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.
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.