For Bob's Mods, yes, oil in the starting area is a necessity. You should have this as an option for game startup. I do like it being very minimal though; just enough to get started in some way.bobingabout wrote:Personally, although I agree with removing Uranium from the starting area, I disagree with removing oil.
However, this is looking at it from the point of view of my mod, looking at it from the point of view of vanilla, it does make sense to remove oil from the starting area, to give you an incentive to go out and explore to find materials.
My mods actually have the same intensive with the next tier up (need to go find gold and other materials to make processing units)
It's probably something I'll change in my mod, make oil appear in the starting area.
But for vanilla Factorio, the oil absolutely should NOT be in the starting area. There is enough technology to push out and secure oil deposits long before the need for oil in the blue Science Pack 3. In Factorio, the first two science packs unlock a tremendous amount of the game already and oil in the starting area makes the game go super easy-mode. My 2 cents...