0.15 Oil Rebalancing - Too Far?

[utoxin]

I've been playing a lot of 0.15, and I'd played a lot of 0.14 as well. While I LOVE most of the changes in 0.15, I think they may have re-balanced oil wells too far in the productivity direction. I've been playing a rail world with expensive recipes and a 2x research multiplier. I'm nearly up to launching a rocket, and still running fairly comfortably on my starting area oil wells. All while consuming multiple patches of iron and copper, at a ridiculous rate.

In my opinion, the best solution is probably to change the 'minimum' output on a well back to 10% of initial (with a 10% absolute minimum), instead of the 20% it's at now. That way you still get the good initial production, but it does eventually reach much lower output, and require you to start exploiting other wells sooner.

Am I the only one to experience this? I haven't seen anyone else complain about the problem, so maybe it's just me.

[AcolyteOfRocket]

I just finished my game, all resources were -2+1+1, recipes expensive x1 and I had very little starting oil. But once I got an outpost onto a moderately sized nearby oil patch it never ran out once I had beaconed it a bit (about 1 beacon per well). I did get more oil later on too.

So, yes, oil does seem rather more plentiful, and my iron and copper were running out quicker too. Nothing that balancing with the start menu can't fix, but a little less oil wouldn't hurt.

[Gus_Smedstad]

I've been playing a game with Default settings but using the Resource Spawner Overhaul mod, and I'm chronically short of oil. I've exhausted my starting oil and two additional sites, I'm running 4 oil refineries converting coal to oil, and I only have 30% of the rocket fuel I need for the rocket, and none left over for the satellite. My setup for creating science packs is eating all my oil via demand for plastic and sulfuric acid, with very little left over for solid fuel production to turn into rocket fuel. I'm currently looking in to clearing the biters off a 3rd remote site.

So no, I'm not finding oil overly plentiful, at least with the RSO.

[utoxin]

Interesting that you're also using RSO. I am as well, but I've checked some vanilla worlds, and seen similar richness oil patches, at least for the starting wells, so I didn't consider it relevant to the discussion. I wonder if the reason me and AcolyteOfRocket don't have problems is the expensive recipes. We're being constrained more by copper and iron, and so we're not hitting the bottleneck on oil.

[Nich]

I feel like oil has lasted a long time but I quite enjoyed it. I am just starting to set up my mall for building a mega base and science is pretty much done but I am already on the third oil patch. In addition the patches in my default setting were SMALL. 5-6 oil rigs per patch. I was even desperate enough to set up rigs on solo patches in the wild.

[zachyattacky]

I like that it doesn't currently force you to use beacons/speed modules. It's nice to have options to just expand a little further, and save your power grid.

[Serenity]

I have a ridiculous amount of oil wells nearby. Even so I'm having plenty of crude even when using only a small number of pumpjacks. A few of my initial wells ran low by now, but I haven't had to add much capacity. So there may be something to this. In previous games I've had to add a lot more pumpjacks.

I never liked they you were forced to use a massive amount of speed modules and beacons to keep things going. That always seemed like a horrible game mechanic. But not having to get new oil wells is not good either.

[Selvek]

I'm on the railworld preset (generated immediately after 0.15 came out, I believe they slightly tweaked the railworld settings a couple days later).

I've got a large oil spawn (maybe 15 patches) in my starting area. So far, I haven't even bothered to put pumpjacks on more than maybe 4 of them. My original copper and iron patches are long since history.

Granted, I'm not rushing to rocket, I've been focusing on getting set up for a large scale train system which means lots of steel for rails and stuff, and I haven't started making high-tech science packs yet. But yeah, compared to my first (0.13/0.14) game where I ran a rail miles outward so I could finally get to an oil deposit with THREE oil patches, this is feeling... umm... pretty abundant.

[utoxin]

It sounds like my experience is relatively common. I still like my proposed solution. Don't touch the current starting output, spawn rate, or depletion rates. Just change the 20% in the 'minimum' calculation to 10%. Results in a lower final output, but still has the higher output initially, and with the new depletion rates, it is still useful for a lot longer than they used to be before you have to supplement with another outpost.

[Kelderek]

Don't forget to factor in the randomness of map generation. Those of you who feel oil was too plentiful, how many new maps have you played since 0.15 came out?

Oil availability had been a fairly common complaint here on the forums, so I can see why they tweaked the numbers to be higher. You always have the ability to change the options down if it suits your play style to have oil be more scarce or you can run a mod like RSO.

[Mehve]

It feels plentiful for the first rocket, but I think a big factor is the fact that plastic's petroleum cost was also dropped by a 1/3. If any changes were made, I'd rather see the initial amount shrunk, rather then the minimum 20% value.

[utoxin]

Don't forget to factor in the randomness of map generation. Those of you who feel oil was too plentiful, how many new maps have you played since 0.15 came out?

Oil availability had been a fairly common complaint here on the forums, so I can see why they tweaked the numbers to be higher. You always have the ability to change the options down if it suits your play style to have oil be more scarce or you can run a mod like RSO.

That's part of why I say don't touch most of the changes they made. I've played maps before where oil was a HUGE problem. And I've generated a lot (20-30 or more) of new worlds in the current generator, trying to find a start I liked. All of them had MUCH better initial oil available than I've ever had before. That combined with the halved rate of depletion means that even a couple wells will support a base for a lot longer before you have to start finding more.

[utoxin]

Another possible solution, since at least a few of us who have had 'too much' oil have been playing expensive recipes, is to raise the oil costs of one or two of the oil products (when using expensive recipes), so that they cost more, just like the metals do. Maybe Plastic and Sulphur? Or even just the base processing recipes.

[saturn7]

Oil used to be a certain bottleneck for me at most part of the game, and with oil sites not really blueprintable, tedious to set up. I'm glad they increased the productivity and minimum output significantly.

[Vykromod]

I disagree with the OP. Right now, oil is fine.

It all depends on the play style. I never use solars - I always go full solid fuel power. Hence, I'm using huge amounts of oil.

On my current world, I didn't reach the rocket yet, I've deployed several oil extraction outposts and I'm still racing against my oil consumption.

[ps666]

No

[Finndibaenn]

FWIW, i'm running a Marathon game, and have had a BIG oil field nearby my base (20 pumps, combined yield is still 1270%) and 2 smaller (6/4 pumps) deposits which i had settled on before finding the big one.

My whole base runs on solid fuel (furnaces, 74 steam engines even though i have about 350 solar panels).

I appreciate oil is plentiful, it's enough to have to be expanding often for copper/iron

[NorwegianBlue]

Agree with OP.

About 15 wells was enough for 3 rockets, all research + 4x infinite ones.

I keep thinking "i'm gonna run out of oil soon... but then check and no... everything's fine".

If anything, I keep running out of heavy oil because i have too much of everything else and those tanks are full.

[FunMaker]

My impression is totally different to other experiences:

Rail World + Maximum richeness on all resources

I had 7 Oil wells in my starting area. That lastet until i started blue circuits.
I have explored some area and the only 2 additional oil spots i have found consisted of 2 and 3 wells (might be random bad luck).
So i have to use Coal liquification. and if i only find oil spots with < 4 wells i would just ignore them because it is too few..
Maybe my impression differs because i play 2-10 trains and in my case 4 wells would fill up a train in 3-4 hours which is just ridiculous slow to me...

[Aeternus]

Started a rail world a while ago as well... had an idiotic 22 oil patches on the peninsula I started on, which even at endgame haven't run out yet - even when I was tapping them constantly for Solid Fuel before I got nuclear power going. Within range were 2 additional oil fields with 12 and 14 patches each. Also had a lucky roll that a little ways north of my starting point there was a huge 12M iron ore field. So no early iron troubles once there was a mining outpost there. Uranium is the isue in my case, I've got many tiny fields of <100k dotted here and there, but nothing big enough for a fullsized train station.. It seems to be fairly random - you sometimes have resource shortages in worlds and have to hunt for more. There's no shame in pausing research entirely and focusing fully on getting a few more mining outposts running if you have to make that choice. Stable resource flow is crucial.