Factorio Forums

I was just wondering how people keep up with oil demand once their factory gets big. It feels like all my oil fields drop to 10% yield very quickly. This is with all the game settings set to normal.

I am having to travel very far now with a lot of pipe to get to new areas I can use pumpjacks on, and often there are only 2 or 1 pools to drain from. Time consuming since I can't use robots.

Should I leave the pumpjacks on the old oil wells even if they have practically dried up?

I'm transporting oil with trains and have 5 dried out fields and 5 very full fields (arround 300% yield). But I set the settings for all resources very high and common.

Too little oil? I seem to be getting tons of oilpatches everywhere even though I tuned their frequency and size down

moochoo wrote:Should I leave the pumpjacks on the old oil wells even if they have practically dried up?

That's what I do. Adding productivity/speed modules also helps.

Also, moving oil great distances using only pipes doesn't seem to be a good thing as throughput seems to drop significantly for some reason. Adding inline pumps helps a bit with that but not too much. Though I admit I haven't done much testing to see if oil gets any slower/faster into a barrel depending on distance. It could simply be an artifact of the way how fluid network works that gives me this feeling while actually the fluid flows just fine even in longer pipes.

moochoo wrote:Should I leave the pumpjacks on the old oil wells even if they have practically dried up?

Definately!!
Each 'depleted' oil well can deliver 360 units of oil per hour. A cluster of 6 'depleted' wells, equipped with Speed-3 modules will deliver ~4000 units per hour! Sure, you're not going to be powering your base with that but it's certainly enough to keep the plastic/batteries flowing until you can find more to refill your storage tanks.

If you're having trouble meeting your oil demands; try and run Productivity modules in your wells until they reach .1/sec. Then you should swap over to Speed modules to keep some oil flowing.
If you get really desperate for oil, I think you can squeeze up to .7/sec out of a single depleted well through the use of Beacons loaded with Speed Modules.

Psycho0124 wrote:

moochoo wrote:Should I leave the pumpjacks on the old oil wells even if they have practically dried up?

Definately!!
Each 'depleted' oil well can deliver 360 units of oil per hour. A cluster of 6 'depleted' wells, equipped with Speed-3 modules will deliver ~4000 units per hour! Sure, you're not going to be powering your base with that but it's certainly enough to keep the plastic/batteries flowing until you can find more to refill your storage tanks.

If you're having trouble meeting your oil demands; try and run Productivity modules in your wells until they reach .1/sec. Then you should swap over to Speed modules to keep some oil flowing.
If you get really desperate for oil, I think you can squeeze up to .7/sec out of a single depleted well through the use of Beacons loaded with Speed Modules.

Thanks for the advice, I think I need to invest in some speed modules then.

All you really have to do is set up a small 'smart' train station to cycle fresh oil barrels as a part of the fuel run.

Generally, you should plan your needs around depleted splats, rather than having to always run around looking for fresh surplus. The supply is always front-loaded, and doesn't last long.

After that, it's a matter of if you're from the "process everything rapidly, then store" or "store supply, process what you need" school

I've seen a few topics on this now. What are you guys donig in order to have a lack of oil?! lol...really don't find I need too much or there is always plenty around the map to use. Say 16-20 fields(which can usually be found in 3-4 patches) will get me from day1 all the way through to completion. With a stupid amount of oil left over.

I don't personally leave depleted jacks either as the gains yielded is just not worth it for me. I usually also build over the early ones as my base will have grown quite large by that point & will probably need that space.
Certainly not saying it's wrong but I feel expanding to a new patch of oil instead of pouring all the resources & additional power for speed3 modules is better for me.

I should write more on this but I have to go back to work!

Ric wrote:I've seen a few topics on this now. What are you guys donig in order to have a lack of oil?!

When you don't use solars and use oil to make solid fuel you'll need quite a bit of that stuff

Ric, some of us don't make the base just to win the game, some of us make huge bases. And i mean huge. But yeah, at that point, you have expanded so much that for me, it is not really an issue. But i have about 100-120 depleted oils right now.

How do I use beacons to speed up oil production?

You put beacons with speed modules in them next to the pump jacks. Since Oil is infinite, the increase in speed really is just that: an increase in speed (and power usage)

IS it applicable for other objects?

What if I place beacons next to the assembling machine?

How much beacons is it possible to place next to an oil pump?

DRBLN, This are very simple questions you are asking. I don't mind at all, but i think you will have better luck going to the wiki. There you have A LOT of information about this and almost anything else and all at your disposal without needing to ask here and wait for a good fellow to answer you.

As for your questions, yes, beacons are applicable to a lot other machines.
And yes, you can have all the beacons you like and they will add up for a machine if their radius touches it. You can see for yourself when your try it

Lol.

I've been playing this game over 1 year now.
And this is the first time I hear, that the beacons are useful.

Thank you!

MtNak wrote:Ric, some of us don't make the base just to win the game, some of us make huge bases. And i mean huge. But yeah, at that point, you have expanded so much that for me, it is not really an issue. But i have about 100-120 depleted oils right now.

Yeh, I can't play a single play-though much longer than 20-30hours or much beyond the point I can complete it. I find it incredibly boring being that powerful. One of my favorite parts is starting out when i'm weak as hell & really have to work for anything

I may build an even more epic base than I already have but that would just be rinse & repeat, which again, bores me to hell(as i have everything built already).

As someone else mentioned, I also go fully solar most of the time so this may another reason I don't use as much as you dirty oil guzzlers. Save the world and your ass, go solar!