What to do with Light/Heavy oil early game?

[Mister Dawg]

I'm basically new to this game (about 40 hours). Been watching NegativeRoot's tutorial on You Tube.

I just got oil up and running. I'm using Petroleum Gas heavily. I'm not using Heavy/Light oil at all yet - and I keep running into oil deadlock, where because my storage tanks are all full of the Heave/Light oil, my refineries shut down, and I run out of Petroleum Gas.

I've destroyed my Heavy/Light storage tanks once, and rebulit them, and the refineries started working again. What a waste. What's a good strategy to deal with this? I don't have Blue Science up yet, but working on it...

[Varenvel The Festive Dinosaur]

Reserch oil cracking , turn oil into recource you currently need the most

Destroying it is weasting it , you can process heavy oil into light and light into gas

[SeaBee]

Keep adding storage for the heavy and light oil, you'll run out as soon as you get the Advanced Oli Processing tech. Once you do you can crack heavy into light, then light into petroleum gas. You can also use light & heavy for flamer weapon ammo. Heavy oil is later used for lubricant for building electric motors. I never have enough oil on my games.

[Mister Dawg]

Alright. I was hoping for a short term fix before I finish up Blue Science, but it's almost done. I'll build more storage until I get there. Thanks.

[Varenvel The Festive Dinosaur]

Originally posted by Mister Dawg:

Alright. I was hoping for a short term fix before I finish up Blue Science, but it's almost done. I'll build more storage until I get there. Thanks.

Short fix is more storage , never too much storage
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=836116157

[Mister Dawg]

Holy Crap! I really do get to feed my OCD with this game don't I? :D

[Rokani]

Turn it into solid fuel and either save it for rocket fuel or burn it for power. Or just keep saving it, but thats a bit boring.

[Varenvel The Festive Dinosaur]

Originally posted by Mister Dawg:

Holy Crap! I really do get to feed my OCD with this game don't I? :D

its amazing game , tho you will face many smaller or bigger self made or not so self made mistakes and chalanges:D

[Name Lips]

Store it in tanks.

The first thing you do when you get oil is work as fast as you can to get blue research bottles.

The first thing you should do when you get the blue research bottles is research advanced oil processing. Then you switch your oil refineries over to advanced oil refining, to give a better ratio of useful products.

It also gives you the ability to "crack" light and heavy oil into petrolium gas, which is probably the only thing you're using in any quantity. Now you can finally get some use out of all the light and heavy oil you've been saving up.

[Noppius]

Hey Mister Dawg!

First thing that you want is getting into blue sience and then do advanced oil processing so you can crack heavy and light into gas.

Second thing is learning how the logistic stuff works, so that you can place a few storage tanks and can "read" the contents of the tanks so you can set up a smart system to handle your fluids. Using the logistic stuff in the game will make live a lot easier for you but it can be a bit hard to understand at first. Try it out and read some guide's about this . I can recommend using the guide from Katherine of Sky (here on steam)

If you plan on using the flame thrower (wich i promote, nothing as fun as burning those aliens bases in a few seconds) then you can set up a flame thrower fuell production. It uses heavy and light. But make sure you keep some in your tanks.

Never ever make that much storage tanks!!! Look at Madzuri or Xterminators video on storage tanks for the whole reasoning but in short, you will never ever be able to empty those tanks completely and the more tanks, the more oil you'll waste because the pressure in the tanks is to low to get it out of the tanks. So never make those storage area's with a ton of tanks!! Never!!

And if you still have to much heavy and light, set up a solid fuel production. Store it, because you'll need it later for rocket fuel and that takes 10 solid fuel for each part of rocket fuel (and you need 1000 rocket fuel to buidl a single rocket) So that will take a lot of heavy/light oil of your hands and keep your tanks more or less empty!

Have fun playing this awsome game!!

[Roxor128]

Siphon off some of your heavy oil for making lubricant. You'll need that for making Electric Engine Units for making bots and the rocket silo. The rest can go into solid fuel which you'll need for making rocket fuel for the rocket and satellite.

[impetus_maximus]

as others have suggested store it, but research advanced cracking ASAP. when storing make it so you can pump everything back into a single tank each of heavy, and light oil. once you have advanced cracking (remember to switch your refinerys to advanced once you do!) you shouldn't need more than one of each. unless you have an uber mega factory i guess.

then it's just a matter of finding the right ratio of refineries, heavy to light cracking, and light to petrol cracking to keep the petrol flowing.
5, 1, 7

combinators (or better yet, SR latches) will let you researve light and heavy oil for lube/flamer fuel.

another tip. don't store petrol, or sulfuric acid. they are to be used, not stored. ;)

[Mister Dawg]

Thanks everyone. This is an amazing game. The You Tube series I'm watching from Negative Root just got to logistics yesterday. Awesome stuff! I got blue science up yesterday as well, and cracking. I didn't know I needed to 'switch' my refineries to Advanced, so that's first order of business today, then off to build some robots. GREAT GAME!

[AlexMBrennan]

What to do with Light/Heavy oil early game?

Nothing. End game you will need light oil for rocket fuel (as well as neglibible amounts of lubricant, flamethrower fuel and so on).

Alright. I was hoping for a short term fix before I finish up Blue Science, but it's almost done. I'll build more storage until I get there. Thanks.

But advanced processing is blue science... you literally cannot achieve your goal of "finishing up blue science" without fixing your oil problems (so you might as well do it sooner rather than later)

[Mister Dawg]

*sigh*, got that all done, now I have too much Petroleum Gas stopping things, and not enough Heavy Oil for the libricant for the robots frames. Seems an eternal balance game, as production of this and/or that creates an ebb and flow for a particular type. Some moderate amount of storage may allow a buffer of sorts...

[Noppius]

The best thing i always found was rigging it all up to a "smart network" so that you can keep it under control and let the machines take care of the surplus by transforming it into something else (heavy into lubricant or light, light into solid fuel or gas, gas into plastic/sulfur or solid fuel). Also, as long as you have the products you need (plastic, sulfur and lubricant and when using it also flamer fuel and solid fuel for rocket fuel), there is no problem when the refinery shuts down. It becomes a problem when you're lacking any of the above products.

So if your factory is running at full capacity, and you can keep up with producing the oil products for the factory, then there is no problem when oil processing stops.

Smart networks are the way to go!