Scarcity Of Iron

[azoundria]

Iron is used about 2-4 times as commonly as all the other ores (especially when you consider steel), and yet there is less of it on average, because the other ores are generated afterwards.

1) It would be great if iron was generated last, overtop of all the other ores.

2) Some sort of modification to the amount of iron relative to the other ores would be good. Because obviously, the map needs more iron than any other ore.

3) Perhaps some of the key recipes could be modified to require less iron. For example, steel might require 2-4 iron plates, and gears could make twice as many.

4) Substituting copper or stone for iron wherever possible would also be useful. For example, inserters could be made out of copper.

5) More uses for stone bricks. Perhaps laser turrets could require them, or you could introduce bridges (as a way to modify the terrain and remove water).

I suppose there are still efficiency modules, though the game is still heavily out of balance.

[n9103]

Iron's pretty high demand, for the first half of the game, yes, but once you start automating things like modules, Copper *quickly* outpaces the demand for Iron.
Mostly it boils down to Circuits and particularly Adv. Circuits, as they use more Copper than Iron, almost 2x as much.
Once you get into things that need several Adv. Circuits, you'll see your copper buffer dwindle at a good pace.

Sounds like you've had a few bad spots with the map generation, more than a real lack of Iron in the game.
By the time you finish off your first non-starting area Iron patch, you should probably have a higher need for Copper instead.

[ssilk]

It happened to me this week, that I started a map with defaults and now after 3-4 hours I feel, that the iron ore will go out. I begun driving around very, very far to find iron ore, and I'm sure to find it at any time, but currently haven't. Only much small fields, not worth exploding and near biters. Altogether I estimate the small fields to only 20000 ore. That's too less.

I would wish something, which finds such fields. Some "resource field radar" or so.

It doesn't unlock the map!

If turned on it begins to put "points" in the map which can be resource fields with some probability (depends on distance, size of field and time of running the radar - needs really, really much power, you need handling that!). When probability reaches a limit (50%?) it also unlocks the type of resource, if more than 80, it shows with rising probability the size, and if it becomes 100% it unlocks the area of the resource field (? Problems if there are only parts of the map unlocked?). Should cover a gigantic radius (5000 tiles or more?). Maybe a filter, to search only for iron etc. which makes search faster.

So if you built it and switch it on and the radar finds a point in the map, far away, then it must be a very big resource (or in some of the next versions a wreckage or something like that).

It would also help to have the existing fields marked in that way, because you will see how big the remaining field is.

[kovarex]

I had problems with iron searching as well, and I have idea how to solve it (that I like very much).

Radars would (additionally to their current function), explore one unexplored chunk when the radar progress bar finishes (It does nothing at the moment, and is just used by script in the 2nd scenario mission).
This mechanism would allow the radar to explore chunks very far away (but it would still be limited).

[Balinor]

I like the idea of actually using radars for more than just showing the current area around them, very cool.

[ssilk]

That's quite cool idea. yes, and no, that it will solve that problems.
No, because you cannot estimate from the size of the field to the amount of resources in it. I think that should be a map function...
And also no, because a chunk is 32x32, right? Then exploring that map I had explored takes very,very long.
And yes, because that takes away the need to explore everything yourself and with the time very wide fields would be explored and it removes the little unexplored pieces, which just look ugly.

[Coolthulhu]

I like the idea of iron being on top of other ores.
Are "mixed" ores in plans? That would make smart inserters and "organic" belts (unfiltered, constantly flowing) so much more useful.
They should be next to trivial to implement.

[azoundria]

My understanding is that the map stores the amount of only one resource. It would be cool to store the amount of every resource separately, but obviously it would take 4 times as much memory to store the map.

My current playing experience has been mining everything fairly evenly as I move around (though I have been 'aiming' for the iron ores since I ran out). I have 1.3 million copper ores in stock, whereas my iron ore stock ran out. In many places on the map, I have iron patches that got overwritten by other ores. When I expanded my factory to feature a chest of each of the items I use, the resulting systems burned through 500k of iron ores. I think it was ironically assemblers, which someone mentioned as using a lot of copper, that took a lot of iron with all the gears they require. I know that circuits and advanced circuits are by far the biggest use of copper, and about the only substantial use of it, whereas you have gears, plates, and/or steel in most recipes (and plates are also in circuits).

There could be a playing style that uses only slightly more iron than copper, but why not have ore placement/usage ratios that works for the vast majority of playing styles?

[ssilk]

Laying more type of resources over into one tile: yeah,I would like the needed sorting part, because you need to filter the items by type to use it intelligently.

[Psycho0124]

Just had to abandon another 4 hour game due to scarce iron deposits (normal resource settings). There's plenty of stone, and an over-abundance of coal and copper (I had 45K copper just sitting in storage). There just wasn't enough iron to tech up far enough to claim the more distant deposits from the (massive) biter bases. Bummer..

[kovarex]

I added cca 20% to ore richness (especially iron), in the 0.7.3, it might be enough, I had also iron problems on default settings.

[azoundria]

Can you make iron ore spawn overtop of other ores? ie Change the order when the map generates new areas. There's probably a way to do this without rendering current maps obsolete.

It really decreases the amount of iron relative to other ores, especially when I increase the ore's frequencies, as I tend to do.

[ssilk]

I mean that overtop drawing should be avoided at all. If there is an resource and another should be drawn overtop, then instead the second resources is drawn around the first. A bit like when I take a full chest while my inventory is full.