Whilst planning my Pelagos factory, it took me a lot of research to understand what it was asking me for, especially since iron generation is so low, I didn't know that it was an actual native resource! I explored around so much that I didn't find any iron patch, until I found a minuscule 28k patch.

I don't know if I got unlucky, but is ore generation supposed to be this low? And am I supposed to make science and rockets out of it?

https://imgur.com/a/MxYfVYN

Looks like bad luck
You can compare it to maps generated with new world preview. That's how I check if iron generation looks fine.
Check that if what generates looks more reasonable

The issue issue is that aligning terrain generator with resource generator is a pain.
In 0.17.0 I added small iron patch right next to spawn to partially deal with that. Still on my way to add lighthouse (liquid fuel radar) to make searching easier

Also that is huge pollution cloud, you should consider reducing number of electric devices in base

You are not alone tho, sometimes people are out of luck, and cases like this pop from time to time (this is 3rd one someone has issue with finding iron/bad spawn of it), and best I can do is to provide tools to easier search for iron, and add starting patch via script (because sometimes vanilla one decides to spawn on water area so it does not spawn at all).
I will try to make iron patches slightly bigger and richer to increase probability of them spawning on island and making them better even if smaller

Yeah that's what I was wondering. Having a way to scan large distances would be very interesting, as the other implied option is to fly/boat around.

And yeah I decided to go against god's will and make a solar array to start up. I underestimated how far and how slowly elecromagnetic pollution dissipates.

Thank you for the heads up!

Having a way to scan large distances would be very interesting

Already thought about it some time ago

I am working on "lighthouse" building for past 2 weeks to do just that :D
finally found right 3d model so it might be added soon.
I will ping you in this thread after adding it to the mod

Lighthouse added in 0.18.0