Raising Land (or Lowering it)

[mark13]

Well, it's a question of how you play the game I guess. I would never, ever *ever* build Pressure Domes as a substitute for Recycling Tanks, for the simple reason that Pressure Domes have a 1/turn upkeep fee. When you think about it, this equates to 200 or more turns over the course of the game, which equals 200 credits. When you mulitply that by the 50 bases or so, it becomes 10,000 credits, which is a lot by anyone's standards....

[RedFred]

YIKES! I always though p-domes were free. Says so in the manual, guess I should know better than to trust it though. In any case I am with Aredhan on not building them, particularly in the early game.

On the issue of (non-washing) jungle raising, yes raising that or the uranium flats will cause the special bonus to disappear.

Tip for any newbies happening by: You retain your monoliths that have been submerged as long as they are -999 or higher. Handy for ship experience upgrades.

[Googlie]

I'll build them in blind research games if I have doc flex but not biogenetics, or if I have little else to build - I'll do the domes then cash in the tanks - one little added benefit is that domes can't be destroyed by probe action - tanks can (altho to my knowledge I've never benefitted from that)

[mark13]

quote: Tip for any newbies happening by: You retain your monoliths that have been submerged as long as they are -999 or higher. Handy for ship experience upgrades.

Wow, does it really? I didn't know that - I'm being serious, well, I guess you learn something ever day. That beggars another point - how tall are these monoliths? 1000m is quite a height, I'd certainly like to see one....

I think domes are free if they are automatically built on sea bases - otherwise they have an upkeep cost, AFAIK....I am by no means certain about this though....

[Chowlett]

As someone pointed out a while ago, this make it a viable strategy to lower a monolith into the sea for the specific purpose of ship upgrades.

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The best way to avoid errors is not to do anything - Dr Beardon (Maths)

[cbn]

Bump

[DilithiumDad]

A fascinating thing about rising sea levels is that there is a major random element. We have had rising sea levels in several multiplayer games played on the Ultimate Builder map, and the submerged tile differ drastically, even in unoccupied areas, and even with identical rises in sea level. Some tiles that are NOT listed as endangered will be submerged.

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Creator of the Ultimate Builder Map, based on the Huge Map of Planet

[Lord Maxwell]

Actually any lowering/raising of terrain destroys landmarks. So you can't raise pholus ridge to get an uber-ridge, nor can you raise the jungle to keep it out of the water. (Well you can, but it stops being jungle.) The only landmark that doesn't really suffer is sunny mesa. (As it has no other intrinsic bonus than height.)

[Flubber]

bump for freshman

[freshman]

Thanks for the bump Flubber!
I think I understand washing now - but it seems like more than just my endangered squares got washed. I had 3 endangered squares, including my base - and about 10 squares got washed! Another question - I had a P-dome - would my base had survived the wash if it didn't?
Also, the link to the washing page is broken - does anyone know where I can find it? - the old link was http://apolyton.net/forums/Forum31/HTML/000230.html

Does all ecodamage of all factions count towards sea level rises?

I read that one way sea level rises are triggered by too many 's in a row - does anyone know more detail on this? I've heard that having a eco-damage of around 40 is good to start poping at a reasonable pace 1 every 2 turns - does anyone know more detail on how often a pop happens for a given eco-damage?

Hey - I read the eco-damage article and was confused on one thing in their formula. The formula is (pasting):

Eco-Damage = (DamageFactor * Perihelion * Techs * Life * Difficulty * Planet) / 300
Planet = PLANET Social Engineering -3, to a minimum of 1.
Difficulty = 3 on Librarian and lower, 5 on Thinker and Transcend
Life = 1, 2 or 3 for Rare, Normal or Abundant native life

From http://apolyton.net/misc/column/175_ecodamage.shtml

I'm confused about PlanetFactor = PLANET - 3
That implies that higher planet ratings have more eco-damage!
Shouldn't the negative sign go in front of the PLANET rating - ie shouldn't it be something like PlanetFactor = 3-PLANET?

Summary of questions:
1) why do non-endangered squares get washed
2) can bases survive washing?
3) where's the old washing link refered to in this thread?
4) do too many pops cause sea level rise?
5) do other factions count in calculating sea level rise?
6) are pops the only factor in causing sea level rise?
7) what is the statistical link between a pop and eco-damage?
8) what is the statistical link between pops and sea level rise?
9) Shouldn't the Planet Factor in eco-damage column be 3-PLANET

[Fitz]

Originally posted by freshman
Summary of questions:
1) why do non-endangered squares get washed
2) can bases survive washing?
3) where's the old washing link refered to in this thread?
4) do too many pops cause sea level rise?
5) do other factions count in calculating sea level rise?
6) are pops the only factor in causing sea level rise?
7) what is the statistical link between a pop and eco-damage?
8) what is the statistical link between pops and sea level rise?
9) Shouldn't the Planet Factor in eco-damage column be 3-PLANET

1) Because they are pulled below sea level by an adjacent square, I think. I'm not sure whether or not non-endagered squares can actually be washed.
2) Yes, with a preassure dome.
3) It did work. *scratches head* Try searching the archives for washing.
4) Pops actually mitigate eco-damage, they don't increase it. However, lots of pops are a sign of high eco-damage, and sea levels are more apt to rise with high eco-damage.
5) Good question. I would imagine yes.
6) Eco-damage causes sea rises, not pops. See point four above.
7) Each base has a chance = its eco-damage as a % to suffer from a pop each turn. Base ecodamage varies from base to base depending on terraforming and mineral production.
8) No way to tell. The formula for sea level rises is not published, or calculable. However, when I run over 50 eco-damage in many bases for more than a few turns, the sea usually starts to rise.
9) In the formula, a PLANET of 3+ counts as a 2.

[freshman]

Non endangered squares definitely get washed - and I haven't seen a good explaination of why yet.
An endangered square is like 10m so it is in level 1. When the sea rises like 60 m, it becomes -50 m or in level 0. So level 1 adjacent squares shouldn't get washed, and level 2 adjacent squares definitely shouldn't get washed. The level 2 adjacent square will pull the level 0 back out of the water - so by that theory which DOES make sence to me - only endangered squares should get washed.

There must be some sort of tidal wave explaination...

I've heard that Pressure Domes aren't necessary for large bases - that something happens whereby an automatic p-dome is created, and half the population is killed off.

The washing link http://apolyton.net/forums/Forum31/HTML/000230.html
is definitely broken

I do understand about pops mitigating future damage, but I have also heard that too many pops in a row cause sea level... It would be nice to know when to expect sea level changes, and how to avoid them. I definitely will give tree-farm and other environmental techs to all factions!

%=eco-damage - cool - good to know!
If your base has 100 eco damage then you're saying that there will be a pop with 100% certainty? What if your base has 200 eco-damage - will there be 2 pops with 100% certainty?

The Planet Factor doesn't make any sense to me. A high planet rating should (and does) REDUCE eco-damage.
3+Planet Factor - 3 does NOT equal 2. And suppose that it did, then does that mean if your faction gets 3+ Planet rating, then he is going to have 2ce as much eco-damage as someone with a -3 Planet Rating.

Acording to the collumn, the eco-damage has a Planet Factor = Planet - 3 (min 1)

So here's the table:
Planet Rating____Planet - 3___Factor
-3 (bad)________-6_________1
-2_____________-5_________1
-1_____________-4_________1
0______________-3_________1
1______________-2_________1
2______________-1_________1
3 (good)________0__________1 (2?? - according to Fritz)

The description of the planet factor in the collumn leads to the above table which doesn't even make sense -

We need Ned to explain...

[freshman]

There is a formula for eco-damage in the Unofficial SMAC guide from GameSpot which is :
Ecology percentage = (ValueFromStep10) • Difficulty •
Technologies • (3-Planet) * Life/300


Where ValueFromStep10 is the DamageFactor talked about in the collumn.

It uses 3-Planet which DOES make sense to me.

The collumn uses Planet-3 which makes NO sense to me.

If we use 3-Planet, and have a min factor of 1 then we'd have the following table which does make sense to me

Planet____Factor
-3_______6
-2_______5
-1_______4
0________3
1________2
2________1
3+_______1

A bad planet rating causes 6x more eco-damage than a good rating.

[Adalbertus]

5)
Freshman:

do other factions count in calculating sea level rise?

Sometimes I got a message like:
Global warming. Sea levels rise due to eco-damage mainly due to Gaians

Really, it have been the Gaians - once, and the other were University. Therefore I think the other factions do play a role in warming. But even if you share tech for Tree Farms and Centauri Preserves - will the AI build them?

[Fitz]

That's an error in the column that Ned published then. The correct factor is:

3-Planet

where Planet greater than or equal to 3 is equivelent to a 2 Planet rating for this formula. Therefore a 3+ Planet rating gives a (3-Planet) = 1. I thought I was being clear, but apparently not.

Your second table is correct.

Notice an important factor here. PLANET rating never prevents eco-damage (makes it 0 or increases the 0 threshold for minerals/terraforming). It only multiplies the value of positive eco-damage by some factor, that factor being the second table you presented.

You'll notice this PDQ if you have some eco-damage with green, then switch to free market. Assuming a standard faction, the eco-damage should go from 1x (PLANET 2) to 6x (PLANET -3). In other words, the damage should be six times the previous value.

You may notice an occasional base that has 0 eco-damage gain positive damage after reducing the PLANET rating. This is because of rounding (ie a 1/3 point of eco-damage going to 0). When you reduce the PLANET, the value is multiplied up (to 2 in the above example). I have frequently seen an increase from 0 to anywhere from 1-5 in the past.

On the link, you'll have to search the archives.

Edit: I just noticed that my post is basically a long winded reiteration of your points freshman. lol.

One last point on the eco-damage = % chance of pop thing. I have heard (I believe from Blake) that with exceptionally high eco-damage, pops no longer occur. I believe the threshold was 200 eco-damage. I think that if you exceed a certain point, it can't handle it anymore. I think the report included massive sea level rises though, so apparently that was still being affected.

As I said before, no one can say for sure how the sea-level rises works for sure because the numbers vs. effects can not be accurately analyzed. I personally have always thought that the sea level rising was due to high eco-damage, and pops were an indicator of high levels of eco-damage. However, it could be theoretically possible that sea-level rising is triggered by pops, with a threshold number of pops triggering a certain amount of level rising. Who knows?

You might be able to test it though. Keep your level of eco-damage really low, then destory reducing facilities and crank up damage to over 200. If you get no pops, but the sea levels start to rise, then you know it isn't pops.