Pump-jacks make way too much pollution

[Hexicube]

I didn't look into it too much initially, but after thinking about it, continued usage of a drained well becomes absurdly polluting. Even with efficiency modules, 1.8 pollution for 0.1/s oil is a bit much, and typically you'd want to use a ton of speed modules to get a decent through-put which pushes it through the roof.

Maybe pump-jack pollution should also account for the patch richness? That way, all pump-jacks make a set amount of pollution per unit, which is a lot easier to balance.

[_itg]

It's hard to say what the pollution number actually represents in this case, but it's not a big stretch to think that if it requires the same of work to get that oil out of the ground, it would produce the same amount of pollution extracting it.

[Hexicube]

It's a case of balance, not thematics. If you need a reason, you could argue the pollution comes from impurities in the oil patch, which would also decrease over time.

[The Phoenixian]

I really don't see why pollution needs to be a factor of material out.

In real life, pollution increases as ore supply runs low because you're going after worse ores. What starts with high grade oil or native copper end up with pit mines to go after dirt and rock with a 0.1 percent copper content or dirty oils that require excessive initial refinement with a lot of waste runoff. (See: The Canadian tar sands controversies, for instance.)

Taking inspiration from that, an balance of pollution being directly proportional to energy efficiency and inversely proportional to material availability seems natural.

[bobucles]

There's a neat trick that will reduce your pollution by 100% and it only hurts your oil production by 0.1

Just remove the pumpjack.

[Hexicube]

I really don't see why pollution needs to be a factor of material out.

In real life, pollution increases as ore supply runs low because you're going after worse ores. What starts with high grade oil or native copper end up with pit mines to go after dirt and rock with a 0.1 percent copper content or dirty oils that require excessive initial refinement with a lot of waste runoff. (See: The Canadian tar sands controversies, for instance.)

Taking inspiration from that, an balance of pollution being directly proportional to energy efficiency and inversely proportional to material availability seems natural.

I don't think a game about crash-landing on another planet where you can hand-craft entire factories is a game that should be following how real life works.

From a balance stand-point, it would make sense that a less productive pump-jack pollutes less, so that there's no huge benefit from using fewer but richer oil patches other than the reduced energy cost.

There's a neat trick that will reduce your pollution by 100% and it only hurts your oil production by 0.1

Just remove the pumpjack.

And lose all plastic/sulphur production too...

[_itg]

I don't see how this is a balance problem. The intention is obviously that you periodically go find new sources of oil, as with all other resources. The fact that you get that .1/s option at all is a bonus. Just shut them off if the pollution is too much for you.

[The Phoenixian]

I really don't see why pollution needs to be a factor of material out.

In real life, pollution increases as ore supply runs low because you're going after worse ores. What starts with high grade oil or native copper end up with pit mines to go after dirt and rock with a 0.1 percent copper content or dirty oils that require excessive initial refinement with a lot of waste runoff. (See: The Canadian tar sands controversies, for instance.)

Taking inspiration from that, an balance of pollution being directly proportional to energy efficiency and inversely proportional to material availability seems natural.

I don't think a game about crash-landing on another planet where you can hand-craft entire factories is a game that should be following how real life works.

From a balance stand-point, it would make sense that a less productive pump-jack pollutes less, so that there's no huge benefit from using fewer but richer oil patches other than the reduced energy cost.

You're right that real life should never have the final say, especially when other factors apply, but it can be useful to look at it, especially for inspiration.

So I'll pull in another line of reasoning: Efficiency is a reward to the player for their time and effort in designing and optimizing their factory systems. Having part of the factory decay is one thing as reasonable amounts of decay create upkeep for the factory, forcing the player to find solutions. (Though as was discussed around in FFF129, the decay of a factory should never be too great, or it risks taking over the game, which is okay for a survival game but that's not what Factorio is.)

However, the if part of the factory simply improves itself as time goes by, as would happen in the case pollution being tied to oil per second, then that's another matter. Even if the reduction in pollution is in trade for a loss in oil production, that's not something the player is deciding for themselves in order to tune the system, or some clever way they found to make it work better all around: it happens on it's own.

But that's just theory, rather than practical work. The real question is how much of an impact it makes.

To answer that: There's a certain follow up question to pump as they age: "Do I boost the speed, and if so, how much and how do I defend it?" If a pump goes faster it gains pollution and that raises its operating costs: You touched on that with energy but even beyond that there's another factor: More pollution in a system means it attracts more biters and needs more in the way of repairs and defenses. On the flip side, a very clean pump will produce so little pollution as to not aggravate biters at all. That's a pretty potent advantage (aside from those times when they set up shop literally within spitting distance.)

Reducing pollution as pumps age would negate the downsides to heavy speed boosting: Fast old pumps would be gain less pollution compared to young pumps and the follow up question of whether to add speed at the cost of pollution becomes more of a no-brainer rather than a choice between options or even a calculation of how to make the obvious right answer work.

[Hexicube]

However, the if part of the factory simply improves itself as time goes by, as would happen in the case pollution being tied to oil per second, then that's another matter. Even if the reduction in pollution is in trade for a loss in oil production, that's not something the player is deciding for themselves in order to tune the system, or some clever way they found to make it work better all around: it happens on it's own.

Actually, it wouldn't be improving itself, it would be the equivalent of miners turning off one by one because of no ore remaining. That's another thing that would happen on its own, and is generally noticed by a reduction in production.

Here's the thing: I consider oil patches to be at 0.1/s regardless of their current richness. As far as I'm concerned, a pump-jack progressively makes more and more pollution over time (because they're on more of the time), up the the limit where they hit the minimum 0.1/s richness. This is the only part of Factorio where something can actually increase in pollution without intervention, the only other thing capable of this is a death spiral from repair pack production due to biter attacks but that requires intervention by the biters themselves.

[greep]

There's a neat trick that will reduce your pollution by 100% and it only hurts your oil production by 0.1

Just remove the pumpjack.

This is actually a good early game solution and I do this. Just move on to another oil field. Late game you can put them back when you're at the point of considering putting productivity modules in mines for 80 pollution for the lulz.

[AutoMcD]

I think 9 pollution is a lot to begin with, and then 9 pollution over .1 oil is kind of silly. Real life pump jack is mostly harmless, you see them in the middle of a farm. Maybe there is a puddle, not a smog cloud that spreads. Not like manufacturing processes. And it isn't an approximation of strip mining.

[FMTK]

Complete your defense before raising the Pollution - Problem solved

[opencircut74]

Back on the pollution problem. I don't see why the pump makes so much pollution. It is a sealed system with an electric motor pumping oil out of the ground. Electric motors themselves barely produce any pollution and a sealed pump will not produce any more, but somehow they produce 40+... To fix your biter problem, just put a few laser turrets around it with walls.

[AutoMcD]

"just build more turrets"
dismissive Band-Aid suggestion

[bobingabout]

the advantage of using turrets:
If you use my enemies mod, you get more bubble-gum!

[opencircut74]

the advantage of using turrets:
If you use my enemies mod, you get more bubble-gum!

Wouldn't you need to pick up the alien artifacts? That would be exceedingly annoying.

[bobingabout]

the advantage of using turrets:
If you use my enemies mod, you get more bubble-gum!

Wouldn't you need to pick up the alien artifacts? That would be exceedingly annoying.

use belts.

I've seen some quite interesting belt designs that not only pick up all the artefacts dropped around the base, but also do it in such a way that they push enemies away from the base, giving the turrets more time to kill them before they get into attack range.

Once the artefacts are inside your base, you can box it up, and take the rest of it away by roboport if you want.

[thereaverofdarkness]

Maybe pump-jack pollution should also account for the patch richness? That way, all pump-jacks make a set amount of pollution per unit, which is a lot easier to balance.

That would be fun with the super rich patches you can find with RSO. If you're getting 25 oil per second, you're also generating 225 pollution!

[Unoxxis]

It's a case of balance, not thematics. If you need a reason, you could argue the pollution comes from impurities in the oil patch, which would also decrease over time.

I think actually that the opposite is true! If you keep a pumpjack running which is only pumping out tiny amounts of oil then guess what the rest is? Junk! Therefore I propose the opposite: In the beginning a fresh pumpjack has only a small amount of pollution, since the crude oil it is pumping is pretty pure. The longer you keep it running, the more pollution is generated because there is much more junk in the oil and/or it costs much more effort to pump said oil out.

This would give players a reason not to stick with one large "depleted" oil patch they artificially keep alive with speed3 (if they are not prepared to heavily defend it). Instead, they could reach out for fresh patches and harvest oil with much less impact on pollution. I think this would be an interesting choice for the player added to the table.

[AutoMcD]

Even w speed3 modules the output is pretty much useless if you have reasonable production happening, you're forced to branch out anyways. I think you need something like 20 depleted jacks to make the output of an average undepleted one.