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my trouble with the worldgen ... a lore-friendly solution


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I've got a build I want to try, but I want to try it in survival mode, not debug mode. That's important. My build doesn't depend on any particular availability of resources with alternatives: worts, AETNs, ice, even nat gas. I need two things to make my build even worth attempting: a renewable source of MOLTEN HEAT and a renewable source of METAL. No particular quantity requirements on either of the above, so a single metal volcano would do, even if everything else on the map is really bad.

I've begun two maps in a row now and figuring my odds were pretty good I just went about solving problems, until eventually both maps were fully discovered and I didn't have what I needed. And, my requirements put me in a pretty good bracket for succeeding, but I failed now twice. For me, that's like 30 hours of gameplay, dead-end.

I think all the complaints everyone has about this geyser being bad or that geyser being bad - not enough natural gas, can't get enough algae, can't get enough water - these all revolve around the same issue. We should have a chance to prospect our asteroid before starting the game, choose something that probably fits our requirements, without spoiling the map or telling us everything in advance.

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Technical

This is actually a pretty significant project. Right now, you've all seen how long the worldgen takes. Klei probably won't run the worldgen 3 times and give you a stats readout on all 3 of them, that'd hurt the playability of the game. They could (1) add a "fast worldgen" that only partially generates a handful of worlds before giving you some basic stats. They could also (2) add parameters to the worldgen (represented by a few letters at the end of the seed) so that the same numbered seed can pop out a variety of different configurations, influenced by this "prospecting" process.

Or, there are ways I haven't thought of.

The point is, it's not just a quick wave of the wand to add something like this.

In the lore

We start at a console and the backdrop looks totally alien. We're choosing our three starting dupes, but it's obviously a being of some type making those choices.

After choosing the dupes, we're shown a map of the asteroid belt (just mocked up, nothing fancy). As we click through a list of possible homes, an indicator moves to highlight the selected asteroid. We're shown various stats to determine if this is a suitable home:

(1) crust makeup - water&ice content (clean and polluted), algae, mineral, solid fuel

(2) geological activity - water (water,pwater,slush,steam vents), fissure activity (all fuels including crude), volcanic activity. [my list isn't good enough for some people, this is an example]

Our progenitor hits a button, a bunch of machines spring to life and a blinding light fills the screen .... and then we flash forward to the opening sequence. !Alert!

I don't think the player should be able to fill in their requirements and hit go, but I *do* think we should be able to see some basic stats and choose one.

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