Give pumpjacks mining range!

[Avezo]

Recently I were setting up an outpost with over 100 pumpjacks...

This cannot be automated with bots and blueprints like normal mining outposts with the same array of miners everytime.
Each pumpjack needs to be put manually.
Then you need to play around with pipe sphagetti (over 100 pumpjacks, remember).
Ore mining outposts are nothing like that.
It's much more tedious than it should be.

So I came up with a solution: Give pumpjacks a 'mining range' making them pump without any penalty from all nearby oil patches.

Maybe even allow them to pump from entire oil field, but such thing probably should have some penalty.

[Zavian]

I think that would lead to people spamming pumpjacks, to get 3-4 pumpjacks on a well. An alternative suggestion is to make the wells always conform to a know grid. eg wells always 8 tiles apart both horizontally and vertically. that way you could use a blueprint to place the mumpjacks the same way you can use a blueprint to place miners. (At the minor cost of potentially using a few extra pipes).

[Avezo]

But that's not a problem if people spam multiple pumpjacks like that, you can already use multiple ore miners over a single ore tile. It will be just depleted faster, they would need to get divided pumping ratio after depletion though.

As for the oil grid idea, I wouldn't really like the look of such oil fields but that's a solution too.

[Zavian]

Oil patches don't deplete the same way mineral patches do.

[Tekky]

I disagree with the suggestions of additional mining range and with the suggestion of having oil fields in a fixed grid.

If the amount of work to set up pumpjacks is too much, then the best solution would be to simply reduce the number of oil fields and, in order to compensate, make them yield more oil. This has been done before in a previous patch and can easily be done again.

[ManaUser]

It would probably require some changes to the mechanics, but actually that makes alot of sense. Having very specific places wells have to be build is kind of weird.

[Sad_Brother]

Is it hard to use Pumpjack as a brush? No.
Sphagetti would be easier if Pumpjack would be allowed to output any corner and even be chained on the same pipe.
What's left? Power coverage. That is easy enough as a brush.

Want blueprinted oil gathering? You need adaptive blueprint tech. But that is another story.

[bobucles]

I think what you're REALLY looking for is an option to make pumpjack placement a bit more magnetic, so when you place over a single viable tile it automatically glues the pumpjack to the proper position. Oil patches do not overlap (That was a pretty early patch) so that means every tile of the patch is going to fit the same pump jack.

[Tekky]

I think what you're REALLY looking for is an option to make pumpjack placement a bit more magnetic, so when you place over a single viable tile it automatically glues the pumpjack to the proper position.

Most of the work involved in setting up pumpjacks is not the actual placement of the pumpjacks, but rather connecting them with (underground) pipes. Therefore, in my opinion, your suggestion does not solve the main problem.

[golfmiketango]

I drink your milkshake!

[Avezo]

I drink your milkshake!

"This video is unavailable"

[golfmiketango]

I drink your milkshake!

"This video is unavailable"

Really? Weird, it W4M. What country you in? I'm in the US.

[golfmiketango]

I drink your milkshake!

"This video is unavailable"

Try this one (better timing of clip anyhow): https://youtu.be/a5d9BrLN5K4

[Slayn25]

I drink your milkshake!

haha thank you

[Slayn25]

I like the mining range for oil pump idea as OP. It fits well and solves the automation problem.

[olafthecat]

WTF?!
I don't sound, but you could easily see what he is saying.
What is this from, PLS...
Watch This...

[Kyralessa]

I think what you're REALLY looking for is an option to make pumpjack placement a bit more magnetic, so when you place over a single viable tile it automatically glues the pumpjack to the proper position. Oil patches do not overlap (That was a pretty early patch) so that means every tile of the patch is going to fit the same pump jack.

I don't know if it's what that person was looking for, but I think that would be cool. If a pumpjack automatically snapped to the closest reachable oil patch that didn't already have a pumpjack, that would take some of the tedium out of setting up new oil fields.

Given that a pumpjack already can't be placed anywhere except on an oil patch, why not have it snap to them automatically?

[eradicator]

Pumpjacks actually have a range internally. It just happens to be smaller than the jack itself. Some mods make it larger than the pumpjack but this results in being able to build more than one pumpjack per oil patch, essentially multiplying output for depleted patches. So that approach would need some weird/unintuitive "occupied" functionality so that only one jack per patch can extract oil.
You could also try to be more "realistic" and mark a whole area as "there's an oil field below this area", and allow placing jacks anywhere in that area. But then it's exactly like all other ore gameplay wise.

From a modders perspective the only thing i can think of would be creating a selection-tool that automatically puts pumpjack ghosts on every oil patch in the marked area. Essentially a "dynamic blueprint" for pumpjacks. You'd still have to do the piping, though it should be possible to make pumpjacks "push through" capable.

[darkfrei]

From a modders perspective the only thing i can think of would be creating a selection-tool that automatically puts pumpjack ghosts on every oil patch in the marked area. Essentially a "dynamic blueprint" for pumpjacks. You'd still have to do the piping, though it should be possible to make pumpjacks "push through" capable.

It's relative easy to implement. Automatic pumpjack placement and spam pipes about them.