v1.7.0 - The Oil Drilling Major Update - OUT NOW!
Dear Stormworkers and Roughnecks,
The Oil Drilling Major Update is live now!
This new update introduces oil drilling to the world of Stormworks.
This update includes many new components and systems to allow players to design and operate oil rigs. Oil drilling is a massive business, with many different ways to drill oil, and loads of engineering. We have simplified oil drilling from real life to work with a set of blocks, but many of the design considerations, mechanics, and logistics remain. Lets talk about what this means:
Surveying For Oil
Players can just start drilling in the hope of striking black gold, but it's probably more sensible to purchase surveys. You can discover oil fields by purchasing survey data from the existing oil sites in game. Industrial Frontier DLC owners can also drill on land at any of the pre-established oil wells on the Meier Isles that include static workbenches for creating rigs.
Establishing A Well
The new oil well component is large and heavy. When placed down level and flat, it can be activated and will lock to the ground. This can be logistically difficult when drilling in the ocean, so you may need special purpose vehicles such as submersibles to assist in positioning the well.
Feeding Rods
The new drill rods are 10m lengths of drilling pipe. They can be stored in the rod holders, picked up and fed using the rod clamps, and threaded together using the rod threading clamp. You will need to thread together a long drill chain of rods as you feed it into your well.
Drilling
Once you have your rods assembled and fed into the top of your well, it is time to start drilling! For this you need to rotate the rods (by feeding them through a rod driver), and pump drilling slurry (using the rod pivot) into the rods to work as cutting fluid.
Extracting Oil
Once you have drilled down to the depth of the oil deposit, it is time to start extracting! For this you need the well pump, a huge piston type pump that needs to be actuated mechanically. Make a pump jack or otherwise drive the piston to pump oil!
Refining
Once you have extracted your oil, you can refine it in a tall custom tank with distillation. Heat the oil using a coal burner, or the new diesel burner or electric heater to 300C and the oil will start to separate. It can be extracted using the distillation taps which will condense jet fuel or diesel depending on their height in the column.
We can't wait to see what oil industry inspired creations players come up with and hope you enjoy these new components and mechanics! And we look forward to your feedback!
Much love
The Stormworks Developers
Patch Notes
v1.7.0
Feature - Oil Industry Major Update
Oil drilling is a new late-game activity for Stormworks, with high start up costs but a large return on investment.
Oil can be found under oil rig workbenches or under random ocean tiles (Purchase survey data from an oil company to reveal them on your map)
Once you have located an area rich in oil it's time to set up an oil rig and start drilling!
Oil Survey:
- Randomly generated ocean oil deposits
- Oil Data Vendors which sell oil deposit location information
- Oil deposit below the static oil rig base
- 4 Oil Well locations on the Meier Isles (Industrial Frontier DLC)
Attach a wellhead to the terrain above an oil deposit (These are pre-placed on the Meier Isles)
Drill Rods can be fed into the top of this component with assistance from Drill Clamps and Connectors to pick up and join the rods.
A rotary table and swivel provide rotation and slurry flow which are required for running the drill.
Once the drill is spinning and has a supply of slurry, the rods need to be physically pushed into the wellhead to advance the drill.
Drilling will saturate the slurry with mud and stone, which can be cleaned and recycled using a slurry filter and fresh water.
After the drill arrives at the oil deposit, the oil can be extracted with a Pumpjack component paired directly to a swivel. The Pumpjack requires mechanical action to draw up the oil from the well.
Oil Drilling:
- Drill Rod Storage
- Drill Clamp
- Drill Connector
- Rotary Table
- Drill Swivel
- Wellhead
- Pumpjack
- New Fluids: Slurry and Saturated Slurry
- Slurry filter
Now that you have an excess of oil you don't just have to sell!
Fractional Distillation is the process of separating crude oil into its more useful components.
Heat up oil inside a contained volume to >300 degrees and use the distillation port to tap off diesel and jet-fuel fractions.
Fractional Distillation:
- Diesel Furnace
- Electric Furnace
- Distillation Port
We have deprecated the fluid filter in this update for a much more simplified version of the component to emphasize the design challenge of fluid system building.
When we deprecate parts they remain in the game files, and a replacement version is added; this means that your old vehicles will still work as usual, but the old version of the part will no longer appear in the edit inventory.
General:
- New Fluid Filter
Fix - #1698 Improved terrain at scxeech trading yard
Rework - #16315 #15892 Resource trading addon now has surge pricing
Rework - Temperature Sensor now uses compartment temperature if placed inside a sealed volume
Rework - Radar now ignores moveable class objects
Balance - Desalinator re-balance
Addon Lua:
- Added getOilDeposits()
- Added large keypad support to setVehicleKeypad
