Base Size and Pollution

[Ned]

Obversed the following: I am playing AKI. I have all techs, and the max minerals before ED are 160. I have taken a base from The Caretakers. With me, it produces 80 minerals. No polution. It has NO tree farms, or hybrid forests, or CP's or anything.

I give the base to Domai. It produces 18 minerals. ED = 13. Domai does not have the tree farm tech. So I instead restart and give the base the Diedre. She does have the tech. Same level of ED. 13.

Just to see if this is related to some other tech, I give Diedre all my technology - and this is all technology available. ED remains 13.

This confirms to some degree my observation that working forests increases the number of minerals one can generate before ED. However, this effect is FACTION WIDE. And it does appear that Tree Farms and Hybrid Forests enhance the effect.

This also explains why more bases are better - at least from the point of view of increasing the number of "clean" minerals. One can win with fewer bases, however, the maximum production from each base is quite limited compared to playing with more bases.

In a game with around 66 bases, all Goodfacilities and the Pholus, my max minerals was 260. In a game with 36 bases, same environment, that dropped to 160. In a game where I had around 10-2 prime bases, the number dropped to 100. I graphed that. It appears to be a linear relationship, with about 2.6 minerals per base.

If one makes a few more assumption, for example, that the average number of worked forests per base is 16, then this number reduces to approximately .16 per forest. Assuming further that tree farms and hybrid forests each double the effect, this means that each forest is worth .04 mineral. Since I further believe the phenomena is related to working forests, an unworked forest in this formula would be worth .02 clean minerals.

Any thoughts on this?

Ned

[Sikander]

Ned,

I wonder if your techs are having an effect on the ED in your first example above, while the AI has a lower tech value. In your second case, did you advance the turn after you gave away your base? If not, the ED formula may not have been re-formulated to take into account Dee's new tech level. Finally, one factor which is going to be hard to control are 'pops' where Planet sends you fungus or worms to punish you for ecodamage. There really isn't any way to know how many pops the AI has had in the past. Even keeping track of your own could be a problem if there is no message at times, or a more complex algorithm for pops than we assume.

[Ned]

Yeah, I thought of that. I did advance to the next turn. In fact, several turns later I continued to monitor the bases I gave away to other factions. I never gave any tech to Domai. Diedre's remained maxed out. Still the bases I have to Domai and to Deidre that had minerals over 16 had ED.

The higher base level for minerals has nothing to do with tech's.

As to pops, I normally have about 4 or 5 in a game. No more. I cannot monitor the AI. However, I can assure you that neither Domai nor Diedre had any in this game. Both were way under-developed.

So, it remains. The effect seems to be based on the used of Tree Farms and Hybrid Forests, and the number of them in use by a faction. As I said, I do not know whether it is also related to the number of forest squares or whether they are worked.

Ned

[Ned]

Just one more observation. I can take over a base where the enemy is getting ED at 16 minerals, and have no ED the next turn at 80+ minerals (I have the Bulk Matter and Singularity Inductors SPs + 15 Mining Stations.) Why?

[DilithiumDad]

I used to be absolutely convinced that ecodamage is decreased by increasing base size, almost as if there was a "mineral per population" factor in the equation somewhere. But now I think that it's just a coincidence --pop growth happens at the same time that Tree Famrs and Hybrid Forests are built and that eecological techs are discovered.

A critical factor missing in the discussion above is that the TECH in the equatioin is **not** total techs but only "green" techs. The only problem is that manual, the prima guide, and the Gamespot guide all fail to tell us which the critical techs are. Centauri Meditation is definitely one because I hae noted that eco damage drops dramatically as soon as it is discovered. Centauri Genetics is another one. So, there are only a small number of techs involved, with the result that a breakthrough or two can have a huge impact.

I can't explain the base-training results described above. Giving the AI faction green tech should have corrected the eco-damage. One limitation of course, is that the effect of the tech is not immediate but rather occurs on the next turn.

------------------
Creator of the Ultimate Builder Map, based on the Huge Map of Planet, available at The Chironian Guild:
http://guild.ask-klan.net.pl/eng/index.html

[MariOne]

At the time of the discussion in the linked threads, we built up several tests.
In all those *controlled* tests, the formula, *correctly interpreted and applied*, always yielded the exact figures which we could observe in red in the basewindows.
This included counting the # of all your faction techs in the formula. I have no notice of a tech reducing the ED, be it Green or whatever.
And I set up tests with basesizes from 15 to 35. In all those tests the resulting ED could be calculated with the formula, that is taking the basesize IN NO ACCOUNT. This should demonstrate that it has no influence on it.

About what you observed, you should remember that there are also history factors to be taken into account.
SO, if you set up a test with the scenario editor, you can easily control all the variables in play.
If you wake up in the middle of a long game, you'd better be sure of everything that happened in that game earlier, before you can draw significant conclusions...

Ned, about the "worked" forest... where was that worker before working the forest? maybe it was working a tile with 3 TF items?

Generally, it's easy that a factor can be overlooked considering only verbal accounts.
If you have cases which seem to be in contrast with what we know, it would be useful that we share the savefiles...

jdm, the "step 8 value" is supposed to be the *result*. I assume that in your example you refer actually to the denominator, or divider, or how do you call it. The term which Blake (IIRC) called GoodFacs.

[Ned]

MariOne, I agree with you about controlled conditions. So I took the AKI game I just mentioned and ran a few turns and changed a few variables. The results were surprising.

Below are two bases held by two different faction, producing roughly the same minerals and producing ED.

Diedre, 19 minerals, +1 Planet, 57 techs, including Centauri Meditation. ED 6.

Domai, 18 minerals, 0 planet, 43 techs, no Centauri Meditation. ED 18.

I then sold all Aki's Hybrid Forests.

Aki's ED's remained unchanged. The crossover between ED and no ED remained 160.

However, Diedre's polution dropped to 4. Domai's to 14.

I next sold AKI's Tree Farms.

Aki's ED'd remained unchanged. The crossover remained at 160.
Diedre's and Domai's ED remained unchanged.

I then game Domai Centauri Meditaion. Next turn his ED dropped to 12.

Finally, I game Domai all AKI's Tech (which was all tech +3 beyond). Domai's ED jumped to 38.


So, what does this tell us? Clearly, Tree Farms and Hybrid Forests are not changing anything per se. The number of forests worked by AKI remained unchanged - so did the Clean mineral value. (BTW, there were 14 Nessus Mining stations. These are also "clean." After tripling by the Bulk Matter SP and Singularity Inductor SP's, this means that 42 Orbital minerals have to be subtracted from 160 to yeild the ground- based clean minerals of 118.)

The above also suggests that the formula is working for Aki and Domai. The differences between Diedre and Domai appear to be related to Diedre's better planet rating, despite her having more techs.

It also suggest that Centauri Meditation does reduce ED.

Still, the base line for clean minerals for Domai and Diedre seemed to be and remain aroung 16. With AKI it remained 118.

Why?

MariOne, I believe the new worker was previously a specialist. However, now that you ask, I don't remember. However, I do remember being able to keep minerals constant by replacing the crawled minerals with worked minerals while at the same time ED went to zero.

Ned

[Blake]

Ned, orbital minerals aren't quite as clean as you assumed, if you have 10 mining stations, then you get 10 clean minerals. If you have 10 mining stations and the minerals are put through a genejack and robot plant you get 10 clean minerals and 10 "dirty" minerals. This would fudge your results. (Also transcend AI's get 1/3 ecodamage)

But.

I can no longer deny that there is a missing link.

I was playing a game as Yang, had 12 bases, 4 pops and could produce ~40-41 clean minerals. I had 0 "goodfacs" and a tree farm and Hybrid forest in every base.
I notice that if I add 16 (base clean) + 4 (pops) + 12 (# TF's) + 12 (# HF's) I get 44, which is fairly close to 40. Therfore I propose that prehaps tree farms have an effect on ecodamage? Prehaps every tree farm built allows you to have 1 more clean mineral in every base. Prehaps every goodfac built also allows you to have 1 more clean mineral every base. Prehaps you need to *build* them rather than add them using the the Scenerio Editor, prehaps detroying one doesn't remove the +1 clean minerals it granted. Lots of prehaps.

Prehaps other people could try to find some saved games and carefully record the total # of tree farms, hybrid forests, CP's etc, then find the clean mineral limit in a base with a TF and HF. Also if playing a game try to save at points like: Just before getting TF's, during the process of building TF's, after finished building TF's, repeat for Hybrids, and Preserves.

I'll start, loading from after completing my TF's, but before the HF's I could produce 28 clean minerals, this is
16 + 12 = 28
after the HF's
16 + 12 + 12 = 40

Interestingly both are in agreement with my clean mineral limit, prehaps pop's only count if you don't have atleast that many tree farms / HF's. I also tested to see if merely getting Env.Eco was enough, it didn't change my ED at all (I genned a couple of turns to check, no change at all)

In general I havn't found exception to the following:
ED changes are always instant, ie you add a CP and your ED is halved, you get a pop and your clean limit is raised by 1. You add a TF and the terraforming Eco is reduced. Iow a change always kicks in for the turn it occured in.
There is never a large discrete jump in clean mineral limit (you wont go from 20 to 40 from a single event)
Once you have a TF and HF in a base it doesn't matter what terraforming you use, clean threshold is the same.

Anyone is welcome to try and find an example contrary to the above.

So Ned, your probably right about tree farms and hybrid forests reducing global ED (even if not for the right reasons). I think this can easily be confirmed with a few more statistics from real games people have played.

Unfortunately this is another kick in the pants for the non-ICS'ers

[Ned]

Dilithium Dad, At least if the above data is correct, there is a dominating factor in the formula that completely swamps any other factor and substantially raises the "clean mineral" bar. That factor is the construction of tree farms, and perhaps, hybrid forests. I have never noticed any reduction in ED simply by researching tech's. However, the number of worms and their lifecyle level is clearly related to the number of techs.

You might want to re-read my post on Domai and Deidre. Domai had virtually no tech, certainly neither Environmental Economics nor Centauri Meditation. Diedre had both. Yet each experienced the same ED when I have them the same base - a base where I generated 80 minerals and they generated 16. I then gave Diedre all my tech. I continued to monitor the bases I have both her and Domai that generated ED. There was no reduction or increase! Tech had no effect at all.

All this clearly indicates that the number of "clean minerals" has nothing to do with tech. However, if there is any damage at all, the number of techs may multiply the damage, as indicated by the formula, and may increase the number of and power of the worms. However, I have not observed the first, but I have observed the second.

Think back to the last time you had a number of bases experiencing ED at the time you discovered Environmental Economics. ED did not drop simply by researching the tech. However, it does begin to drop - everywhere - when you build the first tree farm. The effect is pandemic.

Also, before you get tree farms, try the trick I indicated above. See if you can reduce ED simply by replacing a crawler on a forest with a worker! The minerals will remain the same, but ED goes down. The only explanation I have for this is that "worked" forests reduce ED.

This effect apparently increases dramatically upon construction of tree farms and perhaps hybrid forests.

Ned

[johndmuller]

MariOne, Blake, Fitz: Thank you for your detailed and insightful posts in this and prior threads, and most of all for your patience and tolerance.

Ned: Thank you for sticking to this subject.

Back in the beginining of this thread I agreed with your basic premise that later in the game one seems to be able to produce more mins than would seem to be allowed by the supposed rules (i.e. the formula). While I tossed out a few half baked possibilities as to why, I am not vested in any particular explanation.

I have yet to see anyone address the basic question of how you can produce so many mins without ecodamage.

Lets just use the example of 80 mins.

I'm proposing the following simplifying assumptions:
---term #5 = zero
---no atrocities, no perihelion
---Diff = Trans (5); Planet = 0 (3); and Life = Avg (2).

The formula (from buster's post) reduces to:
((mins - (16+#pops))/(1,2,3, or 4) times (Techs/10))

As long as BOTH of these factors are less than 1, eocdamage must be less than one. If BOTH of those factors are > 1, the ecodamage will start to go up rapidly as mins go up. With one of each, the movement would be more moderate.

If there were 2 pops, then fractional ecodamage would start at 19 mins; ecodamage = Techs/(10 times step 8). If Techs were = 5 and the step 8 value were 3, that would be 1 full damage point every 6 mins, with the first occurring at 24 mins.

At this point, I see that Dilithium Dad has just posted an item of ***MAJOR*** import to my post, that is that the Techs term only refers to "Green" Techs. I don't know whether this clarifies or muddies the water. From the point of view that he didn't know what exactly were the green techs, obviously muddied, but assuming that the techs term is a number of techs, it would presumably reduce the growth rate of the whole formula by quite a lot since I would suppose less than 25% would qualify. DD's reasoning that the discovery of Centauri Meditation reduces ecodamage is contrary to the formula as I see it since it would Increase the Numerator of the formula. Of course, building the associated Centauri Preserves definitely works in the direction of reducing ecodamage by increasing the Denominator of the formula (and perhaps that is what DD means).

All this notwithstanding, even with a Techs value of 1, there should still be an ecodamage point every (10, 20, 30 or 40) mins above the start point of 16 plus pops. Thus, Ned should see at least 1 ecodamage point at his 80 or so mins even with highly favorable assumptions.

What's the missing link?

[This message has been edited by johndmuller (edited April 30, 2001).]

[johndmuller]

Ahhh, it feels like we are getting somewhere.

At last we have a theory that doesn't conflict with my gut perception of how ecodamage works. It's always seemed to me that there is probably some factionwide element to this calculation. Having a lot of builder in my strategy, I usually get into the TF's, CP's ASAP, and eventually, the HF's and the other GoodFacs; coincidentally, at that same point of the game, I am aware of ecodamage, but only for a short period. There is a significant correllation between my focussing on building those facilities and the diminishing of any need to worry about ED for at least a long time, if not altogether.

As I read the posts, we are basically talking about this formula:

((mins-(16+pops+TFs+HFs)) / GoodFacs) times (the DfTePlLi/300 term)

Where DfThPlLi are Difficulty, Techs, (3-Planet) and (Native) Life;
and TFs and HFs are the total faction-wide and GoodFacs = (1 + # of CP, TP & NR in the base) and various simplifying assumptions have been made, like no atrocities or perihelion penalties and that the terraforming term is not significant, because of the TF/HF reduction and/or it is too early in the game for massive borehole-in-base influence.

Another possibility for the formula could be:

((mins-(16+pops)) / (GoodFacs+TFs+HFs)) times (the DfTePlLi/300 term)

This might be a bit more elegant, just putting the TFs and HFs in with the GoodFacs, but Blake's numbers seemed to go better with the first version. The Techs factor is still somewhat confusing what with Dilithiun Dad's offering about "Green" techs.

I'n not sure that this is a big advantage for ICS'ers, since there likely wouldn't be any ED in those size 1-3 bases anyway and they wouldn't be building HFs and TFs as early as a builder either; of course, once they get around to building up all those bases, that would be a different story.
[This message has been edited by johndmuller (edited May 01, 2001).]

[DilithiumDad]

This calls for a scenario editor test! I will set it up with a very low tech level, and certainly no orbitals to complicate the picture! Also, periohelion multiplies everything so I will be sure that's not taking place.

Incidentally, I also see ecodamage mainly in the late early game. This is also around the time of perihelion. Is there any way to quicly determine perihelion, besides noting the warning message?

[johndmuller]

DilithiumDad, good luck on your tests. BTW, could you give us some more info on the "Green" Techs subject; I had presumed that the factor in the formula was the total number of all techs, which I think would ADD (and very substantially as time went on) to the ED - if, as I think you said, it is only the total number of certain techs, it would still add, but not so much and if the first green tech didn't come right away (as in the likely candidate Cent. Ecology), that whole half of the formula would be zero at first.

MariOne, I hesitate to dispute such a large body of research without a well documented alternative, but please consider these points.
a}: Your (presumably rapid growth) style of play may effectively bypass the ED crisis of the late early-game and deprive you of experiencing the puzzlement some of us are reporting here when it seems to go away mysteriously in the face of this formula which looks on its face to rise rapidly as you add mins and tech, but somehow doesn't.
b): In the event that there are some areas of imperfect code in this section of the program (and let me say here that despite the numerous unplanned features cited in this forum that this program is, IMhO, of quite admirable quality), it may be possible that different results occur using the scenario editor than would occur when playing the game. For example, if the game were maintaining a data item for each base (or for the faction) tracking some or all of the ED elements and it incremented/decremented this data item upon performance of certain game actions rather than calculating it from scratch each time, it might not be accurately set by the scenario editor which could reflect logic present in earlier versions of the program. Ned's anomaly when he sold all the TFs and HF's could be a manifestation of a similar oversight by the programmers who didn't think to sell their HFs and TFs during testing.

[Ned]

Blake, et al., Since I had observed ED being eliminated faction-wide on the construction of Tree Farms in only a few bases, I was completely puzzled by my experiment described above where the ED limit did not change on sell all Tree Farms and Hybrid Forests. However, Blake, your theory seems to provide a complete explanation. The construction of TF's and HF's adds one to a "clean mineral" counter for the faction. This counter does not seem to be "recounted" every turn - for efficiency purposes, I presume. So, your "clean minerals" remains the same regardless of subsequent events.

I mentioned that I had graphed the number of clean minerals versus number of bases. The slope was roughly 2.6, but the intercept was around 80-90! (These numbers have to be taken with a grain of salt since I was operating from memory about the number of bases and "clean mineral" limit.) However, it does indicate that 1) other facilities beyond TF and HF may be adding to "clean" minerals; and 2) regardless of TF's or HF, something else was raising the base "clean mineral" level to 80-90.

I propose 1) that "Centauri" techs each add, if the Domai example is accurate, 2 clean minerals; and 2) that certain SP's, such as the Pholus Mutagen and Singularity Inductor (both are said to reduce ED caused by minerals), multiply a base number, such as the base 16, plus the number of "Centauri" techs, by a factor, such as 2.

I count four "Centauri" techs, Centauri Emphathy, Centauri Meditation, Centauri Genetics and Centauri Psi. 16+(2*4)=24. If this base is mulitplied by 4, you get 88, which corresponds to the intercept I charted.

I suspect this theory could easily be verified as well.

As to the "additional" clean facilities, I suggest that these might be the Centauri Preserve and Temple of Planet facilities. These not only operate on a base's ED according to the formula, but add to the number of "clean" minerals just as do TF's and HF's.

Ned

[Ned]

I can confirm that each Centauri Preserve adds one to "clean minerals" for the entire faction. I have not been able to confirm whether the "Centauri" techs also add to clean minerals.

In my current game, I was getting ED at the 16 mineral level when I began building CP's. The turn after I built one, the ED limit for all bases also increased by 1.

Just two datapoints for your confirmation.

ED = 30. 2 pops, 12 CP's
ED = 33. 3 pops, 14 CP's.

Just for your amusement, I had had the tech to build CP's for quite some time, but had not built any. Until I wrote the above post, I had no idea just how important they are. Now, every time I build another CP, I rearrange the "furniture," so to speak, to up my mineral production to just over the ED limit. As expected, this forces a pop every few turn that also adds to the number of clean minerals without causing the polar caps to melt.

Vel needs a new chapter.

Ned