The Wonder of 5% Worlds

[BasileusMaximos]

The 5% world generation should be available by default and not locked behind dev mode. Not only is it easy on the computer to generate, which means its easier to find the exact type of world you want, but its small size also makes you more invested in the world as a whole, not just your small part of it.

On even 30% worlds, I was overwhelmed by the sheer size and number of faction bases. The new landmark naming feature added in B18 meant nothing to me as there were just too many formations to comprehend.

It also didn't make any sense how primitive factions or even the industrial outlanders had planet-spanning empires with hundreds of towns and villages pledging allegiance to them. In a 5% world, most of these factions only have one settlement to take account of, making the world much more believable and hopefully cutting down on performance issues. 

I also think it has potential to makes the overmap better.

Worlds could be generated in 20 different 5% areas. To represent your colonies immediate knowledge of the area, you only start with the knowledge of the factions and landscape of the 5% area you start out in. You can then send out caravans on exploration missions to reveal the neighboring 5% areas, which would then generate new factions to populate them. This would make the overmap and faction interaction feel a lot more organic and interesting than what we currently have. 

[Canute]

The advance of the small/very small world would disadvance the difficult of the worldmap.
You just could travel in a few days to the friendly AI.

What you need is a world map disable, with the function to send straight caravan to other faction to raid/trade.

[cyberian]

THX for telling me there is a 5% option have to try that out.

Always did 100% so far, btw. is there a disadvantage to that other than world creation duration? Like a performance hit during normal play?

[Boston]

The British Empire had a world-spanning empire with industrial-level technology.

The Iroquois Confederacy had regional power across much of the northeastern usn there were neolithic European cultures that covered most of Europe in their time (the Beaker culture, for example)

People didn't wait until 1850 to build regional or even international powerbases.

[TheMeInTeam]

THX for telling me there is a 5% option have to try that out.

Always did 100% so far, btw. is there a disadvantage to that other than world creation duration? Like a performance hit during normal play?

You take longer to load when going into world view for caravans by a significant margin, and the AI ship spawns further away.  YMMV on how much either matters.

[BasileusMaximos]

The British Empire had a world-spanning empire with industrial-level technology.

The Iroquois Confederacy had regional power across much of the northeastern usn there were neolithic European cultures that covered most of Europe in their time (the Beaker culture, for example)

People didn't wait until 1850 to build regional or even international powerbases.

It takes away from the whole "wild space west" feel to have such powerful factions. I know it doesn't really matter how many settlements a faction has but it still feels wrong.

[Boston]

Rimworld has more than "Space Western" going for it.

[BasileusMaximos]

Rimworld has more than "Space Western" going for it.

The game, its name being Rimworld, takes place on a planet at the outskirts of known space and is therefore underdeveloped and wild, a frontier if you will. The presence of monolithic superpower factions goes against that theme, as how can the world be underdeveloped and wild if there are planet-spanning empires?

I know the answer is that the faction system hasn't really been fleshed out properly yet, but to suggest that the system is fine in its current state is stupid.

[Bolgfred]

I know the answer is that the faction system hasn't really been fleshed out properly yet, but to suggest that the system is fine in its current state is stupid.

True that. By now The faction strength is not defined or limited by the number or size of their bases. Actually the distance even makes more or less no difference. Every faction is just strong in economy and overwhelming in numbers by design.
As long as this doesn't change, the world size doesn't really matter - it's just a visual thing.

[Stormfox]

If anything, I would simply double the hex size (and therefore divide the amount of hexes and with that settlements and other special features by 4) and make the default planet generation 50%. Travel times get adjusted, there, done.

This massively reduces the amount of spaces and possible fiddlyness without being non-granular enough to not be able to pick a good spot for what game experience you had in mind.

[jamaicancastle]

I wonder if it would be possible to have a "cheap" world generation pass that was used for the overworld, and then be able to do a full pass on just the region that looks promising.

For a concrete example, imagine a planet that is divided up into quadrangles (and two circles over the poles), like Mars. The world generation would quickly determine the broad geographical features and some basic biome ranges, and then you would choose a quadrangle to "zoom in" on, that it would generate the way it does now, and pick a landing site from there. The other quads wouldn't generate until needed, due to a caravan traveling there or whatever. Even if you were near the border, it wouldn't need to generate more than about 10% of the surface in detail, which would speed things up, but if you wanted to explore into another quad, it could generate that from the original world seed, so you aren't hemmed in the way you are by a small world gen.

[doomdrvk]

Not really a good idea to be suggesting reworks to the way the world generates when the game is already in beta and probably isn't going to change this as its already been balanced with the game.

[orty]

I really dig this idea.

Think about the Friendly AI quest.  It can still be a destination far away, far outside the starting 5% area on the globe.  So traveling toward it will reveal the next 5% area adjacent to your home area, all the while you're interacting with the few faction settlements around you, trading or raiding, and setting up forward settlements along the way.

The idea is conceptually cool, but if you assume that you reveal adjacent 5% sectors of the globe as your caravans encounter them, doesn't that mean your're still allocating onboard resources to generate the whole revealable map, anyway? 

[Hans Lemurson]

But how could you possibly divide a world with an icosahedral tiling pattern into 20 different equally-sized regions?

[dkmoo]

But how could you possibly divide a world with an icosahedral tiling pattern into 20 different equally-sized regions?

Make each 5% map into a shape of a triangle and create a more to make it make sense. Lol