How many minerals before ecological damage sets in?

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Author Topic:   How many minerals before ecological damage sets in?

Wolf Dreamer posted 05-06-99 08:09 PM ET
I've had bases with population 4 harvest 14 minerals safely, with any more than that causing eco damage. I've had bases with population 5 harvest 15 mineral safely, while other bases with same population can't even get that many without causing eco damage. None of these bases has tree farms or anything like that.
Does the pysch of your citizens affect your eco damage? Do disgruntled workers(drones) screw up the enviroment by refusing to recycle? Anyone know the actual numbers as to how this all works?
How come when I use convoys to harvest minerals outside of the base's affected region, I still get ecodamage at that base? Wouldn't any enviromental damage be done at the mining site? Or maybe you get eco damage at the base where the minerals are refined.
Plato90s posted 05-06-99 09:44 PM ET
The eco-damage of the base is determined by total mineral output AFTER all bonuses are applied. So bringing in mineral convoys will cause more damage.
sandworm posted 05-07-99 10:22 AM ET
I think your Planet rating and the "movement of celestial bodies" affects the threshold for ecodamage in your bases as well.
I'm serious about the celestial bodies thing, when I get a popup message about Chiron's second sun approaching perihelion/planet life activity increases my ecodamage seems to go up. Then again, that could be the result of something else I've been doing (I have yet to use PBs, so it isn't that) - OK, so what I actually observed is a big drop in ecodamage in many of my bases when Centauri B receded from perihelion.
a bit muddled without his coffee,
sandworm
jimmytrick posted 05-07-99 10:33 AM ET
Sandworm, in my current game all my bases suddenly stopped showing any damage at all. Ecodamage: 0. There is a dynamic here that I do not understand. In my case I thought there might be a link to a solar shade launch. I never considered Perihelion. If you are right then I should see a spike in a few turns. OMG!
sandworm posted 05-07-99 12:26 PM ET
I can't confirm it myself right now, I could have been using nerve gas, and I don't know if that affects ecodamage. I could have stopped using it and ecodamage could have dropped off as a result. Its not a likely scenario though. Once I start using the gas (which is rarely), I can't seem to stop
What I -do- know is the ecodamage dropped immediately after the "receding from perihelion" message, a direct correlation, but no cause and effect evidence. Wish I still had one of those saved games to tinker with.
S_Carton_Esq posted 05-07-99 05:15 PM ET
I have investigated the eco-damage question thoroughly using the scenario editer, and I can tell you with assurance that the eco-damage formula that appears in the "advanced concepts" section of the datalinks is more or less what the game actually uses. In summary, eco-damage comes from two sources: permanant teraforming improvments (farms, mines, etc., but not things like clearing fungus or leveling terrain) and mineral production. You basically add up the total damage from the two sources, and if the total is greater than a threshold value then you will probably have eco-damage to an extent determined by your planet rating, the game difficulty, the abundance of native life, the number of technologies you have discovered (more tech leads to more eco-damage) and the number of ecology base improvements (centauri preserve, pholus mutagen, nanoreplicator, etc.) you have. I say "probably" here because there is a rounding involved, and eco-damage below 1/2% is rounded to 0. The thing that makes this topic so contenteous is the determination of the threshold value. The threshold value is 16 plus the number of "fungal events" (situations where fungus grows in a square near a base where it did not exist before) that have occured. I have been unable to determine whether the number of fungal events refers to the total number of fungal events that have occured to your faction or the total number of events that have occured to all factions planet-wide (it definately does not refer to the number of fungal events at one particular base, since the threshold value is the same for all of your bases). I expect that the later is the case, either that or there is an undocumented factor for the number of turns elasped factored in, since I have seen the threshold value go up over in bases that have remained the same size and when there have been no fungal events within my faction. There are several things worth noting here. First, contrary to what some people think, the threshold value and in fact the final eco-damage figure are not effected by either the number of drones or by the base size in and of itself (although I have not been able to rule out an interaction between the base size and the number of elasped turns). I suspect that people have concluded that the base size has an effect from the fact that the threshold value increases over time due to accumulating fungal events. Second, a planet rating of greater than 2 has no effect on reducing ecodamage; that is, 2 is the best you can get from the prespective of eco-damage. Third, your planet rating and mineral eco-damage improvemnts such as centauri preserve, temple of planet, etc. have no effect on the threshold value at which ecodamage appears. They help determine how much eco-damage you will have once you are beyond that threshold (1% versus 5% for example), but they have no effect upon the number of minerals you can produce before eco-damage starts (other than a very minor effect from rounding down eco-damage of less than 1/2%). Finally, all the minerals produced by a base, including those brought in by supply crawlers, count towards eco-damage, with the partial exception of those produced by Nessus mining stations. The minerals produced by the mining stations themselves don't count towards ecodamage, but any bonus minerals the produce as the result of base facilities do. So, for example, if you have a base with a robotic assembly plant and a quantum converter and make 10 Nessus mining stations, then the base's mineral production will increase by 20. 10 of those minerals (the ones resulting from the mining stations) will not increase eco-damage, but the 10 resulting from the base facilities bonus to the original 10 will.
S_Carton_Esq posted 05-07-99 05:38 PM ET
I allmost forgot. Major atrocities are a third source of ecodamage, in addition to teraforming and minerals. I'm not sure exactly what constitutes a "major" (as opposed to a minor) atrocity, but using planet busters is definately major. Also, whether or not Alpha Prime is at perihilion is another factor that determines how much eco-damge you have once you have past the threshold.
Plato90s posted 05-07-99 06:20 PM ET
Excellent analysis.
In the end game, I usually end up selling all of my Genejack factories after building the Singularity Inductor. Too much mineral production is bad.
But let me add some corollaries.
1) Utilizing terraformed facilities causes more eco-damage. So having a mine/farm in the city causes damage. But using it causes even more damage.
2) The source of your minerals also matter. As mentioned, Nessus Mining station minerals don't count toward mineral eco-damage threshold, but the bonus minerals created by the facilities do. In addition, minerals taken from fungus also don't count. Try it. A city square taking 2 minerals from a mine square causes more damage than 2 minerals from a fungus square.
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Author	Topic: How many minerals before ecological damage sets in?
Wolf Dreamer	posted 05-06-99 08:09 PM ET I've had bases with population 4 harvest 14 minerals safely, with any more than that causing eco damage. I've had bases with population 5 harvest 15 mineral safely, while other bases with same population can't even get that many without causing eco damage. None of these bases has tree farms or anything like that. Does the pysch of your citizens affect your eco damage? Do disgruntled workers(drones) screw up the enviroment by refusing to recycle? Anyone know the actual numbers as to how this all works? How come when I use convoys to harvest minerals outside of the base's affected region, I still get ecodamage at that base? Wouldn't any enviromental damage be done at the mining site? Or maybe you get eco damage at the base where the minerals are refined.
Plato90s	posted 05-06-99 09:44 PM ET The eco-damage of the base is determined by total mineral output AFTER all bonuses are applied. So bringing in mineral convoys will cause more damage.
sandworm	posted 05-07-99 10:22 AM ET I think your Planet rating and the "movement of celestial bodies" affects the threshold for ecodamage in your bases as well. I'm serious about the celestial bodies thing, when I get a popup message about Chiron's second sun approaching perihelion/planet life activity increases my ecodamage seems to go up. Then again, that could be the result of something else I've been doing (I have yet to use PBs, so it isn't that) - OK, so what I actually observed is a big drop in ecodamage in many of my bases when Centauri B receded from perihelion. a bit muddled without his coffee, sandworm
jimmytrick	posted 05-07-99 10:33 AM ET Sandworm, in my current game all my bases suddenly stopped showing any damage at all. Ecodamage: 0. There is a dynamic here that I do not understand. In my case I thought there might be a link to a solar shade launch. I never considered Perihelion. If you are right then I should see a spike in a few turns. OMG!
sandworm	posted 05-07-99 12:26 PM ET I can't confirm it myself right now, I could have been using nerve gas, and I don't know if that affects ecodamage. I could have stopped using it and ecodamage could have dropped off as a result. Its not a likely scenario though. Once I start using the gas (which is rarely), I can't seem to stop What I -do- know is the ecodamage dropped immediately after the "receding from perihelion" message, a direct correlation, but no cause and effect evidence. Wish I still had one of those saved games to tinker with.
S_Carton_Esq	posted 05-07-99 05:15 PM ET I have investigated the eco-damage question thoroughly using the scenario editer, and I can tell you with assurance that the eco-damage formula that appears in the "advanced concepts" section of the datalinks is more or less what the game actually uses. In summary, eco-damage comes from two sources: permanant teraforming improvments (farms, mines, etc., but not things like clearing fungus or leveling terrain) and mineral production. You basically add up the total damage from the two sources, and if the total is greater than a threshold value then you will probably have eco-damage to an extent determined by your planet rating, the game difficulty, the abundance of native life, the number of technologies you have discovered (more tech leads to more eco-damage) and the number of ecology base improvements (centauri preserve, pholus mutagen, nanoreplicator, etc.) you have. I say "probably" here because there is a rounding involved, and eco-damage below 1/2% is rounded to 0. The thing that makes this topic so contenteous is the determination of the threshold value. The threshold value is 16 plus the number of "fungal events" (situations where fungus grows in a square near a base where it did not exist before) that have occured. I have been unable to determine whether the number of fungal events refers to the total number of fungal events that have occured to your faction or the total number of events that have occured to all factions planet-wide (it definately does not refer to the number of fungal events at one particular base, since the threshold value is the same for all of your bases). I expect that the later is the case, either that or there is an undocumented factor for the number of turns elasped factored in, since I have seen the threshold value go up over in bases that have remained the same size and when there have been no fungal events within my faction. There are several things worth noting here. First, contrary to what some people think, the threshold value and in fact the final eco-damage figure are not effected by either the number of drones or by the base size in and of itself (although I have not been able to rule out an interaction between the base size and the number of elasped turns). I suspect that people have concluded that the base size has an effect from the fact that the threshold value increases over time due to accumulating fungal events. Second, a planet rating of greater than 2 has no effect on reducing ecodamage; that is, 2 is the best you can get from the prespective of eco-damage. Third, your planet rating and mineral eco-damage improvemnts such as centauri preserve, temple of planet, etc. have no effect on the threshold value at which ecodamage appears. They help determine how much eco-damage you will have once you are beyond that threshold (1% versus 5% for example), but they have no effect upon the number of minerals you can produce before eco-damage starts (other than a very minor effect from rounding down eco-damage of less than 1/2%). Finally, all the minerals produced by a base, including those brought in by supply crawlers, count towards eco-damage, with the partial exception of those produced by Nessus mining stations. The minerals produced by the mining stations themselves don't count towards ecodamage, but any bonus minerals the produce as the result of base facilities do. So, for example, if you have a base with a robotic assembly plant and a quantum converter and make 10 Nessus mining stations, then the base's mineral production will increase by 20. 10 of those minerals (the ones resulting from the mining stations) will not increase eco-damage, but the 10 resulting from the base facilities bonus to the original 10 will.
S_Carton_Esq	posted 05-07-99 05:38 PM ET I allmost forgot. Major atrocities are a third source of ecodamage, in addition to teraforming and minerals. I'm not sure exactly what constitutes a "major" (as opposed to a minor) atrocity, but using planet busters is definately major. Also, whether or not Alpha Prime is at perihilion is another factor that determines how much eco-damge you have once you have past the threshold.
Plato90s	posted 05-07-99 06:20 PM ET Excellent analysis. In the end game, I usually end up selling all of my Genejack factories after building the Singularity Inductor. Too much mineral production is bad. But let me add some corollaries. 1) Utilizing terraformed facilities causes more eco-damage. So having a mine/farm in the city causes damage. But using it causes even more damage. 2) The source of your minerals also matter. As mentioned, Nessus Mining station minerals don't count toward mineral eco-damage threshold, but the bonus minerals created by the facilities do. In addition, minerals taken from fungus also don't count. Try it. A city square taking 2 minerals from a mine square causes more damage than 2 minerals from a fungus square.