Long Range Mineral Scanner >> Uranium

[orty]

If any mineral should emit a detectable signal for a long-range scanner, uranium definitely should, but it doesn't (at least according to the wiki definition and all my experiences). 

With B18 dramatically increasing the amount required to build a ship (and each casket needing 20 chunks) it's really hard to find enough.  I'm not saying building the ship should be easy, but my colony has all other materials covered in excess, so the game has become "Uraniumworld" at this point. 

A strategy of mining 0-6 tiles per map quickly becomes unsustainable as the hilly or mountainous world tiles dry up and caravans need to travel farther and farther on slow terrain to find some, if any.  Although this strategy can usually yield many stacks of components (which is a huge time and resource saver), the uranium grind with this method is way too long.

The only other source other than raider weapon drops is from traders, and only exotic traders carry uranium or furniture that might be made from it.  I've gone over a year in-game without seeing an exotic trader, and they don't always sell uranium or furniture. 

I might just try to mod the def for the scanner if that's possible, because this is nuts.  Like 10 hours of gameplay to yield 70 uranium and I need 400 more for all my colonists to leave.

[carbon]

Out of curiosity, have you been making any dedicated efforts to try to deep drill for uranium deposits specifically?

I haven't messed with deep drilling in B18 enough to know for sure, but historically most of a map's uranium was underground.

[orty]

Yeah I hit all the small marks on the map.  Uranium appears in groups of less than 6 tiles, so it's easy to spot.  Jade, gold, and chemfuel only...

[orty]

Yeah I hit all the small marks on the map.  Uranium appears in groups of less than 6 tiles, so it's easy to spot.  Jade, gold, and chemfuel only...

OK, I take that back.  There were a few ground-penetrating scanner blips that were way out at the other edges of the map that I found to mine with deep drills. 

It is a nice late-game challenge to have, finding uranium, but I still stand by my original point, that uranium should show up on the long-range mineral scanner.  Tracking down Jade is relatively pointless for the high investment in resources (for building the scanner), time (~30 days per signal), and travel (up to 30 tiles, at least one way if using drop pods).  And uranium, being 1/5 the mass of Jade, is much easier to transport back via caravan.