Does Kerbin contain 'resource'

[Stewcumber]

I want to practice sending up a satellite with a scanner, identifying resource location, getting a drill/converter/storage tank over there and converting ore to fuel. I haven't done it before so I'd like to practice it on kerbin first. But in the Wiki it says N/A for the scanner altitude- can I actually do this scan/resource drilling on Kerbin?

[Zhetaan]

Yes, you can.  Check the wiki again; are you certain the N/A isn't for Kerbol, instead?  It is not always clear, but Kerbol is the unofficial fan name for what the game calls The Sun.  Kerbin is the green-and-blue ball that orbits Kerbol.

Anyway, you can scan Kerbin and drill for Ore there--except in the oceans:  all oceans (Kerbin, Laythe, and Eve) and oceanic biomes are hard-coded not to have Ore.  For reasons I hope are obvious, you can't drill on the Sun.  (Maybe it isn't obvious:  it takes too much delta-v to get to the surface of the sun.)

Edited February 12, 2016 by Zhetaan

[Geschosskopf]

54 minutes ago, Stewcumber said:

I want to practice sending up a satellite with a scanner, identifying resource location, getting a drill/converter/storage tank over there and converting ore to fuel. I haven't done it before so I'd like to practice it on kerbin first. But in the Wiki it says N/A for the scanner altitude- can I actually do this scan/resource drilling on Kerbin?

Yes, Kerbin is full of resources.  And very luckily for players, the "shores" biome usually has one of the better ore concentrations and KSC is in the "shores".  This means you can create a mining rover in the SPH, drive it off the north edge of the runway, and go to town.  But you have to scan the planet first before the drills will actually do anything.

I wrote a tutorial on scanning and prospecting for ore.  The link is in my signature.

[Stewcumber]

52 minutes ago, Zhetaan said:

Yes, you can.  Check the wiki again; are you certain the N/A isn't for Kerbol, instead?

Yeah I misread Kerbol as Kerbin. I win the reading comprehension award today, much derp etc etc

 

Is the resource distribution not random / procedurally generated?

Edited February 12, 2016 by Stewcumber

[Zhetaan]

Yes and no.  @Geschosskopf would likely have better information on this--he rather wrote the book on prospecting--but the idea is that there are layers of control available for resources.  For example, resources can be made available only on specific planets, or even only specific biomes of a planet.  Alternately, one can exclude a resource from certain biomes (or certain planets, or certain situations).  One may also set limits upon how often a resource appears, what the minimum and maximum concentrations are, and how varied the distribution of the resource is within the biome.  It is possible, for example, to limit a resource so that it is only present in a single, uniform concentration, or to do the opposite and let the random number generator have essentially unlimited influence.  This is meant as a tool for modders adding custom resources; if you're playing stock then it is of no consequence to you.

Ore, particularly, is never available in oceans, but it is generally guaranteed to be present everywhere else.  The concentration varies; how much is available, and where the high and low concentrations are, in a given biome are procedurally generated, but the procedure itself follows enough of a pattern that you can guess to the biome where you're most likely to find high or low concentrations.  Finding specific 'hot spots' of high concentrations within a biome requires more advanced scanning and observation.

Edited February 12, 2016 by Zhetaan