[0.18.21] Groundcover occasionally makes resources hard to see

[MrBurd]

Not sure if this was changed in a recent version, but I'm currently having a hard time finding resources while building miners.
I can obviously see the ore spots themselves, but the edges aren't visible very well as the groundcover covers up most of it.
So for trying to cram as many miners on the ore spot as possible, it's annoying to have to switch to the map back and forth to figure out where the ore spots are.

See the red circle? Ore right there! Didn't see it at first glance.



For oil, it sometimes makes the resource spots nearly invisble; it took me a while before I found this one:



I'm aware I can turn off decoratives in my settings; if permanently, this makes the world look very empty, if temporary, I'd have to switch it off every time I want to work on ore spots (which is annoying.

I don't recall having this issue in earlier versions, so is this something that's changed in one of the later experimental versions?

[astroshak]

One way to be able to see everything clearly is to pave the area over, with stone brick, or some kind of concrete.

Regarding oil patches, the game will highlight (in green brackets) the spots upon which you can place the Pumpjack, so finding those should not be too difficult.

[ColonelSandersLite]

I haven't verified this myself but apparently the best way to find your oil goes like this - You want to take your shotgun and shoot at some food and up through the ground comes a bubblin crude. Oil that is, black gold, Texas tea.

[Koub]

One way to be able to see everything clearly is to pave the area over, with stone brick, or some kind of concrete.

Regarding oil patches, the game will highlight (in green brackets) the spots upon which you can place the Pumpjack, so finding those should not be too difficult.

Nonetheless, I do agree with OP. Paving an area (several times) shouldn't be mandatory to see the resources. The decoratives should be just what their name suggests : mere decoration to make the game more pleasing to watch, not hindrances that degrade the experience (even slightly).

[astroshak]

Not disagreeing in principle, just pointing out that there is a way to get a good visual on them.

[Fanabeam]

I'm running into this problem with crude oil. Been looking for a few hours now. I've tried the decorations off, and the covering huge areas with stone. Can't seem to locate one. Is there something on the map that at least can narrow down an area to search in?

I found it. I went into map editor to see what it looked like. Finally found two patches right on the outside edges of my map. Is it normally that rare?

[ColonelSandersLite]

Is there something on the map that at least can narrow down an area to search in?

On the map, oil appears as purple dots. When you mouse over them, it will say "Crude oil combined yield XXXXXX%"

Screenshots -

factorio map oil a.png (17.72 KiB) Viewed 2416 times

factorio map oil b.png (23.62 KiB) Viewed 2416 times

As for making sure you get pumpjacks on all of them, there's a couple of super useful blueprint strings in this redit thread that will help -
https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comme ... t_strings/

[5thHorseman]

When placing pumpjacks you get a green outline where you can place it. You can even see them through the thickest of trees little alone ground decoration.

When placing miners, anywhere you can place a miner it can get ore. So you don't need to "see" it, just drag a horizontal line of miners and stop when they stop placing. Or hover your miner around to make sure an area has no ore if you really must.

I'd have no problem with ground scatter of any kind not being on ore patches, though.