Friday Facts #358 - Alien decoratives & Polluted water

[conn11]

(...) It would be lovely if we could make grass or decoratives die too, but that's something way too technically complicated for now.

A great idea for post 1.0 could be gradual desertification and buildup of smog (maybe indicated by a slight saturation loss).
Both should be more than pure cosmetics, e.g. decreasing solar output, further increasing the need for polluting energy production.
This has already been partially done by mods (credit: darkfrei).

If they did that for solar, it would lose all value as a ups free power source.

Depends on how far away the solar array is placed.
But optimally the penalty wouldn't be that high, rendering solar completely useless.

[NotRexButCaesar]

(...) It would be lovely if we could make grass or decoratives die too, but that's something way too technically complicated for now.

A great idea for post 1.0 could be gradual desertification and buildup of smog (maybe indicated by a slight saturation loss).
Both should be more than pure cosmetics, e.g. decreasing solar output, further increasing the need for polluting energy production.
This has already been partially done by mods (credit: darkfrei).

If they did that for solar, it would lose all value as a ups free power source.

Depends on how far away the solar array is placed.
But optimally the penalty wouldn't be that high, rendering solar completely useless.

The only reason solar is any good is because it costs no ups. If each panel(or chunk) had to check the pollution every few ticks, them scale down the power, it would lose that value.

[conn11]

(...) It would be lovely if we could make grass or decoratives die too, but that's something way too technically complicated for now.

A great idea for post 1.0 could be gradual desertification and buildup of smog (maybe indicated by a slight saturation loss).
Both should be more than pure cosmetics, e.g. decreasing solar output, further increasing the need for polluting energy production.
This has already been partially done by mods (credit: darkfrei).

If they did that for solar, it would lose all value as a ups free power source.

Depends on how far away the solar array is placed.
But optimally the penalty wouldn't be that high, rendering solar completely useless.

The only reason solar is any good is because it costs no ups. If each panel(or chunk) had to check the pollution every few ticks, them scale down the power, it would lose that value.

Solar was always a kind of no brainer.
Changes to the power generation system, be it more UPS efficient nuclear, could potentially be something done in the range of 1.1 or later.

[Bauer]

Has anyone ever managed to reduce the pollution cloud in a medium to large size base, say 100 or more SPM?
I normally play peaceful or without aliens, so I usually don't care about pollution (or turn it off from the start).
But every time I played with "normal" aliens, I tried to reduce pollution (modules, stop burning coal) but the growing factory compensates all my effords.

So, it there a way to get the blue colour of the starting lake back?

[Koub]

I think the only way to turn the starting lake back to blue will be by using your starting factory as a bootstrap factory, moving elsewhere for your endgame factory, and tearing down the starter base XD.

[Shadow_Man]

I think the only way to turn the starting lake back to blue will be by using your starting factory as a bootstrap factory, moving elsewhere for your endgame factory, and tearing down the starter base XD.

Hey, but what about water treatment plant?
We need it, seriously. We want to live on a green, blooming planet

[steinio]

I would favor black water. Destroy the planet and hit the road.

[tsen]

Has anyone ever managed to reduce the pollution cloud in a medium to large size base, say 100 or more SPM?
I normally play peaceful or without aliens, so I usually don't care about pollution (or turn it off from the start).
But every time I played with "normal" aliens, I tried to reduce pollution (modules, stop burning coal) but the growing factory compensates all my effords.

So, it there a way to get the blue colour of the starting lake back?

Yes, but you have to slow production way down and spread it out over space (in our case we moved to Spain after attacks in our mainbase got too strong for our 'noob' player to handle) so that the terrain absorbs pollution as fast as you make it. On our server this is now known as "tsenmode", so you should call it that too so I can be internet famous.

[bobucles]

Ooh, a reason to rush out those efficiency modules. Playing a pure green style is a challenge all its own, but it's not impossible to avoid dealing serious damage to the environment. At least, it is quite doable until you start cranking up the marathon death world settings.

[BattleFluffy]

Now that 1.0 is nearly here, there has never been a better time to rename "Biters" to "Bitters". Those foolish bitters may as well become official, right? :>

[Enderdraak]

Solar panels could posseble not affect UPS that much. at the polution check (every so often) look if solar panels are >0 and if they are do solar * smog and than you have a number of effective working solar panels, add the original value to the power graph and the new one to the behind the curtain for power math. Will not be fully accurate. but close enough.

[pleegwat]

Currently solar panel yield is calculated surface-wide. Accounting for smog would necessitate moving it to per-chunk, or recalculating the baseline yield for the surface whenever the pollution in a chunk with solar panels changes.