[0.16.50] Idle Pumps Emit Pollution

[LazyDev]

Was looking on the map, and notice that my idle pumps are emitting pollution.

The pump

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The pollution around said pump.

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[Klonan]

All electric entities have a small drain per tick, which causes pollution,

I would say its not a bug

[kitcat]

I haven’t found any other electric entities that produce pollution when idle even though they drain power. All other entities only produce pollution when active, i.e. animated.

When I stop all resource input and let my whole base grind to a halt and then wait for the pollution to clear, only chunks with a pump on it will have pollution flickering on and off in the map view. All chunks with no pump on it will stay at zero pollution, no matter what other entities are on there.

From what I can see, pumps are the only entities that produce pollution when idle, which I would call a lack of consistency.

Actually, pumps don’t even have idle drain (according to the wiki), only active power consumption, which makes this even weirder.

[TruePikachu]

I just looked at prototypes, theoretically the electric furnaces should also pollute when idle (energy_source with emissions and no drain). It could also possibly be the case that the pumps aren't actually 100% idle, so it might be good to check if completely-dry (never touched things that touched fluid) or circuit-disabled pumps also emit the pollution.

[kitcat]

Start sandbox game, place a pump, solar panel and power pole: chunk has pollution.

Unpowered pumps don’t emit pollution. Will try circuit-disabled pumps later.

[Klonan]

So, I was really clear or helpful enough in the first post

We use a general function to extract energy and pollute,
but every entity is sort of written in a custom way,
So this doesn't get called in the same way for each entity, for instance:

Inserter only extracts when it moves its arm
Laser turret only extracts when it needs to shoot
Crafting machine only extracts when it needs to craft

But pump one of the only things that works in a 'general' way, in that if it works, it extracts a certain amount, and if its idle it consumes an idling amount,
The same as radar and roboport, the difference being these are always trying to be at 100%.

For these entities you don't notice, as they don't generate pollution (defined by their electric energy source)

In essence all other entities were rewritten or optimized in a way that means this idle drain per tick isn't needed,
And the other entities that work this way aren't specified to generate pollution in the base game.

So in essence, it is a balancing or lore question as to whether they should, not that it is a bug or not.

[LazyDev]

I still believe, that a pump that has been disabled by circuit connections should not emit any pollution (Correct me if I'm wrong).

[Klonan]

I still believe, that a pump that has been disabled by circuit connections should not emit any pollution (Correct me if I'm wrong).

Correct

[kitcat]

I still believe, that a pump that has been disabled by circuit connections should not emit any pollution (Correct me if I'm wrong).

I just checked and disabled pumps indeed don’t emit any pollution.

Odd that pumps are the only generically pollution-producing entities, but at least that explains why they’re producing pollution all the time.

Workaround for the pump pollution: Just put everything into barrels and use belts. The assembly machines doing the (un)barrelling won’t produce pollution when idle and as they’ll probably be idle most of the time, the average pollution produced by them should be less than the pump’s. Belts with barrels also perform much better than pipes if you want to get further than about 50 pipes.