Posts by Pyure

Quote from axlegear

I violently believe that Gregtech should not be designed in a way that catours to other mods to such a level that it limits itself to THEIR parameters, because other mods do not have the same implementation, goals, or spirit as Gregtech, and this is thusly a flawed and very damaging mindset.

Good, me too. I hope you didn't misunderstand anything I said to imply that I would cater to the occasional lame parameters of other mods.
However, just so we're clear: infinite water is omni-present in modpacks. Perfect finite water is so absolutely rare that I will not cater to that limited crowd. Even without RC, EnderIO, Thaumcraft, Thermal dynamics, etc etc etc you still need to have vanilla infinite water itself disabled. Ignoring reality isn't a solution.

For the record, you tossed around some rhetoric about "broken, cheaty water generators". I agree with it despite the rhetoric. You're also really passionate about this topic. You ranted in detail. For clarity: So am I. I despise lowering GT to the level of another mod. BUT: I told you that the problem with the idea was cost/benefit analysis. Your idea is NOT stupid. Its just NOT something I am willing to commit myself to based purely on the amount of gain vs the amount of effort. Is the idea dead forever? Certainly not. But I personally won't code it in the short term, and probably not in the long term unless other variables change things.

Quote from Sapient

I just want to remind you all, that simplest way to "preventing low-tech-spam" is to change recipe overclock mechanics.
It should eat 4x more energy and work 4x faster on each tier. So total energy/item value would be same for all tiers and players will upgrade they machines asap just to work faster.

Sapient, you've actually nailed the core problem right here. Overclocking vs upgrading is indeed one of the fundamental underlying issues. There's three reasons I can't address it directly:
1) Some people don't want their machines running any faster than they already do ( See axle's concerns below)
2) I looked at the numbers and in many cases I'd either have to a) drastically slow down low-tech processed, or b) figure out how to make multiple processes happen per tick at the high-tech level.
3) I'm hoping to be able to cause machines from other mods to emit pollution (such as coal coke ovens) which would be multiple birds with one stone.

Quote from axlegear

Personally, i'm fine with the overclocking mechanics as-is. But I leave that to you. It's just the pollution that concerns me. The static variable is just a chore. The dynamic effects I suggested adds a clear penalty/reward system, has a logistical GT-oriented solution, encourages green energy, discourages high-yield powerspam options, and has realistic implementation and mechanics. Maybe i'm biased, but I can't see how anyone could disagree and say it's not better than a worldwide 'pollution slows everything' variable.

There's a bit more rhetoric here. Your idea and mine share the exact same degree of vertical dynamicism. You just want way more flavour (broader impacts). Many of your ideas are good. I hope you understand that not all your ideas are absolutely perfect.

Quote from willis936

I think the current OC system is a core mechanic of GT5 and shouldn't be changed. It makes energy expensive. You can argue that you'll always make LV multimachine arrays but is that what anyone really ends up doing for anything beyond ore processing? At the end of the day if you want fast on demand crafting you need a lot of very fast machines. Parallelization only goes so far. Removing the OC energy nerf would throw the entire balance out of whack and honestly make energy crises a thing of the past. While playing (almost to fusion age) the entire game is one long energy crisis. 2x lower tier machines do not equal one higher tier machine. One takes more EU to be able to process serially.

There's room here for both your cake and the eating of it. Theoretically we should be allowing people to Upgrade while providing Overclocking as an option.
For instance, pretend theoretically that instead of the MV centrifuge being faster than the LV centrifuge, it instead provided more byproducts. Centrifuging dirty redstone dust at LV could provide 1 tiny dust, then 1.5, then 2, then 2.5 etc.
For Overclocking, it could be a cover you place on the machine or (since I'm told this is difficult to do) a crafted recipe with a cover and a centrifuge. It would, as expected, increase the energy cost by 3x (or whatever) and the speed by 2x. That's a proper OPTIONAL overclock.

Quote from axlegear

{Something about suggesting axle can code is insulting}

Dude, I'm going to be straight and civil with you. I'll pretend you're my bro and lay out the cards, and explain why you and I butt heads.

You can dish it out but you can't take it.

You have no problem extracting an insult due to pull requests, but you seem to be pretty comfortable describing someone else's ideas as, and I quote: "makes no sense and seems to be about making the implementation super-easy and not balanced, practical, or realistic".

Not "It doesn't make sense to me". Not "appropriate to my play style.". Just senseless, simple and poorly thought out.

Quote from Xarses

tldr; Adding pollution for progression == bad, adding pollution on enhance realism and immersion into the GT theme == great

While pollution is a good subject to address, "pollution" simply doesn't effect all machines the same way. Using "pollution" to force tier advancement is equally contentious (my first thought is, "ya, no") Using it to broadly impact machine performance is simply not reasonable.

Pyure's camp: Adding pollution for progression is great, adding pollution to enhance realism and immersion in the GT theme is bad.

You see the problem? You and I want completely different things from pollution. Your ideas are fine. But they add zero value to my game. I'm coding for me. I'll add the things that make my game happier and better.

Is that selfish? No. That's why I'm having these discussions instead of outright coding. But there's two major camps here: balance and theme, and I can't cater to both in the short term. Objective 1: balance. Objective 2: if I'm not completely disenchanted by the whole process, pick and choose some of these other ideas that I like (particularly axles's) which follow the same line of thought but broaden it. Objective 3: Add cutesy theme stuff.

All of your pollution items you then list: lots of fun things but way more than I'm willing to commit to.

Finally, and I can't be more clear about this: I'm doing this for fun. I'm doing this for the people who play my style, who like hardcore progression, who care more about difficulty than aesthetics. I can't please everyone. I can't incorporate all these ideas. I am going to start with what I want, and then go from there.

Quote from SpwnX

I pretty much agree with axlegear here. Nobody wants pollution that doesn't make sense or is just slapped there for "balance".

Well obviously some people do, or we wouldn't have assembled that design in the first place.

Quote from SpwnX

If its there, it must be something that you deal with because it actually does yield real problems not just some random machine inefficiency "cause pollution".
That is just something half thought and a lazy implementation that I can't accept, at all.

+1 for making the place an actual hazardous place to live, If you can't grow crops, livestock and such, or even breathe safely on that place, it makes pollution already a big problem, really.
Make environment hazardous, enough to destroy your industry.
ALL Blocks get corroded with rain (save acid-proof blocks that are expensive as fuck), machines that run on water or air malfunction, machines that burn stuff gets inefficient (lower oxygen quality), machines that run any cutting device will start to need regular "maintenance" (replace macerator grinder blades, sawmill saws and whatever more).

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All of that is the standard "wishlist" stuff people would like to see involved with pollution. None of it is counterproductive. Some of it may be tricky to implement. None of it is "Day 1 out the door" stuff if I'm doing the implementation.

Its open-source guys. If you want to fork the project or do a pull request, go for it. If it doesn't break anything else, it will probably be accepted.

Quote from axlegear

I disagree on this. A simple variable as you proposed is something which breaks the progression and immersion to me, not adds to it. At present, the progression is that you need to build bigger and better to make the really good stuff (such as distillation tower or matter fabricators), and to run those you need more power. To get the resources, you also need better machines. And you need resources, which are more quickly processed with bigger machines. This variable idea will, to me, not add to progression but greatly discourage advancement in favor of 'absolute minimalism', such as using a bronze macerator or LV macerator for life, because why upgrade when all it will do is require more power for very little gain? It won't be faster, because power = pollution.
I very, very, very strongly feel that it would have exactly the opposite effect on progression than you think it will.

If I'm reading this correctly, you're thinking that I'm implementing measures to make higher-powered machines generate more pollution. This is not the case.
Fundamentally, one can assume that only a few machines will really generate pollution. You can start with Coal and Lava boilers and leave it there and accomplish the majority of the objectives right away.

From worst to last:
* Lava boilers (small) will have the terrible pollution efficiency.
* Coal boilers (small, bronze) will have bad pollution efficiency.
* Coal boilers (small, steel) will have moderate-bad pollution efficiency.
* Coal boilers (Large) will have moderate pollution efficiency.
* LHE (Lava) will have reasonable-moderate pollution efficiency.
* LHE (Hot Coolant) will emit zero pollution

Maybes, dunno:
* LV Machines in general will have reasaonable-moderate pollution efficiency
* MV machines in general will have excelent pollution efficiency
* HV+ machines in general will emit zero pollution

So there's zero reason to stick with lower tech.

Right now people are discouraged from using HV machines because, energy-efficiency wise, they suck ass. Its common to see 16 LV centrifuges instead of 1 HV one (recipe requirements notwithstanding). This will be an additional incentive to upgrade.

Quote from axlegear

The idea I proposed as a whole, in addition to the scrubbers, adds to the 'build it bigger, build it better, make it stronger' mentality that I feel embodies Gregtech. You can build bigger, more polluting power arrays for on-demand processing, but you also have to factor in the additional cost to power scrubbers and water cleaners. (more on the water later.) This will add another branch of logistic concerns in addition to the proposed ecological ones, rather than a variable-based barrier that encourages nothing and discourages everything.

We share identical mentalities. Bigger and better ftw. I also agree that, seen purely from this "fun" perspective, the addition of pollution scrubbing makes tons of sense. Where it fails is that it potentially breaks the initial objective: preventing low-tech-spam.

As a concession, however: It occurs to me there's absolutely nothing stopping me from adding it ANYWAY and making it configurable. It would be a negative polluter. From an implementation standpoint its pretty simple. That said, it would be using the same streamlined "air pollution" mechanic everything else uses. Can't promise it in initial release because it requires a new machine. Call it Tier 1.5

Quote from axlegear

As for water- the idea is that it replaces water source blocks, as metnioned, thus making pure water unavailable for pumping except from external mod sources or complex, costly, inefficient routes. Your options are to etiher purify your water, or deal with the consequences of Pwater (much more rapid maintenance for multi-blocks, slower ore processing, no autoclaving, no brewing, greatly reduced boiler efficiency). This achieves your desired lead-pipe-to-the-knee goal of pollution gumming everything up (and moreso), but in a way that it can actually be overcome with further development and logistics. An obstacle isn't fun if you can't work around it.

This only fails for cost/benefit reasons. There is absolutely nothing wrong with the mechanics you're describing. From a game design perspective they're even streamlined with the overall design.

I'm going to straight up admit that my objection here may be specifically because of the packs I play and the lack of playvalue it adds for ME. Since I know you have some familiarity with Infitech2, you recognize that this would add almost zero play value for Infitech2 players. Nobody pumps the lakes for 3 reasons: 1) its annoying, 2) it makes lakes look ugly with current finite water physics, and 3) everyone can just make infinite water from railcraft, enderio, and thaumcraft addons. It adds nothing for me or the players I work with, so based purely on the design you've suggested I can't prioritize it.

If there was some way to "taint" water in tanks or coming out of infinite water source blocks, it would be a different matter altogether. Dirty water would be fantastic. But using Reika's reactorcraft fission waste as an example: there's no point implementing a measure that everyone can just ignore (in his case by simply voiding the waste)

Quote from axlegear

Now, the numbers for the AIR filter could be made flexible based on output. IE, when you go to assign a 'pollution' variable for each machine, you can decide whether it's a positive or negative machine, based on whether it's a net produce or net loss of pollution compared to Pollution In vs. cost of Pollution Out. In other words..

Refactored (and to some degree abstracted), these appear to be the current design.

Quote from axlegear

I'm on the fence about nuclear. It doesn't realistically IRL throw radiation out into the atmosphere, it's all conveniently bottled into barrels and buried, usually, or reprocessed. So i'm still pondering a good way to handle this, naquadah reactors, and fusion. Those are tricky.

Fusion should have zero pollution interaction whatsoever. I'm inclined to agree with fission. It should only emit pollution if something goes wrong, but if something goes wrong, you have an entirely different subset of mechanics to deal with. Mostly involving restoring a backup in my case.

Quote from axlegear

Currently by default, there's not much reason to use the solar/wind/nuclear power sources because fuel is cheap and easy, and their outputs are excellent and easier to design. This pollution model would make them a lot more valuable and viable, especially nuclear.

I didn't consider this and you're right, it would be a pleasant incentive to use green solar and wind. In Infitech2 at least, fission is already pretty viable thankfully.

"Huge bonus idea: Rarely, random chunks/areas can spawn with pre-existing pollution levels. Could be a fun idea to have a new biome, 'Nuclear Wasteland' with a permanent Radioactivity I. :3"
I'm re-reading this and wondering if I botched my understanding.

Would these chunks spawn as a result of your industrial pollution levels, or just spawn naturally as part of world gen?

Quote from bear989

this makes a lot more sense to me than anything else I have read. I my town we have a GM foundry that has over the years gotten better at polluting, but there machines still worked fine back in the 70's and 80's when there was a blanket of rust colored crap for a 1/2 mile around the plant. but at the same time the half dozen machine shops in town ran just fine.

Yep, the idea of smog in the air having any significant impact on machinery is playing a bit loose with physics. Particularly since you could just wipe gears down with a cloth every once in a while or add some lubricant and "fix" the problem for another decade.

Quote from axlegear

I really, really hate the idea of pollution the way Pyure is suggesting it as an indescript efficiency-cutting variable. It's not even just about realism, it straight up makes no sense and seems to be about making the implementation super-easy and not balanced, practical, or realistic. Very few machines are affected by pollution because they literally don't interact with it in any meaningful way. Pollution is not a logistic problem, it's an ecological one. The majority of effects should only affect players and animals. IE, a sufficient level of pollution would cause reduced sunlight, making solar boilers and solar panels produce less and less power as it worsens. At a certain level, rain would become acidic, damaging any living thing that the rain touches that isn't wearing a hazmat suit. Bad enough and it even damages the hazmat suit until it melts and hurts you. Think 'Twilight Forest' in how the acid rain works, except not block-piercing. Sufficient pollution levels would also randomly replace water source blocks with 'polluted water' source blocks, which would calcify or mess with machines. IE, if a boiler gets it, it would reduce the fuel value by 50% and also the steam value by 25%, making for a grand old fucking. This is the most painful impact I can see, besides acid rain. Polluted water getting into an ore washer would make it take 5 times as long to wash. In a autoclave, it would outright be unable to function at all. Cleaning the water would involve a new machine, a Filter Unit which would use filters made of wool and carbon fiber which would suck up, say, 16 liters of Pwater and produce 12 liters of regular water, with a chance of byproduct of dirt, dark ash, and tiny sulfur. The filter would wear down durability with each successive use, making it an expensive process to repeatedly clean water.
Lastly, a high enough level of pollution would blanket the area with Radioactivity I to IV, requiring constant careful use of a hazmat suit to even traverse. Machines which use mufflers would, in addition to outputting pollution, also work slower and slower (without using any less power) as it presumed muffler = output thus they require an air input and smeggy air is less effective. It would also make machines that require maintenance, require it more and more quickly, since the acidic humidity and air would corrode the machine (such as sulfuric and nitric compounds do IRL)

Huge bonus idea: Rarely, random chunks/areas can spawn with pre-existing pollution levels. Could be a fun idea to have a new biome, 'Nuclear Wasteland' with a permanent Radioactivity I. :3

Cleaning pollution, besides going away super-slow by itself, could involve building a multi-block machine Air Purifier. It uses a 3x3 grid of filters to make Filter Blocks in a star shape (3x3x3) surrounded by casings, the speed affected by power level (starting with 8v for the slowest), and extracting dirt, carbon, and dark ash from the air for slowest effect, or the option to build one for water (or one for each, but not both!) which will produce dirt, dark ash, sulfur, and sulfuric acid (as a liquid, in tiny amounts) from Pwater. If it gets only regular water, it will produce dirt only, at a very low (1%?) rate, and outputs regular water again. (In that way it could be an infinite dirt generator, but at the speed/voltage ratio, it would be an awfully expensive, awful way!)

In polluted settings, the above water-filter process would be required to have reliable, non-polluted water. All your water would have to pass through one or an array of them to even be useable. This, I feel, is a painful restriction that makes pollution a very big concern. (Or in my case, a goal! Make a sufficiently functional factory in a smog bowl! YAY MEXICO CITY!)

I hope you like my ideas. I feel it marries balance and utility with realism and logistics in the true spirit of Gregtech without being overly redundant or being too radically different from 'pollution hurts productivity'.

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Thanks for unblocking me long enough to have this discussion. Understand that everything I say below is exactly worded as though directed to one of my bestMinecraftBuddies4Life. Some is positive, some is negative, and none of it has anything to do with you personally. And no, I have zero expectation that this discussion is going to end civilly due to zero tolerance on my part for bullshit. But who knows? On to the fun!

1) Positives
============
The majority of your suggestions fall directly into the "cool shit we wanna implement to make pollution look fun" bucket. Call it "Tier II" stuff. This includes affecting the player directly, affecting solar input (which I plan to do anyway), requirements for hazmat protection, creation of nasty biome/block effects, destruction of water and/or crops. All of this stuff is sufficiently negative that it provides a player with an incentive to avoid pollution, so none of it runs directly against the grain. Virtually all of it is stuff that Blood Asp will implement at some point if I don't anyway, I can promise you that.

The idea of "initial polluted chunks" is interesting. I need to give that some more thought, but I'm not sure under what circumstances it would normally make sense. That said, I really prefer giving modpack developers new toys, and if someone wants to make a gregtech-based post-apocalyptic world with pre-polluted biomes, its something I'd want to provide if possible. I need details on what might constitute an realistically-polluted environment in a non-apocalyptic environment.

"If it gets only regular water, it will produce dirt only, at a very low (1%?) rate, and outputs regular water again. (In that way it could be an infinite dirt generator, but at the speed/voltage ratio, it would be an awfully expensive, awful way!)"
I think someone above already mentioned a water cleaner. While I love the idea (it sounds very fun) I'm just not sold on the cost/benefit analysis. One way or the other, virtually every GT pack has some sort of infinite water supply, so there's no need to clean water. (And of course it would require implementation of dirty water in the first place). Clarify if I'm missing anything here though.

2) Negatives
============
"Pollution is not a logistic problem, it's an ecological one."
These aren't mutually exclusive. A ecological problem can create logistical problems (and vice versa really). Since there's no ecological issues to address in GT, I'm aiming to fix the gameflow problems as my primary objective.

"it straight up makes no sense and seems to be about making the implementation super-easy and not balanced, practical, or realistic"
Some of this is personal opinion of yours, although I'll allow that the initial implementation cycle certainly does prioritize simplicity. Ultimately it also makes sufficient sense from a realism and gameflow perspective that it appeals to me. Ultimately the implementation will not appeal to everyone.

"Cleaning pollution, besides going away super-slow by itself, could involve building a multi-block machine Air Purifier."
While I love the idea of a pollution-cleaning block, it defeats the underlying point of my implementation here. I'm not implementing pollution as a cool new toy. It's not supposed to do anything other than fix progression problems that exist already in the game. These problems aren't even problems for a lot of players, and so the implementation holds zero appeal for them. So even though the first thing people often brainstorm is "pollution scrubbing" mechanisms, and admittedly its one of the first things that crossed my mind too, ultimately I know its design-breaking.

In all my years in game design (and I have one or two), the key advantage is knowing what to trim away. Ideas are cheap, discipline is hard.

Quote from willis936

But lava's such a natural choice. How much blood must be bled to earn stable EU?

I thiiiink you're kidding here? :p
Zero blood must be shed. You can use lava in the early game with zero repurcussions. Want to have a HP lava boiler? Go nuts. Want three? With the rest of your industry, possibly a minor impact. Want 10? You're gonna have problems.
Blood is only shed when you try to abuse lava instead of progressing, not when you want to use it when its sensible to do so.

Quote from bear989

I hope there is an option to turn off the pollution. I am all for needing chimneys on muffler hatches to vent it outside, witch I already do for looks. but I run different kinds of power generators. I like to use up what I find/make that is stacking up, My last GT5 world I had lava boilers x 12, railcraft boiler for creosote oil,gas turbines for methane, diesel gens for my forestry ethanol, and nitro diesel, IC2 windmills, and a IC2 reactor. I do most things manually and on a smaller scale.

There will at the very least be a blanket option to turn pollution on/off. Not everyone wants to deal with that crap. Pollution is for hardcore players or usage in specific themed packs. Its not for everyone.

Ideally it will additionally be configurable so that you can say "methane generations incur pollution but lava boilers do not" if you so choose. JSON config specifically because I heart that format.

Quote from Drawfox

At least I hope so...

LHE is an advanced tech. While it won't be nearly as clean as processing hot coolant (which will be probably be entirely pollution free) it won't be nearly as filthy as an ancient HP Coal Boiler either. The LHE intelligently outputs a byproduct already, pahoehoe, which itself would contain a lot of the contaminants.

Quote from SpwnX

I'm against pollution affecting certain types of machines. Like that macerator.
Make pollution be a harm to living things and only some machines that make sense to be affected.

If I can I'll make it configurable so you can tweak it for machines where it bothers you.

The point here isn't to model realistic pollution impacts. I can argue that a macerator would clog up from particulate matter, but its irrelevant. What I want to accomplish is "fuck, why are my macerators running so slow? Oh, its because I'm trying to run an EV industry from Lava. Aren't I lame."

Quote from SpwnX

What about 4 types of pollution then? Those are all chunk based too.
Water, soil, air and radiation.

Each of them produced by machine types (and they can produce multiple types should it apply) and each of them having its negative effects on some other machines and environment.

Air pollution would slowly dissipate on its own, water and soil pollution would also dissipate on its own, but very very slowly, requiring active combat or it will reach critical levels fast.
Radiation pollution would also very very very very slowly dissipate on its own and there is little active combat to be done, if an area is radiated it is because someone was an idiot and blew a reactor and/or leaked waste, simple.

Machines with moving parts would pollute water and soil due the residues produced on the processing of stuff (macerators, extractors, compressors et cetera).
Machines that burns stuff would pollute air.
Chemical reactor, ore washing and Tcentrifuges would heavily pollute water, soil and air due the heavy chemical processing.

I'm overcomplicating? Yes. Do I care? Not really, I just wanted to show my idea. If nobody likes it, it will fade just like all the others.

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From a game design perspective, I seriously just look at that and say "can I combine it into one pollution concept? Yes, I can" :p

I love the idea of multiple pollution types, the issue is one of mechanics. There's no fundamental difference between them other than dissipation rates, and it raises all kinds of questions of "why does air pollution affect my macerator half as much as soil pollution, that makes no sense" and I don't wanna deal with it :p

Quote from MauveCloud

Technically, there is another exception: recipes that require a specific voltage. I think this mainly applies to the forming press, laser engraver, assembling machine, electrolyzer, extruder, and fluid extractor, though. Oh, and there's the higher chance of returning materials for the disassembler. However, I'll agree that other machines currently offer no incentive to build the higher tiers beyond the faster processing (and possibly less pollution once that gets implemented). Also, the macerator upgrade scheme is a bit limited, since there isn't much incentive to building at tiers other than LV and HV. (MV has no additional outputs; when recovering raw materials from machines, the arc furnace tends to be more attractive; and the stone/netherrack/etc. dust that ore blocks can give as the third macerator output can easily be obtained as primary outputs when macerating stone-type materials directly)

Fair point

Quote from Drawfox

One thought: What you think about Ore Washer, Cutting Machine and other water using machines, producing dirty water? So it could be filtered and used again?
I know it would be a little more complicated - as some machines would need a output tank, and different from multiblocks, they don't void excess fluid - but I think that this could be kinda good to finite water users...

Honestly, I think its a good idea. I'm just not sure how many people would use it, and I'm not sure whether the machines could easily support two tanks (input/output). Ends may not justify the means.

Quote from Drawfox

I don't know Blood plans to this mod, But I would interesting if all high level machines ( >EV ) had multiblock versions (we already have a Smelter as a furnace alternative), So this output would be easy to do.

I like this idea for streamlining reasons. At a general level, all the machines should sorta follow the same schema.

Quote from Drawfox

And while I didn't wanted to go off-topic, I really want to say that I dislike the idea of the need of a Processing Array, for things like the fusion reactor.
Don't get wrong, Blood's idea great, but to mitigate another problem: the higher's tier EU consuption, forcing the lv machines spam.

End game I don't really wanted to produce tons of LV centrifuges to put inside a multiblock.

Anyone who has tolerated one of my rants on the subject (all none of you) will recognize this as one of my pet peeves with GT5. It defies a critical part of fundamental game design: you can't punish a player for upgrading, and you can't confuse upgrading with overclocking.

When we "upgrade" our machinery in GT with better materials, all we're really doing is overclocking them. With the exception of the macerator, which has a legitimate upgrade scheme.

For the rest, you're getting more speed at the cost of way more power. Its silly. Overclocking should be available from day 1, and upgrades should be a seperate notion altogether.

My opinion? All machines should do "better", one way or the other, as you progress. If that means an EV centrifuge should produce 8 tiny dusts instead of 1, so be it.

Quote from willis936

What's the word on the LHE output? Is a nerf inbound or am I safe to make a build assuming the current behavior is intended?

Not sure.

Quote from Drawfox

So, all machines will produce pollution, even being electric?
That's doesn't make sense to me...
I think that the generators could be heavy polluters, but machines should be clean. That would encourage
generation and consumption on different places, and the use of power lines.

Yes, yes, Realism. I've talked about realism before! Realism always takes a second seat to gameplay design and streamlining.

Handwavium: machines with moving parts use lubricants that eventually dissipate/get dirty, and generate fumes that contribute to pollution. Satisfied? :p

Kidding aside: I'm not ruling out picking-and-choosing which machines can conceivably generating pollution. A macerator sorta/kinda makes sense. A chemical reactor? Maybe. A centrifuge? Not really.

Quote from MauveCloud

I have some thoughts about pollution:
1. I agree that higher-tier machines should produce less pollution, but it might make sense for them to be more susceptible to it, since they operate faster and presumably have more intricate moving parts.

Runs a bit tangent to the design: I want to promote upgrading. I'm not sure I see a benefit.

Quote from MauveCloud

I have some thoughts about pollution:
2. Would confinement of the machines affect the pollution, encouraging base designs that are more open to allow the pollution to dissipate?

Runs against the design. I don't want to implement any measure that allows you to mitigate pollution other than fixing the underlying problem. Also: I probably couldn't code that easily.

Quote from MauveCloud

I have some thoughts about pollution:
3. I'm concerned that instead of encouraging people to progress toward fission/fusion, the pollution mechanic might encourage using power generation from other mods instead (e.g. IC2 semifluid generators, Railcraft steam turbines), since as you mentioned it might not be possible to make non-GT generators cause pollution.

100% agree. I'm hoping I can easily make other mods generate pollution even if I can't make them penalized from it. This is in fact why I make the pollution affect GT machines negatively. No matter where you get your power from, you still need to use those GT machines.

Quote from MauveCloud

I have some thoughts about pollution:
4. I presume the pollution caused by multiblocks would be controlled by the tier of the muffler hatch.

I didn't even think of this and its a fantastic idea.

Ok, confirmed high pressure coal boiler is a thing. Dunno about ya'all but I've never built a high-pressure-steam-anything (although I know people who build the hp lava boiler)

Needs to be said: whatever numbers I use for machines generating pollution will be CONFIGURABLE. Don't panic because you think I'm nerfing anything.

Also needs to be said, the DEFAULT values are not going to hinder anyone who already plays "fair". This means most people won't be affected by pollution at all unless they're in the habit of powering an entire city with lava. Then, yes, you'll be screwed (by default).
However if you're the type of player who likes to upgrade power generation technology, then pollution will be a non-issue for you. It won't factor much into your game at all.

Quote from Drawfox

Do you already have a list of the machines that will produce pollution?
I understand that boilers and furnaces (coal only?) will.
Gas and Oil generators will do as well, I assume?

Basically anything that hinders technical progression, to vastly varying degrees.

The worst offenders would be bronze coal and lava boilers. Steel boilers (are those a thing?) wouldn't pollute as much. Large boilers would pollute even less.

LV machines in general would produce a tiny bit of pollution. Not much. MV wouldn't produce as much. HV+ might not produce any at all unless it particularly makes sense.

diesel/gas generators would produce some pollution, again with higher tiers being more efficient for pollution reduction. Again, not a whole lot. I don't want to discourage the use of these when its appropriate to use them, but I do eventually want to encourage peeps to progress towards fission if/when they decide to generate lots of power.

I'm not convinced I can make fission produce pollution since its an IC2 thing rather than a GT thing. Its possible I can make reprocessing fuel rods generate some pollution, but to be clear this would just be the same pollution as everything else, not some new (un-streamlined) mechanic.

Quote from Airee

Here are some suggestions to exacerbate AE2 support:

Inigo Montoya: "I do not think that word means what you think it means"

Fun ideas though.

Quote from Elthy

How about a lategame (fusion age) machine to clean additional pollution from the air? In fusion age it wouldnt change the balance...

Quote from SpwnX

You shouldn't be producing pollution if your source of energy is fusion...

Now instead of ways to clean it, we should have upgrades that when installed on any polluting machine, reduces the pollution output. Those would be costly.

Quote from willis936

I think he means reversing the damage that's done. I agree it should be reversible so you don't artificially throttle your race to the finish to avoid living in a permanent hellscape.

Notions of pollution scrubbers had already been raised and discarded, honestly. There was no room in the balance flow to allow someone to create pollution in one way and simply offset it in the other.

That said, there's two good points here.
1) Like SpwnX says, by the fusion age you shouldn't be producing pollution anyway.
2) LIke willis said, what about just cleaning what's there. I can't really predict this well, but I don't *think* it would be an issue. Nobody's going to let pollution get that far outta control because your industry would grind to a halt. So it should completely clean itself out in a few ticks anyway. That said, what if someone's pollution really is totally outta whack? Maybe a pollution scrubber would be a good late-game tool in that event.

Quote from SpwnX

What about an analytics scanner googles.
It would show info of every block within range (similar to how the tricorder does, but in a more HUD-y way).
One of the modes would be pollution scanner.

We can always think of ways to screw most machines in a way or another, based on pollution, not just always some random "machines work inefficient".

Ore washer would require distilled water if the pollution level is too high because acidic water can destroy the byproducts
Macerators would require lubricant as pollution is corroding the grinder blades
Extractors would produce ashes 10% of the time because pollution is clogging the extractor's pumps.
Thermal centrifuges would require nitrogen gas (inert environment) to centrifuge.

Higher tier machines have a higher pollution threshold, with the highest tier level not be affected by pollution at all.

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That very last item I definitely want to do.
Some of that other stuff just flat-out wouldn't work due to the work involved (for recipe/slot reasons). That said, I don't actually mind trying to make machines "break" in more interesting ways. We'll see how it goes

Quote from willis936

Any concern of griefing chunks by secretly placing pollution sources next to protected chunks? Perhaps tie the pollution creation to the owner of the pollution sources so if a player can't place a block in a chunk then his pollution can't affect that chunk.

Hmm. I don't *think* its a concern. That's a pretty weak griefing. Also, I wouldn't want to make "cooperative" bases process pollution separately. (Maybe this is really uncommon on the kirara server? In most of my server experiences, many bases are dual-operated)

Attacking your concern from a separate angle though, I'd love to explore ways to provide easy feedback on polluting sources. I'm not sure what the best answer to that, but I could envision maybe adding a pair of goggles that you could wear and it would show polluting sources really strongly, with particular offenders standing out the most. That would give you a tool to remove the griefing machine.

Quote from SpwnX

It doesnt make that much sense on how air pollution affects all machines though.

It should affect only things that burn (reduces air oxygen quality), like boilers.

Rain would corrode blocks away if the pollution is too high (slowly, all the way down to bedrock) , requiring a special acid-proof block to protect yourself.

Ah yes, good old realism.

This is an area where balance takes precedence. The point here isn't to model a fun and interesting pollution simulation. Its to make higher tier machinery less useless, period. I employ a bit of handwavium and say "all machines are subject to particulate matter in the air. So smog can clog anything with moving parts, which is everything."

I might pick a very few machines and render them completely immune, but it really breaks the target objective. And it would require updating every wiki entry to indicate whether a machine is immune or subject to pollution. Its easier to just say "pollution screws with your machines."