How to get more metal?

[Skali]

So I'm constantly running out of metal, and the traders that are passing by from time to time do not have enough. How can I constantly get metal? I've launched two pods to a mining area and digged out some metal, but as I left with 120 metal, the mining symbol disappeared.

I'm still kind of new to the game, so maybe I'm missing something big. Can you help me?

[Monoxide]

If you are open to mods, you can get quarries. They arent game breaking, but they give you a source of stone/metal.

That said, I find it hard to believe that traders dont have enough. Often a bulk trader has 500-700 steel when they come through. If you dont have an comms console, get one. It opens you to space traders and allows you to request trade caravans. You get low, call a faction over to bring you stuff.

[Skali]

Originally posted by Monoxide:

If you are open to mods, you can get quarries. They arent game breaking, but they give you a source of stone/metal.

That said, I find it hard to believe that traders dont have enough. Often a bulk trader has 500-700 steel when they come through. If you dont have an comms console, get one. It opens you to space traders and allows you to request trade caravans. You get low, call a faction over to bring you stuff.

Maybe I had bad luck with the traders. So you say I shouldn't care about mining metal from other places? How about Plasteel? Will traders later have that?

[Draylynn]

Install the setup camp mod, visit nearby mountainous areas with a few pack animals, food and miners > profit.

[Terripan]

Strip mine. Sounds like you only get what's showing. Strip mining is when you mine straight through a mountain, each line is two tiles apart, therefore you see all the ores in the mountain.

[Monoxide]

I usually get majority of my plasteel from trading. Though you can also salvage it from mechanoids if you get attacked by them. Of course, you need the research to make the machining bench to do so.

I usually NEVER go elsewhere to get materials. It would have to be dire for me to do so. I typically get everything I need from traders. However, I also plan for this. This means that I am gathering plasteel and steel well before I need them. I try to keep my on-hand silver low and buy up anything I will use whenever a trader comes through.

[Defektiv]

I second the Quarry and Set up camp mods mentioned above if you don't mind mods. Although I tend to use quarries only on flat maps and set up camp for caravan refueling. In vanilla however you can still set up mining camps in other map tiles and drop pod supplies back and forth. Or caravan the supplies if the map tiles are close. Or you can pack everyone up with everything you want to take with you and launch everyone to another tile to rebuild on a fresh map. If you're a fan of managing multiple settlements at once, enable it in the options and settle additional map tiles.

[Skali]

Not a big fan of multiple colonies, because that would be too much to care about. Later on, with some experience, I might try that. But not for now.

I consider installing mods, but I'd like to rely on vanilla possibilities for my first playthrough so I can play this game independent of others.

For the next few hours, I'll try to get the metal by trading. Maybe I'll have more luck.

Thank you :-)

[Wiawyr]

Suprised it hasn't been mentioned yet, but research deep drilling and ground penetrating scanning and then build one scanner and a few drills over resource pockets (select the scanner to see pockets as a green overlay over the terrain). There is always an enormous amount of steel buried on every map tile.

[Monoxide]

Ahh yea. I always forget about deep drilling. That's actually how I get a lot of plasteel. The only problem is finding the location (which takes steel to do). You get the scanner up, and it shows you things are below, but not what they are until you make a drill. So its a kind of trial and error until you get what you want. However, and I havent used it, there is a mod that lets you move drills opposed to deconstructing them.

On a side note, I was a purist too and played vanilla for a long time. Though I will say there are a lot of mods that dont so much give you an advantage as they do make things work a little smoother or improve quality of life. I would say dont be afraid to check some out.

For example, these mods (in my opinion) dont really give you an advantage over vanilla, but help out a lot with frustration and micromanagement:
*Wildlife Tab - put all wild creatures on a tab so you dont have to go look for them visually
*RimFridge - allows creation of 1x1, 2x1, and 2x2 fridges that are always at frozen temp (component/steal heavy)
*Quality Builder - Lets you set a minimum build quality on a to be built object. If the pawn makes something lower than the minimum, they will deconstruct it and try again (so you dont have to manually tell them to).

[Defektiv]

Just remember to turn the scanner off when you're done with it. It has a massive power draw while its running. I usually turn mine on once, select it to see the ore locations, pause the game then use the planner marking tool to mark all the deposits. Then I can turn the scanner off and still have ore locations marked while its off.

[grapplehoeker]

Originally posted by Defektiv:

Just remember to turn the scanner off when you're done with it. It has a massive power draw while its running. I usually turn mine on once, select it to see the ore locations, pause the game then use the planner marking tool to mark all the deposits. Then I can turn the scanner off and still have ore locations marked while its off.

Yup. I go even farther than that. I'll set up build orders for Deep Drills at every location (and lay out power conduits to them) that I will eventually want to mine out. As soon as they're built, I'll turn them off and then each deep drill mine site is good to go as I mine out each location. I rarely have to use the scanner this way.

[leewwilli]

This might be a necro, but also, building concrete paths and lights out to the deep drills helps with transport. I had a core only playthrough (no mods, not even pick up and haul) where I managed to maintain 2-3k steel while replenishing equipment with ~5 skilled deep drillers. Also, deep drilling speed depends mostly on manipulation and mining skill, at least according to the rimworld wiki. I found that bionic arms helped, although I don't have the royalty dlc for drill arms, which help with the deep drilling speed (also according to the wiki). That rate was helped a lot by the extra infrastructure and a biphasic schedule, as well as having the deep drillers basically just drill and do nothing else, which might not be an option if you only have ~10 colonists or something, although I know the ground penetrating scanner mechanics have changed since they were introduced, although I don't know about the version history of that.

[dazz91b]

Just listen to Metallica, the black album, on repeat non stop for 24hours.

Then you will get more metal.

[AldouzTek]

Originally posted by leewwilli:

"I don't have the royalty dlc for drill arms,"

Drill Arms too OP, a pawn with both Drill Arms + Circadian half-cycler working on deep drill can extract 1000+ steel per day.

[Wasted]

send a 1 man caravan to near villages and buy some