I'm Not Asking What I Can Do To Planet, But What Planet Can Do For Me.

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Author Topic:   I'm Not Asking What I Can Do To Planet, But What Planet Can Do For Me.

Natguy posted 05-03-99 11:55 PM ET
What happens when you have too much eco-damage? I ask because i have just begun my largest terraforming operation ever, and have never had much ecodamage. I'm UoP, 3rd level, on an island connected to a lrge, rough, fungus-infested and Spartan-territory (part of it) to the south. I've cleared all the fungus on my island and plan to destroy the landbridge with the income I get from another stage of my terraforming: a huge mountain with echalon mirrors and solar collectors with supply crawlers from all bases harvesting energy. (I called it Mount Energy. Original, huh?) I then plan to build boreholes everywhere i can, with supply crawlers on those too. My question: I know that boreholes cause severe ecodamage, but aside from guilt, what does ecodamage do? I've heard stories in the forums mentioning Planet getting angry. What would that be? Does it create more worms to send at you? Does it cause more disasters? Does it sink your continent in a spectacular duplicate of Atlantis?
Your help is appreciated.
Wolf Dreamer posted 05-04-99 12:01 AM ET
Fungus pops up out of nowhere and destroys things you created. A lot more mind worms attack the base.
The more ecological damage you do, the more the planet does to get rid of you.
Build a tree farm, and latter on, a hybrid forest, then the planet won't mind your boreholes.
Smeagol posted 05-04-99 12:09 AM ET
From a player who has become very cautious with planet, I can tell you that it does all these things. However, my caution prevents me from giving you the details, because I haven't experienced too often what I've heard can happen. The sea levels will begin to rise eventually if the eco damage done to planet is too high, but this will also happen just because of high mineral output. You will almost definitely be assaulted by huge groups of mindworms, especially if you are playing with Free Market. But I believe that when the sea levels rise, they do so for the entire planet so it isn't just your eco damage contributing. Constant mindworm attacks can be crippling and also very tedious, because you can get attacked by a huge stack of them. Be cautious with your terraforming-- especially with those boreholes. I don't know the eco-damage formulas, but I've heard from others that it isn't advisable to use more than one borehole per base (maybe 2). Since I just forest like crazy after the initial stages of the game, I don't have any eco damage really so I don't experience these problems so much. Also, you can drill to aquifer and this doesn't cause eco damage either. But that's just the way I play.
K posted 05-04-99 05:44 AM ET
A neato trick is to Borehole outside of your base production squares and just use supply crawlers to bring in the energy or minerals you need. I had a base that was bringing in about 40 minerals from Boreholes and other outside sources, and with a bunch of inside terraforming(farms, solar, condensers) it only had an eco-damage of about 15%. Mineral production is what kills you. I've heard that 15 minerals a turn is the magic number where eco-damage is caused purely by minerals.
I've also heard that having one base doing all the major eco-damage means that the mindworms concentrate on that base.
Personally, I get Weather paragigm and buiuld Borehole fields way before I get the tech to exploit them. In this way, the tech becomes a huge boost in my power level compared to the other factions who must take the time to terraform improvements..
Johnny V posted 05-04-99 08:28 AM ET
How do you know you have ecodamage of 15%. Where to you find your faction total ecodamage. The last game I played Gaians had green economy, only had ecodamage at the base building ascent to transcendence and the darn planet still raised the sea-levels and I don't understand why. I had very few bore holes. Stupid planet!
HMFIC posted 05-04-99 09:04 AM ET
It isnt just your eco-damage that will cause the ocean to rise. Other factions abuse of Planet yields the same result. Should you desire the sea level to not rise, you can propose to the Council that the Solar Shield or Shade or whatever be launched which will cause the sea levels to drop.
StargazerBC posted 05-04-99 10:38 AM ET
Well, after 300ish or so years Planet will come after you no matter what.
Things to do to Speed up this Process:
Planet Busting (esp PB'ing!!!)
Any Forming Except Fungus or Forest (including raising/lowing terrain)
Too much Mineral Production
Population Congestion
Things to do to Slow Down:
Releasing Planet-life forms.
Foresting/Fugus Planting.
Building Certain Buildings/SP's (ie Centauri Preserve, Temple of Planet, Pholus Mutagen, etc.)
Etc. Etc.
What Happens during the Day of Reckoning:
Hordes of Demon Boil Mindworms. 10-20 per wave. When I had ecodamge of 80+ (from using 20+ Singularity PB's) Fungus pop'ed up everywhere, water coming in, Worms Worms and more Worms!!! It's really fun, trust me
Johnny V posted 05-04-99 12:11 PM ET
but how do you know you had 80+ ecodamage, do you keep a notebook. I keep asking if there is a way to see total ecodamage for your faction but no one has answered that. I didn't realize that planet comes after you no matter what at a certain point, I think that explains what happened last game. No faction but mine was left strong enough to cause much damage and I was Gain, and very Green. I'm afraid to drop the sea levels this game as a preemptive strike on planet because I will lose my wave generators, but if solar flares knock out comm, I will reload the prior turn and drop the sea level.
jgmagnus posted 05-04-99 01:57 PM ET

JOhnny,
Eco-damage is PER-BASE. So, click on a base. Then look to the left side of the screen. It will have an Eco-damage ratio on there right near where is says how much energy you have and stuff inside the City-screen. If I understand correctly, don't let that number get above 3-4 max. Once it does, planet starts obliterating your solar collectors & stuff.
Hope that helps.
Johnny V posted 05-04-99 02:22 PM ET
okay, thanks, I just thought there might be a way to see a total for the faction. I try to keep ecodamge at zero, but planet still acts up eventually. Thanks to everyone that answered my posts on this and the other threads I've asked questions in. You all make the game a lot more fun.
Natguy posted 05-04-99 04:06 PM ET
Oh. Thank you all very much. I'll try to modify my plans and plant forests everywhere I haven't terraformed otherwise...From your suggestions that should help. If not, oh well.
Krickett posted 05-04-99 05:00 PM ET
the ecodamage counter is the percentage chance of fungus rapidly expanding near your base (it can pop out of nowhere too) and/or huge amounts of mind wormds. this is more likely to happen in later years and the percentage doubles during perihelion.
Djerrid posted 05-04-99 10:54 PM ET
Krickett is right. But he should of mentioned that the percentage is the percentage PER TURN. So if you have 5 bases with close to 10 points of ecodamage each then each base has a 10% chance per turn to get Athelete's Foot or to get the worms.
I just had a thought: Couldn't you use ecodamage to your advantage? Each worm that you attack and kill gives you some energy, about 40-50 for mature or great boils if I remember correctly. So you could have an out of the way base safe from other factions and surround it with boreholes. Then you can not build or distroy your hybrit forrest, tree farm and other green facilities while making or keeping a Command Center and Bioenhancement Center to boost morale. Then you make a bunch of defenders without any weapons or armor except for Empath Song and Hypnotic Trance. Get a couple of sensors and a bunch of bunkers for your army to camp out in and you're ready for action. So if you get a 20-30% ecodamage then you can get the worms to come every few turns and rack up a few hundred energy creds each time.
The down side? The fungus will eat away at your boreholes and the sea will eventually raise. Also you don't get the creds if the worms attack you. You should probably get a bunch of fast units to attack with and disengage if you must.
This is just congecture so I don't know if it is feasible or not. If someone tries it out, let us know.
Plato90s posted 05-04-99 11:00 PM ET
Heck, I can generate 30+ Eco-Damage in a base with only 1 borehole. There is no defense which will hold against attacks by 20 Locusts of Chiron unless you stack 10 trance troops in there. Unlike Mindworms, locusts must be killed one-by-one, not all of them at once. In addition, Locusts which spawn at sea can attack in the same turn they appear, which means you are automatically on the defensive. Ouch....
David Johnson posted 05-05-99 05:45 PM ET
The sea level doesn't seem to rise by more than 48 or 49 meters a turn irrespective of how much damage you do. It will just take longer to get there. You can just keep raising the land at a faster rate than that.
cbraga posted 05-05-99 10:28 PM ET
I suppose someone could build dozens of sky hydroponics/mining stations/solar collectors and pull off production from base squares. (mining stations don't count for eco dmg/global warming)
I haven't tried it though. It seems like a waste of time to make so much effort to end up on the same place, just to kill eco damage.
Wolf Dreamer posted 05-05-99 11:21 PM ET
If you are building a robot assembly plant, or whatever it is called, which doubles the amount of minerals you harvest, remember to turn off some of the bore holes around that base before completing it. I had my eco rating at one base go from zero to forty something instantly and a fungus bloom destroyed something and a lot of disgruntled mind worms attacked without warning. They just came out of nowhere a second after the "base has build robot factory" message appeared.
I have never seen any locus in the game. I guess I don't upset the planet enough yet.
WorldBuster posted 05-06-99 07:50 PM ET
The hybrid forest and tree farm don't work like the manual reads - at best they lower the eco% by 8-12 which is weak. The Preserve has some effect, but not much, putting your planet on Green also helps, but all are of little avail against the inevitable worm swarms.
The best defense - make all your garrisons Empath and Police and with a good defense value, attack value of 2. Have at least two of these units in each city. Connect all cities with Mag tubes. You should have several strong rovers with Empath ability stationed at the eco-damaging cities. Another good unit is the Empath Chopper - though it only takes out one worm, and not an entire stack of worms like ground units, nonetheless, it is still good for roaming though fungus patches and taking out single units - but beware of the Chiron - they are powerful!
I think this baby-sitting of bases deters from the game - I don't mine some eco-damage - but provide a good way to control it. See my post on Game Forum - heading Ecology Damage.
Bingmann posted 05-07-99 03:39 PM ET
I wonder what would happen if you made a horde of fungicidal land and sea formers and removed all fungus from the map. (And formers would immediately remove any new fungus that happened to pop up.) Would that eliminate planet from the game, or can worms, isles, and locusts emerge without fungus?
Plato90s posted 05-07-99 06:10 PM ET
Planet will still spontaneously create fungus squares and loads of worms/locusts even if there are no existin fungus around.
jimmytrick posted 05-08-99 04:56 PM ET
Mind worm hunting is the major part of my economy so I don't care if I lose an occasional unit or base facility to worm outbreaks. I once killed a stack with one infantry attack and netted 500 EC. Once I develop 8-10 good bases I cut economy down to 10-20% which leaves me many credits in the red, but as long as you have lots of units out hunting/exploring you can still make money. Load some units on transports and drop them off on islands with lot of fungus and they can make you a mint. On your continent set aside a good area for hunting and don't develop it. These tactics really pay.
It works even better if you play the Gaians. The thing is you can divert energy from economy to pysch (I play transcend) and labs to get ahead on tech.
Finally at one point in my current game my bases stopped showing ecodamge and the worms stopped coming. Maybe they are resting!

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Author	Topic: I'm Not Asking What I Can Do To Planet, But What Planet Can Do For Me.
Natguy	posted 05-03-99 11:55 PM ET What happens when you have too much eco-damage? I ask because i have just begun my largest terraforming operation ever, and have never had much ecodamage. I'm UoP, 3rd level, on an island connected to a lrge, rough, fungus-infested and Spartan-territory (part of it) to the south. I've cleared all the fungus on my island and plan to destroy the landbridge with the income I get from another stage of my terraforming: a huge mountain with echalon mirrors and solar collectors with supply crawlers from all bases harvesting energy. (I called it Mount Energy. Original, huh?) I then plan to build boreholes everywhere i can, with supply crawlers on those too. My question: I know that boreholes cause severe ecodamage, but aside from guilt, what does ecodamage do? I've heard stories in the forums mentioning Planet getting angry. What would that be? Does it create more worms to send at you? Does it cause more disasters? Does it sink your continent in a spectacular duplicate of Atlantis? Your help is appreciated.
Wolf Dreamer	posted 05-04-99 12:01 AM ET Fungus pops up out of nowhere and destroys things you created. A lot more mind worms attack the base. The more ecological damage you do, the more the planet does to get rid of you. Build a tree farm, and latter on, a hybrid forest, then the planet won't mind your boreholes.
Smeagol	posted 05-04-99 12:09 AM ET From a player who has become very cautious with planet, I can tell you that it does all these things. However, my caution prevents me from giving you the details, because I haven't experienced too often what I've heard can happen. The sea levels will begin to rise eventually if the eco damage done to planet is too high, but this will also happen just because of high mineral output. You will almost definitely be assaulted by huge groups of mindworms, especially if you are playing with Free Market. But I believe that when the sea levels rise, they do so for the entire planet so it isn't just your eco damage contributing. Constant mindworm attacks can be crippling and also very tedious, because you can get attacked by a huge stack of them. Be cautious with your terraforming-- especially with those boreholes. I don't know the eco-damage formulas, but I've heard from others that it isn't advisable to use more than one borehole per base (maybe 2). Since I just forest like crazy after the initial stages of the game, I don't have any eco damage really so I don't experience these problems so much. Also, you can drill to aquifer and this doesn't cause eco damage either. But that's just the way I play.
K	posted 05-04-99 05:44 AM ET A neato trick is to Borehole outside of your base production squares and just use supply crawlers to bring in the energy or minerals you need. I had a base that was bringing in about 40 minerals from Boreholes and other outside sources, and with a bunch of inside terraforming(farms, solar, condensers) it only had an eco-damage of about 15%. Mineral production is what kills you. I've heard that 15 minerals a turn is the magic number where eco-damage is caused purely by minerals. I've also heard that having one base doing all the major eco-damage means that the mindworms concentrate on that base. Personally, I get Weather paragigm and buiuld Borehole fields way before I get the tech to exploit them. In this way, the tech becomes a huge boost in my power level compared to the other factions who must take the time to terraform improvements..
Johnny V	posted 05-04-99 08:28 AM ET How do you know you have ecodamage of 15%. Where to you find your faction total ecodamage. The last game I played Gaians had green economy, only had ecodamage at the base building ascent to transcendence and the darn planet still raised the sea-levels and I don't understand why. I had very few bore holes. Stupid planet!
HMFIC	posted 05-04-99 09:04 AM ET It isnt just your eco-damage that will cause the ocean to rise. Other factions abuse of Planet yields the same result. Should you desire the sea level to not rise, you can propose to the Council that the Solar Shield or Shade or whatever be launched which will cause the sea levels to drop.
StargazerBC	posted 05-04-99 10:38 AM ET Well, after 300ish or so years Planet will come after you no matter what. Things to do to Speed up this Process: Planet Busting (esp PB'ing!!!) Any Forming Except Fungus or Forest (including raising/lowing terrain) Too much Mineral Production Population Congestion Things to do to Slow Down: Releasing Planet-life forms. Foresting/Fugus Planting. Building Certain Buildings/SP's (ie Centauri Preserve, Temple of Planet, Pholus Mutagen, etc.) Etc. Etc. What Happens during the Day of Reckoning: Hordes of Demon Boil Mindworms. 10-20 per wave. When I had ecodamge of 80+ (from using 20+ Singularity PB's) Fungus pop'ed up everywhere, water coming in, Worms Worms and more Worms!!! It's really fun, trust me
Johnny V	posted 05-04-99 12:11 PM ET but how do you know you had 80+ ecodamage, do you keep a notebook. I keep asking if there is a way to see total ecodamage for your faction but no one has answered that. I didn't realize that planet comes after you no matter what at a certain point, I think that explains what happened last game. No faction but mine was left strong enough to cause much damage and I was Gain, and very Green. I'm afraid to drop the sea levels this game as a preemptive strike on planet because I will lose my wave generators, but if solar flares knock out comm, I will reload the prior turn and drop the sea level.
jgmagnus	posted 05-04-99 01:57 PM ET JOhnny, Eco-damage is PER-BASE. So, click on a base. Then look to the left side of the screen. It will have an Eco-damage ratio on there right near where is says how much energy you have and stuff inside the City-screen. If I understand correctly, don't let that number get above 3-4 max. Once it does, planet starts obliterating your solar collectors & stuff. Hope that helps.
Johnny V	posted 05-04-99 02:22 PM ET okay, thanks, I just thought there might be a way to see a total for the faction. I try to keep ecodamge at zero, but planet still acts up eventually. Thanks to everyone that answered my posts on this and the other threads I've asked questions in. You all make the game a lot more fun.
Natguy	posted 05-04-99 04:06 PM ET Oh. Thank you all very much. I'll try to modify my plans and plant forests everywhere I haven't terraformed otherwise...From your suggestions that should help. If not, oh well.
Krickett	posted 05-04-99 05:00 PM ET the ecodamage counter is the percentage chance of fungus rapidly expanding near your base (it can pop out of nowhere too) and/or huge amounts of mind wormds. this is more likely to happen in later years and the percentage doubles during perihelion.
Djerrid	posted 05-04-99 10:54 PM ET Krickett is right. But he should of mentioned that the percentage is the percentage PER TURN. So if you have 5 bases with close to 10 points of ecodamage each then each base has a 10% chance per turn to get Athelete's Foot or to get the worms. I just had a thought: Couldn't you use ecodamage to your advantage? Each worm that you attack and kill gives you some energy, about 40-50 for mature or great boils if I remember correctly. So you could have an out of the way base safe from other factions and surround it with boreholes. Then you can not build or distroy your hybrit forrest, tree farm and other green facilities while making or keeping a Command Center and Bioenhancement Center to boost morale. Then you make a bunch of defenders without any weapons or armor except for Empath Song and Hypnotic Trance. Get a couple of sensors and a bunch of bunkers for your army to camp out in and you're ready for action. So if you get a 20-30% ecodamage then you can get the worms to come every few turns and rack up a few hundred energy creds each time. The down side? The fungus will eat away at your boreholes and the sea will eventually raise. Also you don't get the creds if the worms attack you. You should probably get a bunch of fast units to attack with and disengage if you must. This is just congecture so I don't know if it is feasible or not. If someone tries it out, let us know.
Plato90s	posted 05-04-99 11:00 PM ET Heck, I can generate 30+ Eco-Damage in a base with only 1 borehole. There is no defense which will hold against attacks by 20 Locusts of Chiron unless you stack 10 trance troops in there. Unlike Mindworms, locusts must be killed one-by-one, not all of them at once. In addition, Locusts which spawn at sea can attack in the same turn they appear, which means you are automatically on the defensive. Ouch....
David Johnson	posted 05-05-99 05:45 PM ET The sea level doesn't seem to rise by more than 48 or 49 meters a turn irrespective of how much damage you do. It will just take longer to get there. You can just keep raising the land at a faster rate than that.
cbraga	posted 05-05-99 10:28 PM ET I suppose someone could build dozens of sky hydroponics/mining stations/solar collectors and pull off production from base squares. (mining stations don't count for eco dmg/global warming) I haven't tried it though. It seems like a waste of time to make so much effort to end up on the same place, just to kill eco damage.
Wolf Dreamer	posted 05-05-99 11:21 PM ET If you are building a robot assembly plant, or whatever it is called, which doubles the amount of minerals you harvest, remember to turn off some of the bore holes around that base before completing it. I had my eco rating at one base go from zero to forty something instantly and a fungus bloom destroyed something and a lot of disgruntled mind worms attacked without warning. They just came out of nowhere a second after the "base has build robot factory" message appeared. I have never seen any locus in the game. I guess I don't upset the planet enough yet.
WorldBuster	posted 05-06-99 07:50 PM ET The hybrid forest and tree farm don't work like the manual reads - at best they lower the eco% by 8-12 which is weak. The Preserve has some effect, but not much, putting your planet on Green also helps, but all are of little avail against the inevitable worm swarms. The best defense - make all your garrisons Empath and Police and with a good defense value, attack value of 2. Have at least two of these units in each city. Connect all cities with Mag tubes. You should have several strong rovers with Empath ability stationed at the eco-damaging cities. Another good unit is the Empath Chopper - though it only takes out one worm, and not an entire stack of worms like ground units, nonetheless, it is still good for roaming though fungus patches and taking out single units - but beware of the Chiron - they are powerful! I think this baby-sitting of bases deters from the game - I don't mine some eco-damage - but provide a good way to control it. See my post on Game Forum - heading Ecology Damage.
Bingmann	posted 05-07-99 03:39 PM ET I wonder what would happen if you made a horde of fungicidal land and sea formers and removed all fungus from the map. (And formers would immediately remove any new fungus that happened to pop up.) Would that eliminate planet from the game, or can worms, isles, and locusts emerge without fungus?
Plato90s	posted 05-07-99 06:10 PM ET Planet will still spontaneously create fungus squares and loads of worms/locusts even if there are no existin fungus around.
jimmytrick	posted 05-08-99 04:56 PM ET Mind worm hunting is the major part of my economy so I don't care if I lose an occasional unit or base facility to worm outbreaks. I once killed a stack with one infantry attack and netted 500 EC. Once I develop 8-10 good bases I cut economy down to 10-20% which leaves me many credits in the red, but as long as you have lots of units out hunting/exploring you can still make money. Load some units on transports and drop them off on islands with lot of fungus and they can make you a mint. On your continent set aside a good area for hunting and don't develop it. These tactics really pay. It works even better if you play the Gaians. The thing is you can divert energy from economy to pysch (I play transcend) and labs to get ahead on tech. Finally at one point in my current game my bases stopped showing ecodamge and the worms stopped coming. Maybe they are resting!