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Did anybody actually playtest this new mechanic before release? It's made the game completely unplayable.

 

Pollution builds up way too fast and there really isn't any method to get it down except setting production to zero or near zero (just one cell operating).

There are only a limited number of pollution control buildings available and if you're playing a non-creative race, there's a 50% chance that you won't get the most effective building either.

This means, whatever you do, once your planet is somewhat developed, you'll just have to set it to food/research and not produce anything.

The Pollution from just 3 turns of setting a planet to "Production" can be undone only in about 20-30 turns in some cases. This means i'm constantly setting my planets to zero production and clicking next for the next 30 turns.

 

This isn't a new mechanic, it's a nail in the coffin for the game. I'm stopping playing the game until this mess is fixed.

 

I'm not against changing the Pollution mechanic. I'm very much against the balance values as it is. Seriously - even a tiny bit of QA would've revealed that the new mechanic is extremely badly balanced.

Please leave all feedback regarding the new pollution mechanics here.

Hey Gulyabani,

 

I merged these topics so that we can gather feedback easily in one place (if other players share your opinions). Based on your guys' feedback, we can try to improve certain parts of the game to make it more enjoyable. 

 

Kandly

v51.3

 

While I like the overall concept of the new pollution mechanics, the implementation and numbers balancing is in severe need of tweaking and a overhaul.

 

With the current values used by the new pollution mechanic, managing your empire feels like a 500lbs Gorilla has you in a chokehold.

 

Here is an example planet:

 

Size - Huge

Biome - Gaia

Minerals - Ultra Rich

Gravity - Normal

Race - Human

Population 29/29

Pollution 0/350

Industrial structures - Automated Factory, Neutron Collider, Robo Miners and Deep Core Mine

Pollution structures - Pollution Processor and Toxic Processor

Available number of production squares: 12

 

With 0 of 12 prod squares utilized = +4 production and -15 pollution (Time to clean 350 pollution equals 24 game turns)

With 1 of 12 prod squares utilized = +12 production and -3 pollution (Time to clean 350 pollution equals 117 game turns)

With 3 of 12 prod squares utilized = +20 production and +9 pollution (Planet will become fully polluted in 39 game turns)

With 6 of 12 prod squares utilized = +51 production and +56 pollution (Planet will become fully polluted in 7 game turns)

With 12 of 12 prod squares utilized = +92 production and +117 pollution (Planet will become fully polluted in 3 game turns)

 

In the 12 of 12 prod squares utilized example:

Pollution from industry - 138

Pollution from population - 29

Subtotal - 167

Biome tolerance - 30

Pollution processor - 15 

Toxic processor - 5

Subtotal - 50

Total pollution per turn - 117

 

Additional pollution reduction if Toxic Waste Dump was built - 150

 

Food degradation with 102/350 pollution = -13 food per turn (Turning all 12 of the planets food squares yellow)

 

Conclusions:

 

1. Fully polluting a planet happens very quickly on a developed world. It only requires a few turns even when only utilizing 50% of your production capacity.

2. Pollution clean up is extremely slow in comparison, even when fully shutting down your production.

3. Acquiring and building industrial technologies feels like a downgrade rather then a upgrade to your empire, due to massive pollution spiking and penalties. 

3. The Toxic Waste Dump technology is extremely overpowered, allowing you to totally negate pollution mechanic from the game.

4. Choosing the Deep Core Mine technology over the Toxic Waste Dump from Tectonic Engineering, is equal to your empire committing industrial suicide.

5. The other pollution reducing technologies are very limited in number and have low values when fully researched (Pollution Processor = 15 and Toxic Processor = 5)

6. Food degradation happens at low pollution values and scales quickly, creating a micromanagement nightmare of shifting your population around as pollution levels change.

7. Lithovore empires laugh at you, while having a production frenzy and dancing in a conga line on their toxic hell hole 'who cares about pollution' planets.

 

Possible suggestions:

1. The new mechanic is a decent concept idea. Try changing the numbers and the scaling.

2. Change pollution scaling. Your planet should not be gaining much pollution when utilizing 50% or less of it industrial capacity.

3. Change clean up scaling. Having to fully chocke your industrial output for minimal pollution reduction is severe. Have minimal clean up while maintaining moderate production, and more significant clean up at low production.

4. Consider introducing more effective and/or possibly more numerous pollution clean up technologies other then the Toxic Waste Dump technology

5. Reduce effectiveness of the Toxic Waste Dump technology. No single technology should singlehandedly remove the entire pollution mechanic from the game. A more gradual advance in pollution tolerance and/or clean up cap as new anti pollution technologies become available. Not the current jump from insignificant clean up (Pollution Processor and Toxic Processor) to negating the pollution mechanic wholly (Toxic Waste Dump) as with the current techs.

6. Increase the threshold where food degradation occurs due to pollution and have it happen at sizeable marked intervals. Something like 40%-60%-80%-100%. Save us from this blighted micromanagement nightmare of continually having to shift food workers around!

7. Balance pollution and Lithovores. Some possibilities are have pollution effect Lithovore food generation or have pollution also affect science and production values. Or something else entirely.

 

Hope that write up helps.

Very much looking forward to the new Antaran update and the DLC : D

 

Just hope the 500lbs pollution gorilla with a choking fetish is of our backs by then ; )

 

Love the game

 

Yours truly

 

Hedgehog sitting very still in the Bounce House

 

Edited by BounceHouseHedgehog, 01 December 2016 - 10:18 PM.

If true, I also think that the pollution grows too fast and as a result degrades the planets very quickly, they should let it be cleaned if not all the pollution at least a part or even better because not sending it to other nonhabitable planets with ships of Transport (after all, it is what we are doing here on Earth with the pollution generated by the developed countries)

The v54.6 patch notes regarding pollution clean-up values for Pollution Prosessor and Core Waste Dump, are actually the same values used by the game in v51.3.

Patch notes incorrect? Patchnotes pasting error? What changed for pollution clean-up structures? What is the recyclotron ?

I can't check this stuff since my tech tree is bugged and not showing anything.
Edited by BounceHouseHedgehog, 01 December 2016 - 10:21 PM.

 

Okay, so starting a 2nd new game now actually allows me to see the tech tree.

The Recyclotron is a new pollution clean-up building that can be built on rich and ultra rich worlds, adding 25 clean-up value.

The pollution clean up value changes for pollution prossessor and toxic waste dump listed in the v54.6 patch notes are actually not changes. These values are the same as in v51.3

 

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Edited by BounceHouseHedgehog, 01 December 2016 - 10:42 PM.

I liked the new mechanic from the get-go. Now that I've been playing with it some time I really like it a lot compared to the old way of doing it.