This mod began life as an effort to update Better Deep Scarce Ores, whose author appears to be on a bit of a break. I took his ore values and just merged EarthLike and Moon into Pertam, called it a day. After playing with the resulting mod, I began to feel the need to adjust the numbers a bit, to better suit my usual scenario. The result is this mod. I hope you’ll find it enjoyable.
Supports Deuterium (2H) ore from Life’Tech-Powers. If you don’t use the mod, that’s fine. Any Deuterium patches will just turn back into stone.
I began the project with ore depths up to 1200m, but very quickly found myself wrestling with the limitations of SE’s subpar voxel scanning code. The result was that, no matter the range of your modded ore detector, you would only find the deeper ores by accident, never on purpose. I decided to make the ores much more shallow, and hope Keen will eventually get around to optimizing this much neglected bit of their game.
This project is available on GitHub.
EarthLike has Iron, Nickel, Silicon, Cobalt and small quantities of Magnesium in surface boulders. You’ll want to head to the Moon for Gold and Silver, Mars for Platinum, Alien for Uranium and Deuterium. Magnesium is available in varying small quantities everywhere, and large quantities on Triton.
Pertam has the same as EarthLike, but also small quantities of Silver and Gold, since it doesn’t have a local moon, as well as actual (rare) Magnesium deposits, since I have yet to see any boulders on Pertam.
Asteroids can spawn everything, although most of the time you will only run into ores containing iron, nickel, silicon, cobalt, silver, and ice. But sometimes, you’ll get lucky. Space starts are viable, but you’ll probably want to set up planet-side mines to get more reliable resources.
Technically, I guess you can start on Triton, since it has all the basics in some quantity, but I wouldn’t recommend it.
Processing stone with a survival kit is slow but yields increased ingots and less gravel. Doing so with a refinery will yield only trace amounts of ingots, but much more gravel. This is to help those that start with a vanilla drop pod, push the player towards finding actual ore rather than relying on stone for anything but getting started, but also to help with mods that actually use gravel, such as AQD Concrete.
Since the dependency system in SE is kinda broken, this mod does not explicitly depend on Better Stone. You do, however, need both installed, added to your world, AND THIS MOD ABOVE Better Stone (below if DS). Please make sure you get that right. There’s nothing I can do to make any of this automatic, I’m sorry.
In fact, adding it as a dependency on the workshop, breaks it in game. Thanks, Keen.
- Mods that modify the ore maps or vanilla planet definitions will likely not get along with this mod at all. Whichever is on top in the mod list will have their definitions take effect.
- Modded planets are an entirely separate affair from this mod. They have their own ore maps and planet defs, and whatever is in them is what you will see. This mod does not automatically do anything to non-vanilla planets.
- Modded ores almost certainly ship with planet defs, so see point 1 about that.
- Pretty much any other kind of mod should have zero issues with this, but please let me know if you run into issues. Preferrably on GitHub, so I can keep track of it.
- Bring Back Cyberhounds overrides the EarthLike def to adjust the creature spawn radius. Make sure the Cyberhounds mod is placed below (above on DS) in the mod list.
If I’m on X, what will I find?
- EarthLike: Fe, Fe+, Ni, Si, Co
- Moon, Europa: Fe, Ni, Si, Au, Ag
- Mars: Fe, Fe+, Ni, Si, Co, Pt
- Alien: Fe, Fe+, Ni, Si, Mg, Au, U, 2H
- Titan: Fe, Ni, Si, Au, Ag, Pt
- Triton: Fe, Fe+, Ni, Co, Mg
- Pertam: Fe, Fe+, Ni, Si, Co, Mg, Au, Ag
If I want X, where is it most plentiful?
- Fe, Fe+: Triton
- Ni: Europa
- Si: EarthLike, Moon
- Co: Pertam, EarthLike
- Mg: Triton
- Ag: Europa
- Au: Titan
- Pt: Mars
- U: Alien
- 2H: Alien
- 2H+: Alien
One of the main principles behind this mod is that ore deposits should be quite rich. When you find one, you’ll probably want to set up a permanent mining operation on top of it. To compensate for this bounty, you’ll be searching far longer for them. Deposits are both less frequent, and much deeper.
- T1 (Fe, Ni, Si) at 50m
- T2 (Co, Mg, Ag) at 150m
- T3 (Au, Pt, U, 2H) at 300m
- T4 (2H+) at 400m
Here are some notes and recommendations for you:
- I recommend a long range ore detector mod. You probably won’t find any T3 deposits without one. My personal favourites are Ore Detector Reforged and Seismic Surveying.
- I would suggest you spawn with something mobile, like the New Spawn Pods mod.
- If you don’t start yourself with a large grid ship or rover, I would suggest Wasteland Encounters, and your first step being finding a large wreck to get you started.
- Lemmiwinks for creating the Procedural Ore Generator, which is how I created the ore maps.
- Chrido and Darian Stephens for creating Scarce Resources, and introducing me to the idea that having everything within 300m of literally anywhere is boring.
- DranKof for Better Stone, and introducing me to the idea that more ores are more fun.
- Ghost722nd for Deep Ores, and introducing me to actual large mining operations, rather than just a small mining ship.
- Cak for the original Better Deep Scarce Ores, which served as a foundation and motivation for creating this mod.
- Kuvat for his work on the Life’Tech mods.