RSO mod benefits?

[je11693]

Can someone explain what exactly the benefits of this mod are vs not using it? Is it just that it incentivises the use of trains in the late game, or are there early game benefits as well? (If patches of resources are more spread out, I would've thought the early game would be a pain since you would have to walk there to get them)

[orzelek]

Starting area resources are still there but next patches might be further then in normal game.
So you should aim to get trains from your starting resources and be able to fight biters.

Later on with RSO resources should be more spread out with faster increasing density further out you go.

When using lots of mods that add a lot of ores you might have much more searching for resources but you won't end up with map filled out with ores everywhere.

[je11693]

Starting area resources are still there but next patches might be further then in normal game.
So you should aim to get trains from your starting resources and be able to fight biters.

Later on with RSO resources should be more spread out with faster increasing density further out you go.

When using lots of mods that add a lot of ores you might have much more searching for resources but you won't end up with map filled out with ores everywhere.

Thank you. I don't think the mods I will use will add any ores (for this playthrough).

[Porter65]

I have the same naive question. Now, with 1.4 million downloads, I have no doubt it adds something, but I don't get what. I have been using the vanilla ore generator with very very low frequency and richness, and I definitively needs railways to get to new ore patches, which are very distant from each other. With ultra low richness, the first deposits I get are in the 100k range, and spotting one above half a million is a lucky find.

And that's with vanilla. So what RSO would do better here? Again, that's not a charge against the mod, it is the first download mod of Factorio, so I'm missing the obvious, but what it is?

[GrumpyJoe]

I have the same naive question. Now, with 1.4 million downloads, I have no doubt it adds something, but I don't get what. I have been using the vanilla ore generator with very very low frequency and richness, and I definitively needs railways to get to new ore patches, which are very distant from each other. With ultra low richness, the first deposits I get are in the 100k range, and spotting one above half a million is a lucky find.

And that's with vanilla. So what RSO would do better here? Again, that's not a charge against the mod, it is the first download mod of Factorio, so I'm missing the obvious, but what it is?

If you don't find the answer in the post above yours, this might help:

It's more OCD friendly if you wanna go big. There is "enough room" for a factory that you don't have to build over resources around the spawn.
You simply don't need to mine/delete them.
It's just a different curve of ore distribution.
Not a maths person myself, I'd call it less linear.

I'd say that it's something like "railworld settings enhanced"

It also gives mods that add ores something to get useful defaults from, since every major overhaul that asks for implementation seems to get it.

Personally I wouldn't use it for vanilla, railworld settings are imho fine for your daily factory.

[bormand]

As far as I remember, vanilla generator was quite different from what we have now. It generated little "puddles" of ore, a lot of them. That's why RSO mod became so popular those days.

Today it's not a requirement if you're happy with vanilla generator.

[Porter65]

Yes, I feel I'm happy, but I don't want to miss a Great Mod that so many people seems to be using. Somehow I wonder what I'm missing that makes it the most downloaded mod.

So a first mandatory use would be to play with extra ores, right? Vanilla don't handle that at all or well, distribution wise.

I always play my games with super rare ores, that force me to go very far to get the minerals I need, all the while with a lot of biters to push around. I'm not much of a super-efficient factory guy, more a guy that likes to feel I play against odd, a race between an hostile world and managing to leave it.

So perhaps RSO is not needed for me?

[Optera]

I use RSO for generating nice looking patches of angels infinite ores with normal finite ore on the outside.

[orzelek]

In general with current vanilla generation RSO might not be needed. I did not run any significant testing to compare it with vanilla after all the generation changes.

Once you get much more ores then in vanilla difference in ore generation will be more visible since vanilla is not that good at handling a lot of ores.

There are some other benefits that mainly matter in modded games or are not outright visible. Some examples:
- ore deconfliction (will try to move ore patches to minimize collisions)
- much more configurability (some of mod options allow you to set up really sparse ores, different ore richness in starting area then rest of the world)
- additional support for Angels Infinite ores like Optera mentioned

In general - if you are content with vanilla presets like Railworld then you don't need RSO.