Epic Starting Location Failure

[amasuriel]

So I started a new game with this random seed: 1283107575

I explored literally half the 80 world map. I found 1 Advanced Research (quite far away), and 3 Fabricators, all far away. 1 of the co-processors. 0 Data Centers. 0 Factories. No Dyson Sphere. No AI home worlds.

The other half the map must be a happin' place

Not complaining, just never seen a starting position quite that bad. Maybe I'll save the seed for some time when I'm feeling up to more of a challenge

[zoutzakje]

yeah that stuff happens. I got something similair. Started a 100 planet 9/9 game very recently. Scouted everything in a 4-5 hop radius and the only "good" things I have found so far are a Regenerator Golem and some fabricator. Guess I'll just have to take some ground until my scouts can get further in.

[Oralordos]

I've got the same thing in my current game. One data center nearby which I've already taken. The hybrids have built up too much for me to be able to visit far enough out to see what's in the mysterious area of the more than 5 hops out.

[Coppermantis]

I'm in a game that seeded 4 ARSes within four hops, as well as a number of golems. It was convinient.

[Oralordos]

Well I've managed to explore out to 5 hops from my homeworld in my current game now. I've seen 3 data centers, 1 ARS, 1 advanced factory, and 2 raid engines. So in answer to a thought of keith's from earlier, yes raid engines can spawn on 7/7.

[LaughingThesaurus]

I think it'd be best to have a fairly even distribution of things so that you can always be taking meaningful planets as you push out.
That being said I had a game with a Zenith V and an ARS within 2 hops. Zenith V was adjacent to my home planet. Pretty incredible stuff.

[Pluto]

Bad starting location; raid engine two hops from the HW, the planet in between being a critical chokepoint, both planets mk 4 (couldn't get scouts past).  First trigger sent a heroic battleship my way 30 minutes into the game.

[Oralordos]

That's ouch, what was the seed?

[zoutzakje]

I like the fact that the RNG can screw you over at early game or not. I don't always want to find good targets nearby. This is exactly one of the things that causes AI war to have so much variety. I once found all golems I wanted and every single ARS within 4 hops. And an other time I found literally nothing in 7 hops. And I love that kind of randomness.

[LordSloth]

Cluster microcosms tend to lead to interesting starting locations for me.

Such as home clusters with two interplanetary munitions boosters
or home clusters with two raid engines within two hops of my hw supported by gravity drills (AI) and on a crosshatch sector.

[zoutzakje]

hehe gotta love Raid Engines in a crosshatch or crosshatch sector I should try a 9/9 crosshatch game again sometime, with one of the AI types being a Raid Engine. I don't think I'll last long.

[TechSY730]

I think it'd be best to have a fairly even distribution of things so that you can always be taking meaningful planets as you push out.
That being said I had a game with a Zenith V and an ARS within 2 hops. Zenith V was adjacent to my home planet. Pretty incredible stuff.

Modifying the map seeding process a bit to prevent excessive "clumping" of capturables may be nifty, but I think part of the idea is that the map seeding is supposed to be very random, and you might or might not be placed close to the nearest "desirable" capture. (This would remain true even if worse case clumping behavior becomes prohibited)

It's one of those variety things, trying to get you to try out strategies that you might not of tried before (like a deep strike, satellite worlds, or even a "no capturable goodies" win)

[Pluto]

That's ouch, what was the seed?

Not sure - got wiped, decided it wasn't worth the effort, and restarted with a new map.  It was a cluster microcosm map.

[LaughingThesaurus]

Oh no, by that post I made, I didn't mean "Tweak the worldgen". That would be absurd. I was talking an optimal scenario for the player's end. When you have 7 useless hops near your home planet, you have to actually take planets to avoid deep striking that wouldn't provide you anything useful to actually get to the juicy (and clustered up) bits. Same problem in reverse if everything's really closeby. You have to deepstrike or take useless planets to link yourself to the AI home planets and make them go boom. The optimal set up is somewhere in the middle, where you have the occasional juicy planet within 3 hops of the last one that you took.
So in short I was stating the obvious.

[Coppermantis]

Not as bad as starting a game on one end of a snake map and having a Mk. IV world with a raid engine two hops out.