Re: First impressions 0.10.0
Posted: Wed Mar 06, 2013 12:39 am
I have a few problems with the pollution mechanic. The first is gameplay wise, I just don't think it's very interesting and it's kind of annoying. There isn't an option to pollute or not, everything positive you do causes pollution. The impact of it ranges from nothing when it covers an unnecessary square, to critical when it covers your +6 food square that is supporting your whole empire. It basically just acts as a way of forcing you to have a former for each city just in case.
The second problem is that it just doesn't make sense to me. In the real world people work in toxic environments all of the time. I understand it affecting food, or growth, or population, or happiness, but not minerals. I've never heard of an iron mine so polluted the iron didn't work any more. So it feels arbitrary and bizarre. Maybe it would make more sense to me if you called it something like "Corruption" or "planet blight" and explained it as the planets reaction to your meddling. Basically, you pump enough crap into the air, the planet starts building a hive of evil insects to clean it up. That would make more sense why no one wants to go there, why having some would cause it to spread more, etc. Maybe it could tie in to hive ecology or something, like how the zerg have the creep.
I can see a lot of ways you could play with something like that. For instance, you could have island in the game that are completely covered in creep and higher level hives (spawning galeth+ for instance), that act as a place for a second wave of colonization once the first landgrab is done and everything is built up.
The second problem is that it just doesn't make sense to me. In the real world people work in toxic environments all of the time. I understand it affecting food, or growth, or population, or happiness, but not minerals. I've never heard of an iron mine so polluted the iron didn't work any more. So it feels arbitrary and bizarre. Maybe it would make more sense to me if you called it something like "Corruption" or "planet blight" and explained it as the planets reaction to your meddling. Basically, you pump enough crap into the air, the planet starts building a hive of evil insects to clean it up. That would make more sense why no one wants to go there, why having some would cause it to spread more, etc. Maybe it could tie in to hive ecology or something, like how the zerg have the creep.
I can see a lot of ways you could play with something like that. For instance, you could have island in the game that are completely covered in creep and higher level hives (spawning galeth+ for instance), that act as a place for a second wave of colonization once the first landgrab is done and everything is built up.