No oil!

[Bluelight]

Tutorial on how to play the game is great, but when you are 9 hours into a great multiplayer game and then you suddenly find out that there is not a single oil spot on the whole map.. It does not help very much... Tutorial or no tutorial.. They don't magically spawn oilspots.. I do not want to start all over, and the level editor is not a good choice.. Are the Factorio development team this sloppy? Do they never test their game before an update.. And why is the update so late? Please get together and do proper work..!

[Koub]

can you post your map string, and tell us what version you started the game with please ?

[British_Petroleum]

The devs did play test 0.13, and there has been a lot of 0.13 bug reports from players, but nobody has had this problem... devs can't fix a problem if they dont know it exists. I am interested to see the map string

[Nexela]

Also 0.13 is marked as experimental for a reason....

[TheSkiGeek]

Resource generation is random - this means there can sometimes be huge stretches of the map with little or none of any specific resource. Especially if you lowered the frequency of resource patches. This is not really a bug, and definitely not a case of inadequate testing. (Also worth noting that in 0.13, resource patches are richer the further you are from the spawn. So if you have to go a long way to find oil, you should get a lot of it when it does turn up.)

Also, the map is infinite, unless you deliberately limited its size. The map generation and gameplay in vanilla are not balanced for a limited-size map - you might want to look at various "infinite resources" mods for that.

If you don't like the randomness, the RSO (Resource Spawner Overhaul) mod guarantees you some of every resource in the starting area (among other changes), and you can also extensively tweak its behavior.

If you're really stuck in your current game, there are also console commands that can spawn resources wherever you want.

[Zaz]

The same thing happened to me. I've walked around in peaceful mode and haven't seen a single oil.

I'm using .13.6, and the map was started in that version. Map string:

Code: Select all

>>>AAANAAYAAAADAwYAAAAEAAAAY29hbAIDBAoAAABjb3BwZXItb3Jl
AgMECQAAAGNydWRlLW9pbAEDBQoAAABlbmVteS1iYXNlAwMDCAAAAGl
yb24tb3JlAgMEBQAAAHN0b25lAgMEratgugAAAAAAAAAAAwBs6pre<<
<

[Koub]

The same thing happened to me. I've walked around in peaceful mode and haven't seen a single oil.

I'm using .13.6, and the map was started in that version. Map string:

Code: Select all

>>>AAANAAYAAAADAwYAAAAEAAAAY29hbAIDBAoAAABjb3BwZXItb3Jl
AgMECQAAAGNydWRlLW9pbAEDBQoAAABlbmVteS1iYXNlAwMDCAAAAGl
yb24tb3JlAgMEBQAAAHN0b25lAgMEratgugAAAAAAAAAAAwBs6pre<<
<

I downloaded the 0.13.6 and started a new game with your settings

This, my friend, is a very low oil frequency :

Map settings

Factorio - No Oil.jpg (123.52 KiB) Viewed 13752 times

And this means that you will have very very few oil patches (but you'll get some eventually). I face force-explored with a console commandan area of 2048x2048 around the spawn point, and got this :

Oil patches on your map

Factorio - There is oil.jpg (328.55 KiB) Viewed 13752 times

You can't tell there is no oil unless you have explored far enough to get to the edge of the map in all directions, and indeed found no oil

[TN_Creator]

Wow, this "very low" setting is not kidding.

[brunzenstein]

Wow, this "very low" setting is not kidding.

But its ok and works according to the book.
Anyhow, I find the critique on the map creation largely overblown, especially as there is a free map creator on board for the "experts".

[brunzenstein]

Wow, this "very low" setting is not kidding.

But its ok and works according to the book.
Anyhow, I find the critique on the map creation largely overblown, especially as there is a free map creator on board for the unhappy "experts".

[Ranakastrasz]

I thought low frequency also made patches larger. Is that not the case? (Anymore?)
It was one of those things that seemed odd unless you considered it like a radio wave frequency.

[TheSkiGeek]

I thought low frequency also made patches larger. Is that not the case? (Anymore?)
It was one of those things that seemed odd unless you considered it like a radio wave frequency.

In theory, yes, there should be the same total amount of resources per area. But you might have to go REALLY REALLY REALLY FAR to find it.

"Frequency" affects how often you find patches of that resource. Lower frequency should mean less frequent (but bigger) patches, higher frequency should mean more frequent (but smaller) patches.

"Size" affects how many squares each patch contains. "Low" size means fewer squares with more resources/square, "High" means more squares with fewer resources/square.

"Richness" directly affects the amount of resources/square.

Edit: the wiki page linked below seems to indicate that "size" might affect total resources found per area, but "frequency" should not. "richness" definitely does.

[Ranakastrasz]

Thing is, if that were the case, you would expect to almost never see a single patch of oil. No, with low frequency, you should get something like 10+ patches of oil, at least, but pretty much never find another area with it.

[Zaz]

The same thing happened to me. I've walked around in peaceful mode and haven't seen a single oil.

I'm using .13.6, and the map was started in that version. Map string:

Code: Select all

>>>AAANAAYAAAADAwYAAAAEAAAAY29hbAIDBAoAAABjb3BwZXItb3Jl
AgMECQAAAGNydWRlLW9pbAEDBQoAAABlbmVteS1iYXNlAwMDCAAAAGl
yb24tb3JlAgMEBQAAAHN0b25lAgMEratgugAAAAAAAAAAAwBs6pre<<
<

I downloaded the 0.13.6 and started a new game with your settings

This, my friend, is a very low oil frequency :

Map settings

Factorio - No Oil.jpg

And this means that you will have very very few oil patches (but you'll get some eventually). I face force-explored with a console commandan area of 2048x2048 around the spawn point, and got this :

Oil patches on your map

Factorio - There is oil.jpg

You can't tell there is no oil unless you have explored far enough to get to the edge of the map in all directions, and indeed found no oil

Thanks for the reply, and for taking a look.

I remember setting the resources all to low, but I guess I had forgotten that I set oil to very low.

Yeah, it turns out "very low" means extremely rare and very hard to find. Major surprise, there.

[Harkonnen604]

Map generator frequency is explained here https://wiki.factorio.com/index.php?tit ... _generator