Are you running any other mods at all?
What planet are you on?
Have you turned your ore/metal detector range up to max?

The only other mod I am running is Daily Needs.
I'm on the earth planet, on the solar system preset
and my ore detector is cranked all the way to 100 meters.

Strange. On my earth, I think there are too many ores! They're all between 1-2km away from me. Are there any recommended settings that you might have missed in the guide?

Maybe try switching into admin mode, and give yourself a large block ore detector,just to rule out if you're going mad or something? With a large block set to max, I can see pretty much every ore from just that.

So I've gone into creative, slapped a massive top-tier ore detector on my base, cranked up the detection radius to 1.5km, and when I check then, the only resource there is that is remotely close to me is oil sand, which is for now completely useless to me.

After about half an hour of searching and buzzing throughout the land in creative mode slapping down about 15 little detector outposts I've eventually found iron. Without going into creative I would've never found this resource. I've now found that the scale of this is so big it's impractical for a singleplayer playthrough.

I can't seem to share it properly, but look at my latest screenshot - this is on titan, but it's no different for me on Earth either.

I wonder if you or I have different difficulty settings or something?

https://steamcommunity.com/id/chatzicat/screenshots/

The only thing I can see is asteroid density - is yours set to normal?

I don't even see that many ores unless I'm close to where a lot of meteors impacted. I'll try reloading a new world or something...

I agree that the metal detector is brutal with only having 100m range. One big advantage of having asteroids on is that resources come TO YOU. A paltry amount, but enough to get up to the assembler. Maybe it should be increased to 150m.

BTW, earth has far too many ores for my taste. However, I started on high asteroid density...and maybe that affects ore generation? I later turned asteroids off, because the gravel turrets were wasting far too much ammo (heh, now I have gravel out my arse but at that time I was hand drilling) and 1km radius around my base looks like front lines of Le Somme - complete PITA to drive from the base now. But I couldn't find anything with the metal detector myself, not until I got the ore detector. I'll tell you though, its tough. Within a 5km radius of my base I've got only 4 ores...finding them with a small grid ore detector wasn't bad and I think the range is fine (I'm building onsite static bunker mines) but finding those with a 100m metal detector would have driven me crazy.

I'm having loads of difficulty as well... this is absolutely nuts, I've searched nearly 6 square kilometers for ore with a small ship ORE detector, nothin.

I haven't gotten to space with this mod but on planets i find it best to just look for the color shift in the ground. on ice it's easier

Daily needs affects the Ore generation doesn't it? I'm sure there's a compatibility mod on the workshop somewhere.

1. Make sure you have no mods which - in any way - interfere with planet definitions. Put IO at the top of your mod list for game load.

2. Again, don't use modded planets. That is unless they specifically implement IO compatibility.

3. Unless something is messing with IO you will definitely have an ore deposit round about every 2 to 5 km. The ore maps are a fairly even grid pattern. Deposits can sometimes be deeper than your early game detector can pick up and absolutely will be if you're playing with the Deep-Ores plugin.