Explanations on Ecology

[History_Buff]

Was just curious if someone here could give me a quick run through the details of eco-damage, ie, the ones that they never tell you about in the manual or ingame.

Occasionally, at the end of the game, I'll have bases with all forests, plus Tree Farms and Hybrid Forests, and be pulling in around 120 mins/turn, and getting eco damage of about 13-30. Problem is, I'll be Gaian's, with +3 Planet at the least, and if the manual is to be beleived, then I should be getting 0 damage.

I've also seen a few references to a "clean minerals limit", "being over the hump", building and scrapping preserves, etc. And I also don't know what the hell those are refering too.

[Leon Trotsky]

You ask for a quick explanation, so I'll try not to overwhelm you.

There are two factors which increase ecodamage; terrain improvemets worked at a base and mineral production.

Advanced terraforming (boreholes, mirrors and condensers) is particularly harmful to enviroment. Forests actually help here (doesn't make much sense to me, since they are an alien species competing for resources with the native fungus - oh well...).

There is a hidden value within the game, the "clean minerals limit". You can have a mineral output equal to this number with no ecodamage from production. Initially, it is 16, but you may raise it by building the "eco-friendly" facilities (tree farms, centauri preserves, etc). Each one of those you build increase the "clean" mineral limit by one. Note that the counting begins with the first fungal pop ("in your head, something goes pop..."), so many players actually force their first pop so that all their green facilities add up.

Atrocities also increase ecodamage.

If you have some more time, read this:

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

[History_Buff]

Intriguing. And disregard that quick, I think I'd rather have the full deal.

[Adalbertus]

For normal gaming purposes, this is enough, actually.
You know that you should not build advanced terraforming and should not commit atrocities to have low ecodamage.

To increase the tolerance of planet, you'll have to wait for the first fungal bloom, and then each fungal bloom (i. e. it is worthwhile to provoce them if you can cope with the worms!) and each ecological improvement (there are four: Tree Farm, Hybrid Forest, Centauri Preserve, Temple of Planet) adds one to your free minerals. Each atrocity subtracts from free minerals, some more, some less. After a planet buster war, you might be in trouble with planet.

Social Engineering Planet rating only affects the tolerance of planet if you produce more than the "free minerals" in one base.

Deeply hidden in the forum, there is a thread explaining this in detail.