Page 1 of 1

Terraforming: Green planet

Posted: Thu Nov 03, 2016 12:43 pm
by Engimage
I have searched for this on forums but have not found any complete idea.

Currently all player can do is pollute the planet. There is no effective way to recover from pollution other than adding effectivity modules to reduce it.

So I would like to propose several machines that will automate planet terraforming towards making planet more eco friendly.

1. Seed factory.
A machine which produces "seeds" from wood and water.

2. Terraforming station.
A machine with a certain area of effect like roboport logistic network. Consumes seeds and water to transform surrounding biomes into grassland.

3. Forrest control station
A machine with a certain area of effect like roboport logistic network. Consumes seeds and water to plant trees in its vicinity.

It may be a good idea to utilize construction bots to help planting trees. Or even introduce a new type of bots stationed in terraforming station for this purpose just to make it look much more realistic.

There are several goals for this feature. First of all it is to remind people that actual factories do make planet polluted and its not only biters that have to remind of it.
And second is pure gameplay feature to surround your production with things that stop pollution from spreading.
And the third goal is to make use of tons of wood that you recover by cleaning out space for your factory.

Re: Terraforming: Green planet

Posted: Thu Nov 03, 2016 4:08 pm
by Diodon
Definitely would like to see new eco-friendly options (not that I don't also enjoy playing as a forest burning smoke belcher!)

I would opt to keep it simple. Make a new robot type that will plant biome appropriate flora in the area it has access to. If this is a robo port then the planting area would be the construction area. This would also work for the personal robo-port.

I'm not sure I would want wood to be part of a recipe you'd need in mass quantity, especially if it requires tearing down the trees you are trying to grow. I'd just abstract out needing a seed item and either require no material component or possibly some type of expendable gardening tool (like repair tools currently are) or a fertilizer derived from something like stone / water / oil-byproducts, etc.

Worth considering is that I think the game might optimize vegetation in saves by only saving vegetation in chunks where it was modified from the auto-generated vegetation. It might be worth internally prioritizing restoring the original vegetation of a chunk before planting new vegetation. This might give options to keep save files small by only representing which vegetation items are different from what was auto-generated.

Re: Terraforming: Green planet

Posted: Fri Nov 04, 2016 3:36 pm
by Grimtongue
The ability to plant trees creates the same exploit as the ability to place water: you could create an impenetrable barrier to keep out the biters.

I also don't like the mods that add forest growth for another reason: this game is a technology-based game, so magical fast-growing trees simply don't belong.

Re: Terraforming: Green planet

Posted: Fri Nov 04, 2016 7:55 pm
by Diodon
Grimtongue wrote:The ability to plant trees creates the same exploit as the ability to place water: you could create an impenetrable barrier to keep out the biters.

I also don't like the mods that add forest growth for another reason: this game is a technology-based game, so magical fast-growing trees simply don't belong.
Biters will attack trees or any barrier that is between them and their destination. You can observe this by trying to evade them through a dense forest. When they get jammed up many will start attacking the trees themselves until they break through. In fact, biters will even ignore walls. The only time they attack them is to get at what is behind them.

Re: Terraforming: Green planet

Posted: Sat Nov 05, 2016 12:42 am
by GlassDeviant
Grimtongue wrote:don't like the mods that add forest growth for another reason: this game is a technology-based game, so magical fast-growing trees simply don't belong.
Some varieties of bamboo can grow at a rate of 4cm per hour (1 inch per 40 minutes). As these trees are alien, who is to say what is a normal growth rate since in the base game all the trees we ever see are already fully mature?

Re: Terraforming: Green planet

Posted: Sat Nov 05, 2016 2:24 am
by British_Petroleum
this is like what the old tree farm mod did. You place a plot and make saplings in an assembly machine from wood and feed them into the plot, and trees will slowly grow over time. These trees would also reduce pollution like any other trees. Was a cool mod :) I played many games with it.

Re: Terraforming: Green planet

Posted: Sat Nov 05, 2016 11:32 am
by ssilk