How do you get enough steel on flat maps?

[Forblaze]

There isn't enough naturally occurring steel on the map for everything I'm able to build on something like a large hill map. Trade caravans just don't carry enough steel. Requesting 5 at a time just for half of them to have less than 1k steel just isn't economical. Trade ships are better, but aren't frequent enough to rely on.

Similarly, how do you get usable amounts of plasteel on maps that aren't lucky enough to have any? Not only is it rare to find in quantity, but it's also *extremely* expensive to buy.

[Serenity]

Deep drilling maybe? I haven't used as an exclusive source, but you can get a lot of steel and plasteel that way.

Disassembling mechanoids is a great source of plasteel

[ArguedPiano]

I usually resort to buying it from caravans and orbital trade's.

[BetaSpectre]

I had to make do with only space traders back in the old days. Caravans make this much more easy.

Though back then you could sell any item to anyone more or less back then. Oh and the fact that you had literal raids with 500+ pawns spawn in at any given time meant you had lots of things to shooty/sell

[Canute]

How do you define "enough" ? :-)
Enough to get a rush research for all ship parts and build a ship to leave the planet, yes.
Enough for a 30 pawn colony with high power useage, no, but you can request trade caravans on mass, and trade your fruits,cloth,sculptures for raw metals.

[Shurp]

Devmoding orbital traders works well.

[Shurp]

How do you get enough boob in flat girls?

Devmode some hills there too :-P

[RawCode]

devilstrand + trading bro

[Alpha393]

Use wood wherever possible, swap for stone in exterior buildings later on.

[Shurp]

Wood and trading aren't going to help you when you want to expand your power supply for all those sunlamps in your devilstrand greenhouses.  You need a substantial steel supply, which means either:

a) Mining in large hills or mountain on a large map
b) Fiddling with the deep resource extractor
c) Devmoding orbital traders

Although lately I've noticed even devmoding isn't working well.  I get plenty of exotic goods and combat suppliers but rarely bulk goods traders.  I may just give up and devmode the steel directly (and then destroy an appropriate quantity of silver)

[Canute]

When you use devmode for steel, i suggest to use a or many mods instead.
Deep core mining for infinity driller https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=25346.0
Veg. Garden for resource leafs you can smelt into ore  https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=12934.0

[Lizardo]

Mushrooms are know to acquire metals from the soil, maybe develop a mushroom type that can be refined for the metal it collects.

[Bozobub]

I dunno; deep drilling yields a LOT of w/e resource, usually.  That and trading is usually where I get the vast majority of my steel/plasteel, anyhow, so *shrug* .

Remember, don't start stockpiling too much valuable stuff too early!  You'll invite strong raids.

[Shurp]

Hmmm, that's a clever idea for a mod.  As long as "<harvestedThingDef>" allows Steel it should work.  And it would bypass the silliness of waiting forever for a caravan to show up to sell produce to and another one to show up to buy steel from.

Deciding on an appropriate growth time and yield is more challenging.  Also it invites growing silver, gold, plasteel, components... setting an appropriate rate for all of those could be a challenge.

[stu89pid]

Since deep drilling was added, I've seen copious amounts of steel on all maps. How far in the game are you if you've already exhausted all of the deep metal pockets on the map?

Granted, map size also affects this. I typically play on the largest or second largest map because I like to build a big base and rarely rush the ship.