Is active pollution sinking worth it?

[Lighthouse]

Attacks on Nauvis are triggered by pollution and reducing it is generally beneficial.

What I am wondering is: Have you known about the following numbers and chose to not do pollution sinking? Or are you surprised and would like to try implementing some larger scale pollution sinking?

A tree farm can support 47 trees, resulting in -2.82 pollution per minute.

This yields 18.8 wood per minute, occupying 21 x 21 tiles.

2.55 farms can support a biochamber (wood processing) with 4 Producitivity Modules Lvl3, which yields another -5.88 pollution per minute.

This also requires nutrients, which could be provided by

a) processing imported bioflux - all in all: using 1125 tiles + biochamber (wood processing) ( + a few for logistics) could be used for -13.07 pollution per minute.

b) biter spawner + nutrients from eggs. In this case:
A biter spawner produces -1 pollution per minute itself, producing 30 eggs per minute. 1 biochamber (4 productivity modules Lvl3) can process 24 eggs to yield 912 Nutrients per minute (while adding -5.88 pollution per minute). Each of these biochambers consumes 63 Nutrients per minute, so 1 spawner + 1.25 biolabs could support more than a dozen tree farms.
Math is a little sloppy here, but point is: If one would push for pollution sinking, there seem to be even more options. (Maybe just producing nutrients from eggs for solely keeping biochambers running and reprocessing the spoilage?)

[Khazul]

By the time I have tree farms and biter spawners, the nauvis natives are usaully cowering in distant corners of the map and/or waking to nuclear sun rises.

[Lighthouse]

I see - so this is an incentive to do Gleba first and as early as possible.

[Shulmeister]

Correct me if i'm wrong but in order to have your first biters spawners you need to capture some wild nests. Thus if you kill all biters and relegate them to a distant corner of the map, you will have to go to such corner to capture them, and then establish a needlessly long logistic supply of bioflux to that distant corner of the map, and also rockets parts, or transport the eggs back to a rocket silo.

I see - so this is an incentive to do Gleba first and as early as possible.

I don't think the same way, you can take your time to research nuclear enery and nuclear bomb or even settle other planets before going to Gleba, you have an incentive not to use them too much though, otherwise you force upon yourself a long and tedious logistic chain to feed the captive biter spawner.

[jaylawl]

Correct me if i'm wrong but in order to have your first biters spawners you need to capture some wild nests. Thus if you kill all biters and relegate them to a distant corner of the map, you will have to go to such corner to capture them, and then establish a needlessly long logistic supply of bioflux to that distant corner of the map, and also rockets parts, or transport the eggs back to a rocket silo.

Not quite: you just need to get your first couple of eggs, from which you can then craft your own captive biter spawners and place them closer to your space hub.

[Shulmeister]

Not quite: you just need to get your first couple of eggs, from which you can then craft your own captive biter spawners and place them closer to your space hub.

I don't think you can craft captive biter spawner without fluoroketone and Aquilo's technology though, so you can't do that when you unlock treefarm as those come before.

Beside to get those couple first eggs, it require finding a wild nest and capturing it, and feeding it bioflux which will force a player to go much further than necessary if all the biters eggs are relegated in a distant corner of the map. Which can be avoided that's my point

(And there is no particular incentive related to this to go to Gleba first )

[mmmPI]

Beside to get those couple first eggs, it require finding a wild nest and capturing it, and feeding it bioflux which will force a player to go much further than necessary if all the biters eggs NESTS are relegated in a distant corner of the map. Which can be avoided that's my point

Correct me if i'm wrong but there's a mistake here !

[Lighthouse]

The tree farm setup could work with merely Bioflux import. Eggs are just an additional kick.

Of course I do not really suggest doing Gleba first, though.

[mmmPI]

The tree farm setup could work with merely Bioflux import. Eggs are just an additional kick.

Indeed, treefarm setups are useful in certain conditions, like if you have already efficency modules in your mining drills, and surround an outpost with trees, you can easily mitigate the pollution cloud so that it doesn't spread beyond your walls and thus prevent any attacks. Only expansion party will be killed by turrets, but that's a lot less than attacks caused by pollution.

Of course I do not really suggest doing Gleba first, though.

You could But i don't think it's optimal, most of the time for biters-difficult games like death world, (where pollution sinking is the most useful) i think the first and favourite choice is Vulcanus for the artillery shells !

[Lighthouse]

if you have already efficency modules in your mining drills, and surround an outpost with trees, you can easily mitigate the pollution cloud

One could import Bioflux in intervalls, only for converting all wood to tree seeds when needed. With the seeds you could plant trees around these outposts manually - but I am not sure how many trees would be needed to mitigate the cloud significantly. Would a chunk wide be sufficient? At least I will experiment with that a little before I let go of the pollution sinking entirely.

Currently I concur with: Active pollution sinking is only highly efficient with end-game tech, at which stage one does not need pollution sinking anymore because the normal defense is also highly efficient by then.

[mmmPI]

Currently I concur with: Active pollution sinking is only highly efficient with end-game tech, at which stage one does not need pollution sinking anymore because the normal defense is also highly efficient by then.

It's a point of view, but there's really nothing making the tree farm more effective in "late-game", the minimum pollution for mining drill is 20% of their original value, which can be achieved with efficiency module tier 1, no quality no nothing.

Aquilo's tech aren't required for tree farming, you can use it when you unlock it. (even before gettin to the last planet).

Even in late game you may want to do pollution sinking to avoid 90% of biters activity or so.

Edit : the amount of tree required to mitigate a mining outpost's pollution, depend on the number of mining drills and the frequency at which they are active, small patch do not require a full chunk of trees around them to absorb the pollution, a single row of farm i found was enough many times.

[Lighthouse]

there's really nothing making the tree farm more effective in "late-game"

The tree farm itself is always the same, but the "nutrients from biter eggs" setup works best when one can freely place the Captured Biter Spawner - an Aquilo tech.

And while I was previously only talking about active sinking (i.e. negative pollution), the efficiency modules of course can have a huge impact and I would like to consider them. But usually I equip my miners with productivity modules to effectively increase amount of the resource batch.

As I tend to view the warding off of enemies as a resource trade (e.g. "trading" iron plates (= ammo) for killed biters) the invest of using efficiency modules instead of productivity modules is immense, if you follow my logic: Consider a 10million resource batch, harvested with Big Mining Drill. Each with 4 Q1 Productivity Modules Lvl2, I get an additional 2,4 million resources. This increases pollution and draws enemy attacks that have to be fended off. This will cost resources (energy consumption for lasers, etc.). The question is: What is more expensive. either [+2,4 million harvested resources minus (estimate of) required resources for defense against aggravated enemy] or [no additional resources minus (estimate of) required resources for defense against less aggressive enemies]?
Never really calculated it through, but gut feeling is: Defense is not as expensive as "loosing" the millions of additional resources when not using Productivity Modules.

If my resource (and time) consumption for setting up active pollution sinking (tree farm, biter egg processing, ...) saves resources (and time) compared to investing in military defense, I will do so. Otherwise I will invest my time and stuff differently.

[mmmPI]

The tree farm itself is always the same, but the "nutrients from biter eggs" setup works best when one can freely place the Captured Biter Spawner - an Aquilo tech.

nutrients from biter eggs is not necessary for tree farms though !

You can use them just fine before going to Aquilo.

You don't need the extra 50% productivity from biochamber here, you want to make the more trees ! so just use regular assembly machine and you will use more trees for the same amount of seed, thus eating more pollution !

And while I was previously only talking about active sinking (i.e. negative pollution), the efficiency modules of course can have a huge impact and I would like to consider them. But usually I equip my miners with productivity modules to effectively increase amount of the resource batch.

If you want to reduce pollution you shouldn't put productivity modules in mining drills (obviously ). That's like closing the car window to save on fuel from air conditionning but still having the brake on when driving.

[Lighthouse]

nutrients from biter eggs is not necessary for tree farms though !
...
You don't need the extra 50% productivity from biochamber here, you want to make the more trees ! so just use regular assembly machine and you will use more trees for the same amount of seed, thus eating more pollution !

A biochamber has a pollution of -1 per minute. WIth speed modules this effect is increased already, but with productivity modules is increased the most. Quality does not matter. 4 Productivity Modules Lvl3 per biochamber changes its pollution to -5,88 per minute.
However keeping the biochamber running constantly requires nutrients, which could be imported via bioflux (and processing it on Nauvis) or by biter egg processing. Hopefully this can clarify some of the points previously raised.

I do not buy your car window story. To me the active pollution sinking is more like adding active cooling to a computer while overclocking its processor at the same time.

[mmmPI]

nutrients from biter eggs is not necessary for tree farms though !
...
You don't need the extra 50% productivity from biochamber here, you want to make the more trees ! so just use regular assembly machine and you will use more trees for the same amount of seed, thus eating more pollution !

A biochamber has a pollution of -1 per minute. WIth speed modules this effect is increased already, but with productivity modules is increased the most. Quality does not matter. 4 Productivity Modules Lvl3 per biochamber changes its pollution to -5,88 per minute.
However keeping the biochamber running constantly requires nutrients, which could be imported via bioflux (and processing it on Nauvis) or by biter egg processing. Hopefully this can clarify some of the points previously rised.

This doesn't change the facts mentionned previously. You don't need to use the biochamber here, you can use the tree farm just fine without the nutrient from biter eggs for the purpose of reducing pollution. The biochamber pollution reduction is very minimal compared to the effect of the trees i found because they won't be runnin often compared to the lifetime of the trees they produce and how much every single of them can absorb. That would be like 1/1000th of the pollution reduction come from the biochamber if not less so it's neglible imo.

I do not buy your car window story. To me the active pollution sinking is more like adding active cooling to a computer while overclocking its processor at the same time.

I 100% maintain that if you want to reduce pollution placing productivity modules in mining drill is the worst thing you can do because those increase the minimum pollution per ressources, unlike the research which should be used.

[Lighthouse]

Each healthy trees reduce pollution by -0.001/s = -0.06 per minute. It requires 98 trees to amount to the same pollution sinking of a running biochamber with 4 Productivity Modules Lvl3.

So in the setup of the active pollution sink with biter egg processing (including captive biter spawner and biochamber doing the processing), which requires 2.55 tree farms, the trees do about half the sinking.

Each tree could absorb 10 pollution in total (if not harvested before end of life).

To me active pollution sinking is not about avoiding pollution. Its about dealing with enemy attacks and finding efficient moves to deal with them. But surely I would like to hear more opinions. Are other people out there using efficiency modules in their mining drills? Or are you also opting to go with productivity modules instead and just deal with the attacks when they come?

[mmmPI]

To me active pollution sinking is not about avoiding pollution. Its about dealing with enemy attacks and finding efficient moves to deal with them. But surely I would like to hear more opinions. Are other people out there using efficiency modules in their mining drills? Or are you also opting to go with productivity modules instead and just deal with the attacks when they come?

You asked the question "is active pollution sinking worth it" ? If you are doing the most amount of pollution possible, by placing productivity modules in your minin drills, maybe also use steam engines coal powered, and have 1000000000 laser tower drains , you kinda make the question and the answer imo.

Yes active pollution sinking is worth it for me, but when i do for it to be worth it, i don't do the same as you explain.

Each healthy trees reduce pollution by -0.001/s = -0.06 per minute. It requires 98 trees to amount to the same pollution sinking of a running biochamber with 4 Productivity Modules Lvl3.

So in the setup of the active pollution sink with biter egg processing (including captive biter spawner and biochamber doing the processing), which requires 2.55 tree farms, the trees do about half the sinking.

Each tree could absorb 10 pollution in total (if not harvested before end of life).

I don't think that's how it works x), why would stop at 98 trees produced ? why not double or triple of make it 100 times more ? You can easily have 1000 trees absorbin pollution at the same time from a single biochamber no ?