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Gaist wrote:Is there a way to turn down / turn off the sound from pollution clouds? It's deafening for us for some reason.

Wildejackson wrote:Is the pollution "nerf" applied automatically or manually to entities in the game? Will treefarms and pumps from other mods be affected by pollution? I really love this system but I worry about how it will play with other mods, either in the sense that they simply wont be affected by the mods changes, or that they become useless.

• The balance between pollution and progression in the early game, when you're relying on burner miners and later steam boilers feels right - it provides an incentive not to stick too long with burner miners and you do have to worry about how much pollution you're making when you start to scale up your steam power by the time you automate green science.
• Despite being on a heavily forested map, I had to deal with some nasty and persistent biter attacks as a result of my pollution spreading too far, which prompted me to start using deaerosolization machines to move it somewhere it wouldn't reach the biters as easily and dissipate it faster.
• Once I switched to solar power the pollution problem seemed to become negligible. Oil refineries were the only thing left that could make any significant pollution but since my starting oil and gas was finite and plastic production difficult to set up with angel's petrochem, the pollution cloud never left the base after that.
• At the present time in that playthrough, with blue and yellow science automated, pollution is still a non-problem. I have automated some deaerosolization machines to run when pollution goes above 2k and the sludge is processed faster than I can produce it by just one angel's chemical plant that turns it into useful things like carbon and sulfur dioxide.
• Other than the brief time of peak pollution early on with constant biter attacks, the biters never evolved past level 1. (2/3 HP)

• My experience with pollution in the early game was more or less the same.
• I decided to expand earlier than the previous game because I needed more space for the factory with bob's electronics installed. Apart from the fights to clear the nests, I haven't been attacked by biters yet, although I am running into the limits of how much pollution I can allow the environment to absorb.
• I have automated red and green science, currently in the process of setting up oil and gas refining for plastic production.
• I have not yet started using deaerosolization machines due to taking more space early on and the modpack's naturally slow progression.
• If I switch to solar power soon and/or start storing polluted sludge I expect I'll have no problems with pollution in the future.
• The biters never evolved past level 1 (2/3 HP), so a simple sparsely gun-turreted wall with basic ammo gives me plenty of security.

• It seems biter de-evolution is too strong right now. I do like the idea of being able to shut down the factory to let the biters calm down if I notice I've overextended but I would like the evolution of a well-managed low pollution factory to at least follow somewhat behind the player's progression so that by the time you have a wall of laser turrets protecting your factory the biters aren't still level 1 with 3 HP.
• It shouldn't be possible to filter all pollution out of the air no matter how many deaerosolization machines you spam. Some ways to do this could be limiting the number of deaerosolization machines that can do useful work per chunk and/or reducing their effectiveness with lower pollution levels in the chunk. A highly polluted chunk would let them work as normal, a medium polluted chunk at a reduced speed or effectiveness but the same power cost, and in a chunk with minor pollution it would stop working at all.
• I would like to see occasional/regular biter attacks still being a possibility even if you handle pollution well, especially in the phase after switching to nuclear/solar and you start to scale up production and use modules that increase pollution. I could crank up the pollution in the mod settings but as I mentioned in my experiences before, there is a difficulty spike just before transitioning to solar which might become frustrating at best, unsurvivable at worst. Balancing pollution so it is impossible to remove all pollution and allowing mild pollution clouds to spread far and wide to trigger the occasional attack from biter nests might achieve this. And perhaps reduce the scale difference in pollution between normal machines and boilers/refineries so that late game factories running solar/nuclear have a bit more of a problem to deal with.
• Once you have the ability to process pollution into useful things with angel's petrochem installed there is no reason to use other methods of pollution disposal like depleted wells. The processing is relatively fast, cheap, yields useful resources and if any of the chemicals are unwanted they can be flared at effectively no pollution penalty. Aside from increasing the cost/slowing it down, this could also be made more interesting by requiring some catalyst/filter type resources to filter out the pollution elements from the sludge so that processing all your pollution isn't automatically the best solution.
• Angel's mods force you to deal with chemical byproducts, many of which end up in a clarifier or flare stack. The base pollution of flare stacks and clarifiers is extremely low so it might deserve an increase. Depending on what is flared, the pollution could be made to vary as well although that might be more within Angel's domain than Nauvis Day's.

Lyneira wrote: Wed Oct 17, 2018 6:47 pm So here's my feedback:
It seems biter de-evolution is too strong right now. I do like the idea of being able to shut down the factory to let the biters calm down if I notice I've overextended but I would like the evolution of a well-managed low pollution factory to at least follow somewhat behind the player's progression so that by the time you have a wall of laser turrets protecting your factory the biters aren't still level 1 with 3 HP.increase. Depending on what is flared, the pollution could be made to vary as well although that might be more within Angel's domain than Nauvis Day's.

Lyneira wrote: Wed Oct 17, 2018 6:47 pm It shouldn't be possible to filter all pollution out of the air no matter how many deaerosolization machines you spam. Some ways to do this could be limiting the number of deaerosolization machines that can do useful work per chunk and/or reducing their effectiveness with lower pollution levels in the chunk. A highly polluted chunk would let them work as normal, a medium polluted chunk at a reduced speed or effectiveness but the same power cost, and in a chunk with minor pollution it would stop working at all.

Lyneira wrote: Wed Oct 17, 2018 6:47 pm And perhaps reduce the scale difference in pollution between normal machines and boilers/refineries so that late game factories running solar/nuclear have a bit more of a problem to deal with.

Lyneira wrote: Wed Oct 17, 2018 6:47 pm Once you have the ability to process pollution into useful things with angel's petrochem installed there is no reason to use other methods of pollution disposal like depleted wells. The processing is relatively fast, cheap, yields useful resources and if any of the chemicals are unwanted they can be flared at effectively no pollution penalty. Aside from increasing the cost/slowing it down, this could also be made more interesting by requiring some catalyst/filter type resources to filter out the pollution elements from the sludge so that processing all your pollution isn't automatically the best solution.

Lyneira wrote: Wed Oct 17, 2018 6:47 pm Angel's mods force you to deal with chemical byproducts, many of which end up in a clarifier or flare stack. The base pollution of flare stacks and clarifiers is extremely low so it might deserve an increase.

Lyneira wrote: Wed Oct 17, 2018 6:47 pm Depending on what is flared, the pollution could be made to vary as well although that might be more within Angel's domain than Nauvis Day's.

Reika wrote: Sat Oct 20, 2018 5:40 pm

Lyneira wrote: Wed Oct 17, 2018 6:47 pm It seems biter de-evolution is too strong right now.
...

It is funny you say that considering that the prevailing opinion is that NVDay makes the game far too hard, and alien attacks and evolution ramp up far faster than the player can possibly compensate for. Indeed, I have seen that happen myself, including with my current save.
...
NVDay is explicitly designed to punish dirty technology, not factory size.

Reika wrote: Sat Oct 20, 2018 5:40 pm

Lyneira wrote: Wed Oct 17, 2018 6:47 pm It shouldn't be possible to filter all pollution out of the air ...

I have wanted to do this for a long time - primarily because I do not want deaeros producing sludge from nothing - but there is no performant way to do this, especially if one places many of them. The best I can do is iterate over all the deaeros every second or so, check the pollution in that chunk, and then mark them functional or not, which is very very slow.

t = game time (in ticks)
s = 10 (seconds between checks)
m = 60 * s (effectively check 1 / m of all deaeros every tick)
deaero_list = numerically indexed list of all deaeros
i = t % (60 * s)
while i < deaero_list.length; {
 do_deaero_check(deaero_list[i])
 i = i + m
}

Reika wrote: Sat Oct 20, 2018 5:40 pm The intent is that you have far more sludge than can be reasonably processed. Given your earlier comment about very little pollution, it sounds like you have very little sludge.

Reika wrote: Sat Oct 20, 2018 5:40 pm

Lyneira wrote: Wed Oct 17, 2018 6:47 pm ... The base pollution of flare stacks and clarifiers is extremely low so it might deserve an increase.

I can do that. What is its internal name and entity type?

data:extend(
{
...
    {
    type = "furnace",
    name = "clarifier",

data:extend(
{
...
    {
    type = "furnace",
    name = "angels-flare-stack",

Lyneira wrote: Sat Oct 20, 2018 11:24 pm So you're right that dirty technology is punished severely and I'm not asking that to be made harder than it is. Nor do I want to specifically punish factory size. I saw you're working on a mod called Loss Prevention that's intended to use a heuristic to set a cap for biter evolution to address the out of control ramp up you've seen in your games.

Lyneira wrote: Sat Oct 20, 2018 11:24 pm My thinking with this suggestion was you could apply the same heuristic to set a minimum for the biter de-evolution so that in a late game where you have a large factory and strong offensive/defensive technologies, you can't shut down power, go afk and come back to level 1 biters for easy nest clearing. Let's say your factory was fending off level 5 biters during normal operation, when you go afk to let the biters calm down their minimum level might be level 3 instead but won't go lower due to your technology level.

Or a much simpler way to do it: Keep track of the highest evolution level seen during the game (X %) and never allow the de-evolution to drop the evolution level to less than for example X - 30%.

Reika wrote: Sat Oct 20, 2018 5:40 pm If you have a numerically indexed list of all your deaeros, you could spread out the checks for them to reduce the impact so checking all of them at once doesn't create lag spikes. If you wanted to check each deaero only once every 10 seconds and given 60 ticks per second, you could use modulo math to check 1/600th of all deaeros every tick. In pseudocode:

Code: Select all

t = game time (in ticks)
s = 10 (seconds between checks)
m = 60 * s (effectively check 1 / m of all deaeros every tick)
deaero_list = numerically indexed list of all deaeros
i = t % (60 * s)
while i < deaero_list.length; {
 do_deaero_check(deaero_list[i])
 i = i + m
}

If there are fewer deaeros than 600, some ticks will do no check and others will only check one machine per update. If there were 1200 deaeros on the map, it would still only check 2 deaeros per tick.

Lyneira wrote: Sat Oct 20, 2018 11:24 pm I hope I found the right piece of code for that, here's the Clarifier:

Code: Select all

data:extend(
{
...
    {
    type = "furnace",
    name = "clarifier",

Although looking closer, the Clarifier might not need a pollution increase because it is used only for unwanted types of water such as mineralized water, saline water etc. For example if you need chlorine, you might purify water into purified and saline water, use the saline water to get what you need and clarify all the purified water if you have no immediate use for it. You can't just throw any liquid in here to remove it, it only works on Angel's different types of water.

The flare stack is the more dubious one. This is what lets you get rid of most unwanted nasty chemicals from Angel's petrochemical processing without much pollution. It's also frequently used to vent harmless gases like nitrogen when you're filtering air for oxygen, or excess hydrogen (you can't burn it for power afaik) after electrolyzing for chlorine or oxygen.

Code: Select all

data:extend(
{
...
    {
    type = "furnace",
    name = "angels-flare-stack",

Reika wrote: Mon Oct 22, 2018 3:53 am I am well aware of this, but the problem is that checking that sporadically will not serve the purpose of checking at all, especially for the more powerful deaeros which can clear 2000 pollution in less than five seconds. The checks need to be fast enough to be effective, but also slow enough to not cause a tick overhead. These two ranges do not overlap.

Also, even 1200 deaeros may be an underestimate for some. I had issues with EGCombat's turret healing tech, as I assumed that 'spreading' the ticks would work fine. Then I got reports of extreme lag, as people were building hundreds of thousands of turrets, which made the spreading utterly worthless, as 500 turrets were still being ticked per tick.

• Limit the number of deaerosolizers in an area. If a player or bot tries to place one too close to another one, prevent it or disable it so it won't get checked. (with feedback about interference from a nearby deaero) This is probably pretty harsh without further changes. It might not even be needed if the incentives below are strong enough.
• Accommodate larger scale with the deaerosolizer lineup. Cleaning more pollution means you need to blow more air through the machine. You can either blow air through the machine faster (current deaero upgrade line) or have a bigger intake. (bigger machine) If you give players a range of deaeros from small to huge, they can still make that tradeoff of surface area and power to clean more pollution despite being limited in the number of deaeros they can put in an area. You can incentivize that further by making bigger deaeros (slightly) more power efficient than smaller ones.
• The checking system could take the form of slowing a deaero down exponentially when it is getting close to cleaning all pollution out of a chunk. This allows sporadic checking to be effective because a powerful deaero in a chunk with little pollution will be running slow enough that it doesn't reach zero pollution before the next check. At the same time, this will cause pollution levels to stabilize at a level depending on the amount being generated and create a system of diminishing returns from spamming deaerosolizers in a single area. I thought this could take the form of multiple recipes with different crafting times and emissions multipliers but I'm not sure if some pollution/sludge vanishes when recipes are switched out like that. Perhaps there is another way to apply modifiers on a running machine's speed, power consumption and pollution, something like the module system but controlled by the mod rather than the player inserting modules into slots?
• If exponential slowdown is used and you don't want a range of different sizes, scaling the current ones up in power (and optionally, size) could also compensate for the area limit or diminishing returns.

Lyneira wrote: Mon Oct 22, 2018 10:24 am The checking system could take the form of slowing a deaero down exponentially when it is getting close to cleaning all pollution out of a chunk. This allows sporadic checking to be effective because a powerful deaero in a chunk with little pollution will be running slow enough that it doesn't reach zero pollution before the next check. At the same time, this will cause pollution levels to stabilize at a level depending on the amount being generated and create a system of diminishing returns from spamming deaerosolizers in a single area. I thought this could take the form of multiple recipes with different crafting times and emissions multipliers but I'm not sure if some pollution/sludge vanishes when recipes are switched out like that. Perhaps there is another way to apply modifiers on a running machine's speed, power consumption and pollution, something like the module system but controlled by the mod rather than the player inserting modules into slots?

I realize something like the above would mean quite a bit of work, so the above points are of course merely meant as suggestions.

Reika wrote: Mon Oct 22, 2018 3:26 pm

Lyneira wrote: Mon Oct 22, 2018 10:24 am The checking system could take the form of slowing a deaero down exponentially when it is getting close to cleaning all pollution out of a chunk. This allows sporadic checking to be effective because a powerful deaero in a chunk with little pollution will be running slow enough that it doesn't reach zero pollution before the next check. At the same time, this will cause pollution levels to stabilize at a level depending on the amount being generated and create a system of diminishing returns from spamming deaerosolizers in a single area. I thought this could take the form of multiple recipes with different crafting times and emissions multipliers but I'm not sure if some pollution/sludge vanishes when recipes are switched out like that. Perhaps there is another way to apply modifiers on a running machine's speed, power consumption and pollution, something like the module system but controlled by the mod rather than the player inserting modules into slots?

I realize something like the above would mean quite a bit of work, so the above points are of course merely meant as suggestions.

I completely forgot that 0.16 added emissions multipliers to recipes - that does enable both the above and the original idea of flare stack recipe-specific pollution increases (and for that matter, the Bob venting pump).

	{0, 0},
	{1000, 0.05},
	{2500, 0.2},
	{4000, 0.5},
	{10000, 0.8},
	{25000, 1},
	{40000, 1.5},
	{100000, 2.5}

Lyneira wrote: Tue Oct 23, 2018 6:22 am That's good news! I look forward to seeing it the next update.

Does the power consumption stay the same across all the different recipes?

• Just increased pollution modifier in the mod to 2.5. Can't believe I hadn't even looked at that....
• Modified the coal burner detection to no longer look for obj.energy_source.fuel_category == "chemical". This lets it trigger on Angel's blast furnaces (probably still not quite enough, but this was easy)
• Put in a game start mod setting for pollution evolution, and upped that to 1.5x base. Might increase this a bit more, but as is at least when the factory is running hard evolution will increase a little bit, and clearing out nests will take long enough to reset that there's at least some cost to it.

Light wrote: Wed Feb 06, 2019 1:46 am This mod has made my combat heavy games quite enjoyable, but there is one thing I'd like to request.

NauvisDay likes to modify the evolution values, which is fine by itself, but it does conflict with mods such as Pitch Black which modify the values based on certain day/night events to spice things up. Unfortunately, Nauvis keeps resetting these values and it throws the balance out of whack. When that process is removed, battles are intense (Rampant), night time excursions are hair raising (Pitch Black), and pollution control is essential both day and night (NauvisDay).

Reika wrote: Sat Mar 23, 2019 8:30 pm

Light wrote: Wed Feb 06, 2019 1:46 am This mod has made my combat heavy games quite enjoyable, but there is one thing I'd like to request.

NauvisDay likes to modify the evolution values, which is fine by itself, but it does conflict with mods such as Pitch Black which modify the values based on certain day/night events to spice things up. Unfortunately, Nauvis keeps resetting these values and it throws the balance out of whack. When that process is removed, battles are intense (Rampant), night time excursions are hair raising (Pitch Black), and pollution control is essential both day and night (NauvisDay).

How would I do this? NVDay has to update those in order to compensate for things like mods assuming the values NVDay sets are unintentional and overwriting them.

Light wrote: Sun Mar 24, 2019 6:41 am

Reika wrote: Sat Mar 23, 2019 8:30 pm

Light wrote: Wed Feb 06, 2019 1:46 am This mod has made my combat heavy games quite enjoyable, but there is one thing I'd like to request.

NauvisDay likes to modify the evolution values, which is fine by itself, but it does conflict with mods such as Pitch Black which modify the values based on certain day/night events to spice things up. Unfortunately, Nauvis keeps resetting these values and it throws the balance out of whack. When that process is removed, battles are intense (Rampant), night time excursions are hair raising (Pitch Black), and pollution control is essential both day and night (NauvisDay).

How would I do this? NVDay has to update those in order to compensate for things like mods assuming the values NVDay sets are unintentional and overwriting them.

I've already suggested adding a toggle to disable any evolution changes from occurring or disabling that function while Pitch Black is installed.

Pitch Black operates on the principle of increasing and decreasing evolution based on time of day or random events. It needs full control over evolution values to accomplish what it's designed to do. Nauvis needs to leave evolution alone to avoid tripping over Pitch Black, which is why I made that request so the two mods can work together instead of fighting each other for control. Otherwise it's a 'one or the other' situation and that's completely unnecessary.