Maps

#What's this all about?# You can find Small Maps, Maps and Big Maps by destroying trees, enemy spawners, or worms. If you pick up a map, it will reveal unknown area in a certain radius around you, and be destroyed immediately.

Maps are made of burnable material. As of version 0.18.4, they may be damaged by fires or explosions: small or normal-sized maps will burn completely, big maps will leave a scorched map behind. Depending on the damage a map has taken (a random value), this will reveal the area in a radius of 25% to 90% of an intact big map.

Just collecting loot may become boring over time. Thus, since version 1.1.2 there is a setting that makes destroying trees risky. Biters and spitters dwell in living trees, worms prefer dead ones. They can't read, but according to their lore, dangerous creatures that dig up Nauvis, destroy their nests, fell trees en masse, raise noisy, ugly structures everywhere, and cover the planet with a thick veil of poisonous fumes will show up wherever there is a map. Therefore, they avoid trees where they've sensed a hidden map, but there is a slight chance that destroying a tree will rouse an enemy.

As of version 1.1.3, small maps have a new purpose: In the optional "Constant surveillance" mode, there is a chance that the force of a player picking up a small map will gain free radar coverage of the chunk where the map was found. This will only happen if picking up the small map didn't reveal a new area. Only one force can have constant surveillance of a chunk, so in multiplayer games you should be quick and pick up maps before your adversaries do! (Optionally, chunks placed under constant surveillance can also be associated with the player who picked up the small map instead of the player's force. In this case, if a player joins another force, constant surveillance of all chunks associated with that player will be moved from the old to the new force. If a player is permanently removed from the game, all chunks associated with that player will be inherited by the last force the player belonged to.)

#Help needed!# I've remade the map icons, but I'm no artist and the quality of the new icons isn't something I'd like to brag about. If you feel you could come up with some really nice icons, your contribution is very welcome! Of course, you will be credited for your work! :-)

FAQ

#Players#

I've mined/deconstructed thousands of trees but never found a map or a hidden enemy.##

You must destroy the trees: shoot them, explode them, burn them, roll them down with your tank, etc. Poisoning trees won't work, however. Also note that fire and explosions will consume small and medium maps, only fragments of big maps will remain.

What enemies will be hidden in trees?##

All kinds: the biters, spitters, and worms from the vanilla game as well as those created by other mods.

What size do the hidden enemies have?##

The maximum size of worms depends on the evolution factor, the maximum size of biters and spitters on the pollution in the chunk. That means that shooting down a dead tree at the beginning of the game could awaken a small worm, but shooting down a living tree before you've got some machines running (or at a place outside of the pollution cloud) will reveal no enemy at all. The actual size of a hidden enemy is randomly chosen: it will never exceed the maximum size, but it may be smaller.

#Modders# ##I've defined a unit/turret prototype. If you spawn it, you break my mod!## Just run this during script.on_init:

-- patterns: string or array of strings if remote.interfaces["MAPS"] and remote.interfaces["MAPS"]["dont_spawn_these_units"] then remote.call("MAPS", "dont_spawn_these_units", patterns) end

if remote.interfaces["MAPS"] and remote.interfaces["MAPS"]["dont_spawn_these_worms"] then remote.call("MAPS", "dont_spawn_these_worms", patterns) end

A pattern may be plain text or contain regular expressions that work with string.match(). If you do use regular expressions, don't forget to escape special characters! If you have just one pattern, you may pass it on as a string for simplicity. If you have several, it's more performant to pass on an array of strings containing all patterns.

Entities from these mods will be ignored per default:

• AAI Programmable Vehicles,
• Creative Mod,
• Kombat Drones, Mining Drones, Transport Drones,
• Updated Construction Drones,
• Will-o'-the-Wisps updated