Is oil now too rare?

Airship

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Jul 29, 2019
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My go-to strategy of starting a new world used to be very buildcraft dominated. I'd walk around the world until I found a nice green biome with a small oil spout nearby and set up a little hovel with the machines and stuff, then work on making a refinery and powerplant using the oil. This would last me until I could set up something more permanent, like a biofuel chain.

These days, we all know that buildcraft changed how oil spawns in a world. Basically, oil spawns are now very rare unless you live in either a desert (bad for bees), swamp (uuugly) or an ocean (hard to build in, and very boring).

Of course, the spouts found in these areas can be massive and awesome, but what if I want to live in a plains biome? Or a forest? I used to be a huge fan of the large biomes modifier, as the immersion would be greater and I would have an incentive to set up satelite bases in distant important biomes like mountains and deserts, but now it's just way too hard finding a world with a decent spawn where oil is still a possibility for the early game. (Sidenote, does anyone have a large biomes unleashed seed where you can find a plains biome with borders to desert, mountains, forest and oceans?)

Basically, oil is now reserved for midgame, when you have liquid tesseracts and chunkloaders available and thus can mount expeditions to your friendly neighbourhood desert and set up a pump or two, as you wouldn't be able to extract the oil unless you built your base right next to it. Thing is, know what else is easily accessible by then? Biofuel/Ethanol. There's just no incentive anymore to use fuel at all anymore, unless of course you do build your first base in one of the aforementioned biomes.

Sorry about the long post, but what do you think?

TL;DR: Oil too rare unless you build in the few biomes that have it; deserts, ocean or swamp. Makes fuel useless for most as Biofuel/Ethanol is easily attainable by the time you can extract the oil, especially if you're using large biomes and/or a biome mod.

EDIT: I'd like to add, that the rarity of oil even further incentiveizes(is that even a word, what am I looking for here?) the use of the extremely fun and clever lava pump, as it is much less effort than mounting an oil expedition.
 

Lord Wumbo

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Jul 29, 2019
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I think oil is a good power source, but I think early game you might want to try something like steam engines or stirling engines. You can probably set up a tree farm easy. Might not be automated, but it's power.
 

Airship

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I think oil is a good power source, but I think early game you might want to try something like steam engines or stirling engines. You can probably set up a tree farm easy. Might not be automated, but it's power.
Of course, that's what i usually do. First steps is all about the charcoal. But oil used to be a reasonable upgrade for early-mid game after you've gotten your first few diamonds and such. Now, you only get access to oil after you've considerably upgraded your logistics, and by that time you probably have no issues with setting up a fully automated biofuel setup instead. And thus oil is left in obscurity, never to be used again ...
 

Airship

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Jul 29, 2019
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No, if anything, they UPPED oil gen. I mean, they just added 2 oil biomes.
Yeah, but in the same move they also decreased oil gen in 'certain biomes' that is plains, forest, mountains, etc. The two oil biomes are still just desert or ocean, just with more oil in them, which is part of my point. By the time you have the resources needed to extract the stuff from these places, you might as well get biofuel instead, as it is flat out superior.
 

Lord Wumbo

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Jul 29, 2019
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Yeah, but in the same move they also decreased oil gen in 'certain biomes' that is plains, forest, mountains, etc. The two oil biomes are still just desert or ocean, just with more oil in them, which is part of my point. By the time you have the resources needed to extract the stuff from these places, you might as well get biofuel instead, as it is flat out superior.


Extracting oil from oceans shouldn't be that hard, just place dirt or cobble around the spout and build a little platform for your pumping rig.

Of course, you might want ender tanks.
 

snooder

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Jul 29, 2019
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Yeah, but in the same move they also decreased oil gen in 'certain biomes' that is plains, forest, mountains, etc. The two oil biomes are still just desert or ocean, just with more oil in them, which is part of my point. By the time you have the resources needed to extract the stuff from these places, you might as well get biofuel instead, as it is flat out superior.

Actually, fuel is superior to biofuel. It lasts longer in engines and boilers. Which isn't a big deal for engines, but is MAJOR for boilers given startup costs.

The trade-off between fuel and biofuel is supposed to be that fuel is better, but more difficult to get and automate. So it's not too crazy for fuel to be a thing you get after your biofuel setup when you have the resources to find an oil biome.
 

mushroom taco

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Jul 29, 2019
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Actually, fuel is superior to biofuel. It lasts longer in engines and boilers. Which isn't a big deal for engines, but is MAJOR for boilers given startup costs.

The trade-off between fuel and biofuel is supposed to be that fuel is better, but more difficult to get and automate. So it's not too crazy for fuel to be a thing you get after your biofuel setup when you have the resources to find an oil biome.
He means it's superior in the fact that it is renewable.
 

Zelfana

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Jul 29, 2019
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But don't you need to find more oil anyway? Why is it important to build all of your stuff next to the first oil spout you find? Transporting the oil is easier, I get that but I would just be there temporarily and move when the oil is used up. There's no need to anchor yourself anywhere because you won't get everything there anyway.

Imo, it's a good thing that oil isn't friggin everywhere because do you find cactus on beaches, trees in sandy deserts or lily pads littering every body of water? All biomes should serve a purpose beyond just having a different grass color. Generating stuff only in certain biomes promotes exploration.
 

cynric

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Jul 29, 2019
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For me, fuel has only ever been a temporary solution till I got some renewable energy going. So it had to be close by, because at the tech level I did use it, I couldn't afford the stuff required for remote operation (tesseracts+chunk loader).
 

Xeonen

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Jul 29, 2019
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You can just build a simple railcraft tank and pump oil into it via an ender tank which is pretty cheap or pump it into portable tanks oil converted into fuel is so energy efficient that 40 buckets of it can get you for a looong time.

I'd also like to mention that rarity of oil is good for single player games yet on large scale multiplayer games, it will pose a big problem unless mystcraft is allowed otherwise players would have to travel tens of thousands of blocks to find a small well.
 

Azzanine

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Jul 29, 2019
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People actually use oil for power... o_o.

Too hard to find, too hard to transport and never lasts.

My Start game and end game energy needs are usually sorted by charcoal and a steam boiler...

I'd be screwed if a pollution mod of some sort was added my areas would be covered and soot and choked with smog.