Nessus Mining Stations causing Eco Damage?

[DukeLeto]

Maybe I'm a sucker for believing what the manual tells me, but I thought that Nessus Mining Stations were supposed to be 100% Eco safe... Well it seems they ain't.

I'm running a maximum development game to see how BIG a faction can grow. This involves full terraforming for maximum resource production with no Eco damage on the ground and 60+ Satellites of each type.

I've been very careful to prevent eco damage and make sure that I got the most bang for my buck. The maximum any city can get safely without space industry is 80 Minerals or so. As I said, I have balanced this carefully. Last turn, I launched a bevy of 10 Nessus Mining Stations. Eco Damage jumped from no damage anywhere to 10 per base. What?

It clearly says in the formula for a base's eco damage that the minerals produced by satellites Don't count, and are subtracted from the total minerals that are fed into the calculation.

I've looked at this formula like a programmer for a moment, and I think I know what the problem is:

The minerals produced by the satellites are subtracted, not the minerals produced * the facility multipliers.

Does this count as a bug, and am I the first person who noticed it?

-DukeLeto

(PS. I checked 10 screens back but found no posts on the subject.)

[Provost Harrison]

Well I can honestly say that I have never ever noticed this happen before, it seems to be steady, with or without NMSs

[Basil]

It's a feature. I'm pretty sure it's in either the manual or the strategy guide somewhere...

[Blake]

I actually assumed the extra minerals from facilities boosting NMS would cause ecodamage quite a while ago..., seemed like something the programmers would be likely to omit.

Just ran a test in scenerio editor, I had a few deep sea cities, with kelp as only improvement. Built heaps of sats, 80 NMS in total.

Ran FM to amplify any eco damage and didn't build any ecodamage reduing facilities.

When my cities were size 60 producing about 60 minerals they produced no ecodamage.

I added 3 mineral boosting facilities and the ecodamage shot up to 1300(!)

I did the same in a size 2 control city (with only the base square and 2 NMS minerals) and ecodamage remained at 0

Conclusion, NMS minerals are only clean up to the city size, any boost from facilities incurs ecodamage, I guess this means once you have quite a lot of NMS you should scrap all of your mineral boosting facilities.

[DukeLeto]

Well, that pretty well confirms my theory.

I guess I'll try and send a note to Firaxis over the weekend to get them to note this. Perhaps they'll fix it in the 5.0/3.0 Patch...

Hell, show me the C++ code and give me a compiler I bet I could write the Patch.

-DukeLeto

[Sarxis]

Patch? Did somebody say 'PATCH'??

WE DON'T NEED NO STINKING PATCHES!!

[MariOne]

"Enchantments", please

[Chowlett]

quote: Originally posted by MariOne on 01-27-2001 08:07 AM "Enchantments", please

Did you mean that, or was it a misspelling of "Enhancements?"

[Muzta]

I've gotten a size 30 city to produce over 200 minerals a turn....with lots of eco damage

[Lord Maxwell]

Well, if you have any of those nifty +50% minerals (Genejack factory and it's successors) then you are out of luck. If you send up 10 satellites then the 10 base minerals don't count toward eco damage. But the 5 from genejack factories do. And if you have all (three?) mineral multiplicators then you can pretty much settle for an planetpearl income in the thousands every turn here after. Just build empath song ground troopers, have xenoempathy dome and the wonder that makes fungus better. Run green, control the manifold nexus and watch em rake in useful goodies from those squares.