Question from Chris: What's killing you?

[mllange]

What's killing me? In my latest game - nothing. I've seemingly reached something of a population-plateau around 2250 which is frustrating ambitions for growth, but aside from an encroaching but seemingly benign neighboring race (Burlusts), I have nothing to worry about.

The most frustrating aspect of the game for me (as anticipated) at this point is the lack of information on why and how the mechanics are operating. Why isn't my population growing when I have excess food, water, population capacity, good overall health and relatively low crime and no pollution, disease or planet rage?  Things like that.

How's unemployment? If more than 10% of citizens are unemployed, births stop.

I have something close to 200 open jobs, and 138 births per turn.

[ptarth]

The problem:  You cant just put those things anywhere.  The buildings are restricted to needing contact with other buildings.   And if there is some sort of wind effect, I havent seen it... my own residential WAS away from the industrial (or at least, as far from it as the connection restriction allowed) but also, I had very, very little industrial.  Or other things that produced pollution.  As it was, I was also sitting right around 1400; the number was VERY SLOWLY going down.  Yet still, when disaster struck, everything in every direction from the industrial soon corrupted (all at once) with disease.

Though, in addition to this, it was an extremely sudden garbagesplosion that suddenly made it go bonkers.  Garbage went from a count of 0, to about 22,000, in *one* turn.  Which made no sense at all.  And of course, the instant this happened, the pollution went off the charts. 

You hadn't seen this, so I'm resposting.

I made some changes in your design, check them out in the attached saves.
1. Notice that all the hazmats are offline (for the most part).
2. Notice that Pollution gets up to 1000 - 1400 depending on save, and then doesn't change.
3. Notice that the Evucks have a cloud of smog drifting your direction.
4. Notice the Acutians are horrible people, their cloud of smog is also drifting in your direction.

[Pumpkin]

What kills me? Disease.

I learned to handle crime (for sure) and pollution (I think) but past a certain invisible threshold disease appears and start killing everyone. I build tons of graveyards (and it really feels too much graveyards). Crematoriums are not a solution: their impact is negligible (maybe long term, but unable to handle hundred of daily bodies). It seems there is no way to down the pollution: hazmats seems to deny its production but nothing is able to "unpollute".

[ptarth]

Actually I believe it is the opposite.
Pollution is created, regardless of hazmats. Then on the next turn the hazmats clean it up. That is why you get pollution even with an overwhelming number of hazmats.

[Draco18s]

Actually I believe it is the opposite.
Pollution is created, regardless of hazmats. Then on the next turn the hazmats clean it up. That is why you get pollution even with an overwhelming number of hazmats.

Mmm, I think I can see it now.

On the next turn you have massive pollution so a disease hits, infecting a large number of people and the hospitals "fix" it next turn.
But at the stat of the next turn, a massive number of people die from infection, and the grave yards fix it it next turn.
At the start of that turn, there's a pile of dead bodies in the streets, so crime goes up and the police stations fix it yet another turn later.

And by that point, your civilization has collapsed.

[ptarth]

Mmm, I think I can see it now.

On the next turn you have massive pollution so a disease hits, infecting a large number of people and the hospitals "fix" it next turn.
But at the stat of the next turn, a massive number of people die from infection, and the grave yards fix it it next turn.
At the start of that turn, there's a pile of dead bodies in the streets, so crime goes up and the police stations fix it yet another turn later.

And by that point, your civilization has collapsed.

Almost (I think)
Pollution hits triggering disease.
Disease kills people. CDC does not prevent disease, it may reduce the duration. It doesn't seem to do much about lethality.
Dead people immediately fill the graveyards. Unless you have a few thousand unfilled graves, they fill up and cause pollution and crime. (Example I had 5000 citizens. A disease hits, we immediately get 250 bodies in one turn, even if I can produce babies fast enough to neutralize population loss, the graves very quickly fill up. I'd need 25 incinerators to manage body disposal.)
The hospitals don't do anything about people with disease.
Crime is neutralized until it goes over your police coverage. Then it spirals because crime causes more crime (by causing dead people).
Unburied dead people cause pollution.

To summarize

• pollution causes litter, crime (9 pollution causes 1 crime), and increases disease rates.
• litter causes crime (10 litter causes 1 crime) and pollution.
• crime causes dead people. Crime lethality is severe.
• dead people cause pollution, reduced building effectiveness, and crime (20 bodies = 1 crime)
• Reduced building effectiveness causes everything to fail.

[Pumpkin]

Actually I believe it is the opposite.
Pollution is created, regardless of hazmats. Then on the next turn the hazmats clean it up. That is why you get pollution even with an overwhelming number of hazmats.

Mmm, I think I can see it now.

On the next turn you have massive pollution so a disease hits, infecting a large number of people and the hospitals "fix" it next turn.
But at the stat of the next turn, a massive number of people die from infection, and the grave yards fix it it next turn.
At the start of that turn, there's a pile of dead bodies in the streets, so crime goes up and the police stations fix it yet another turn later.

And by that point, your civilization has collapsed.

Interesting. Maybe not very healthy for the game's balance, but you should be right. And thank you for explaining the sudden pollution/crime/disease explosions.

However, an overwhelming number of hazmats should clean pollution that is already here, so why do I have a steady cloud over my factopolluting district even when there is twice more hazmats than facto in it? There is still a difference between how I understand the game and how it behaves.

Is stopping all factopolluters one or two turns to let hazmats work a viable strategy? If yes, maybe it's too tricky to be a real mainstream strategy for the polished game. If not, then how?!?

Fake-EDIT:
Thanks Ptarth for these precisions.

I feel this explosion mechanism is really unfair for a polished game experience. I hope it would be balanced to be more foreseeable and manageable for the blueshirts or latter.

[ptarth]

I really wouldn't worry about the balance at this point. Chris & Keith have been working on the engine and not ironing out trivial details. And yeah, it is a trivial detail. If you tweak less than 3 lines of code this problem is completely gone (but in the wrong direction).

If you want to look at smog and pollution, go grab the misery population saves I've posted in the thread. You can see that you can actually not have hazmat at all and still have not too bad pollution. The problem is that pollution is triggering diseases too 'hard' and that disease controls aren't functioning as intended yet.

[Cyborg]

You can build incinerators for bodies?


Just a warning here, there are cultural sensitivities around burning people. Not that you can't do it, but there is some kind of care that needs to be taken here. For example, not having something called an incinerator and putting bodies in it. Maybe just changing the word or the description would be enough, if in fact that's what it's called.

[ptarth]

You can build incinerators for bodies?


Just a warning here, there are cultural sensitivities around burning people. Not that you can't do it, but there is some kind of care that needs to be taken here. For example, not having something called an incinerator and putting bodies in it. Maybe just changing the word or the description would be enough, if in fact that's what it's called.

So I read up on cremation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cremation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_cremation_rate
It's prevalent except in the U.S., Jews, and Muslims. These populations want to be buried in graves. However, spatial and pollution concerns are rising.

In most cases they refer to the building as a crematorium, the device as a furnace or cremator, and the process cremation.
In game it is refered to as the Crematorium and you have "Bodies Incinerated Per Turn:".

Environmentally friendly options include Farms & Soylent Green.

[Captain Jack]

In most cases they refer to the building as a crematorium, the device as a furnace or cremator, and the process cremation.
In game it is refered to as the Crematorium and you have "Bodies Incinerated Per Turn:".

Environmentally friendly options include Farms & Soylent Green.

But that's people. Aliens aren't people. 

[ptarth]

Well, they did get their technology base from humans, so perhaps it is soylent green. Or maybe {RacialAdjective} {Colorname}...

[TheVampire100]

I'm pretty sure that Fenyn would make excellent Soylent Green.

[Teal_Blue]

I did some experiments, and I think we are misunderstanding how pollution works.
1. Pollution is like crime.
2. Pollution doesn't grow infinitely, it seems ALL tiles are able to reduce pollution. Forest & Jungle is 2. Grassland/Mountain very, low but still some.
3. Pollution drifts in certain directions, for certain distances (i.e., smog & wind). I don't think the direction every changes. I'm going to refer to this as wind & wind direction. Down wind is the way the smog pollution goes.
4. Solution to Pollution: Find out which way is down wind, mostly likely left or right. Build everything that doesn't produce pollution upwind. Build pollution sources downwind, but orthogonal to the path of the wind. Build hazmats, 1 space upwind of the pollution generators.
5. You will see your pollution increase some, but then it will stabilize. With a factory, dump, 3 extractor and an OIL power plant (2000 pollution in 5 tiles!), I was stable at 1400 pollution. The OIL Power plant didn't even have a hazmat next to it. I believe the hazmats are used to hurry the removal of pollution from buildings, not to completely cancel pollution out.

I think I was wrong when I framed this game as Skyward Collapse. It isn't. It is SimCity with combat. Put your Industry away from your Residential areas. High level buildings all seem to produce pollution, so that may be an issue. Stay upwind.

Now to figure out crime. Because apparently Banks and Stock Exchanges are actually Burlust Mafia Dons working part time for the Triads and the Yakuza.

  I like that answer very much, very cool. Its nice when games and books do that, don't you think? We look at them and think they are one thing, only to figure out later, that they are something else.   Makes me feel like i've made a discovery when that happens in a game. 

-Teal

[Teal_Blue]

I did some experiments, and I think we are misunderstanding how pollution works.
1. Pollution is like crime.
2. Pollution doesn't grow infinitely, it seems ALL tiles are able to reduce pollution. Forest & Jungle is 2. Grassland/Mountain very, low but still some.
3. Pollution drifts in certain directions, for certain distances (i.e., smog & wind). I don't think the direction every changes. I'm going to refer to this as wind & wind direction. Down wind is the way the smog pollution goes.
4. Solution to Pollution: Find out which way is down wind, mostly likely left or right. Build everything that doesn't produce pollution upwind. Build pollution sources downwind, but orthogonal to the path of the wind. Build hazmats, 1 space upwind of the pollution generators.
5. You will see your pollution increase some, but then it will stabilize. With a factory, dump, 3 extractor and an OIL power plant (2000 pollution in 5 tiles!), I was stable at 1400 pollution. The OIL Power plant didn't even have a hazmat next to it. I believe the hazmats are used to hurry the removal of pollution from buildings, not to completely cancel pollution out.

I think I was wrong when I framed this game as Skyward Collapse. It isn't. It is SimCity with combat. Put your Industry away from your Residential areas. High level buildings all seem to produce pollution, so that may be an issue. Stay upwind.

Now to figure out crime. Because apparently Banks and Stock Exchanges are actually Burlust Mafia Dons working part time for the Triads and the Yakuza.

The problem:  You cant just put those things anywhere.  The buildings are restricted to needing contact with other buildings.   And if there is some sort of wind effect, I havent seen it... my own residential WAS away from the industrial (or at least, as far from it as the connection restriction allowed) but also, I had very, very little industrial.  Or other things that produced pollution.  As it was, I was also sitting right around 1400; the number was VERY SLOWLY going down.  Yet still, when disaster struck, everything in every direction from the industrial soon corrupted (all at once) with disease.

Though, in addition to this, it was an extremely sudden garbagesplosion that suddenly made it go bonkers.  Garbage went from a count of 0, to about 22,000, in *one* turn.  Which made no sense at all.  And of course, the instant this happened, the pollution went off the charts. 


All very confusing.  Still feels like Skyward to me though; there's too many restrictions on where things can be set down, which is exactly how Skyward had it.

Crime I still havent encountered.  I've so far been about 170 turns into the game.

Hi Misery,
                    I was just thinking, and i could have it all wrong, but what if the garbage is geometric, i guess what i mean is 2 units produce 4 garbage after 12 turns, but 3 garbage gives me 12 garbage after 8? So we have a sort of higher garbage count gives us higher returns (spoilage?) after shorter turns?  The 0 to 22,000 in one turn seems crazy, but maybe there are other variables? crime or pollution, or disease that generate certain garbage levels? Or maybe i'm just not getting this?

but was trying to see how having the jump could fit into the game in a useable way and push me into using certain building types, or maybe building order? 2 of this, one of that, plus one of that other building = a reduction in the garbage level? In that way it could be a discoverable number and order of buildings in combination that provide a way out, instead of just having a one building counter.

Anyway, thats just a thought,  hope some of it makes sense. 
Thanks for listening,
-Teal