Planned feature, give feedback: Pollution multipliers

[bobingabout]

Something I've been working on in my adventures with source access, Pollution multipliers on fuel items, and recipes.

Without going into any details, I just want to ask... What multipliers would you put where?

Now, I've already had suggestions in the past on gas venting. Oxygen reversing pollution Chlorine and Sulfur Dioxide releasing massive pollution, etc. But what other things would you multiply, or reduce pollution on?

And what fuels should be polluting, or cleaner than usual?


Also, it is purely a multiplier, it would still produce pollution based on power consumed. in the case of a machine with a recipe, and a fuel multiplier, they're simply both multiplied onto the base.

So... Suggest away!

[ukezi]

polution: rocket fuel> coal> wood> solid fuel=oil products>hydrazine > carbon > hydrogen. You also make a mixture gas for generators of hydrogen and oxygen and give it pollution 0.

[mrvn]

Natural fuels like coal, wood, crude oil should be heavy on pollution. Refined fuels like solid fuel, coke, heavy/light oil should probably lighter since the processing takes out some of the contaminants.

And yeah, for flare stacks the pollution should be related to the toxicity of the gas.

And I should really be ashamed to have 4 flare stacks running full tilt with chlorine gas.

[bobingabout]

We'd have to poke Angel to do any of his recipes, but yeah.

This is my thoughts so far.
Venting recipes
Chlorine and Sulfur Dioxide should have about a 50x pollution value.
Nitrogen should be zero, Oxygen -1.
what about Hydrogen?

Fuels:
Nuclear fuel should probably be quite polluting, lets say... 5x
Coal 2x (It's got sulphur and all kinds of crap in it)
refined carbon 0.75x
wood 1x
solid fuel block 0.5x
enriched fuel block 1.2x
rocket fuel 1.2x (With my mod, it's Nitrogen based)

Fluids:
I haven't looked into adding pollution modifiers in code to fluids yet, however.
Heavy oil 5x
light oil 2.5x
petroleum gas 1.5x
Hydrazine 1x
fuel oil 1x
hydrogen 0.2x


These are on the spot figures.

[mrvn]

Hydrogen is rather harmless. It is so light it rises and is gone. So apart from the risk of explosions near the release site I don't think it counts as pollution.

So maybe 0?

[Aeternus]

While at it, you may want to consider a "clean boiler" that is a little more expensive to craft and/or slower burning, but produces siginificantly less pollution. IE as if it had a Green module in there.

Venting oxygen at -1... make sure that won't crash the game or produce weird results if you end up with negative pollution production on a tile. Integer underflow would be bad
Oxy at -1 and hydrogen at 0 would mean electrolysis plants venting everything would be negative pollution generators. Not sure if that's something that is desirable.

But yea, my suggestions would be:

Fuels:
Nuclear fuel: 0. Nuclear is emission free. Radiation is a different kind of pollution not really quantifyable, and nuclear waste is represented by those spent fuel which get reprocessed.
Coal 2x if burned directly. Coal gassing should be an option to convert it into a light gas by adding steam, which should burn a lot cleaner.
Refined Carbon 1x: It's essentially coal with impurities removed, combusting with air generates NOX compounds)
Wood 1x (also Planks, light power poles and wooden chests). Baseline for any wood burning stuff
Solid fuel block 0.8x: This represents condensed petrol products specifically intended as fuel.
Enriched fuel block 0.7x: This represents condensed petrol products specifically intended as fuel, further processed for this purpose.
Rocket fuel 2x: Burns at high temperature, creating significant NOX byproducts. Also, as you said, Nitrogen based

Fluids:
I haven't looked into adding pollution modifiers in code to fluids yet, however.
Heavy oil 3x: Heavy, tar-like oil is emissions heavy.
Light oil 1x: These represent refined Gasoline-like substances, that when processed become solid fuel basically. Should not be much more polluting then solid fuel therefor.
Fuel oil 1x: Similar to light oil
Petroleum gas 0.8x: Lighter gases pollute less
Hydrazine 2x: Isn't this nitrogen based? NOX emission heavy?
Hydrogen 0.5x: Hydrogen itself burns clean, but unless "burned" through a fuel cell, the combustion with air will still result in NOX being created.

[bobingabout]

I just spend 10 minutes going through the source code.

Yes, negative pollution is accounted for... pretty much how you'd expect. pollution = math.max(0, calculation), IE, if the calculated result is less than 0, it's stores 0.

Hydrazine is Nitrogen based.
Rocket fuel is hydrazine based, but includes an oxidiser

And after some discussion, Pollution is anything in the atmosphere that shouldn't be there. why is pollution bad? It's often because it's Carcinogenic and can cause cancer and mutation.
What does radiation do? in low levels it causes Cancer and Mutation.
So... we decided that radiation and pollution have similar effects, and therefore should both be considered pollution.

And nuclear fuel is a combustion fuel. you burn it, it's not just heat either, sure it might be in the boiler, but it powers a combustion engine in the case of being used in a vehicle. Sounds quite pollution heavy to me.

[Aeternus]

I just spend 10 minutes going through the source code.

Yes, negative pollution is accounted for... pretty much how you'd expect. pollution = math.max(0, calculation), IE, if the calculated result is less than 0, it's stores 0.

Hydrazine is Nitrogen based.
Rocket fuel is hydrazine based, but includes an oxidiser

Figured the rocket fuel was something like that... My suggestion thus will stand

And after some discussion, Pollution is anything in the atmosphere that shouldn't be there. why is pollution bad? It's often because it's Carcinogenic and can cause cancer and mutation.
What does radiation do? in low levels it causes Cancer and Mutation.
So... we decided that radiation and pollution have similar effects, and therefore should both be considered pollution.

And nuclear fuel is a combustion fuel. you burn it, it's not just heat either, sure it might be in the boiler, but it powers a combustion engine in the case of being used in a vehicle. Sounds quite pollution heavy to me.

It can be pollution but a completely different kind. It's not soot, dust or chemical. It is radiation based, and that kind of pollution works differently. It does not spread, it remains in place and diminishes only with a halflife of the fissile elements.
And as for the burner nuclear fuel... I kind of assumed that those consist of a small fuel cell, that convert the heat of some fuel rods into chemical fuel that can be used. Possibly even into steam as a driving engine (there's been some wild ideas for a nuclear-powered-boiler-steam-train, which do hold up). I guess it's just not possible to kick out a spent nuclear fuel cell when the burner completes it's cycle -only- when the nuke fuel rod is used. But that's for another topic. Nuclear fuel does not generate local pollution - barring disasters. It burns clean, just leaves hazardous waste material which in Factorio kinda gets glossed over with the spent rod reprocessing.

[mrvn]

Oxy at -1 and hydrogen at 0 would mean electrolysis plants venting everything would be negative pollution generators. Not sure if that's something that is desirable.

1) This is somewhat offset by the pollution of the electrolyzer.
2) You are taking water and releasing oxygen. So you are making the air better. Why shouldn't that have negative pollution?
3) If you are using steam or nuclear power then the power consumption will add a lot more pollution elsewhere.
4) A better case might be nitrogen production. You take air, split it into nitrogen and oxygen, release oxygen (-1) and nitrogen (0). Does this end up positive or negative overall? (assume solar cells)

[TheSAguy]

I just spend 10 minutes going through the source code.

Yes, negative pollution is accounted for... pretty much how you'd expect. pollution = math.max(0, calculation), IE, if the calculated result is less than 0, it's stores 0.

Question,
How does negative pollution affect evolution?

When Pollution in generated, it causes evolution to go up, even if it's get's absorbed by trees, terrain afterwards.
Was just wondering if you produce negative pollution, does it reduce evolution?

I assume the evolution due to pollution is based on totals, so your total base pollution will cause the evolution to go up. But still, what if, for some reason the total pollution generated is negative.

While at it, you may want to consider a "clean boiler" that is a little more expensive to craft and/or slower burning, but produces siginificantly less pollution. IE as if it had a Green module in there.

Venting oxygen at -1... make sure that won't crash the game or produce weird results if you end up with negative pollution production on a tile. Integer underflow would be bad
Oxy at -1 and hydrogen at 0 would mean electrolysis plants venting everything would be negative pollution generators. Not sure if that's something that is desirable.

But yea, my suggestions would be:

Fuels:
Nuclear fuel: 0. Nuclear is emission free. Radiation is a different kind of pollution not really quantifyable, and nuclear waste is represented by those spent fuel which get reprocessed.
Coal 2x if burned directly. Coal gassing should be an option to convert it into a light gas by adding steam, which should burn a lot cleaner.
Refined Carbon 1x: It's essentially coal with impurities removed, combusting with air generates NOX compounds)
Wood 1x (also Planks, light power poles and wooden chests). Baseline for any wood burning stuff
Solid fuel block 0.8x: This represents condensed petrol products specifically intended as fuel.
Enriched fuel block 0.7x: This represents condensed petrol products specifically intended as fuel, further processed for this purpose.
Rocket fuel 2x: Burns at high temperature, creating significant NOX byproducts. Also, as you said, Nitrogen based

Fluids:
I haven't looked into adding pollution modifiers in code to fluids yet, however.
Heavy oil 3x: Heavy, tar-like oil is emissions heavy.
Light oil 1x: These represent refined Gasoline-like substances, that when processed become solid fuel basically. Should not be much more polluting then solid fuel therefor.
Fuel oil 1x: Similar to light oil
Petroleum gas 0.8x: Lighter gases pollute less
Hydrazine 2x: Isn't this nitrogen based? NOX emission heavy?
Hydrogen 0.5x: Hydrogen itself burns clean, but unless "burned" through a fuel cell, the combustion with air will still result in NOX being created.

Like these ideas.

Thanks.

[manseaua]

I don't use adjustable inserters because I find it really cheaty I like having to find alternate solutions but your latest logistics update removed the long-handed inserter making it the game completely unplayable can you please make it so the adjustable inserters mod removes the longhand instead of logistics mod.. also long-handed inserter used for recipes like in FARL no longer posible

[bobingabout]

I don't use adjustable inserters because I find it really cheaty I like having to find alternate solutions but your latest logistics update removed the long-handed inserter making it the game completely unplayable can you please make it so the adjustable inserters mod removes the longhand instead of logistics mod.. also long-handed inserter used for recipes like in FARL no longer posible

1. Why are you talking about the inserters mod in the pollution multipliers feature update topic?

2. It wasn't broken until people were complaining about something else and told me to make this change to fix something else.
I'll see what I can do.

[RocketManChronicles]

This is a very interesting topic Bob. I like where you are going with this, as I have already seen your Oil Burning Generators in-game. As having majored in Rocket Propulsion, perhaps I can add my two cents....

Rocket Fuel in the real world is Hydrogen and Oxygen based: H2 as the Fuel and O2 as the Oxidizer. Your Rocket Fuel in-game is Nitrogen based and therefore up for debate on its pollution creating effects. If we were to consider Earth's atmosphere as a basis for the pollution characteristics, the NOx byproducts would be considered pollution and the H2O, H2, and NH4 would not. I would consider your rocket fuel to have a minimal multiplier to pollution.

Now, I would like to talk about Oxygen. Venting it can be a good thing, reducing pollution around the area. However, too much Oxygen is a pollution. I am guessing the game does not calculate how much would be vented over time, but I think it would be ideal to take that into account if possible. If it is too much over a set period, it becomes a problem. This can also be said of Hydrogen (even Nitrogen - to an extent considering Earth's atmosphere).

[mrvn]

It's too bad pollution spread i CPU costly (at least I remember that being mentioned somewhere). Otherwise pollution could account for different types of pollution. The amount of oxygen put into the atmosphere could be tracked and an excess could cause random forest fires and so on.

[bobingabout]

Basically, the game as it is now only has a single option.

How much pollution is being generated. That's it.

There is no way to determind what has been previously released so as wether to consider it polution or not.

[RocketManChronicles]

Basically, the game as it is now only has a single option.

How much pollution is being generated. That's it.

There is no way to determind what has been previously released so as wether to consider it polution or not.

Fair enough. I would suggest not having anything at zero or below one, or simply have everything produce pollution but have Oxygen, Hydrogen, and Nitrogen at reduced rates. Obviously, the fossil fuels should be heavy producers.

[BlueTemplar]

This looks like a good thread to post this in :

I just noticed that one of my assumptions was wrong :
I though that a more inefficient boiler would pollute more.
Which is NOT the case !
(At least not directly - you still get the pollution from producing that fuel...)

For instance the vanilla boiler pollutes at the rate of :
energy_consumption x emissions
1.8 MW x (0.1/6.5) PU/s/kW = 27.69230769 PU/s
(note how energy_consumption could be misleading because the actual consumption is divided by effectivity = 0.5, resulting in the 1.8 MW / 0.5 = 3.6 MW Energy consumption that you see displayed in the game.)

Note how effectivity is not being used in the pollution calculation !

Another example is your MK3 boiler :
5.4 MW x (0.1/6.5) PU/s/kW = 83.07692308 PU/s
(effectivity = 0.7, displayed Energy consumption = 5.4 MW / 0.7 = 7.7 MW)

Which is why it might be interesting to play with the effectivity of Steam Engines too - steam is a non-polluting fluid EDIT : they don't have any emissions, but a lower effectivity Steam Engine would still indirectly increase the pollution from Boilers...

[bobingabout]

that's an interesting point. Perhaps I could make higher tier boilers pollute less by a factor of their energy increase.