View Issue Details
| ID | Project | Category | Date Submitted | Last Update | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0016232 | Stars Beyond Reach | Gameplay Issue | Apr 16, 2015 5:03 am | May 1, 2015 1:22 pm | |
| Reporter | Misery | Assigned To | Chris_McElligottPark | ||
| Status | resolved | Resolution | fixed | ||
| Product Version | 0.772 | ||||
| Summary | 0016232: Pollution/disease mechanic makes no sense | ||||
| Description | Okay, so, I'm including a save that might help point all of this out, but what's basically going on is that first, I've got so many hazmat buildings that the pollution generation in the city should be ENTIRELY nullified; in fact, that's what the tooltip for the pollution counter says. And when I go to place another, all of the hexes for the city are blue... there isnt any major source, because the sources are all neutralized. The amount of cleanup doesnt seem to actually be subtracted from the "pollution over town" number at all.... it never goes down no matter how far the pollution cleanup is over the pollution produced. Yet, a disease still suddenly appears. And THIS time, there's no explosion of trash; I already prepared for that. The trash counter is at 0, and has not once gone up. Someone on the board had suggested that there might be some sort of "wind" that shoves pollution around? This is the only explanation I can think of, as the nearby Evuck facilities (though these are still way outside of range of my own city) are producing huge amounts of pollution.... but the boundaries of that dont come close to touching any of my stuff. So, yeah... the whole pollution/disease mechanic just doesnt make any sense, and currently seems broken. | ||||
| Tags | No tags attached. | ||||
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It's actually working as intended, but I see why it's confusing. There is indeed a wind that blows pollution eastward. Additionally, pollution gets cleaned up the turn AFTER it is emitted at the moment, rather than at the time it is emitted. That probably needs to change. Diseases are something that will strike you periodically no matter what, not just from pollution. Those are more of a cyclical thing. But the notification is super misleading there and needs adjustment for when it's actually pollution and when it's just something like "disease from the jungle." All diseases have different characteristics, and severities, and so perform many different things. So one disease doing one thing versus another not is working just fine. The problem is the tooltips aren't there on that part. Basically there are two actual problems here, other than documentation: 1. As I've been debating for a while with myself, pollution scrubbers should happen after pollution generation between turns. 2. And then diseases appearing need to not mention pollution if that's not the cause. |
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I'm okay with the pollution scrubbing happening a turn later, it just needs to be explained (in tooltips too) to the player. |
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It's one of those mechanics that sounds good on paper, and in my own testing it works... if you already know to place your polluters downwind. But that basically makes hazmat ineffective if you are not placing your stuff downwind. To me that creates a circular situation where new players are almost guaranteed to be trapped. I'd rather have the situation be non-ideal for new players (they are not as streamlined as they could be because they are new, and that's fine), but still functional and not requiring a tooltip to understand. In light of that, placing stuff downwind is still always the ideal thing because you don't have to incur the costs of the scrubbers. But making the scrubbers more immediately effective will then make it so that they behave as expected, and you can stack scrubbers to completely eliminate smog where you've placed things suboptimally. Originally I didn't want that sort of "total elimination of smog" to be possible, because I felt like it would negate the mechanic. But everything is cost/benefit, really, and so I now don't see a reason why you can't expend a ton of energy/money to negate that mechanic in lieu of placing buildings better. Most likely I'll make hazmat a little pricier as part of this, and have that also talk about placing stuff downwind. |
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Hm, there is the other aspect of the disease bit though that was making this even more confusing, which was that the instant one of them starts... and it didnt seem to matter which one... absolutely everything just collapses. There's that one building I know that's supposed to do something or other for disease control, but typically by the time I have it, it's too late (every time so far right around turn 160-170, like clockwork). So that probably contributes to the confusion everyone is getting. Not to mention that, at least in my experience, the game never gave just ONE of them. Each time it happened for me it was about 3-4 diseases at once, and once they were there, that was pretty much the end of it. I kinda feel like there needs to be additional options available for the player to take in terms of dealing with that, particularly as they arent necessarily going to know that they need to beeline to the anti-disease building before a certain point in the game (which kinda feels arbitrary anyway). There's also the question about pollution produced by other races... I'm not sure how far the stuff travels, but what I did notice in that last save of mine was that gigantic yellow field that the nearby Evuck stuff was putting out... and that's just the bit it actually displayed. Speaking of that, is there a way to show where the wind is taking the pollution? Just knowing that it's "too the east" is a bit vague, and players are likely going to expect more info. But what about the trash aspect of this? Most times this happens the garbage level would just suddenly explode, going from nothing into like, 20000 in a moment. |
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Having a bunch of diseases strike at once sounds like a bug. The trash explosion is probably a misconfigured variable in the diseases file; we'll have to look at the multipliers there. To see where pollution is, you can toggle on the smog map if you like. It does just generally move eastward, but has a chance to drift north and south as well. It collects against mountains. Yes, pollution from other cities will still bother your citizens, so if you're downwind of the acutians in particular I hope you have your hazmat teams ready, heh. That's going to be rough. |
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A giant arrow pointing out the direction of wind and pollution flow on the pollution layout would go a long way. The litter problem is that litter production is unnoticeable until it fills your dumps. Looking at Misery's game, he was producing around 7k per turn of extra trash. However, until his dump fills, it wasn't obvious from the GUI. Then it fills and disaster happens. Having information about how quickly your dumps are filling and how quickly you are disposing of litter would be good. Having earlier access to trash incineration would also be great. Also, Misery, look at the smog layout, not just the net pollution. Chris, if you take a look at that misery pollution 4.save I've posted a dozen places, you'll see the Acutians with massive WEST spreading smog. The disease problem is probably related to 1. Diseases never really ending and 2. Conditions that cause diseases continue to exist, so you get multiple activations. |
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An arrow for wind direction is a super good idea! Good point also on the litter problem in terms of it not being clear when you're going to run out of capacity soon. Same with bodies, really. In terms of incineration being earlier, I'm not so sure. I think that it's a nice reward to get in there later and no longer have so much trouble with trash after it being an issue in the early game. Having different problems at different stages of the game is something I really value. |
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There's a smog display? I've never seen it, aside from the blue/yellow stuff that comes up when a hazmat is selected. If there's a way to open that without selecting it, I seriously have no idea where it is. |
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Select the layout options. There is a ton of them: Smog, Pollution Generation (net), Crime (net), Crime (Gross), Power Consumption, etc. With the new GUI, they are found using the magnifying icon at the bottom middle of the screen. |
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Marking this one as resolved, since the state of disease and pollution has changed so much since the original report that it's a whole new conversation if there is still any confusion. I'd rather have a new issue about that if that is the case, to avoid muddying the issue with what was happening way back. Thanks! |
| Date Modified | Username | Field | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Apr 16, 2015 5:03 am | Misery | New Issue | |
| Apr 16, 2015 5:03 am | Misery | File Added: pollution.save | |
| Apr 16, 2015 8:30 am | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0040042 | |
| Apr 16, 2015 8:31 am | Chris_McElligottPark | Assigned To | => Chris_McElligottPark |
| Apr 16, 2015 8:31 am | Chris_McElligottPark | Status | new => assigned |
| Apr 16, 2015 11:03 am | ptarth | Note Added: 0040050 | |
| Apr 16, 2015 11:14 am | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0040052 | |
| Apr 16, 2015 1:09 pm | Misery | Note Added: 0040058 | |
| Apr 16, 2015 1:12 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0040059 | |
| Apr 16, 2015 1:16 pm | ptarth | Note Added: 0040060 | |
| Apr 16, 2015 1:17 pm | ptarth | Note Edited: 0040060 | |
| Apr 16, 2015 1:19 pm | ptarth | Note Edited: 0040060 | |
| Apr 16, 2015 1:19 pm | ptarth | Note Edited: 0040060 | |
| Apr 16, 2015 1:26 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0040061 | |
| Apr 22, 2015 7:33 am | Misery | Note Added: 0040131 | |
| Apr 22, 2015 9:26 am | ptarth | Note Added: 0040133 | |
| Apr 22, 2015 9:26 am | ptarth | Note Edited: 0040133 | |
| May 1, 2015 1:22 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0040408 | |
| May 1, 2015 1:22 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Status | assigned => resolved |
| May 1, 2015 1:22 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Resolution | open => fixed |
