How does world size affect story locations?

[larenzhaeli]

I'm preparing to start a new world and I wanted to make sure I'm understanding some settings correctly. If I keep the setting "story structures distance scaling" at its default, does this mean that the locations will generate their set distances from the spawn point no matter what size the world is?  I'd like to make a world that's 52k by 52k blocks, maaaybe 100k by 100k, and (if I'm also understanding world generation correctly) set spawn at the equator to ensure that I'll see a cold north and south pole similar to earth. 

Basically I'm trying to figure out if I'm going to end up accidentally making all the story content take place in the desert. Apologies if this question has already been addressed in another topic.

[MKMoose]

1 hour ago, larenzhaeli said:

If I keep the setting "story structures distance scaling" at its default, does this mean that the locations will generate their set distances from the spawn point no matter what size the world is?

Story structure distance scaling is independent from all other settings.

Note that if the world size is too small to spawn a structure, you may end up having to generate it manually - not necessarily a problem, but may be worth keeping in mind, especially if you've never experienced the story naturally yet. At 100% distance scaling you currently need 51k width and 25k length, and it will likely increase eventually, at some point in the future. Changing the scaling naturally changes the the world size required for natural generation proportionately.

 

1 hour ago, larenzhaeli said:

I'd like to make a world that's 52k by 52k blocks, maaaybe 100k by 100k, and (if I'm also understanding world generation correctly) set spawn at the equator to ensure that I'll see a cold north and south pole similar to earth. 

Keep in mind that this is not exactly possible in the vanilla game currently, not in a clean way at least, because the world center is always at your spawn location and not at the equator. Maybe some mods could help with that.

Unless you're looking for a very specific result, there's no harm in bumping the world size higher than you think you need - the default size is 1M x 1M, but most people don't go beyond the "hemisphere" that they spawn on either way. The parts of the world which haven't been generated yet do not impact performance, save size or anything of the sort in any practically meaningful ways.

 

1 hour ago, larenzhaeli said:

Basically I'm trying to figure out if I'm going to end up accidentally making all the story content take place in the desert.

Deserts are more or less equally common in all climates, if that definition includes gravel and ice as well. Even if you only consider sandy deserts, it's not really possible to fully prevent story structures from spawning there using standard methods as far as I know.

In terms of hot climates, though, which is what you may also be talking about, this primarily depends on story structure distance scaling and polar-equator distance.

Several story locations are placed near the latitude of the world spawn, so where they are placed depends almost exclusively on your starting climate.

For other structures, at 100% distance scaling and a temperate start, you would need 25k or less polar-equator distance to risk spawning structures in hot climates (they may equally spawn in icy climates), or 50k polar-equator distance to spawn structures in cool or warm climates. Reducing the scaling would naturally allow you to reduce the polar-equator distance as well.

Edited Sunday at 06:51 PM by MKMoose

[larenzhaeli]

Thank you, that's exactly what I needed! I do have a mod that allows me to set the latitude where I spawn, so I can force the world to use the equator as the world center. I didn't consider that story locations will still be added so maybe a bump in map size is in order. Mostly I'm making the map smaller because the limits will make me explore all regions of the map instead of making it easy to stick to where I'm comfortable.