Returning player questions

[Porter65]

I have forgotten everything. Not that I knew much in 2018

I'm playing with RSO, if it explains. I did not change the settings of the mod.

1. Distant deposits are unmasked progressively, without me having a single radar. Is it a vanilla feature, a RSO one? I would prefer having to explore to discover them.

2. The initial deposits are fine in amount, 100k each roughly. But even the first 'ring' of extra deposit is in the million. This seems a bit too much to my taste. With 2 millions per type of mineral, I guess I'll have my needs mostly covered until the end game, right? Now I might be wrong, so give me a ball park estimate. With 2M of each mineral, how much of the game you complete, if you face some significant critters opposition (I also have Rampant).

I'm considering restarting and dividing by a factor of 4! the amounts, but perhaps I'm just committing suicide here, I need pointers here.

EDIT: My aim is to not starve to death on minerals, but definitively have a need for trains and distant outposts that would need protection. Not sure I would ever need that if I sit on 8 M minerals overall within say 300 tiles of my starting point. And this seems the case with RSO default settings.

[Bilka]

Sounds like you're looking for vanilla railworld or maybe even vanilla default settings.

[orzelek]

Ad. 1
It's an option of RSO to map deposits - Reveal spawned resources. Check if you have it enabled.

Ad. 2
For scenarios like this RSO has two resource multipliers:
Global richness multplier will multiply all resources richness, starting area one will apply on top of global one but only in starting area.

Edit:
Also RSO will use map settings for the map and multipliers listed above are applied on top of modification by map settings.

[Porter65]

Thanks guys. Better restart now than later it seems.

What is your rough estimate of number of iron ore to build a rocket, either without (much) opposition or with serious crittereness?
This can help me decide more or less what I want/need to play the style of game I prefer.

[SoShootMe]

What is your rough estimate of number of iron ore to build a rocket, either without (much) opposition or with serious crittereness?

Assuming you mean the total consumed to get to launch the rocket, I think there's a large range depending on settings and play style. Just the prerequisite research, with normal recipe/technology cost, is something like 400k iron ore if memory serves. Between actually building a factory, some additional "useful" research, and keeping the enemy at bay, double that might be closer.

[Porter65]

Ok, that's nice from you to give me an actual number, I could not have begun to figure what was needed. You could have told me 20 millions, I would have said 'ok'

So ... If I see for 2 millions iron ore not very far from me, and without much need of a train to get it, then that's definitively not the style of game I want!

[Trific]

I have a spreadsheet where I worked out the bare minimum for the tech required to get to rocket, and iron ore came out to 225k. Note this doesn't include the cost to build anything else, including the silo and rocket itself, just the tech.

[Porter65]

Yes, so I guess that if you face a significant biter presence, factor factories and infrastructure plus a not-so competent player (me!), I can at most top at 2 M (or die trying).

--

So I restarted a map. I halved richness and deposit probability, so I should have a density close to 'Train World' if not mistaken. 2 hours of playing afterward, I found again a 3.1 Millions Iron deposit some 250 tiles from my starting area.

I don't get it. Either there is a small probability that a deposit is super rich, or something is wrong. Should I really set up richness to 10% and probability to 25% to be in a world not ripe with minerals?

[Laie]

What is your rough estimate of number of iron ore to build a rocket, either without (much) opposition or with serious crittereness?
This can help me decide more or less what I want/need to play the style of game I prefer.

I'm not sure if that is a good way of thinking about it.

I'm a rather new player, and planned my science according to the cheat sheet: 5 assemblers making red bottles, six assemblers for green bottles -- that amounts to 45 Science / minute. Later I found out just how much raw materials I will need in order to sustain that rate through to purple and yellow bottles, not to mention space science.

(skipping over several iterations of ever larger factory designs)

Since yesterday, I have a factory that can *almost* make 45 science/minute. On vanilla default, I had to hog about 10M worth of iron ore in order to secure a sufficient flow. The limiting factor was the extent of the deposits, and hence the number of mines I could put there. I'm now at the point where I have not launched just one rocket, but several (I'm about to go into double digits, whee!) and comparing save games, I seem to have used up about 3M of iron ore so far.

FWIW, this map has been the most violent I've ever played: with lots of sand and few trees, the the pollution spread far and wide from the get-go. I was constantly under attack, and had to stake out a (for me) large area. As best as I can tell, my great wall took up ~250 overland poles and 400 laser turrets -- that would be less than 50k of iron if I'm not mistaken? So in the grand scheme of things, it doesn't seem to amount to much.

ETA: I also have a steel crate worth of AP ammo sitting around. At this point I don't expect to ever use it, but 86k of iron went into building that cache

[orzelek]

Yes, so I guess that if you face a significant biter presence, factor factories and infrastructure plus a not-so competent player (me!), I can at most top at 2 M (or die trying).

--

So I restarted a map. I halved richness and deposit probability, so I should have a density close to 'Train World' if not mistaken. 2 hours of playing afterward, I found again a 3.1 Millions Iron deposit some 250 tiles from my starting area.

I don't get it. Either there is a small probability that a deposit is super rich, or something is wrong. Should I really set up richness to 10% and probability to 25% to be in a world not ripe with minerals?

Tbh I haven't looked at that from very long time. RSO has by default quite significant variation on deposit richness. And you should be aware that if you tweak the size up richness also goes up (multiplicative with actual richness).
I would recommend playing a bit with RSO settings and this command might be helpful to see how ores are shaping up:
/c local radius=2000 game.player.force.chart(game.player.surface, {{x = -radius, y = -radius}, {x = radius, y = radius}})

Modify radius to your preference.
If you don't want to spoil the map then find decent settings first and restart on different seed to play - general ratios should be the same.

[SoShootMe]

What is your rough estimate of number of iron ore to build a rocket, either without (much) opposition or with serious crittereness?

... Just the prerequisite research, with normal recipe/technology cost, is something like 400k iron ore if memory serves. Between actually building a factory, some additional "useful" research, and keeping the enemy at bay, double that might be closer.

Apologies, memory apparently does not serve: I checked back and I made the research around 400k total mined resources (excluding oil and any coal used as fuel). Of course, that is a theoretical figure; due to other consumption such as mentioned above, 400k iron ore is probably around the practical minimum to launch the rocket (ie without having a very small factory running for a very long time), and due to variation in play style, double that would still not be at all surprising.

But...

Since yesterday, I have a factory that can *almost* make 45 science/minute. On vanilla default, I had to hog about 10M worth of iron ore in order to secure a sufficient flow. The limiting factor was the extent of the deposits, and hence the number of mines I could put there.

This is a very good point. With default size/richness for ore patches, you may need two or three outposts for each of iron and copper ores, densely packed with mines, to sustain science pack production at a "reasonable" rate (also one or two of coal if you use that as fuel to power everything). This invariably means claiming far more total resource than needed to get to the first rocket, though of course this provides plenty for other uses.

The only way to avoid this is to expand early and buffer (electronic circuits and steel in particular), but that can only go so far and may make the natives more of a problem.

I don't get it. Either there is a small probability that a deposit is super rich, or something is wrong. Should I really set up richness to 10% and probability to 25% to be in a world not ripe with minerals?

It sounds like expensive recipes and technology might be to your liking. Also, bringing down the size of deposits will force you to expand more to get a reasonable rate (as per Laie's point), but could become tedious with low richness.