MOD REQUEST: A true Eco-Friendly (zero pollution footprint factory) mod

[zOldBulldog]

I really hope that an expert modder likes this idea and runs with it. There are many players, including me, that would love to "go green" or even just have a pollution/evolution model that makes intuitive sense (unlike the current vanilla one).

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There are several mods that do a partial job by giving tools and incentives to go green. But while those mods might help you ***reduce*** the pollution production, none of them actually lets you bring the pollution and its negative effects down to zero.

The good news is that after doing a little research and getting some very good answers from the experts in this thread (viewtopic.php?p=429637#p429637) I found out that all of the key API functions to achieve this kind of mod already exist. I can't claim to come even close to understanding those APIs and many of the comments in that thread, but I am certain that the expert modders will understand them just fine.

The basic concept is:

(A) Aliens should not evolve if the nests are not touched by the pollution cloud.

(B) You should be able to scrub/clean pollution created so that it does not ruin the environment.


Here are the specs that I believe will allow making such a mod:

MOD SETTINGS:

1) Allow choosing how much does TIME impact evolution. Include zero as a valid value. Maybe even make it the default.

2) Allow choosing how much total PRODUCED POLLUTION impacts evolution. Include zero as a valid value. Maybe even make it the default. Produced pollution is the biggest contributor in vanilla to the aliens evolution.

3) Allow choosing how much aliens evolve when nests are destroyed.

4) Allow choosing how do nests reproduce. This might not even be necessary, if the current mechanism happened to be that new nests are produced in response to evolution... but to be honest I have no idea how this works today. Regardless... this mod would not work too well with the current vanilla "runaway reproduction" of nests. It would totally defeat the purpose of trying to "go green" if you then have to destroy 20 million nests and cause evolution just to expand because the aliens completely covered the planet.

5) Allow choosing how much aliens evolve when the pollution cloud touches their nests. Currently this does not exist, and it would be the main evolution driver for the mod.


TREES, AIR SCRUBBERS, ETC:

This is an area where creativity rules, and where ideas can be taken from other mods.

- For air cleaning there are several ideas that were already implemented in other mods: Planting trees , creating greenhouse buildings that scrub the air, creating air scrubbing devices.

- There could also be new buildings to achieve old jobs that do not pollute.

- Or there could be new modules that can be added to buildings that would bring pollution all the way down to zero or near-zero (unlike the current efficiency modules that are only partial). For added realism, it could require different modules in the same structure so that different pollutants are removed/prevented.

- We probably don't need special power generation items, as Solar and Nuclear already do a good job, and there are Advanced Solar mods that allow compacting solar panels into a reasonable area of space.

[darkfrei]

See vanilla enemy and advanced settings: https://wiki.factorio.com/World_generator

[zOldBulldog]

See vanilla enemy and advanced settings: https://wiki.factorio.com/World_generator

Yes, as you can see... it treats the Pollution factor as a single thing. It does not distinguish between pollution produced and pollution that reaches the enemy spawners.

So, in vanilla it does not matter how well you keep the pollution cloud away from the enemy spawners. They evolve regardless.

As an example, in my current 0.17 game I have not even started building a 1 science per second (and much less rockets), my pollution cloud only touched the spawners twice, for maybe a total of 5 minutes, and I am at 98% evolution.

Vanilla is essentially a runaway evolution model, designed to push you into combat instead of promoting conservation and pollution control. The vanilla tools to control pollution are very much a joke, and even if you use them all you will still generate so much pollution that it is impossible to achieve zero pollution footprint through smart building. The only way to achieve zero evolution in vanilla is to turn it off... which totally defeats the point of trying to build in an eco-friendly way.

This mod would fix that.

[Deadlock989]

See vanilla enemy and advanced settings: https://wiki.factorio.com/World_generator

Yes, as you can see... it treats the Pollution factor as a single thing. It does not distinguish between pollution produced and pollution that reaches the enemy spawners.

So, in vanilla it does not matter how well you keep the pollution cloud away from the enemy spawners. They evolve regardless.

You are wrong. It's right there in front of you: time factor. If you change that to zero then biters do not evolve as long as none of them come into contact with pollution. I play like that most of the time, on the rare occasion I have biters enabled. Most of the rest of what you want - how much destroying nests boosts evolution, how much pollution drives evolution - is also right there in front of you.

95% of what you want is right there. The remaining 5% is the bit you say you don't understand anyway. There are countless mods that add pollution filter modules.

Sorry to be harsh but if you're going to slate the game then you do need to read things more carefully.

[zOldBulldog]

See vanilla enemy and advanced settings: https://wiki.factorio.com/World_generator

Yes, as you can see... it treats the Pollution factor as a single thing. It does not distinguish between pollution produced and pollution that reaches the enemy spawners.

So, in vanilla it does not matter how well you keep the pollution cloud away from the enemy spawners. They evolve regardless.

You are wrong. It's right there in front of you: time factor. If you change that to zero then biters do not evolve as long as none of them come into contact with pollution. I play like that most of the time, on the rare occasion I have biters enabled. Most of the rest of what you want - how much destroying nests boosts evolution, how much pollution drives evolution - is also right there in front of you.

95% of what you want is right there. The remaining 5% is the bit you say you don't understand anyway. There are countless mods that add pollution filter modules.

Sorry to be harsh but if you're going to slate the game then you do need to read things more carefully.

It is not 95%, more like 60%.

Time = 0 and destroy=0 are part of the total desired. I know about those settings and if that was all I was hunting for then it would be enough. Including them in the complete description is necessary to help whoever builds the mod to create a comprehensive and successful solution, even if all they do for those two is set a default so that you don't need to change it every time you hit "new game".

But you are very wrong about Pollution Factor, it is PRODUCED pollution, not pollution that touches the nests. And there are no mods available that replace produced pollution with pollution that touches the nests.

BTW, this or any other mod requests has nothing to do with zinging the game, it is about achieving a behavior that for me and many others would be better and more intuitive than the vanilla behavior. If you don't like the proposal just ignore it and don't use the mod if someone else builds it.

[Deadlock989]

But you are very wrong about Pollution Factor, it is PRODUCED pollution, not pollution that touches the nests. And there are no mods available that replace produced pollution with pollution that touches the nests.

Doubt it can be done without horrible runtime scripting that will murder UPS once you expand anywhere at all. Pollution touching nests isn't supposed to increase evolution, it drives biter spawning, and that's hardcoded. You'd have to scan every nest every nth tick and do a bunch of number-crunching. Proper sledgehammer versus nut territory, so good luck with that.

Or you could just dial everything except nest destruction down to zero and have 99% of the same experience.

BTW, this or any other mod requests has nothing to do with zinging the game, it is about achieving a behavior that for me and many others would be better and more intuitive than the vanilla behavior. If you don't like the proposal just ignore it and don't use the mod if someone else builds it.

You said the vanilla game was a "joke". I thought that was worth a comment.

[Qon]

Doubt it can be done without horrible runtime scripting that will murder UPS once you expand anywhere at all. Pollution touching nests isn't supposed to increase evolution, it drives biter spawning, and that's hardcoded. You'd have to scan every nest every nth tick and do a bunch of number-crunching. Proper sledgehammer versus nut territory, so good luck with that.

Incorrect. The game already collects pollution absorbed by nests statistics (globally) and exposes it via the API. It will have no impact on your UPS at all.
It should be fairly trivial to write the mod also.
If you wanted just nests that absorbed pollution to evolve then that would be a problem however.

[zOldBulldog]

You said the vanilla game was a "joke". I thought that was worth a comment.

As we used to say in the early days of computing... RTFM. I said that *the tools to control pollution* in the vanilla game are a joke, not the game.

Those tools (like efficiency modules) help reduce pollution some, but even using them you still end up with runaway pollution and evolution. That is what makes them a joke... using them is very much a waste of time and resources outside of some very specific game modes.

[Deadlock989]

As we used to say in the early days of computing... RTFM.

Oh, irony.

Those tools (like efficiency modules) help reduce pollution some, but even using them you still end up with runaway pollution and evolution. That is what makes them a joke... using them is very much a waste of time and resources outside of some very specific game modes.

So turn the pollution down. You seem to want all the easiness of non-pollution play without actually having no pollution. Sorry, but you can't always have your cake and smoke it. You don't want to fiddle with a single dial in the map settings, but you want someone else to go to great lengths to produce a mod which in the end produces exactly the same result.

There are ideas for mods which are good in concept, and there are ideas which are well-supported by the modding tools available. Your idea is neither, I'm afraid.

[Qon]

viewtopic.php?f=30&t=70801

The mod isn't 'possible' to create. Until 0.17.39 q:

Those tools (like efficiency modules) help reduce pollution some, but even using them you still end up with runaway pollution and evolution. That is what makes them a joke... using them is very much a waste of time and resources outside of some very specific game modes.

So turn the pollution down. You seem to want all the easiness of non-pollution play without actually having no pollution. Sorry, but you can't always have your cake and smoke it.

But... he could have his cake and smoke too if there was a mod that did what he requested.

You don't want to fiddle with a single dial in the map settings, but you want someone else to go to great lengths to produce a mod which in the end produces exactly the same result.

If fiddling with the map gen can't possibly get him the results he wants, why tell him that he is lazy for not making the mod with the map settings?
What great lengths are you talking about? You have spent more words in this thread telling him that the mod isn't possible and a bad idea then the amount of words that are necessary for the mods code to do what he asks for.

There are ideas for mods which are good in concept, and there are ideas which are well-supported by the modding tools available. Your idea is neither, I'm afraid.

When pollution created causes evolution then if you want to use pollution scrubbing mods instead of eff modules then you don't get the same effect. Which makes a pollution scrubbing factory run fairly pointless since it can't achieve its goals. And you can't put efficiency modules in boilers in case you like steam power but want to be eco-friendly. And even if the effect would be the same as using efficiency modules the gameplay is a bit different (good enough reason) and it just makes more sense. You can kill biter nests to get less evolution due to pollution though, but with a high evolution penalty for killing nests you could balance that out.

Just because you can't make a trivial mod doesn't mean others can't. The modding tools are just fine, when bugfixed...

[zOldBulldog]

As we used to say in the early days of computing... RTFM.

Oh, irony.

Those tools (like efficiency modules) help reduce pollution some, but even using them you still end up with runaway pollution and evolution. That is what makes them a joke... using them is very much a waste of time and resources outside of some very specific game modes.

So turn the pollution down. You seem to want all the easiness of non-pollution play without actually having no pollution. Sorry, but you can't always have your cake and smoke it. You don't want to fiddle with a single dial in the map settings, but you want someone else to go to great lengths to produce a mod which in the end produces exactly the same result.

There are ideas for mods which are good in concept, and there are ideas which are well-supported by the modding tools available. Your idea is neither, I'm afraid.

You seem really determined on trolling. You intentionally misinterpret and invent conclusions trying to distort and confuse the matter. If you don't like the idea you can just ignore. Please go away and let others make their own decisions on whether the mod idea is good or bad.

Nobody said *make it easier*. The idea is to *make it possible to play in a truly ecological way* by removing runaway evolution based on *pollution produced* and REPLACE IT with evolution based on pollution that *TOUCHES THE NESTS*.

That pollution that touches the nest can be small or very significant depending on the player's choices. That is what can make it truly fun. If you want it easy you pick a setting value that is low, if you want it very challenging you use a very high value and small starting area, so that a single misstep can give you up to 100% evolution.

[Deadlock989]

Nobody said *make it easier*. The idea is to *make it possible to play in a truly ecological way* by removing runaway evolution based on *pollution produced* and REPLACE IT with evolution based on pollution that *TOUCHES THE NESTS*.

Like I said, twice. Not currently supported by the game engine. Can't be done without seriously heavy lifting in runtime scripting. I would never write such a mod, nor ever install it were one to be written by someone else - I like my UPS at 60. You'd be much better off asking for this to be added to the engine if you really want your unique vision to become reality.

Or just turn down the existing settings to zero or near-zero and play a game that plays out almost identically.

Or, you know, do a basic mod search.

https://mods.factorio.com/mod/air-filtering-patched
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/artsGiantMachine
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/greysmod_pollutants
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/air-filtering
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/TjAirCleaner
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/TheForester

[zOldBulldog]

Nobody said *make it easier*. The idea is to *make it possible to play in a truly ecological way* by removing runaway evolution based on *pollution produced* and REPLACE IT with evolution based on pollution that *TOUCHES THE NESTS*.

Like I said, twice. Not currently supported by the game engine. Can't be done without seriously heavy lifting in runtime scripting. I would never write such a mod, nor ever install it were one to be written by someone else - I like my UPS at 60. You'd be much better off asking for this to be added to the engine if you really want your unique vision to become reality.

Or just turn down the existing settings to zero or near-zero and play a game that plays out almost identically.

Or, you know, do a basic mod search.

https://mods.factorio.com/mod/air-filtering-patched
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/artsGiantMachine
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/greysmod_pollutants
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/air-filtering
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/TjAirCleaner
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/TheForester

Qon and others (in this thread and others) have already demonstrated that it is supported by the engine.

Please stop trolling.

[Deadlock989]

Qon and others (in this thread and others) have already demonstrated that it is supported by the engine.

Please stop trolling.

Well, if it's such a piece of cake, I look forward to seeing the implementation.

[Koub]

Or, you know, do a basic mod search.

https://mods.factorio.com/mod/air-filtering-patched
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/artsGiantMachine
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/greysmod_pollutants
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/air-filtering
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/TjAirCleaner
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/TheForester

All the mods you linked help prevent the pollution cloud from spreading by cleaning it. But neither prevents the cleaned pollution from increasing evolution factor.

With these mods, if I pollute like there's no tomorrow AND depollute accordingly, my evolution factor will skyrocket nonetheless. That's precisely the reason of this request : OP asks a mod allowing that, no matter the pollution produced, if it never reaches a nest, it doesn't raise the evolution factor.

If you think you can't make such a mod accordingly to your ethics (no dirty hacks that kill the UPS), feel free not to contribute. Others seem to have clues on how to do so providing the correction of a bug, hopefully this will do the trick, and everyone will be happy.

[Deadlock989]

If you think you can't make such a mod accordingly to your ethics (no dirty hacks that kill the UPS), feel free not to contribute. Others seem to have clues on how to do so providing the correction of a bug, hopefully this will do the trick, and everyone will be happy.

Like I said, let's wait and see how well it performs.

[Qon]

Well, if it's such a piece of cake, I look forward to seeing the implementation.

Alpha version is here!

UPS and bugs: Currently runs once/second for testing purposes. But it can run once/minute or something. It just reads the pollution statistics all time table and compares it to the previous and changes the evolution number accordingly. When the API is fixed it will not have to keep track of previous value so code will be simpler, faster and work with multiple forces. Because currently it can't handle kill stats if you have multiple forces so set those evolution factors to 0 if that applies to you. But Factorio 0.17.39 solves that.
There are many different kinds of trees that can be killed and they have to be summed up in LUA code for the kill stats. But for something that only loops through like 20 values once/second/force (or per minute) it's negligible ups impact.

And the 0 ups impact is constant. It isn't affected at all by map size or number of enemies on map or killed or anything. And no code runs when enemies/trees die or when pollution is absorbed. So it will not affect UPS at all regardless of how big your factory gets.

Name is in flux atm. I've tested enough to see that it gives about the same evolution as vanilla pollution (when absorbed values are the same as produced in a vanilla game and same setting value is used).

[zOldBulldog]

Awesome! I will install this tonight after work (AM right now).

Edit: I was able to spend a few minutes testing over lunch. Looks great so far.

[darkfrei]

Here is my version, UPS up to 2500.
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/Evo

[Qon]

New version! Factorio 0.17.39 just released so I updated the mod to use the now working API, fixed the bugs that are now fixable and cleaned up the code a bit. Haven't tested it more than just seeing that the game launches with this version though q:
But it should be better!

Code: Select all

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Version: 0.0.2
  Bugfixes:
    - Now should support evolution factor when there are multiple forces killing the natives.
  Changes:
    - Uses the API that was fixed in [0.17.39] https://forums.factorio.com/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=70801
    - Code cleanup and refactoring.
    - New default values for the different evolution sources.
      Should be somewhat comparable in balance as default settings in vanilla if you set evolution
      due to pollution produced (vanilla map gen settings > enemy > evolution) in map gen settings.
      So it is suggested you turn that to 0 and rely on this mod to evolve them from pollution. But you
      can use both if you want of course.

• spawner-absorb default: 45. Pollution produced is 9 with default settings in vanilla. This is higher but generally much less pollution hits the spawner compared to how much is produced since the ground and trees will absorb massive amounts.
• dying-tree-absorb default: 9. Same as vanilla pollution-produced factor. With this you can set the vanilla evolution due to pollution to 0 and get comparable evolution results. So evolution happens not when produced but instead when the environment is damaged. But it's a default that is the same as vanilla default and this is where most pollution is mostly absorbed for the first hours.
• nature-absorb default: -3. This rewards you for emitting some light amount of pollution. Plants do like CO2 pollution. But they don't like toxic chemicals so don't pollute too much because then they will get damaged and evolution rises instead.
• nature-killed default: 20. Default for killing spawners is 400 in vanilla. This way 20 trees causes same evolution as 1 spawner. So you can't freely chop down trees before they get hurt by pollution. Because then you would be incentivized to kill trees to get less evolution.
• natives-killed default: 0. Zero is a good default. Having this higher would mean you are really forced to keep pollution cloud away from spawners or you will get double punishment when you defend yourself. The options above give you an alternative evolution model that can replace the vanilla evolution due to pollution without really changing the difficulty unless you tweak the values. This option is for those who want it. Worms are not included here.

All values can be any double, so fractional values like 0.25 and -4000 (negative) are possible for any of the settings. The mod doesn't touch the vanilla evolution model so turn those you don't like from it off or lower the values, because both work at the same time and you can get evolution from both!

To make a simple calculation test I watched the stats of a small rail world of mine that has been running for a few hours.
This is the influence of pollution values only for both vanilla (default values) and what it would be if I had used my mod:
Vanilla:

Code: Select all

(1.4 + 1.2 + 0.32 + 0.09 + 0.07 + 0.06 + 0.025 + 0.003) * 9  -- These are the machines pollution values, in millions of pollution produced multiplied with 9 since that is the pollution produced evolution factor of my world.
Result: 28.512

What it would have been with my mod (left in millions pollution absorbed * right is the setting):

Code: Select all

1.3 * 9 [damaging pollution absorbed] + 1.2*(-3) [healthy absorbtion by nature] + 0.45 * 45 [spawner absorbed pollution]
28.35

The numbers are almost identical. (The numbers are only useful for comparing the evolution models and are not the evolution factors themselves!)

So the results is the same for my rail base with my mod and with vanilla. But it's a rail world so there's not that many spawners on it and there's plenty of trees since I'm in a forest instead of a desert. And my factory produces fairly small amounts of pollution, but it isn't full eco. It uses like 60 MW coal power but I'm playing "All Minable" and "Science Ores" so there are not many assemblers that are polluting at all. If I had polluted more (science is free in my world and that's the main source of pollution in a regular game) or it was a death world (more spawners close to base, less possibility of killing all spawners) then the evolution would have been much worse with my mod. But if I cared at all about reducing my pollution then I would have much less evolution than what vanilla would have given me since scrubbed polution doesn't contribute. So I would say these are really balanced numbers.