Fulgoran Oil Processing Reimagined

[Tohim]

TL;DR

I think Fulgora's oil collection/processing, as it stands, is far too simple and makes little thematical sense.

What ?

Think about it:

How in the world are you getting clean, pre-refined petroleum products of any kind from this centuries-old polluted, sandy sludge?
That's where my idea comes in: Tar. Another new resource, exclusive to Fulgora. Too viscous & sticky to flow through regular pumps/pipes, it must be harvested via a new, modified offshore pump-type building(think something like the "Mud Collector" , or whatever it was called, from Seablock ).
Within this new building Tar is collected & also combined with Barrels (Yes, I want this process to require barrels. Sue me!) to create Tar Barrels, which are then unloaded & transported throughout the player's factory, in the same way as other raw materials like Scrap or Ore.
From there, the idea is mostly ambiguous; You'd probably then take the Tar Barrels to an Oil Refinery building to be separated into various oil products, along with a couple of wildcard waste/byproduct materials like Stone or Ice(maybe even a bit of Holmium ore, too?), and of course, the Barrels to be returned & reused. (Or recycled back into steel, if that's your preferred style )
One thing is certain, though: This whole idea revolves around the basic concept of Tar being the fluid-focused analog to Scrap; A new resource harvested in a familiar way, but refined in a new, top-down focused manner instead.

Why ?

I know this will probably be taken as a very controversial idea. That said, Fulgora as a whole is a place born of extreme ideas, so I want to get it out anyway. I also know it may sound like too much added complexity to an already very new & different planet, but I assure you, the main idea & motivation behind this suggestion is simple: The opportunity for another source of great novelty, in a place of which's spirit already revolves around such novelty so greatly, yet is disrupted by unusual simplicity in a bothersome, immersion-breaking way, as I have previously discussed. Also, as previously mentioned, it is an idea that plays nicely into Fulgora's "Trash-to-Treasure"-focused industrial environment. By extension it even allows for more planet-exclusive qualities like Fulgora potentially being the system's most efficient source of Oil Products, even if at the added cost of Tar Barrels requiring off-world exportation to be refined en masse. It's something in a similar vein to Vulcanus being the new most efficient source of common metals, even if at the cost of the player's foundries being built amongst it's difficult terrain OR shipping Calcite off-world to be used on Nauvis Instead. All in all, even if not a flawless idea, I believe it is one worth considering with it's potential to maximize Fulgora's hallmark qualities of novelty & interest, along with reinforcing the Expansion's core values of strengths & weaknesses between planets overall.

[CyberCider]

I, for one, think the relative simplicity of oil processing is a nice complement to the scrap processing puzzle. The planet already has its central challenge. And remember that planets, besides adding new challenges, also simplify other areas of the game, to avoid repetition. For example, Vulcanus gives players easy access to ready-made sulfuric acid.

And I think “repetition” is really the biggest flaw of this suggestion, more than anything else. You put something in an oil refinery, and oil products come out. People already get tired of this in 1.1, the last thing the developers want is to make players do it four times over. Fulgora skipping refineries and reducing oil processing to cracking only is a nice breath of fresh air, that lets players focus on the planet’s main new content.

To be honest, I do quite like the barrel idea, it’s novel and doesn’t feel forced, and would provide a nice logistics puzzle. It feels like it could fit into the game, but again, not here. And at first I liked your idea of sending tar barrels to other planets, until I remembered… Oil is literally an infinite resource . I think it’s probably the last thing people would want to spend rocket parts on.

[pleegwat]

I like it from a realism standpoint, but it might be better suited to a 'hard mode' mod.