Crawling Minerals?

[Mark123jansen]

Ive been experimenting with supply crawlers over the last few months, and is it me or does crawling minerals cause much more ecodamage then when a citizen mines those exact same minerals?

[Lazerus]

Not that I've ever been aware of, do you have screen shots of an exact case or just a general feeling ?

[Mark123jansen]

I've had cases where if i put the citizen on (for example) a rocky-road-mine-mineral bonus square there would be no ecodamage, but if i would make the citizen a specialist and put a crawler on that same square the ecodamage would suddenly be 20 or so (dont remember exact numbers)

[BlackCat]

That sounds pretty strange - have never experienced such behaviour. As Lazerus suggests, post some screen pics.

[Dis]

or post the save game.

I crawl minerals all the time. I often get eco damage though . but once I get hybrid forrests up, it's not so bad.

[Ka Plewy]

IIRC, the eco damage formula takes into account supply crawlers and the distances involved.
It's been a long time since I've seen it, and I can't really be specific.

[Mart]

IIRC energy output of a base counts to ecodamage too.

[Chaos Theory]

The only positive contributions to ecodamage should be:
Minerals produced (either directly or through facilities)
Terraforming
Atrocities
Negative planet rating
Technologies discovered
Difficulty level
Native life density (selected at map generation)
Hercules

[GeoModder]

Hercules? You mean Alpha Centauri B?

[Hercules]

Somebody call

[Petek]

The ecodamage formula (as modified by Ned/Blake/Fitz) appears at the end of the following link:

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

The "Minerals" factor doesn't distinguish between worked or crawled minerals, so there shouldn't be a difference.

[GeoModder]

Originally posted by Hercules
Somebody call

Yes, it's proven you have a positive influence on ecodamage.

[Mark123jansen]

ok thx for all the info guys, I now feel much safer putting crawlers on rocky mineral lode squares

[CEO Aaron]

Mark, the best advice I can offer you is to stop fearing the wrath of Planet, and instead learn to harness that wrath into a valuable resource.

What am I talking about, you ask? Simple: Deliberately pissing off Planet to harvest her irate sentinels. What does it take to pull off:

Just one base with a fairly high eco-damage rating, defended by a hardened stack of trance troops. I find the best troops to use for this purpose are a few artillery and some sam rovers. Keep a few formers handy as well for post-fungal bloom cleanup. The way it works is simple: The amount of ecodamage a base produces affects the local chance for a fungal bloom. The TOTAL eco-damage produced affects the chance to raise sea levels. So if you have only one high-pollution base, you'll have a high chance to induce a worm attack, and a minimal chance to induce a rise in sea levels. Try to aim for about a 50 in eco damage in your pollution base. What will happen is that after the first 2 blooms, Planet will begin sending ever increasing hordes of mindworms to stamp out your base. Unfortunately for her, destroying huge stacks of worms is really quite easy with the proper tools, and once you've done so, you'll reap a fortune in planetpearls. Ironically this can be even more lucrative if you're running green, as you'll gain PSI attack advantages, and even free units by deliberately provoking Planet. Each fungal pop will send more and tougher units against you, but it will also raise the clean mineral threshold for your faction, so your other bases will be able to harvest ever increasing amounts of minerals without risking the dreaded rise in sea levels.

[Senethro]

Heh, I had fungus pops for the first time in months today playing my first OCC. I had the first sea levels rising in a year because of one super polluting city...