0.15 Oil Rebalancing - Too Far?

[ftbreizhbugs]

I've started a tweaked railworld in 0.15, and honestly the first setting i tweaked was to lower the oil patch size to medium ( down from big). Most of the oil patch are around 5/6 wells, however i have some that are 10+ but quite far away...

But i think that its more the original setting of the map that need a tweak that the oil flow that need to be nerfed... And even before 0.15, i nerver choose the same setting for oil than the other resources. That s usually why when i create a new game, i immediatly save and use console command to uncover around 1000 tiles around the starting location to see what the map settings have generated ,checking each type of ressources patch if their placement/size are ok!

Its "easy" to go to the rocket whatever map settings you choose, but for a long term pleasure, map settings are very very important and also very easy to fuck up!

[cpy]

Oil is fine now.

[Deadly-Bagel]

I only changed the oil field size in the Rail World preset to Small (not Very Small) and if it wasn't already I put the richness at maximum. I got 2 wells about 400 tiles away. Radars have scanned at max range (or very close to) and I still haven't found any more =/

On the other hand my original 0.15 playthrough (default Rail World settings) I got about 50 wells in my starting area, this is why I set the size smaller because I felt it was too many. Feh.

[Vxsote]

My current game is vanilla on all default settings. I've launched about 50 rockets so far. I have an oil field near my starting location, and one remote outpost with oil. The remote outpost has 1 big (~20ish wells) oil field plus two smaller fields within pipeline distance, and I just recently bothered putting pumpjacks on the second small field there. I'm still only using a single train with a single fluid wagon to bring all the oil I need from the remote outpost to my base. I've also done zero coal liquefaction, and only recently exhausted the coal in my starting area (2 separate patches).

As far as availability for future expansion, there are what seem like a reasonable number of small oil patches around the map that I've revealed so far. The big oil patches are much more rare (perhaps I got lucky to start), but there is a 10,000%+ field that I already have rail near (that I placed in my quest for more copper). Coal, on the other hand, I'm practically tripping over everywhere. I have numerous patches in the 1-4M size within belt distance of my existing copper/iron outposts but I just haven't had a reason to put drills on them, and tons more in range as I am expanding.

So, my feeling is that the availability of oil (and coal) far exceeds my needs. While it's nice not to be perpetually lacking and chasing new sources of oil as in the past, I certainly don't think I would call it balanced. On the other hand, I'm not sure it's a problem, either.

[Frightning]

I found even in my last 0.14 game (where I finally researched everything and got the tech achievement) that once I had 2 decent sized oil patches (about 35 pumpjacks in all, with Speed module 2s in them now) I am overproducing oil still, even after both patches have been depleted (I have been playing that save for about 63 hours now). I also haven't been using any productivity modules, so I'm not exploiting productivity bonuses at all to stretch that oil supply either. I feel like the biggest issue with oil in 0.14 was it's inconsistent availability in your start (I only had 1 isolated Oil field near by start, which I tapped first to get a little oil, but once I started to need Crude oil in quantity, I immediately went for a sizable patch to my SE, I later added one almost due E of me at a similar distance, and that's a 3rd I've yet to tap NE which probably has ~25 Oil fields in it). Second biggest issue was how low the baseline yields tended to be, particularly if frequency was set to low or very low (read: <80% yield typically, even at very high richness).

[Matthias_Wlkp]

I'm by far not an experienced player, and so far in my latest 0.15 game I can't complaint either way about Oil. My first patch had 5 spots and by the time I started automating purple science, it's almost entirely gone and I have to look for more. Maybe for veterans it's way too easy, but for an average Joe like me, it seems fine so far.

[quyxkh]

I think it's pretty clear that oil should continue to deplete, with total supply limited only by the (eventually very) slowly declining output rate.

[NorwegianBlue]

I bootstrapped a deathworld base to laser turrets and tanks on one pumpjack...

Yep, too far.

[rldml]

Oil was broken in 0.14 and is just fine now. If you really think the game generates to much, just lower the size of oil fields before you start a new game.

In my last game in 0.14 i had several oil fields equipped with pumpjacks, but none of them supported my base with crude oil for at least more than two or three hours in total, before they depleted. So i started to think, oil could be broken in 0.14 and tried 0.15. There was the first time, the first oil field reaches for more than only some plastic bars and a little fuel for my flame thrower.

and the numbers are far more realistic now: Start to facilitate a 0.14-70%-oil field with only 0.7l of oil per second? Really?

Greetings, Ronny

[Nasabot]

I actually agree. The 20% minimum is unnessary now as you can turn coal into oil. The game should be balanced in a way that oil patches alone are not sufficient in the long run.

[SeaRyanC]

Agree with OP. Oil used to be infuriatingly rare, to the point where you were catch-22'd by not having the circuits needed to effectively set up a new oil outpost. We've swung very far in the other direction - my rail world map has launched ~150 rockets without ever setting a pumpjack outside the original oil patch near my base, though I am running coal liquefaction on one coal patch.

Perhaps there needs to be a diminished return on putting speed beacons on pumpjacks, i.e. a Pumpjack only gets half the benefit of Speed effects?

[HurkWurk]

it always made sense to me that iron and copper were in fields that were finite due to the limited nature of the tech to drill only surface level, etc. however oil being rare made no sense at all.
oil fields are not like a vein of a mineral. they are orders of magnitude larger. there are still oil wells running since the time of the roman empire. while there are also some copper mines that have ran that long, most of them are using advanced deep mining, not surface scraping.

[thereaverofdarkness]

I haven't come close to draining my oil wells yet in my 0.15 game. Granted, I haven't really stressed them much yet. But I was hoping the oil x10 multiplier would mean that oil would eventually deplete to a tenth the output of what it previously went to. Originally with default map settings, by the time I'd explored very far I would have uncovered enough oil to provide for my needs even with all wells fully depleted. It would be nice to have a reason to expand to new oil patches in the late game without having to make oil really rare in the map settings.

I only changed the oil field size in the Rail World preset to Small (not Very Small) and if it wasn't already I put the richness at maximum. I got 2 wells about 400 tiles away. Radars have scanned at max range (or very close to) and I still haven't found any more =/

On the other hand my original 0.15 playthrough (default Rail World settings) I got about 50 wells in my starting area, this is why I set the size smaller because I felt it was too many. Feh.

The settings may still be bugged. I know in the past, setting oil patches to very small resulted in them failing to spawn at all, and setting them to small seemed to make most of them fail to spawn while very tiny patches would occasionally spawn. So there was a drastic difference between normal (which I felt was WAY too much oil), and small (which even at very high occurrence was uncommon).

I know the way biter bases spawn has been altered in 0.15 and the settings now work properly, but I haven't tested oil yet in 0.15.

[netmand]

...and still running fairly comfortably on my starting area oil wells. All while consuming multiple patches of iron and copper, at a ridiculous rate.

Kinda funny I'm more concerned about the part about consuming iron and copper at a ridiculous rate. Having to do that is a bit of a grind for me. Reaching out to find my first oil was fun. But now I've settled in a bit and making my space science choices I don't feel the game needs to have me grind oil along with copper and iron. I'm still needing to do some interesting things to make the most of the oil I'm getting, so I don't think it's too far.

The other resources; coal, stone, uranium; consumption rates seem aligned with oil in my opinion.... okay not stone I seem to have an over-abundance of stone, but haven't paved everything yet. I didn't forget trees... ugh trees, they've always been a grind.

[thereaverofdarkness]

I feel like oil patches go to a depleted state too quickly, maybe because they start with such high yield. I get a lot of mileage out of a patch, but then I feel like I just finally got the base set up around it and already it's depleting. Just the same, a depleted patch seems to have a pretty significant output for something that will never run out. If I simply downsize the factory around it, I can easily have a depleted oil farm running oil nonstop at max capacity.

I'd like to see oil patches get a bit richer, but have 10/s be the max rate a pumpjack draws oil (not counting modules). So for instance if you find one at 30/s, you can hook it up for 10/s and get a steady oil output until it goes all the way down below 10/s. But then I'd like to see them deplete all the way to 0.1/s. Over time as I accumulate multiple patches, I may eventually start to get good oil income from all of them put together, but mostly I'll be driven to create new pumpjack farms and ship their crude oil to my already existing factories.

My latest oil farm has 5 pumpjacks running at 2, 2.6, 2, 3.3, 2.4 for a total of 123% according to the map. It's enough to keep one refinery operating at 67% capacity. That's not a lot all by itself, but it's just 5 patches. I have a total of 28 pumpjacks running and I haven't even expanded my factory that far. I'm beginning to develop a halfass production line for production and high-tech science packs, just enough to nab a few techs I can't get with my favorite 4 science pack types, and for once I'm considering making a new oil outpost for the sole reason that it's actually easier than repurposing one of my other existing and non-depleted patches. It looks to me like it'll be a somewhat trivial (though slightly tedious) task to make a sustainable production line of production and high tech science packs out of nothing but depleted oil patches.

[chuz]

in 14.23, my game was like this :
-oh my god, i need oil so much, i need to expand my base.
-oh with all these new oil patches i found, i should be fine
-oh my god i need oil so much, i need to make speed module lvl3 for all my oil wells
-oh yes it's better, but i need more oil ! lets make beacon with speed module lvl 3
-oh my god all my iron and copper mine patch are gone. I have so much oil i dont need.


So actually i found oil production pretty balanced in 14.23, it's kinda hard to get it early but very easy lategame (100+hours) because oil is literrally infinite but iron/copper are not.

you tell me that in 0.15 oil is much easier to get. that's not really good at all in my opinion.

Also, coal and stone were too useless lategame in 0.14.23 and i really doubt they fixed it in 0.15, i heard you can transform coal to oil. but you were getting lot of oil lategame so i don't see how it fix the problem.

[Miravlix]

Another concern is infinite productivity research, it works really well for empty oil wells.

I used a single train to collect from 6 separate oil fields, but now with 200% Mining Productivity, 3 trains can hit those fields and all return full.

It's unfortunate that very small frequency and size is a double chance that you get no oil. (very small and the game can decide an oil field is too small to exist, so even if very small frequency generated a field, you might not get it, creating a domino effect resulting in zero oil.)

The way game coders use random numbers is awfully broken, because I'm ONE player, it doesn't matter to me that among 10 or 10000 players we together have X oil fields, if my game get's zero of them, you can't really use unlimited randomness, you need to ensure that each player get a range, not simple a x in y chance of an oil field, because with an X chance, someone somewhere is always going to get a good run or a bad run of numbers.

[Terukio]

Before, I would be doing nothing but wondering why I had no red circuits. Ever. That is because I used to run out of oil in about an hour or two after creating a new outpost. With the new settings, I've create one outpost that was massive after my initial one in the base and I'm 60 hours in. I agree it has gone too far, I think a sweet spot would be to have to set up an oil outpost every 3-6 hours or so. Numbers can be tweaked of course.

[Sunder1977]

in 14.23, my game was like this :
-oh my god, i need oil so much, i need to expand my base.
-oh with all these new oil patches i found, i should be fine
-oh my god i need oil so much, i need to make speed module lvl3 for all my oil wells
-oh yes it's better, but i need more oil ! lets make beacon with speed module lvl 3
-oh my god all my iron and copper mine patch are gone. I have so much oil i dont need.


So actually i found oil production pretty balanced in 14.23, it's kinda hard to get it early but very easy lategame (100+hours) because oil is literrally infinite but iron/copper are not.

you tell me that in 0.15 oil is much easier to get. that's not really good at all in my opinion.

Also, coal and stone were too useless lategame in 0.14.23 and i really doubt they fixed it in 0.15, i heard you can transform coal to oil. but you were getting lot of oil lategame so i don't see how it fix the problem.

Replace "oil" with "iron" and now you have 0.15.

Oil is fine.