Story Time
"But Oarcinae, you already made Oarc Multiplayer Spawn, why did you do this..."
A long time ago, my OG Mod had support for "vanilla" style spawns. Way back when it was just a scenario and Factorio was still in Early Access. However, due to multiple issues, it was easier to implement and a better experience to custom make spawn points. While my old mod technically added support for Space Age's new planets, it was never an ideal system, and Vulcanus was particularly broken requiring lots of hacks so that you don't get run over by demolishers immediately and that your cargo pod arrives at the right place.
This mod aims to fix all that by doing things right. The proper way. The way the factorio devs themselves probably would have preferred I do the first time around. Now, at the start of the game, each planet has several starting_points laid out in a grid. You can specify how many you want, and how far apart they are. New players who want their own team get their starting area, perfectly safe from demolishers, and looking exactly like a normal starting area.
This mod is still in testing so please report bugs here or on GitHub please. Thanks and enjoy!
What is this mod good for?
Glad you asked. If you like playing Factorio with other people, but don't want them to touch your spaghetti, then this is the mod for you! If your friends really love you, they'll prove it by running 1000 tiles through biter nests to meet you in person. Perfect for rail world enthusiasts, or just players who like progressing at their own pace while still playing alongside others.
If you want to join someone else, this mod is intended for couples and throuples at most. If you have large groups of people all joining the same base, why bother with my mod in the first place?
How do I start a game with this mod?
Easy! Just launch the freeplay scenario.
Check the mod settings for some options you might want to tweak first, the most important are the mod startup settings (which are the number of total starting points and how far they are spread apart).
Overview:
Any player who joins the game can do the following:
- Start a new team (aka force) which gets their own starting point.
- Join another existing spawn, if the other player allows the request.
- Sit in the starting lobby area and admire the fish.
Important Options:
- Yes you can still choose the "oarc" style prefab spawn circle if you really want to enable it. It's still an option.
- You can choose if you want evolution to reset anytime a player starts a new spawn on any planet. This is there so that if someone joins Gleba or Nauvis really late, they don't struggle with the enemies.
Other important features:
- Shared chat and vision. Players on different teams still can easily chat and view each other, and are automatically friendly (configurable).
- Spawn areas that are abandoned immediately get cleaned up (deleted from the map) if a player leaves within 15 minutes of starting (configurable). This helps avoid clutter around the map and keeps the save file size down.
- Offline protection. If there are no players from your spawn online, any enemy attacks targeting your base will be disabled.
- Regrowth & World Eater are the names of the features I added to help trim down on unused map areas. If a player explores a large area of the map, after about 1 hour, any chunks with no activity (no radar/vision/buildings placed/etc.) will be deleted to help keep the save file size down. The map can be still be re-explored and will generate as if it was new again. I don't recommend using these features anymore unless you really care about file save on long running games.
- All these features mentioned are configurable and can be disabled, enabled or tweaked.
- A template scenario is provided that shows how you can make your own scenario or mod to take advantage of the features I provide and extend your own if you want. The template shows examples of how to use the remote interfaces and custom events provided by my mod.
Improvements Over My Old Mod:
- Vulcanus demolishers and territories work properly with the starting points now. You're not immediately surrounded by behemoths and tons of free area.
- Native starting area and other map generation settings work as expected.
- No hacks for making "safe spaces" around spawns.
- No hacks for making sure cargo pods arrive at the right place.
- No hacks for making sure players arrive at the right place when landing on new planets.
- Starting to get the idea...? Less hacks?
- This should be way more compatible with other mods now... if it isn't, let me know and I'll try to help support.
Known Issues:
- Forces only get 1 landing pad per surface. This isn't a technical issue, this is how the base game was intended to be played. To work around this, you can try a mod such as "All the Landing Pads".
- Enemy spawner health scales in a way that means late joiners can have a lot of difficulty killing the spawners near their starting area. I added a simple option that resets the evolution factor of a planet when someone starts a new spawn.
- Fulgora lighting attractors sometimes can't be deconstructed with the planner/remotely. This is an engine limitation which requires the attractors to be on a force and they can't be deconstructed by other forces except manually. However, my mod changes the owning force to the nearest spawn's team, so you really shouldn't run into this issue unless you build in areas closer to another player in which case you probably need to coordinate with them anyway.
Planned Content:
- None other than supporting this if people want it. The point of this was to be as light and pure a mod as possible so that it would conflict with the least amount of other mods.
Most settings can be tweaked once you're in game and are available in the mod settings menu as well as in my slightly nicer custom GUI.
If you need additional customization of the spawn areas (resource types for example), please look at the included scenario template in the mod folder. Reach out to me if you have any questions.
Good luck and please report issues you find (see contact info below).
Not compatible with Space Ex or any other mod that significantly changes surface and map generation (in ways where starting points might break). But if you want to help me test it out, I'll help support you!