TL;DR
Pollution should have actual effects on gameplay other that just biters coming after you.What
Pollution currently has 3 effects in the game.1. makes the map red, which can be turned on/off, and has no effect on gameplay
2. makes biters agressive, which can be turned on/off and once they are killed, they won't bother you again. (also defenses and weapons get stronger)
3. changes tree/grass textures and makes them drop less wood, which has about no effect on gameplay as well. (because by the point that happens you will likely already use medium poles and steel chests)
what i want to say is that pollution is nothing to worry about towards mid/end game, so why not make pollution actually "punish" people who never take care of it (aka, pretty much everyone)
effects of pollution could be:
- Fog
the more pollution the foggier it gets, the player can see less, solar panels get less efficent with increasing fog, and the enviroment would get darker altogether... meaning that lamps would work longer as it is longer (or constantly) dark.
- Dirty water
the dirtier the water the less water pumps can take. this would be kinda like oil, where it gets close to 0, but never actually reaches it. so the water production of a pump would never stop, just become painfully slow.
- Slower Machines
at some point pollution would be so massive that machines have problems pumping it into the air, decreasing their speed.
- Efficency modules
They should be able to decrease pollution and energy consumtion.
-Research
like with mining drills, there could be some infinite research to decrease pollution prouction of machines.
-Cleaning
some machine that would in exchange for power filter pollution out of the air (in the chunk it is in), the more it needs to clean the more power it requires. (that way you could still make pollution, via furnaces, drills, etc but still use clean power... even if it would take more power altogether)
Ideas for Clean alternatives could be:
solar boilers (use water + sun to make steam, creating no pollution, an early game thing maybe even from the very start), Wind turbines (creates power depending on wind speed and direction, mid game), Large Area solar boiler/Solar panels (mid game, advanced versions of the normal stuff), Biomass, etc.
Why
Because unlike biters, this would be a constant thread towards the Player which is not at the border, but instead right in the middle of the factory. this also means designs/fatcories would get more complex. and modders would have something new to play with.End Words
There are a lot of people on this forum who are a lot smarter than me, and know a lot more about balancing. so let me know if this would be even doable without breaking everything or being too unbalanced to go either way. (dirty/clean way)lastly, there needs to be an Achivement by completing the game with the (near) lowest Pollution/s production possible
