Turn wood into crude oil

[Yandersen]

Howdy!
Well, realistically, the charcoal leftovers from the wood heating is not even nearly the same thing as the mined coal. And from the gameplay perspective, petroleum+coal as output just deteriorates logistic puzzle for the plastic production. And crude+petroleum? You keep jiggling around the simple straight recipe "wood->crude" forgetting what Occam said. Damn, now I even feel compelled to link you this!

You are in charge, mr FuryoftheStars, but IMHO, qualitatively, the basic recipe should be just "wood->crude" and the advanced is "wood+acid->crude". Cuz Occam, you know.
As for the quantities... Well, the basic should not be as efficient as advanced - otherwise why bother with an addition of acid, right? And since the advanced yelds 58% eff (by fuel energy value{1Wood=2MJ,1Crude~1MJ}, I suppose?), than the basic one should be even less efficient than that. I suggest to turn off for a moment our common OCD problems with precise math and do it rough, at least for the start. It is always possible to update the mod with number tweaks without braking anyone's game, right?
So here is my proposal for the recipes:
Basic: 2Wood -> 1Crude (0.5sec);
Advanced: 5Wood + 5Acid -> 6Crude (1 sec).
The quantitative tweaks are up to you, of course, but in case OCD will not let you sleep again, let me make it worse: the production of sulfuric acid involves sulfur coming from gas, which also has fuel value. Plus energy consumption of the machines... And those are game-set values, which have nothing to do with reality... You know what I mean? Don't try to dig too much into this mess, total realism is not possible anyway.
I hope you will not get in circles again!

[FuryoftheStars]

Yeah, agreed, I did some follow up research today and see that coal is completely unrealistic for this type of stuff. I was only bringing it up because there seem to be a lot of mods that do this or, as mentioned, someone was requesting it on the mod portal page. Nope... striking coal out.

I also want to point out a correction real fast, the advanced recipe is actually a 42% efficiency yield (I think I had said it had a 58% loss in efficiency, and so apologize for the confusion that may have caused).

I apologize, but I might not be the right person to make the mod you want. At this time, I can't in good conscious make it with the kind of values you mention as, for me, this seems like it starts rubbing up against being a bit cheaty and I don't like making mods that way.

What I have done, though, was a small bit of research on wood gasification. Obviously I don't know for sure, but after reading some stuff on this, it almost seems like that Russian version you saw may be a form of wood gasification (and maybe you can link me to some info on the Russian one if it's definitely not). But regardless, what I did find on wood gasification is that it does produce gas and tar (50,000 mg/cubic meter), but it doesn't have to. Apparently there's another way of doing it where two of the stages are separated into separate reaction zones (though I'd still do only 1 recipe) and it causes the amount of tar to drop to less than 1 mg/cubic meter. Also... apparently wood gasification has a whopping 75% efficiency.

That said, at this time, I feel like I would make the basic recipe more like wood gasification. With 75% efficiency, I could do something like 2 wood to 5 petroleum gas. No other products, time 2.5. I also feel as though this wouldn't need a separate research to unlock and could just be unlocked with oil processing. If you find more stuff on the Russian one that shows it as being something very different, I can still try to include that.

As for the advanced one, I looked the numbers over again and realized that the actual ratio for least rounding loss is 8 wood to 7 crude, so I'll be adjusting the recipe for that.

{...} in case OCD will not let you sleep again, let me make it worse: the production of sulfuric acid involves sulfur coming from gas, which also has fuel value. Plus energy consumption of the machines... And those are game-set values, which have nothing to do with reality... You know what I mean? Don't try to dig too much into this mess, total realism is not possible anyway.
{...}

Hehe, yeah, I think I got all of that accounted for. The article showed it as 1 ton of wood converts to 1.25 barrels of fluid that has the equivalent energy of 1 barrel of oil. At this point I just convert the 1.25 barrels to 1 seems in game we're just using straight crude anyway. While sure, I'd like to know how much sulfuric acid is being used in this (and how much actually gets recycled), in the end, the actual numbers (in my mind) don't matter much as they wouldn't effect the outcome, just so long as I'm able to use something that I feel is reasonable. Energy consumption of the machines... that's a separate issue. And yeah, it's a game, the devs probably assigned very, very arbitrary values to everything, but I don't find it too hard to take these values and use them to scale realistic ones. The hardest part I find, sometimes, is finding some of the realistic numbers....

[Yandersen]

Hmmm... I am starting to wonder, what exactly are we doing here? Feels more like science rather than the game mod! XD I think you are getting too deep into background losing connection with the gameplay, which should actually be the main focus - the game is a game, one man carries thousands of buildings in his pocket, which hardly feels real, but fits the gameplay and noone rebels, right? So from the practical point, the initial idea of the mod came from two existing problems (or rather uncomfortable gaming situations):

1) oil sources are most often too far from the starting point and become needed at the game stage when the player is not fully set to comfortably establish such long logistic path with self-sufficient independent outposts;

2) at late game with massive automated construction and base expansion, the wood accumulates in an enormous amounts, while at that stage it has no use becoming a trash flooding logistic chests all over the base. Personally, I am too jewish to just blow up the chests to get rid of that resource and too eco to burn it in furnaces for steam electricity.

As I see you jump from heavy to petroleum I start worrying to see light oil next time? BTW, please, just don't get offended by my sarcasm, be tolerant to russian-style repplies - it's a part of our internet culture, please accept with heavy sigh and bear with it a little more.
So... Petroleum as a product. OK. Makes it possible to get plastic, solid fuel, well, anything except lubricant. So no bots then. Alright, much better than heavy oil, but... Don't you think it will make the oil-setup puzzle cheesy-easy? Why bother with huge plants, pumps'n pipe mess, cracking-balancing blocks and all this if you can just build an array of chem plants, feed it with a wood-belt and get everything you need (almost) from a single output petropipe, right? Oh God, I hear devil laughing as a player maniacally sharpens his axe... Plus, at some point, sooner or later, the oil production will be set anyway, and such handy wood-based production block will become redundant.

As a bottom line, me just stuck in thinking that the best for the mod will be "basic{wood->crude}", "advanced{wood+acid->crude}. Qualitatively. As for the ratios - idk & idc. That is my stubborn opinion.



I think it would be nice to hear other people's opinion about the idea of turning wood into chemical products. Seems like two of us look at the same problem from two different angles - I want to put the wood into good use from gameplay perspective, and mr FuryoftheStars carries more about realism of this system. As I see it. Call the judges!

[FuryoftheStars]

Yeah, like I said, I may have been the wrong person to do this for you. You don't want to get me started on my OCD of the player inventory, storage, and all the "free powered" entities in the game....

Don't get me wrong, I don't want a 100% realistic game. A game that realistic, I might as well go out in my backyard and just do it myself. I also really like sci-fi and fantasy, being a really big Star Wars fan (not of Disney's version, though) and love playing D&D. I don't know if this is correct or not (I don't know how to properly describe myself), but I like things making logical sense, even if they're in a completely made up system.

I think the issue I have with doing something like 2 wood to 1 oil in a super short time frame (0.5-1 sec), though, is that I start feeling like we're brushing against the lines of being cheaty. While this is a game, it still has some basis in reality. For example, you wouldn't make copper plates out of iron ore. Yes, there are some other processes that can turn wood into oil (like the sulfuric acid one), but I'm hesitant to make them capable of directly competing with the game's oil processing mechanism (kind of bypassing one of the dev's game mechanics), which I feel (and it may just be me) is the direction 2 wood to 1 crude goes.

[joking] I'll switch the basic recipe over to light oil if we find out that's more what the Russian was making. [/joking]

Well, oil processing, once fully setup, is producing petrol at a rate of 40 every 5 secs (55+ at advanced (90 averaged if everything is cracked)). I hope that doing 5 petrol and no heavy/light wouldn't be able to fully compete with that, though as I think about it, it might still be better if I increased the time more? Not a huge amount, just to 4 or 5 secs. (EDIT: Sorry, forgot I had already done some testing with time = 4s and felt like these were still too fast. Assigning 6s.) I really wish the base game had more good uses for heavy and light oil than just lube, solid fuel, and cracking, though.

I'm slowly feeling like the below balance may be good:

• Basic Wood to Oil Processing (may rename to Wood Gasification)
  • Ingredients:
    • 2x Wood
  • Results:
    • 5x Petroleum Gas
  • Crafting time: 6s
  • Unlocked by new tech with Oil Processing as prereq
• Advanced Wood to Oil Processing
  • Ingredients:
    • 8x Wood
    • 8x Sulfuric Acid
  • Results:
    • 7x Crude Oil
    • 3x Sulfuric Acid
  • Crafting time: 6s
  • Unlocked by new tech with Basic Wood to Oil Processing, Sulfuric Acid, and Advanced Oil Processing as prereqs (yes, I know, bear with me)

I'm then also going to include a setting with the mod that is false/off by default. Turning it on/true will replace the Wood Gasification recipe with:

[list][*]Basic Wood to Oil Processing
[list][*]Ingredients:
[list][*]2x Wood
[/list]
[*]Results:
[list][*]1x Crude Oil
[/list]
[*]Crafting time: 2s
[*]Unlocked by new tech with Oil Processing as prereq
[/list]
[/list] EDIT: Changed my mind on this. Above balance for the others is wrong now, too.

Thoughts?

Also, that pic...

[BlueTemplar]

Feels more like science rather than the game mod!

Welcome to Factorio !
(Take a look at Angel's Petrochem or Pyanodon's mods !)
But yeah,
gameplay > "realistic" mechanics > "realistic" numbers...

While we're at it,
what the British/Americans call petrol(eum) or gas(oline), a liquid in the usual conditions of temperature and pressure,
is probably not at the same level of oil processing than Factorio's "petroleum gas" !

IRL, petroleum gas - usually a mixture of C3 propane and C4 butane (unlike the lighter natural gas = C1 methane) - is often sold in a liquefied form under pressure with the moniker LPG.
(No, I don't know why in Factorio it uses the icon for ethene aka ethylene...)

[FuryoftheStars]

(No, I don't know why in Factorio it uses the icon for ethene aka ethylene...)

I wonder if it was because that one was simpler looking than either propane or butane.

Oddly enough, too, it look like petroleum gas is also used (sometimes?) in the production of gasoline.

[Yandersen]

Dear mr FuryoftheStars... Let me ask you directly: why is it so important for you to make the product to be a petroleum gas but not crude oil? Please explain...

If gas, then it creates a new logistic chain, which is surely temporary as downcracking is not an option and lube will be needed eventually anyway. A dead end early game option and nothing more. Plus wood gasification mod exists already - so really, what is the point to double it?
However, if it would be the crude oil, then it competes with oil deposits only, being an alternative source of oil. Very handy at early game stage, helpful at lategame as a way to get rid of wood waste and prolong oil wells depletion a little bit at the same time. Isn't it wonderful?!

P.S.: why so trumpy? Cuz me is russian hacker and I made him a president, so he is working his dept here for me now! XD

[FuryoftheStars]

Dear mr FuryoftheStars... Let me ask you directly: why is it so important for you to make the product to be a petroleum gas but not crude oil? Please explain...

I kind of already have:

I think the issue I have with doing something like 2 wood to 1 oil in a super short time frame (0.5-1 sec), though, is that I start feeling like we're brushing against the lines of being cheaty. While this is a game, it still has some basis in reality. For example, you wouldn't make copper plates out of iron ore. Yes, there are some other processes that can turn wood into oil (like the sulfuric acid one), but I'm hesitant to make them capable of directly competing with the game's oil processing mechanism (kind of bypassing one of the dev's game mechanics), which I feel (and it may just be me) is the direction 2 wood to 1 crude goes.

I don't know the words to explain it better than that.

If gas, then it creates a new logistic chain, which is surely temporary as downcracking is not an option and lube will be needed eventually anyway. A dead end early game option and nothing more. Plus wood gasification mod exists already - so really, what is the point to double it?

It's using the already existing in game Petroleum Gas, so not sure how you're getting a new production chain out of that? You'd need something in place for handling the gas from oil processing anyway.

And yes, Wood gasification already exists, but it produces less gas and adds tar (which requires an extra production chain to deal with). This one would be a legitimate alternative that yields more gas and no tar.

I'm sorry for wasting your time on this and I'm going to bow out at this point. I just don't want to do a mod to the specs you're requesting. I'm sure someone else would have no problem with it, though.

EDIT: I've made one final balance change and will upload shortly. If it works for you, great. If not, again, I'm sorry I wasted your time.
EDIT2: Made a mistake in the values for the gasification.

• Advanced Wood Gasification
  • Ingredients:
    • 10x Wood
  • Results:
    • 25x Petroleum Gas
  • Crafting time: 6s
  • Unlocked by new tech with Oil Processing as prereq (if Wood Gasification mod is installed, then it will add that tech as a prereq as well)
• Advanced Wood to Oil Processing
  • Ingredients:
    • 8x Wood
    • 8x Sulfuric Acid
  • Results:
    • 7x Crude Oil
    • 3x Sulfuric Acid
  • Crafting time: 8s
  • Unlocked by new tech with Advanced Wood Gasification and Sulfuric Acid as prereqs. No longer requires Chem science.

Means you put wood into the advanced gasification, get petrol out. Convert petrol into sulfur used for sulfuric acid, feed back into advanced wood to oil process, get crude out.

Can all be done with red & green science.

[Yandersen]

Nononono, wait! I am not demanding anything from anyone, don't take my pushy style too seriously - I am just making a suggestion for a mod trying to explain the reasons why do I suggest this and that specifically. And having some fun along the way to juice up the text, you know. We r just 1.5 gentlemen having a slightly spiced discussion, that is all!

So... A super-short time for the recipe was just a suggestion, as I said here:
"As a bottom line, me just stuck in thinking that the best for the mod will be "basic{wood->crude}", "advanced{wood+acid->crude}. Qualitatively. As for the ratios - idk & idc."
What I didn't get is that:
"I'm hesitant to make them capable of directly competing with the game's oil processing mechanism"
This statement is not clear to me since the suggested recipe "wood->crude" basically turns the limited wood resource into a crude_oil_source_option. Meaning it creates an alternative where the player can get the oil from - directly from pumpjacks or from the chem plant fed with wood. Consider that the wood is limited and comparably scarce, so let's make it clear: no long-term game production chain can actually be based on such resource. It can only serve a helping side role in a gameplay.
I suspect you don't like crude as an output because you want a solid proof that this is actually possible in reality. Well, I failed to link that video I described, my fault, sry. Honestly, I tried to surf youtube today to find it with no luck. But! Remember where the natural crude oil comes from? from the decomposition of biomass under certain specific conditions, right? And what is the wood, huh? So at least theoretically, it is surely possible, no doubt, would you agree? Isn't it enough for the game? I think even that should put worries about believeability of such process aside and let us focus on a gameplay value of such option.

Anyway. What we have no argument about is that an advanced version of the recipe outputs crude, right? Well, consider the player started with basic recipe, built few belts, chem plants, pipes, tanks and so on. Made some setup, shortly saying. And then eventually he got his hands on advanced version which is more profitable number-wise. He wants to switch to it, but... "Different fluids can't mix". The nice little chem camp need to be rebuilt from the scratch? Oh well... Think of the analogy with basic and advanced version of vanilla oil processing. Does switching involves that much inconvenience? But if both recipe verions output the same thing, this would not be the problem, what do you think about it?

P.S.: I suggest you not to rush and have a game with your mod by yourself to test the gameplay change it creates and maybe reconsider your decisions while keeping in mind alternatives I suggest as you play. You are not making the mod for me, it is a common thing once you publish it. Factorio is a great game, and I only want it to be better in a ways I feel being underdeveloped. Not just having things more suitable for me personally, but better in general, as I see it. I modded before, but not in Factorio. Getting old and lazy to learn new things, so flushing down just ideas. Wasting time? C'mon, what is playing games then, huh?

[pleegwat]

To vanilla balance, this would be a problem unless wood cannot turn into heavy oil. The reason is that an initial supply of heavy oil is required to bootstrap coal liquefaction.

Wood itself is scarce, and pre-oil gathering it is a manual process, hence you're probably just going to use it to get some early oil-based equipment before expanding to the actual oil wells. But if it allows you to start up coal liquefaction, then suddenly you can automate blue science without ever exploring out of your starting area and finding oil.

[FuryoftheStars]

Another rebalance (unreleased) after looking over some results. For the Advanced Wood to Oil Processing, increased net Sulfuric acid consumption and decreased crafting time. As it was before, a single chem lab running the gasification could produce enough petrol -> sulfuric acid to run more than 3 chem labs doing the advanced process full time. With this change, it should drop it to 2.

• Advanced Wood Gasification
  • Ingredients:
    • 10x Wood
  • Results:
    • 25x Petroleum Gas
  • Crafting time: 6s
  • Unlocked by new tech with Oil Processing as prereq (if Wood Gasification mod is installed, then it will add that tech as a prereq as well)
• Advanced Wood to Oil Processing
  • Ingredients:
    • 8x Wood
    • 12x Sulfuric Acid
  • Results:
    • 7x Crude Oil
    • 4x Sulfuric Acid
  • Crafting time: 6s
  • Unlocked by new tech with Advanced Wood Gasification and Sulfuric Acid as prereqs. No longer requires Chem science.

Consider that the wood is limited and comparably scarce

Wood itself is scarce, and pre-oil gathering it is a manual process

I'm running low on time at the moment, might be able to reply more later, but did want to point on this real fast.

Seems we are talking about a modded game, we do need to at least consider other mods: Noxys Trees, Lumberjack, Tree Saplings, just to name the ones I use.

[Oktokolo]

To vanilla balance, this would be a problem unless wood cannot turn into heavy oil. The reason is that an initial supply of heavy oil is required to bootstrap coal liquefaction.

Wood itself is scarce, and pre-oil gathering it is a manual process, hence you're probably just going to use it to get some early oil-based equipment before expanding to the actual oil wells. But if it allows you to start up coal liquefaction, then suddenly you can automate blue science without ever exploring out of your starting area and finding oil.

You soon have to prospect for more metals anyway - not much boost to get by bootstrapping blue science with handchopped wood and coal from the tiny starter field. I mostly rush oil not for the science but for solid fuel wich is way better suited to feed my off-grid smelter columns than coal. Making solid fueld from coal would probably be an act of insanity as that stuff is way better used for making plastics and explosives (don't know what use case coal liquefaction was made for as oil is the easiest resource to mine and transport - after water *g*)...

[FuryoftheStars]

(don't know what use case coal liquefaction was made for as oil is the easiest resource to mine and transport - after water *g*)...

Probably just a sink for coal later in the game, if I had to take a guess, which is kind of the idea here with the wood.

Though I suppose that would also be the point behind having coal liquefaction being locked behind advanced oil processing. Forces you to establish at least one oil outpost before getting to the stage where it'd be self sufficient without it. Though eventually you should run out of coal, too, unless you have an infinite ore mod or something. And of course, Resource Spawner Overhaul has an option to allow oil to spawn in the starting area (though sometimes it will spawn in the starting lake...).

I really have no idea if I'm trying to make a point or what it would be (and at this point I almost feel like I'm just "thinking out loud"), so don't try reading into anything I'm saying.

--------------

As I was looking at my version of wood gasification and thinking about the things needed for blue science, it makes sense why the existing wood gasification mod used the tar producing version (for heavy oil and petroleum gas). But that's ok.

Anyway, I'm kind of liking the setup I've done with wood -> petrol -> sulfur -> sulfuric acid + wood -> oil. A straight wood -> oil without any intermediary steps seems too easy, especially seems this allows you to bypass the need for an oil outpost and, once you get advanced oil processing, you get coal liquefaction which just allows you to keep at it.

So, yeah, I do apologize, but I do feel like one should work a little for oil. If not the outpost, then in the logistics of the setup to produce oil without the outpost. And really, the logistics of this (or even the existing wood gasification mod) are not that complex.

And please don't read any of my comments as being upset or snarky or anything like that. I really am being laid back and just rambling on over here. The reason I was saying that maybe I should bow out from this was because what was being requested/envisioned for this was just something that I wasn't truly wiling to make and felt like it'd be best if I just stopped and allowed someone else to step in. That said, I'm not planning on deleting or dropping support for the mod that I have created.

I'm not good with explaining things. I've tried to the best of my ability to explain where I'm coming from. I know I've failed, I knew I was going to from the start, but figured an effort was deserved. Unfortunately I don't know how else to explain at this point.

[BlueTemplar]

To vanilla balance, this would be a problem unless wood cannot turn into heavy oil. The reason is that an initial supply of heavy oil is required to bootstrap coal liquefaction.

Wood itself is scarce, and pre-oil gathering it is a manual process, hence you're probably just going to use it to get some early oil-based equipment before expanding to the actual oil wells. But if it allows you to start up coal liquefaction, then suddenly you can automate blue science without ever exploring out of your starting area and finding oil.

once you get advanced oil processing, you get coal liquefaction which just allows you to keep at it.

Erm, coal liquefaction is a late game tech that requires Production Science packs... I'd hope that your blue science would be long automated by that point...

[FuryoftheStars]

To vanilla balance, this would be a problem unless wood cannot turn into heavy oil. The reason is that an initial supply of heavy oil is required to bootstrap coal liquefaction.

Wood itself is scarce, and pre-oil gathering it is a manual process, hence you're probably just going to use it to get some early oil-based equipment before expanding to the actual oil wells. But if it allows you to start up coal liquefaction, then suddenly you can automate blue science without ever exploring out of your starting area and finding oil.

once you get advanced oil processing, you get coal liquefaction which just allows you to keep at it.

Erm, coal liquefaction is a late game tech that requires Production Science packs... I'd hope that your blue science would be long automated by that point...

Oh poop... why did I keep thinking I saw it on advanced oil processing? Do the reseach icons look the same?

[cappie]

Hi guys, just to let you know: my mod Wood Gasification v2.1.0 (only for 0.17.x and above, sorry) now includes a new technology called the "Advanced wood gasification process".

Advanced wood gasification turns 28 wood and 50 water into 35 units heavy oil, 15 units of light oil and 20 units of preroleum gas in a refinery. (this should be balanced to a 75% efficiency.. it doesn't matter if you use the normal wood gasification or the advanced when it comes to yield; they're both the same.. the advanced one is just way more convenient as it only uses water and wood as an input for your refinery).

In order to keep things a bit fair the research costs 200 automation (red), logistic (green) and chemical (blue) science packs.. you'll have to set up the basic one using a lab and create some plastics to create the 200 blue science packs in order to be able to fully switch to wood-only chemical plant setups.

The original wood gasification recipe has been unaltered and still uses a chemical lab.

Let me know what you think at the discussion pages on the mod page itself.

Hope you like it!

---

EDIT: I got inspired reading the Reuters article as well; didn't knew you guys were discussing it here until I searched for it.

---

Wood_Gasification_2.1.0.zip

the mod itself

(82.99 KiB) Downloaded 111 times

[Yandersen]

Anyway, I'm kind of liking the setup I've done with wood -> petrol -> sulfur -> sulfuric acid + wood -> oil. A straight wood -> oil without any intermediary steps seems too easy, especially seems this allows you to bypass the need for an oil outpost

Exactly! It allows to setup the oil-based production chain before setting up the first far oil outpost. Because the player is not ready for such task without the oil-based products. And this oil from the wood gives a hand in this situation. But it can not last long considering how scarce the wood is. Pretty quick it will become easier to build oil outposts than continue chopping down forests around the base to supply continuously increasing demand for the oil. I am telling you, mr FuryoftheStars, you need to try it out in practice to get rid of (or prove) your (or mine) possibly wrong assumptions. I assume that woody-crudy thingy will feel more like an improve in qol rather than the cheat. Of course, it depends on numbers you put in the actual recipe, sure.

So... Mr FuryoftheStars, how about going with two mods: one is like you want, and another one that comes with two recipes only - the basic (woody-crudy) and advanced (wood+acid->crude) to give people chance to try, compare and share opinions? Looking at your mod's guts I feel it will not be too much headache to change few things to make an alternative version, me raaaayt, yes?.. ^.^ Oh geez, I am such a PITA... XD

[BlueTemplar]

Oh, wow, major changes to vanilla !
https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-304

[FuryoftheStars]

Oh, wow, major changes to vanilla !
https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-304

I'm going to wait until this settles down before making any real decisions.

It allows to setup the oil-based production chain before setting up the first far oil outpost. Because the player is not ready for such task without the oil-based products. And this oil from the wood gives a hand in this situation. But it can not last long considering how scarce the wood is. Pretty quick it will become easier to build oil outposts than continue chopping down forests around the base to supply continuously increasing demand for the oil. I am telling you, mr FuryoftheStars, you need to try it out in practice to get rid of (or prove) your (or mine) possibly wrong assumptions. I assume that woody-crudy thingy will feel more like an improve in qol rather than the cheat. Of course, it depends on numbers you put in the actual recipe, sure.

Well, let's go over this for a moment. You'd like a wood to crude process so that you can build things that require oil, like bots, in order to have them help in the setup of your first oil outpost. (And a way of getting rid of wood without directly burning it, but I feel this is more of a secondary.) In doing this, I feel like this is less about the oil itself and more about construction of a far outpost.

The game I was referencing where I truly reached oil for the first time, was actually my... 4th?... outpost on that map. I had already established another iron, copper, and coal outpost. I even used the RSO mod to force the ore fields out further than what the in game settings allow. No bots. Oh, and one of those outposts actually had two types of ore spawned one over the other, so some of my belts coming out of there had to use filter inserters to separate (this was before splitters had filters). All belt fed bullet turrets, too. No lasers, though I did have the Long Range Turret mod to help in this aspect (at that time I want to say it still had less range than lasers, did slightly more damage than a standard bullet turret, but fired a lot slower).

So yeah, I have done that already and felt like I was doing just fine without the need to bootstrap myself with some bots.

I feel like the few intermediary steps I've put in that use things and setups that you need to deal with at some point anyway is a minor cost for the ability to get bots a bit earlier and easier than intended. *shrug*