asking for directions even in a generated galaxy

[LoSboccacc]

so the issue with locating a specific factory is well known: most of the sectors are generated as needed so the game does not yet know if a given sector will hold a factory of a specific type or not

 

also, given the large amount of sectors (generated and not), an exhaustive search would be too demanding.

 

 

here's a suggestion to have it all work:

 

make finding stuff happen not in a infinite search menu, but in the interaction menu with traders/selelrs/etc. this will limit the search scope, as they'll only know about their faction territory.

 

on their territory, there will be a known limited amount of sectors having factories - they're known beforehand because of the energy signatures, even if their content is not yet generated.

 

now, for sectors that are generated, the game can just check against the list of generated stations, plus a chance for the trader not knowing about the station.

 

for sectors that are not yet generated, the game can still use the chance to generate a particular station at each sector to provide an answer: if there's say a 0.1% chance to have a solar factory, for each hidden energy signature the game can run a random test against that chance and if the test pass, the not yet generated sector gets a flag that tells the engine to generate a factory of a certain type the next time the sector gets generated.

 

sectors that already have a flag of this type are excluded from further checking or can be bounded to a maximum amount of station generating via the interaction menu in other ways, to avoid abusing the mechanic.

 

by tweaking the chance for the traders of not knowing about known generated stations one can still maintain the illusion of coherence in the game.