Disclaimer: I have no clue what i’m saying and could be saying complete garbage as I only play the game and have no clue about the code. I’m also just dumb.
So it has gotten to the point where even playing with only the cataclysm++ mod and Pk mod makes it so that the mandatory overmap special count goes to 78. Two mods I personally couldn’t play cataclysm without and consider necessary(probably others that also play with these mods)((everyone should)). Now I am here to ask if there is a way to possibly fix this without butchering the spawning of some buildings.
Here comes my clueless suggestion:
Is there a way to somehow increase the overall size of the overmap so that the mandatory count could at least be raised to fit in a few more buildings. Just as to retain the feeling of the vanilla spawning and spacing of all the possible locations but as to include the added buildings from these mods. I’m sure a sacrifice would have to be made somewhere along the line but as long as it doesn’t change the feel of the game as it was intended. I’m open to possible solutions but I am a potato and would need some explanation.
Sorry if everything I said was complete blasphemy and total nonsense. I just want to be able to spawn all muh buildings without reducing all these numbers and breaking the vanilla feel Q_Q. I want to have my cake and eat it too 
Increasing overmap size would require recompiling the game and changing some important settings. Not doable at the moment.
However it is possible and planned to increase the density of special spawns. That hard limit exists because the function that spawns specials is quite old and hasn’t been fully reworked yet. It only spawns at most one special in a big block (I think 9x9).
What you can do as a temporary work around is go into the overmap specials of each of the mods and adjust the spawn density of the specials. I believe, but don’t take my word on it, that changing the rate from 0 (MUST have a chance of spawning in every tile) to a different value (IE one that will cause one to spawn in every 10, or 20, or 100 map tiles) should help correct the error.
Or just blacklist some of the more “worthless” buildings. Like offices. And radio stations. And abandoned storefronts. And so on. Whatever you deem to be less of a priority.
I usually use abandoned storefronts as steel mines m’self. All those racks can supply a small forging program. Try the goo pits.
Discussion from Discord (kevin the alarm clock is me for… reasons)
[1:43 PM] kevin the alarm clock: the lines with "occurrences" look like
"occurrences" : [1, 1],
[1:43 PM] kevin the alarm clock: that first number is the important one
[1:43 PM] kevin the alarm clock: that number is the number of mandatory instances of that special
[1:48 PM] kevin the alarm clock: for example, Urban Development is adding 40 buildings as mandatory, but NONE of those are the target of a mission
[1:49 PM] kevin the alarm clock: that's literally half of the problem
[1:50 PM] kevin the alarm clock: if you go through and change those lines to be
"occurrences" : [0, x],
where x is whatever is there now, it should just start working
[1:51 PM] kevin the alarm clock: the only exception to this kind of thing is when a special is a target of a mission, so you have to have one otherwise mission creation will fail
[1:52 PM] kevin the alarm clock: I think what we are going to do is remove the ability to set that minimum, and instead build a list of mandatory specials by enumerating them in the missions themselves
[1:54 PM] Curt: I won't be fiddling with any of the code myself, but good to know a solution is in the pipeline. Thanks, man.
[1:55 PM] kevin the alarm clock: meanwhile just set a bunch of those numbers to 0 and it'll start working
[1:55 PM] Curt: 
[1:56 PM] kevin the alarm clock: I'd start with Urban Development, More Locations, More Buildings and Extended Buildings
[1:56 PM] kevin the alarm clock: I'm 99% sure those don't have missions targeting them
TL;DR Find the “occurrecnces” fields, and change the first of the two numbers to 0, and it should resolve your issue.
Target the “more buildings” mods, since they cause most of the problem.
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