[W | 0.12.911] No native plants growing in the middle of the map.

[Mihsan]

Not sure if this bug or not. This looks weird and gamebreaking, so I will report this anyway.

1. What the circumstances were.
I have played on large map in shrubland region. At year 3 I noticed that pretty large area on my map does not have any plants on it (no trees and no grass). It was not like this when I started playing. Not sure, what caused this, but possible it became like this after few poison ships (they was
lying there for a few months), toxic fallout event and volcanic winter. No animals was there to eat those plants. Right now it is year 6 and there are still no plants in that area.

2. What happened.
No native plants spawning on large area in the middle of the map.

3. What you expected to happen.
Native plants and trees spawning and growing all over the map.

4. How we can reproduce the bug.
Spawn a few toxic ships, add toxic fallout and volcanic winter, then wait. Killing all plants on map with debug menu gives almost the same result.

[Vault101]

It's by design. Plants "move" from the edges of the map towards the middle. It's supposed to mimic the natural spread of life. But it makes sense only for large areas in real life. In game you inhabit a very small area of land, it shouldn't take so much time for plants to "come" to middle of the map, they should regrow everywhere simultaneously on such a small area.

And it really sucks as far as pastures are concerned because you don't want your animals hanging out around the edge of the map because they'll get instantly killed by raiders. Also in nature animals don't cause degradation of flora because their waste encourages growth of new plants.

It's not a bug but it should be reworked in my opinion.

[Songleaves]

In real life there would be a seed bank already present under the soil, so that when things die due to fire, you would see all the plants basically regrowing by the next year. The poison ships could destroy the seedbank by freezing the soil underground, but even then given the small size of the map you would expect grasses and seedlings to be popping up by the next year as well just due to dispersal.

[Rahjital]

This is very much by design. Plants spread by shooting seeds around themselves, so if they can't "creep" to the empty area, they'll never grow there. Notice how in the last and second to last screenshot, the plantless area is seperated from the plants by a mountain or a wall.

Playing in arid shrublands is not helping either, the plants will take longer to recover there.

[Mihsan]

This is very much by design. Plants spread by shooting seeds around themselves, so if they can't "creep" to the empty area, they'll never grow there. Notice how in the last and second to last screenshot, the plantless area is seperated from the plants by a mountain or a wall.

Playing in arid shrublands is not helping either, the plants will take longer to recover there.

Well that is counterintuitive. After 5 years I would expect for at least some plants to appear in some places from seeds carried by the wind, animals and stuff like that.

No matter what my map should never look like "Martian surface". It is just wrong on so many levels. If such extinctions are normal for RimWorld, then why I am starting in green heaven?

[TLHeart]

This is very much by design. Plants spread by shooting seeds around themselves, so if they can't "creep" to the empty area, they'll never grow there. Notice how in the last and second to last screenshot, the plantless area is seperated from the plants by a mountain or a wall.

Playing in arid shrublands is not helping either, the plants will take longer to recover there.

Well that is counterintuitive. After 5 years I would expect for at least some plants to appear in some places from seeds carried by the wind, animals and stuff like that.

No matter what my map should never look like "Martian surface". It is just wrong on so many levels. If such extinctions are normal for RimWorld, then why I am starting in green heaven?

disasters, change the soil, and the game. And yes the map can and may look like a barren landscape after disasters for a long time.

[Mihsan]

And yes the map can and may look like a barren landscape after disasters for a long time.

And how is that possible? That soil was not changed, nor having long term poison in it. I know this because I can plant there anything and it will grow fine. So the problem only with spreading of native plants, which is not good enough. Just check the picture:


And, probably, it might worth to rethink how poison ship works? It would be absolutely fine for me if it would literally poison ground around it and make it unusable (for some time? or allowing to clear the area from poison with some action?). It would be fun.

But just killing plants and exploit that they can not spread as good as in real life? Not realistic, not fair, not buying for it.

[ison]

Not really a bug, more like a feature request I guess, hmm...

//edit:

In real life there would be a seed bank already present under the soil

True. I'll think about it.

Thanks for the report, I'm going to close this thread now.

[ison]

Reopening, since we've received a reopen request.

I think it'd be good to address this issue before the final release.

Perhaps we could leave the current "spawn from the map edge" behavior and add a new timer which spawns plants anywhere in the map but 10 times slower or something like this.

// edit: The plant reproduction algorithm has been reworked for the next release. Discussion: https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=37509.0