How bad can a starting position get?

Have you ever had any worse starting positions?

Thankfully position 2 was on a small-but-not-that-small island with about 6 mex. At least it had enough space for building a base.

I while back I had a spawn that was about the same, save the island was smaller. Or another time the spawn had one mex but was completely surrounded by mountains I couldn't path over.

See, that's why randomization is bad. This is extreme situation but in general it always creates advantages and disadvantages

except in these cases, that's not necessarily a bad thing. Equality is good too, but randomness can make games more interesting, more challenging, and make for more competitive gameplay.

This is why boats need to be able to traverse through lava.

Meh, randomization is one option and equality is another. Either one gets boring honestly, best have both options to get all the use out of a game.

Also, that is obviously an ambiguous bug, considering spawn points are supposed to be somewhat fair ish.

Maybe spawnpoints also need to force lava into land with an algorithm for error so it doesn't look like a drawn circle. Or not allow lava worlds to be that restrictive and put a cap in actual biome generation on how much can actually be lava.

During a Commwars match on one of Cumsume's planets, one of use Realminions (I can't remember who) spawned with no mex, just near one spot. Tough to beat that, eh?

From this angle that planet seems to be mostly Lava. You do get to choose how much land is on a planet.

Let me fix that for you.

As long as the players have fairly balanced starting positions I think it is all right even if the 2 players/teams have different advantages and different disadvantages.

wtf? why's different races comming into this? this has nothing to do with the conversation, plus you're blissfully unaware and utterly wrong.

If only we could hoover all that molten metal goodness......

Actually....what about hovercraft? and planes? And why don't we have metal spots IN the lava?

Oops

Double oops

And we will have both options with playermade planetoids .. it will just take a while before that gets in

@igncom hasnt there be said something bout thermalplants and liquid metal extractors in the livestreams?
Hovercrafts will get in however a full set may not come till release but a after

Yeah as tatsujb said I'm not sure why you brought different races into discussion. Anyway there is difference between unfair early spawns and different races.
In case you have the same race and unfair spawns, one guy gets advantage early on and then they have the same tools available so they only can catch up by abusing your opponent's mistakes which means you have to play better which means you don't have fair chances.
In case you have different races and you have advantage in early game, usually reasonable game developers offset it with advantage for other race in mid or late game. So you catch up by using race's mechanics so you have fair chances. This is obviously assuming the game is somewhat balanced.

Just wait untill you can change the amount of metal depos, put it on near zero xD

Hovercraft could probably handle lava. Planes do not like an atmosphere full of dust and particulates. It quickly fills up the air intake and will kill them.

That's a tough one. Isn't lava supposed to be "dead planet" space? Like you nuke a planet half to hell, creating a huge crater and tons of lava?

I guess extractor points could keep the game going, but here's another option: wreckage. Instead of being an extractor point, the dead spot causes metal to boil to the surface. A flying unit can easily reclaim whatever bubbles up, but land structures remain impossible. That way land space keeps shrinking, metal stays high, and high speed units become more important to control terrain/end the game.

Planes of a war driving robot race of the future? Oh come on

Garbage is garbage, regardless of the era. Even if it's non lethal, it's not doing anything to help either.

The planes don't necessarily have an air intake, they could be a closed system. IT'S THE FUTURE!