# Error when choosing cabin or LMOE as starting location

**URL:** <https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/error-when-choosing-cabin-or-lmoe-as-starting-location/8532>\
**Category:** The Garage\
**Created:** [January 6, 2015, 6:55pm UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/error-when-choosing-cabin-or-lmoe-as-starting-location/8532 "2015-01-06T18:55:55Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 7\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/uploads/cataclysmdda/original/1X/21b5d044e8473b25d0bf905d60477e25f6fbe0cf.png) [@system](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/system)\
**Post date:** [January 6, 2015, 6:55pm UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/error-when-choosing-cabin-or-lmoe-as-starting-location/8532/1 "2015-01-06T18:55:55Z")

</div>

There’s a random chance that upon choosing a new game with said locations (and after having confirmed your character creation), the screen goes black with the following message:  
DEBUG: Could not find starting overmap terrain cabin  
followed by  
DEBUG: Could not find starting place for character  
after that, you start the game either in an open field or inside a forest.

I started a new game 20 times in each location, and the above error resulted 6 times when choosing the cabin. It is less frequent with LMOE (only 2) but still happens since they usually spawn close to forests as well.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![deadmerits](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.cataclysmdda.org/deadmerits/32/19_2.png) [@deadmerits](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/deadmerits)\
**Post date:** [January 6, 2015, 9:11pm UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/error-when-choosing-cabin-or-lmoe-as-starting-location/8532/2 "2015-01-06T21:11:00Z")

</div>

What city size are you using? Sometimes even with the default 4 it can still not have a suitable location that you selected available.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/uploads/cataclysmdda/original/1X/21b5d044e8473b25d0bf905d60477e25f6fbe0cf.png) [@system](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/system)\
**Post date:** [January 6, 2015, 9:24pm UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/error-when-choosing-cabin-or-lmoe-as-starting-location/8532/3 "2015-01-06T21:24:25Z")

</div>

Yes, I am using 4 as city size.  
However, I always spawned in the middle of nowhere, with no town in sight. Only once I managed to see 4 houses at the egde of the overmap, but that’s it.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![KA101](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/278dde/32.png) [@KA101](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/KA101)\
**Post date:** [January 6, 2015, 11:13pm UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/error-when-choosing-cabin-or-lmoe-as-starting-location/8532/4 "2015-01-06T23:13:21Z")

</div>

It’s not uncommon to have a rare structure not generate on the starting overmap; known issue with random mapgen. This is an issue but a comparatively minor one, and if I had to fix it NOW I’d remove the option to start in an LMOE or cabin.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![ramesesniblet](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ce73a5/32.png) [@ramesesniblet](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/ramesesniblet)\
**Post date:** [January 7, 2015, 12:07am UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/error-when-choosing-cabin-or-lmoe-as-starting-location/8532/5 "2015-01-07T00:07:52Z")

</div>

It’s not just restricted to LMOE or cabin, sometimes as mall start, or even cop/firefighter start. Generating new worlds until a valid spawn happens isn’t such a big deal, but it would be nice if worlds had a way of creating at least one of these locations, rather than removing them or ignoring the problem.

For those suffering the same problem: use the save template option and generate a few worlds until it works.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![vache](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/ea666f/32.png) [@vache](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/vache)\
**Post date:** [January 7, 2015, 6:08am UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/error-when-choosing-cabin-or-lmoe-as-starting-location/8532/6 "2015-01-07T06:08:06Z")

</div>

A solution might be to change the minimum occurrences in overmap\_specials.json to require at least one cabin/LMOE. These occurrences were pulled from the initial specials implementation and are not really balanced against the set of specials that exist now.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Snaaty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e495f1/32.png) [@Snaaty](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/Snaaty)\
**Post date:** [January 8, 2015, 11:07am UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/error-when-choosing-cabin-or-lmoe-as-starting-location/8532/7 "2015-01-08T11:07:19Z")

</div>

Personally, I’d like to see a change in mapgen (no idea how to that, sigh) that makes it more likely for towns to have 1 of every building rather than 4 gun shops or so.

Random generation is good, but it also leads to sometimes really strange town layouts, imo. If there was some mechanism that checked if certain real-life “common” buildings like fire stations, doctor’s office, are not at all there in your big town, to place one of them instead of the eleventh grocery store.