Oil Transport (Resolved, there are oil springs in origin islands)

[Emelio Lizardo]

It's a mystery to me how to do this.
- Oil is only produced in the new world
- Electricity is only produced in the old world
- Oil tankers need electricity to build.
- Supposedly an oil tanker can be bought but I've yet to see that appear.
- I don't see how to jump start this.

Why can't we have coal fired electricity, or even ethanol?

[Peez Machine]

Your starter old world island should have oil on it. Barring that, you can try to find an item that provides electricity to the shipyard via a trade union.

[Emelio Lizardo]

I never found that oil. It's supposed to be on the initial island but ...
Hopefully that electric rock will show up or a tanker for sale. Otherwise ....

Coal. Let us burn coal.

[Hundinger]

Originally posted by Emelio Lizardo:

It's a mystery to me how to do this.
- Oil is only produced in the new world
- Electricity is only produced in the old world
- Oil tankers need electricity to build.
- Supposedly an oil tanker can be bought but I've yet to see that appear.
- I don't see how to jump start this.

Why can't we have coal fired electricity, or even ethanol?

Mods can do that. Look at the ingame mod browser. There are several with different energy buildings.

Also, if you choose to start with a starter island you will get one with oil. If you choose to search for a starter island yourself you have to make sure you choose one with oil.

[Gibbo]

You should have oil wells in Ditchwater. This is just enough to power your shipyard and your most valuable factories. There should also be at least one more island in the old world that has oil. You will need to claim that island and not only build an oil well, docks etc but also a commuter pier. This will give you the workforce needed for building an oil well. The you build an engineer's shipyard and then a tanker. Set tanker to trade between your islands. Job done.

Once you've done that you should have a surplus of oil and it should be easy to claim more in the new world. Good luck!

[Hundinger]

Originally posted by Gibbo:

You should have oil wells in Ditchwater.

Why are you assuming they are playing the campaign?

[Emelio Lizardo]

I found the oil springs. I guess they really do exist.

[Hundinger]

Originally posted by Emelio Lizardo:

I found the oil springs. I guess they really do exist.

Tip: if you are looking for ressources like oil, coal mines, iron mines etc., just click on the corresponding symbols over the mini map. If you click on iron for example the game will jump to an iron deposit, if you click again, it will jump to the next one and so on.

[POWER WITHIN USER]

Originally posted by Emelio Lizardo:

Why can't we have coal fired electricity, or even ethanol?

Coal is already required by a lot of smelters and is relatively easy to get while oil is exclusively used for power/fuel generation and shows up in a couple islands only.

[Primigenia]

I agree however that coal should be able to be used for energy production as well, it's so odd it isn't, maybe something like use double the coal than oil to reach the same rate

[Hundinger]

When the game released coal was a very limited ressource. There was no docklands to import infinite amounts of it. You needed that coal for other stuff, so coal power plants wouldn't have a place. Also the whole train thing is an integral part of the gameplay, they wouldn't want to just let players entirely skip it. Yes, they softened that up with the arctic dlc, but arctic gas is a pain to get and you can only support a relatively small number of gas power plants, so it's balanced like that.

If you want coal power plants, old world gas production or water power plants, there are mods that provide that. Mods are super easy to use since the ingame browser is a thing and since the game won't get new major updates, they are also future proof.

[Emelio Lizardo]

Well, yes coal is easy to access. It is also less energy dense than oil and more expensive to transport/manage. Having multiple sources is good and allows for resource management by the player. Coal is a good first use resource, then is replaced by more effective resources as technology permits. In fact you could use oil for many of the things coal is used for but that would be a terrible waste, unless it was the only thing available.

Mods are great for games like Rimworld but Anno should continuously evolve such that Mods aren't necessary.