Factorio Forums

TL;DR

Reduce spores generated by agricultural tower when harvesting fruit from 15 to 15/12.5/10/7.5/2.5 for common -> legendary quality.

What?

Agricultural towers can have a spore production multiplier that scales with quality, with the same scaling as mining drill resource drain (1/0.83/0.66/0.5/0.16), resulting in 15/12.5/10/7.5/2.5 spores per fruit harvest. This will give players a way to control pollution on Gleba, and gives quality another purpose on Gleba. Optionally, you can apply this to the automatic spore production of the tower as well, though that's a trivial amount compared to the fruit harvesting spores.

How this could be implemented:

1. If spores are generated by the tower, just slap a multiplier on that.

2. If spores are generated by the fruit tree, instead make the generated by the tower, then return to (1).

3. If spores are generated by the fruit tree, have them check for agricultural towers nearby, and use the multiplier of the best quality within range (similar logic as for beacons).[/list]

(I know this has been proposed before viewtopic.php?t=123478 but I want to make a longer case for it here.)

Why?

The goal of this change would be to expand options for megabasers and late-game players, without impacting casual players.

1. This would be a new way to interact with Gleba pollution. Pollution control on Nauvis is a fun challenge with several approaches besides fighting biters (efficiency modules, solar power, tree farms, biochambers for negative pollution), but Gleba currently lacks anything like that: pollution can only be absorbed by the ground or by pentapods, so you are forced to fight pentapods in proportion to the size of your factory (either by clearing area or by building defenses). For an example of this, this recent megabase tour (https://youtu.be/gikrR2Xuvvs?si=UbVKNuSv8n9N4d8O&t=5470) used the editor to change enemies from 600% deathworld to 100% on Gleba because there's no other option to interact with pollution on Gleba at megabase scales.

2. This is backwards-compatible and does not impact the default balance or casual experience. It nonetheless expands gameplay options for late-game and megabasing players.

3. It is plausible in terms of lore. I appreciate that a tower can't make a tree grow faster, but it makes a lot of sense to me that it can more delicately harvest the fruits to release less spores, or filter the spores out, etc.