Feature: tweaks to restore caving

[BryceBubbles]

Firstly thanks for this mod, it's great! I really like the addition of the surface samples and prospecting for large deposits. However, with default configs the caves are now very bare, which strongly disincentivizes caving. In a heavily modded game with other mechanics this might be exactly what's needed, but in a more vanilla setting it feels a little off.

So I played around with overriding ores_to_remove.json in order to add the smaller vanilla ore deposits back in. This fixes the caving issue a bit, but having more ores around makes the prospecting pick show lots of "in this area" messages, which can take quite some time to animate in and out.

A fix for this could be to have a config option that disables the prospectChunk function that runs when nothing is found within range. Even without more exposed ores the chunk search feels a little OP, as well as being a little confusing in the toasts list. Another option could be for the secondary search area to have a diameter and range config, so it can be set to a smaller area?

I also played with increasing the NUMBER_CLUSTERS_PER_CHUNK and decreasing CHUNK_SKIP_CHANCE etc instead of adding vanilla ores back in. While this can create more exposed ores, it adds too many samples on the surface. Decreasing MAX_SAMPLES_PER_CHUNK helps, but as samples are distributed around a deposit, less samples make it harder to work out exactly where the deposit is. Also, increasing the amount of clusters would require making deposits smaller in order to balance things again, which then breaks the idea of prospecting for larger deposits. So it's not ideal.

I also tried increasing the "spread" of deposits like iron/gold/copper to be more like redstone/coal, and this helps a little, but not enough.

So I'm wondering if a different solution might be to have samples generate in caves somehow? Perhaps they try and generate in any air block within a configurable radius around the deposit? Or maybe just above or below? This could be especially good for deepslate level deposits, which perhaps wouldn't logically have samples on the surface?

Thanks

[mrsterner]

So I'm wondering if a different solution might be to have samples generate in caves somehow? Perhaps they try and generate in any air block within a configurable radius around the deposit? Or maybe just above or below? This could be especially good for deepslate level deposits, which perhaps wouldn't logically have samples on the surface?

Im using the heightmap to place the samples in dimensions without roof, to save on performance, so making it it generate in caves will decrease its worldgen efficiency. ill add a config for prospectChunk to be disabled

[mrsterner]

I can also add a config for forcing samples to be placed on first valid block above deposit, at a cost of performance

[Cool-dsi]

I don't want to sound naive or anything, but where is the config for disabling the prospectChunk function? Wanting to test this for balancing on my playthrough on the Aged modpack and don't want to spend too much time mining, thanks.

[mrsterner]

No theres no way to disable it

[Cool-dsi]

Ahh ok, thanks for the clarification