So, my animal husbandry idea had some nice discussions so I thought I'd start a new one for another thing I've been thinking about that could be a new mechanic.
That is, pollution.
The main theme for it is of course a balancing act of production vs environment. I've been thinking of pollution as a balancing mechanic, where you can build mines, power plants, refinery buildings, forges and industrial buildings that produce more resources but in turn cause more pollution as well. You'd also have recycling plants to produce minor amounts of resources and remove a bit of pollution, and 100% green building options that produce no pollution at all. Imagine it as having 3 variants of a mining/energy district: High pollution, Low Pollution and No Pollution. The high pollution ones will produce the most resources but the most pollution as well and vice-versa the no pollution variant produces the least amount of resources but also no pollution at all.
Of course Stellaris is set in the future, so one might expect pollution to be figured out, but not all empires are the same. There would be by default on game start an option to go full-on green from the very beginning but similarly there's also an option to go full on exploitation mode with no regard to the health and safety of your home planet.
So with the intro out of the way, what would pollution be exactly in the context of the game? It would be another indicator for your planet much like happiness or stability. For normal empires pollution would carry penalties with it, the more you have on a planet the more negative modifiers there would be, but certain special technologies, factions, ascentions and other things could affect what pollution does for you.
What could pollution affect by default?
- Ammeneties are an obvious choice for this, more pollution=more ammeneties needed.
- Planets with very high pollution could have an effect on the base habitability of the planet.
- Population growth penalties could come into effect as well for high pollution as well as immigration attraction getting a big hit for polluted planets.
- Depending on the strata of pops pollution could have more or less of an effect, for example rulers would be affected less by it than workers who spend their time in the mines.
- Certain policies could exacerbate or alleviate these penalties and offer production bonuses at the cost of pollution.
- Faction happines - Some factions would oppose pollution while others would encourage more exploitation of resources. Your empire's politics should have an effect on what types of buildings you use predominantly.
- Planet types - High pollution could reduce/remove the bonuses of Gaia worlds, Ecumenopoli if left unchecked, this would only happen if it really gets out of hand.
So to recap, if you are a slaver empire that wants to go the full exploitation route you could enact policies and use special species rights where pollution would not affect the upper classes as much as the lower classes, so you have the option to get more resources at the cost of happiness but most of that cost is put on the backs of slaves/workers which depending on your empire might not matter to you as much.
Or if you go full-on green, you could create an empire that doesn't produce as much raw materials but the happiness and stability of your planet gives you bonuses to the production instead with other potential perks/benefits/technologies that can only be used when at a low pollution.
What things could pollution be affected by?
- Buildings would of course increase or decrease it, some buildings would do more than others, while some would be completely neutral.
- Environmentalist civic could reduce pollution or even offer a unique building to combat pollution
- Pop traits such as wasteful could cause more pollution
- Edicts could increase it (for example 20% extra mineral/energy edicts could also increase pollution by a big amount)
- There could be a campaign for energy credits that reduces it
- Governor/Empire leader traits could reduce/increase pollution
- Junkyard unique planet could reduce pollution empire wide but instead increase it on the designated planet - Similarly to how resort worlds, penal colonies and thrall worlds work
- Certain policies and species rights could affect how much pollution pops generate vs how much they produce and also how much happiness penalty the pops get from pollution
Special mechanics - Ascencion perks:
- Environmental ascencion - A new ascencion path that gives you bonuses for having low pollution as well as a large host of new buildings and districts that have better production with no pollution as well as brand new resource conversions such as converting food into exotic gasses, convering motes into food, converting energy into food and new edicts and campaigns that use food for various other benefits.
- Fanatic Recycling - A new ascencion perk for the late mid-game that reduces the amount of food and consumer goods used by all your pops by 50% and all pollution generated by 50%. It requires 3 perks already taken and a number of society technologies already researched.
- Outsourced Manufacturing - A new ascencion perk for megacorps only, that allows you to create a gigantic manufactory on other empires planets (branch offices) that gives you a large number of resources but causes great amounts of pollution on the planet its placed upon.
- Corsair fleets - A new early game ascencion perk available only to millitaristic empires that will give you a chance after each space battle that you win, to gain control of any enemy ship that was "destroyed" during the battle. Ships that fled via FTL are not counted. The ships will be heavily damaged when you are given control of them.
Special mechanics - Civics:
- Post-Apocalyptic - In addition to its current bonuses, this civic will also cause pollution to start a terraformation process, slowly turning the planet into a tomb world over time (if its not already one of course) instead of reducing the habitability on the planet. The more pollution there is, the quicker the terraformation process is.
- Environmentalist - Removes access to the high pollution mining and energy district variants and instead gives you a much more efficient no pollution district variant.
- Micro-biologist - Replaces the standard Recycling Plants for your empire with Microbial Recycling Plants. These are planet unique buildings that consume food and pollution to produce a moderate amount of minerals.
The civic also provides a 5% bonus to all society research production.
(Standard recycling plants reduce pollution by a smaller amount and produce a much smaller amount of minerals but also produce a tiny amount of consumer goods)
Special mechanics - Machine empires
So of course machine empires have no real issues with habitability and happiness isn't really an issue either so things work slightly differently for them. They still cause pollution and have multiple variants of districts and buildings but:
- The high/low/no pollution buildings also come with a high/medium/low energy upkeep, the districts and buildings that cause more pollution will produce more materials but in a less efficient manner. So you can turn more minerals into alloys if you wish but it will be at a worse mineral to alloy ratio. Mining/energy disctricts will also cause pollution as normal.
- The pollution itself will similarly to normal empires, will cause a pop growth penalty and an ammeneties penalty simmulating how more reparis have to be done on the robots as they are more likely to break down and more junk needs to be cleared by technicians.
- In addition to those penalties there would be another housing penalty, essentially the waste has to be stored somewhere thus offering less space for the robots to stay in.
- Recycling would have a bigger impact for machine empires, giving you new buildings and tech options that give you benefits based on waste/pollution.
For example - Letting you use waste materials to increase pop growth by using recycling to create new robots.
- Letting you scrap fleets and regain a large % of the resources that they cost.
- Letting you upgrade/retrofit fleets much quicker and more efficiently
Special mechanics - Hive minds
So for hive minds again, I'll just quickly go through what I thought it would look like. Again, pollution is slightly different for them, but much like normal empries I'd offer a spectrum from Harmonious nature loving hive minds to Devouring swarms that consume planets in their entirety.
Again you have the multiple building and district variants, high pollution buildings will produce more resources but create pollution.
Pollution for hive minds causes the normal ammeneties drop but in their case it will also come with food production penalties which will be the main limiting factor for the hive minds. Food will be much more essential for hive minds and will be the core of the pollution mechanics. If you go for more resource production you get less food production however this won't affect livestock. So that playstyle would focus on getting pops from other empires as the main food source. The opposite playstlye instead would focus on getting a huge amount of food production which through technologies and new ascencion perks could be turned into biological ships that cost food and minerals (and other rare resources for weapons) instead of alloys and buildings that turn food into rare resources.
Recycling for hive minds looks slightly differently, they would use microbial organisms to eat the waste up and create useful materials.
That is, pollution.
The main theme for it is of course a balancing act of production vs environment. I've been thinking of pollution as a balancing mechanic, where you can build mines, power plants, refinery buildings, forges and industrial buildings that produce more resources but in turn cause more pollution as well. You'd also have recycling plants to produce minor amounts of resources and remove a bit of pollution, and 100% green building options that produce no pollution at all. Imagine it as having 3 variants of a mining/energy district: High pollution, Low Pollution and No Pollution. The high pollution ones will produce the most resources but the most pollution as well and vice-versa the no pollution variant produces the least amount of resources but also no pollution at all.
Of course Stellaris is set in the future, so one might expect pollution to be figured out, but not all empires are the same. There would be by default on game start an option to go full-on green from the very beginning but similarly there's also an option to go full on exploitation mode with no regard to the health and safety of your home planet.
So with the intro out of the way, what would pollution be exactly in the context of the game? It would be another indicator for your planet much like happiness or stability. For normal empires pollution would carry penalties with it, the more you have on a planet the more negative modifiers there would be, but certain special technologies, factions, ascentions and other things could affect what pollution does for you.
What could pollution affect by default?
- Ammeneties are an obvious choice for this, more pollution=more ammeneties needed.
- Planets with very high pollution could have an effect on the base habitability of the planet.
- Population growth penalties could come into effect as well for high pollution as well as immigration attraction getting a big hit for polluted planets.
- Depending on the strata of pops pollution could have more or less of an effect, for example rulers would be affected less by it than workers who spend their time in the mines.
- Certain policies could exacerbate or alleviate these penalties and offer production bonuses at the cost of pollution.
- Faction happines - Some factions would oppose pollution while others would encourage more exploitation of resources. Your empire's politics should have an effect on what types of buildings you use predominantly.
- Planet types - High pollution could reduce/remove the bonuses of Gaia worlds, Ecumenopoli if left unchecked, this would only happen if it really gets out of hand.
So to recap, if you are a slaver empire that wants to go the full exploitation route you could enact policies and use special species rights where pollution would not affect the upper classes as much as the lower classes, so you have the option to get more resources at the cost of happiness but most of that cost is put on the backs of slaves/workers which depending on your empire might not matter to you as much.
Or if you go full-on green, you could create an empire that doesn't produce as much raw materials but the happiness and stability of your planet gives you bonuses to the production instead with other potential perks/benefits/technologies that can only be used when at a low pollution.
What things could pollution be affected by?
- Buildings would of course increase or decrease it, some buildings would do more than others, while some would be completely neutral.
- Environmentalist civic could reduce pollution or even offer a unique building to combat pollution
- Pop traits such as wasteful could cause more pollution
- Edicts could increase it (for example 20% extra mineral/energy edicts could also increase pollution by a big amount)
- There could be a campaign for energy credits that reduces it
- Governor/Empire leader traits could reduce/increase pollution
- Junkyard unique planet could reduce pollution empire wide but instead increase it on the designated planet - Similarly to how resort worlds, penal colonies and thrall worlds work
- Certain policies and species rights could affect how much pollution pops generate vs how much they produce and also how much happiness penalty the pops get from pollution
Special mechanics - Ascencion perks:
- Environmental ascencion - A new ascencion path that gives you bonuses for having low pollution as well as a large host of new buildings and districts that have better production with no pollution as well as brand new resource conversions such as converting food into exotic gasses, convering motes into food, converting energy into food and new edicts and campaigns that use food for various other benefits.
- Fanatic Recycling - A new ascencion perk for the late mid-game that reduces the amount of food and consumer goods used by all your pops by 50% and all pollution generated by 50%. It requires 3 perks already taken and a number of society technologies already researched.
- Outsourced Manufacturing - A new ascencion perk for megacorps only, that allows you to create a gigantic manufactory on other empires planets (branch offices) that gives you a large number of resources but causes great amounts of pollution on the planet its placed upon.
- Corsair fleets - A new early game ascencion perk available only to millitaristic empires that will give you a chance after each space battle that you win, to gain control of any enemy ship that was "destroyed" during the battle. Ships that fled via FTL are not counted. The ships will be heavily damaged when you are given control of them.
Special mechanics - Civics:
- Post-Apocalyptic - In addition to its current bonuses, this civic will also cause pollution to start a terraformation process, slowly turning the planet into a tomb world over time (if its not already one of course) instead of reducing the habitability on the planet. The more pollution there is, the quicker the terraformation process is.
- Environmentalist - Removes access to the high pollution mining and energy district variants and instead gives you a much more efficient no pollution district variant.
- Micro-biologist - Replaces the standard Recycling Plants for your empire with Microbial Recycling Plants. These are planet unique buildings that consume food and pollution to produce a moderate amount of minerals.
The civic also provides a 5% bonus to all society research production.
(Standard recycling plants reduce pollution by a smaller amount and produce a much smaller amount of minerals but also produce a tiny amount of consumer goods)
Special mechanics - Machine empires
So of course machine empires have no real issues with habitability and happiness isn't really an issue either so things work slightly differently for them. They still cause pollution and have multiple variants of districts and buildings but:
- The high/low/no pollution buildings also come with a high/medium/low energy upkeep, the districts and buildings that cause more pollution will produce more materials but in a less efficient manner. So you can turn more minerals into alloys if you wish but it will be at a worse mineral to alloy ratio. Mining/energy disctricts will also cause pollution as normal.
- The pollution itself will similarly to normal empires, will cause a pop growth penalty and an ammeneties penalty simmulating how more reparis have to be done on the robots as they are more likely to break down and more junk needs to be cleared by technicians.
- In addition to those penalties there would be another housing penalty, essentially the waste has to be stored somewhere thus offering less space for the robots to stay in.
- Recycling would have a bigger impact for machine empires, giving you new buildings and tech options that give you benefits based on waste/pollution.
For example - Letting you use waste materials to increase pop growth by using recycling to create new robots.
- Letting you scrap fleets and regain a large % of the resources that they cost.
- Letting you upgrade/retrofit fleets much quicker and more efficiently
Special mechanics - Hive minds
So for hive minds again, I'll just quickly go through what I thought it would look like. Again, pollution is slightly different for them, but much like normal empries I'd offer a spectrum from Harmonious nature loving hive minds to Devouring swarms that consume planets in their entirety.
Again you have the multiple building and district variants, high pollution buildings will produce more resources but create pollution.
Pollution for hive minds causes the normal ammeneties drop but in their case it will also come with food production penalties which will be the main limiting factor for the hive minds. Food will be much more essential for hive minds and will be the core of the pollution mechanics. If you go for more resource production you get less food production however this won't affect livestock. So that playstyle would focus on getting pops from other empires as the main food source. The opposite playstlye instead would focus on getting a huge amount of food production which through technologies and new ascencion perks could be turned into biological ships that cost food and minerals (and other rare resources for weapons) instead of alloys and buildings that turn food into rare resources.
Recycling for hive minds looks slightly differently, they would use microbial organisms to eat the waste up and create useful materials.
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