Factorio Forums

I was playing on a server, and I had been paving a lot of the factory by hand. The server owner and other players did not complain, even when I paved swaths of the factory in front of the admin's face.

Around 7 hours into the game or so, some guy is on and sees me paving it and starts freaking out that I am ruining the factory and there is no point to pave it because it causes so much pollution and every factory that's paved is basically dead. He said paving it is like herpes(what?). So I spent an hour with him removing all the paved surfaces except for 2 tile width roads.

Is it bad etiquette to pave a factory or something? Is this guy a fringe?

Based on what you've reported, he was concerned about you reducing the pollution absorption of the natural landscape (which has some) by replacing it with stone or concrete (which has none). To the extent that the map has biter attacks triggered by spawners absorbing otherwise unabsorbed pollution, you would be effectively increasing the frequency and size of the attacks. This may or may not be a concern; it sounds like to this fellow there was a concern, so in the absence of other information we must take his word for it that more severe biter attacks would cause problems or be otherwise unwelcome. (It would be quite strange if he would welcome more biter attacks, I suppose.)

There is also the issue that some people consider flat concrete and stone everywhere unappealing, but perhaps this was less of a concern for him.

You need around 10000 tiles (a bloc of 100x100) of free grassy soil to absorb as much as a standard steel furnace running full speed without modules would pollute.
Depending on the paving you did, it can be a lot pollution unabsorbed, or simply an infinitesimal quantity of it .

If they're on a "minimal pollution" map, and you paved a huge surface, it might be a significative increase of their pollution cloud.

There are many suggestions about enemies, that come "out of the ground". References to Dune.

viewtopic.php?f=80&t=139 Enemy Variations / Enemy Variety / New Enemies / Boss
which points to --> viewtopic.php?f=6&t=5757

and many more... I think in that case nobody would have anything about paving.

Maybe the problem is then: It costs memory (and bits of performance) and where is it "enough"? But I think such things will be formed with time.

paving should give better performance, not worse, since it removes the brush that is the root cause of most major performance issues.


Paving is important for the base, makes it better to move around. Besides, the absorption of the tiles is already dead the moment you place an assembler down. Use the Air Filter mod or Treefarm if your REALLY that worried about pollution.

I meant with performance CPU performance.

Pave what you can, youll move way faster around your factory. Also spend the excess stone you mine at those mixed stone/copper deposits.

The effect of pollution is stupid. Just extend the base 1 (ONE) Tile further out, and the enemies will sniff the same air. Building defenses is btw a game objective.

Unless you have an objective like ultra low pollution. But this effect of concrete is barely measurable anyway.

he was a nutter.

personally i like to pave roads, it helps the base look organized. but i have no expectations of organization when multiplayer.

AutoMcD wrote:he was a nutter.

personally i like to pave roads, it helps the base look organized. but i have no expectations of organization when multiplayer.

same here, my roads are 10 concrete with a black/yellow border building and the factory floor is just stone. This gives me a lot of driving space to cruise through it at maximum speed without crashing into things:


the edges of my base are lined with lasers in range of roboports with contruction (or rather repair) robots so even behemoths can't penetrate a single wall before it's repaired:

I don't complain about it either, but it doesn't mean I support it. Complaining about anything in multiplayer games only make things worse. Don't take lack of complains as agreement to whatever you are doing.