpy, birch) and the blue mush ones. After that, one of my friends burned down an entire green mushtree biome; you can guess what happened some days later.

Thus yeah, from all this and what you guys wrote it appears more and more this is a bug. Could an admin move this topic to the bug section, pls?! Thanks in advance!

[ThemInspectors]

I may have found the problem. I took a look at tuning.lua and tuning_override.lua Those are responsible for the chance of which a treeguardian spawns and other things including regrowth. If you take a look at the relevant lines of regrowth here:
 

Spoiler

        EVERGREEN_REGROWTH = {
            OFFSPRING_TIME = total_day_time * 5,
            DESOLATION_RESPAWN_TIME = total_day_time * 50,
            DEAD_DECAY_TIME = total_day_time * 30,
        },

        EVERGREEN_SPARSE_REGROWTH = {
            OFFSPRING_TIME = total_day_time * 8,
            DESOLATION_RESPAWN_TIME = total_day_time * 50,
            DEAD_DECAY_TIME = total_day_time * 30,
        },

        TWIGGY_TREE_REGROWTH = {
            OFFSPRING_TIME = total_day_time * 8,
            DESOLATION_RESPAWN_TIME = total_day_time * 50,
            DEAD_DECAY_TIME = total_day_time * 30,
        },

        DECIDUOUS_REGROWTH = {
            OFFSPRING_TIME = total_day_time * 3,
            DESOLATION_RESPAWN_TIME = total_day_time * 50,
            DEAD_DECAY_TIME = total_day_time * 30,
        },

        MUSHTREE_REGROWTH = {
            OFFSPRING_TIME = total_day_time * 3,
            DESOLATION_RESPAWN_TIME = total_day_time * 50,
            DEAD_DECAY_TIME = total_day_time * 30,
        },

        REGROWTH_TIME_MULTIPLIER = 1,

 

Spoiler

            veryslow = { REGROWTH_TIME_MULTIPLIER = .15 },
            slow     = { REGROWTH_TIME_MULTIPLIER = .33 },
            default  = { REGROWTH_TIME_MULTIPLIER = 1 },
            fast     = { REGROWTH_TIME_MULTIPLIER = 3 },
            veryfast = { REGROWTH_TIME_MULTIPLIER = 7 },

 

You can see that that for regrowth how it will work for an evergreen tree on desolation on "Very Fast" is like:

Full Day x 50 x 7 so it would take 7x as long or 350 days for "Very Fast" to have tree desolation regrowth
Alternatively for "Very Slow" It would take 1/6 of the time for regrowth to kick in, meaning Yes, regrowth gives the opposite effect.

Moral of the Story, @BluesyBuesy is right, the devs are silly.