Unpopular Opinion: Oil Ponds Shouldn't Exist in Scrap Mechanic Survival

Some things are unpopular for a reason.

In scrap mechanic getting fuel was super hard and time consuming and now it is just too easy. Hope that Axolot will find a middle ground here.

I think the oil ponds should stay but........ it will require a beter pump or to upgrade ur regular pump .

I agree with the point, but then the person brought up thrusters ... a thruster will eat an entire gas tank in like 30 seconds, even if it's not on full power. I think if they do change the oil ponds they are also going to have to make thrusters more efficient, or they will be even more useless then they already are in survival. One of the big reasons i'm so big into fant mod and the wings mod is because they add flying alternatives that use way less gas. the pico thrusters from the modpack are also pretty gas efficient, yet powerful enough to move most things ... vanilla thrusters are almost unuseable

I agree, we should have to build a refinery or something. or maybe just make it to where you need to combine something with oil to get the gas. BTW, I use tons of gas, like to the point that I definitely need the oil (flyers, spinning defense systems, cars, etc.)

instead should have 2 qualities of fuel, unrefined and raw oil, raw oil comes from ponds and needs some extra step to make into unrefined oil, which can be refined into gas with craftbot, this could also open the opportunity to have different types of fuel, like diesel engines that give a bit of extra torque at the cost of speed, unrefined oil can come straight out of the underwater geysers so it is still early game. Could also have a different pump needed to pump raw oil out of the oil ponds. To summarise: should have a supply chain set up to make gas out of the raw oil which is extracted from ponds with a more expensive pump. can still get unrefined oil from underwater.

what if the ponds were not unlimited ressources and they would drain out from oil and take time to refuel (like 100 in game days to be full again)

man i remember when people were BEGGING for easier ways to get oil

I remember people were asking for sone way to automaticly harvest oil gysers, and we just got infinite oil. Maybe the oil ponds shiuld either be limited, so after a certen amount of oil pumped they would dry out, or make the oil in ponds diferent and need a new way of processing it inti gas.

Bro you don’t know the pain we had when there was literally no oil.

Im going to play on steam deck and its not easy to play scrap mechanic with controller to get it. But the ponds are so useful to fix that issue

I agree with them being further away from the starting area. I personally had the idea that they should be underwater (kind of like the regular oil geysers you find) so you have to build something almost like an oil rig to pump it from the sea floor.

I agree to some extent, but have to disagree on a few points

Firstly the amount of oil ponds in a seed is fairly random, some they might be plentiful other have none (or very few) In my main seed I eventually tracked one down but I had already been playing for a few weeks

In those few weeks I was constantly running out of fuel, even with doing regular runs to the ocean. The low level engines are very inefficient

Driving around isn't the only purpose for fuel, at the very least you need some form of contraption for mining and while controllers can be used, they require alot of component kits so not an option in early game

Also using stacked bearings while perfectly possible is borderline an exploit anyway and very unstable in heavier vehicles, transporting crops that way causes some interesting physics (although granted once you have the guns and clothing you won't need that vehicle anymore)


All I can say is I hope Chapter 2 releases and is much more balanced and content rich, at the moment the gameplay loop is pretty short