Infinite Resources such as Oil Spots have rather intransparent Map Tooltips

[GregoriusT]

Whenever I go for more Oil, I usually dont think of how much I can get off the Oil Spots, because in the end it is always the same 2 Oil per second (yes they can spawn with lower but when does that ever happen apart from starting areas).

And when I hover with a Pumpjack over an Oil Spot (or with a Miner over a modded Infinite Spot) I actually get said X/sec Rating. But how long does it last? Well until it decreases to some minimum Value. It is essentially a starting Bonus and not the long term data you would need to know about Infinite Resources.

Even more confusing is the rating displayed on the Map. Having an Oil Field that has over 9000 Percent doesn't mean anything in the long term. What would actually be useful is knowing how many of the Infinite Spots there are, and what they would give you per square once they are at their lowest rating, if we were to ignore overlapping or higher Tier Miners/Pumpjacks.

I know very well that those Percentages on the Map display accurately what total Oil you get in the beginning, but those percentages change constantly until they hit rock bottom, giving you no useful Information whatsoever.

Lets demonstrate how confusing the Percentage Display on the Maps really is, especially for new Players and everyone who isn't a Veteran or Math Genius.

Screenshot_20200218_072729.png (7.69 KiB) Viewed 966 times

So this Oil Field has 834%. After some very manual counting I see 11 Oil Spots. Long term that means about 22 Oil per Second until the whole thing gets moduled and beaconed up with additional mining productivity being researched.

How do I get from this out of the World percentage to how much Oil I will be getting? Well it is 83.4 Oil per Second. Just add a decimal point to the number really if you happen to look it up in the Wiki or so (it is way hard to discover that information ingame by the way, unless you happen to have one singular lonely Oil Spot or that random stupid stray Spot that is slightly too far away from the group to be counted by the Map as part of it).

Except when the Percentage is above 1000% per Spot, then the number becomes entirely meaningless as the Pumpjacks will cap out and summing them up will add imprecision and false hope of highest yields. (ofcourse not important early on, since there are no such spots close to the spawn area).

And I am not even going into Infinite Ore Spots, where there is sometimes millions of Percents and overlapping Miners! (I don't want this to be more than 70% Rant)

-----

Here is what I would change: Give people a way to see Long Term yields of Oil Fields on the Map, and give an actual Count of Oil Spots when hovering over them, so you know how many Pumpjacks you can use, before going there. Sure it can still be a percentage, but at least split up Long Term and Current Yield.

The Tooltip for the screenshot could be "Crude oil (11) combined yield 220+614%", or if we were to ignore Mods with better Pumpjacks (which we shouldn't) "Crude oil (11) combined yield 22+61.4 Oil/s" could work too. The word "combined" could even be left out since the "(11)" is already implying grouped results!

This way you can instantly see how many Refineries and Pumpjacks you need, and if there is Spots that are lower than 20% those would be taken into account too without having to hover over every single Oil Spot to look if it is lower than 20% or not.

I feel like this small change would make discoverability and learning the Oil Game much easier than the current Tooltip, which encourages flat out ignoring the yields altogether and eyeballing the amount of required Refineries, instead of going "hey I get this much Oil, so i need this many Refineries!" or a "I need this many Oil Percent to run my current Refinery in the long term, so I will pick Oil Field A over Oil Field B" when expanding the Outposts!

And Pumpjacks should also list the "Rock Bottom" Value of their Output in their Tooltip, so you can actually calculate constant and non-fluctuating Results in beaconed Setups.

-----

So what do you all think? I would like some input from Veterans on this too, since I would like to see more facets of this, and if it would cause any Issues to add my Suggestion. ^^

[Khagan]

Whenever I go for more Oil, I usually dont think of how much I can get off the Oil Spots, because in the end it is always the same 2 Oil per second (yes they can spawn with lower but when does that ever happen apart from starting areas).

It's the other way round: 2/s is the minimum, not the maximum. So if you see an unexploited oil patch with 5000% production, you know that the long term yield is 1000%.

Nevertheless, you are right that there is information that should be accessible and is not. I like to start with a couple of Efficiency 1 modules in each pumpjack, and then switch to both internal and beaconed speed modules once the well is substantially depleted. But right now there is no way of knowing the original (or almost equivalently, the final) production level, so to know how depleted a well is you have to remember its initial level. I would have suggested showing the rate in the pumpjack tooltip as current/original; your suggestion of final+(current-final) also works.

[GregoriusT]

It's the other way round: 2/s is the minimum, not the maximum. So if you see an unexploited oil patch with 5000% production, you know that the long term yield is 1000%.

Weird, I guess I never got large enough Oil Spots so far to have it stop somewhere above 2/s, but now that I have read the Wiki yet again on this (this time the Oil Field instead of the Pumpjack Article), yeah this makes even less sense.

Sure I can just assume "% divided by 5 is minimum", which will help with high yield lategame Oil Spots, but the closeby Oil Spots where you actually have to manage Resources (since no Megabase yet) instead of spamming everything down do not have this easy divide by 5 Rule.

At least this gives meaning to actually going for higher Numbers on infinite Resources as opposed to just checking how much space you have to place down Harvesting Facilities.