Two Questions

Yxklyx · December 14, 2001, 16:17

I have some citizens which show as drones in the city display but don't in the overall F4 display. Why is this? Stapling perhaps?

I'm finishing up a game via conquest and there's Eco damage at every city even those generating 1 or 2 minerals. Sea levels are rising. Could use of Soporific or Nerve Gas be the cause?

Thanks

Yxklyx · December 14, 2001, 16:49

For example I have a city with Population 1 producing 4 nutrients, 2 minerals, 5 energy YET it has an Eco damage of 19! Why is this? All my cities are seeing the same thing. The most advanced structure I have built anywhere are Research Labs - no boreholes/condensers etc... I'm in a mop-up phase with something like 40+ cities (most of them size 4 or less) and there are about 5 small cities left to conquer. Playing Morgan with Police/Green/Power. Pops all over the place. Confused.

Flubber · December 14, 2001, 16:59

There is a well known bug that puts additional drones in the city display at the bottom. Without going to F4 you can check the drones in the top window of the city display ( the window that I usually have showing the city radius and resources)-- You can access a window that shows the actual drone situation and the effect of police, psych ,facilities etc. So in the same display you can actually see the difference between the wrong display on the bottom and the correct situation up top

On the ecodamage formula a couple of folks did a bang up job on figuring that all out and I don't recall all the specifics but the short answer is that atrocities will increase ecodamage and nerve gassing is an atrocity unless you repeal the charter or are doing it to aliens. I will see if I can bump that thread or at least extract the right bits.

Flubber · December 14, 2001, 17:09

I checked the ecodamage formula thread and the answer seems to be that a base gets a certain number of clean minerals-- ie the number each base can produce without producing ecodamage. Use of a planet buster or a tectonic missile is stated to reduce the number of clean minerals by 5 for EACH base-- (note that building a singlr tree farm increases the limit by one in EACH base)-- I did not see an explicit mention of how nerve gassing applies but it appears that it has an effect similar (but probably lesser than ) PBs.

The result is that if you commit enough atrocities you can get ecodamage at ridiculously low levels of mineral production but that it is curable by facility builds. I will bump the thread which contains the details.

Yxklyx · December 14, 2001, 17:22

Yeah but that formula says that only Major atrocities affect Eco and specifically states that Nerve Gas is NOT a Major atrocity.

The Eco of that one base I mentioned went down to 3 after two turns.

Yxklyx · December 14, 2001, 17:24

How can you determine whether you're in Perihelion or not. Is this shown somewhere?

Flubber · December 14, 2001, 17:30

I've been reading on this and have not found the definite answer yet-- for example in one thread Flo said

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"It is planets normal response to extensive gassing (possibly stapling ?). I assume its implemented from a balance standpoint, as it doesn't matter whether you won't receive trade income for 30 or 30000 years. Not sure if the ecodamage formula (5 mins/ gassing) correctly represents the observed effects. From experience i'd say the first 5 or 8 atrocities are "free", after that, damage is triggered. The function doesn't appear linear, it sure as hell looks logarithmic or some such.

What makes it dangerous and hard to track for the scenario builder is the lag between commiting atrocities and planets response. It seems to be in the order of 3-5 years. In the game Buster described the first damage (about 30 points in his bigger bases happened a few years into heavy gassing. One year later, all hell broke lose for Buster. Unfortunately, the atrocity victim had to surrender in the same year. "

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This was written by Flo in September 2001-- I have been perusing some of the other threads since I am curious about this but have not found anything definite yet. I have not yet found where people established the effect of the minor atrocities EXCEPT that there does seem to be a consensu that there is an effect-- I'll keep looking

I am curious-- your ecodamage went down right-- In the interim did you build ANY tree farms, HFs, Centauri preserves or do anything at all that would impact your Planet rating?? Just curious because if nothing else changed it would support the idea that gassing has a temporary effect

Yxklyx · December 14, 2001, 17:46

I had the same experience. I was using Nerve Gas (and Stapling) for quite a while (20+ years) when all of sudden Eco Damage jumped (it could have been been _helped_ by Perihelion too). What's really goofy is that only your faction suffers Eco damage from atrocities you commit which means the more cities you conquer the worse planet gets (kind of counter-intuitive). I'm looking at Hive and Gaia bases with 0 Eco - as soon as I conquer it, it shows 19 Eco. If I were to give all the bases I conquered back to Hive and Gaia the planet's Eco would get back to normal though my own bases would stil suffer of course. I think there's a specific threshold - I may have used Nerve Gas around 10-20 times before Eco jumped.

johndmuller · December 14, 2001, 21:02

One way that ED could go down is that each >pop< raises the clean mineral point. As to ED jumping from zero to a large amoung, remember that the ED formula finishes with a multiplier, so that once you get into positive ED territory, you don't just go up by one at a time. Earlier in the game (particularly before you have many techs), the multiplier itself is less than one, so it is reducing ED for a while, but once it gets over 1, it starts exaggerating the ED so that soon each extra min is worth 5, 10, 20, whatever, giving rise to that exponential feeling.

I think I tried an experiment during the course of the ED thread that lead to that article; I believe I tried Nerve Stapling Captured bases or some such attempt to measure a minor atrocity. IIRC, there was no detectable effect on ED (it got some other effects though, particularly sanctions, and I think maybe extra drones in other bases or something like that), but maybe I didn't have enough captured bases to cross over some threshhold or other.

Yxklyx, why is it counterintuitive that ecodamage appears when an ecodemon takes over a greenpeace colony? Probably the first thing you do is turn off the power to the treatment and recycling plants to boost your factory output. Its reacting to your factions policies.

Black Sunrise · December 15, 2001, 18:37

I've used Nerve Gas to drown a world before. Remember, nerve gas choppers are committing an atricity every time they use gas. That could be 5 choppers, 5 attacks = 25 atrocities in ONE TURN. You build up eco damage REALLY fast.
If you're Sven, playing green, it can be a lot of fun.

Yxklyx · December 16, 2001, 13:50

"Yxklyx, why is it counterintuitive that ecodamage appears when an ecodemon takes over a greenpeace colony? Probably the first thing you do is turn off the power to the treatment and recycling plants to boost your factory output. Its reacting to your factions policies."

Because in this case the bases only generated 1 mineral and eco damage was caused *solely* by Nerve Gas use. I suppose it is assumed that once you use it your entire society is dirtied with the chemicals (though that wasn't the case in WW1).