Why do the drills emit so much damn pollution?

[Flytrap]

I get that burning coal creates a lot of it, but im on electric, why's it making pollution to begin with? Am i mining copper ore so coarsely that its particles are being spread into the air or what?

If you atleast made the argument that im mining uranium and the pollution is the liquid im pumping into it to be able to extract it, then sure, but im not introducing any pollutants into my copper veins, wtf

[Fel]

Pollution in this game is quite vague but mining generally destroys the nature around it quite a bit.
I like to think our mining drills are similar to the massive mining machines you can see in the big outdoor coal mines in germany for example.
Those things utterly ravage the land to collect the mineral they need.

You can also see it as a balance element to make mining outposts a bit less safe if you don't defend them.

On the plus side you should be able to get to the first tier of green modules fairly quickly and adding those to your mining drills drastically reduces the pollution they output.

[Chindraba]

If you have show particles and show all smoke on you will see the "pollution" as the drill operates. Both of the drills "drill" the ground to extract the ore. Of course, the ore is kept, but all the dust from the dirt just floats into the air, the same as smoke. In the US, the EPA monitors a few things for "air quality", ground-level ozone, particulate matter, carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide. The coal burning contributes mostly to the sulfur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide levels, and some to the particulate matter (the soot). The electric mining drill will mostly be particulate matter. That's just the air pollution. Don't forget about the tailings, the source of many poisoned towns in the previous centuries. The game just groups all pollution, including fluid waste, under the general heading of pollution.

[Galileus]

Because it's a game and having drills create a lot of pollution create nice, simple co-dependency. /T

[JustSmile]

All deposits in this game are on the surface so all mining is strip mining. ♥♥♥♥'s nasty.

[RiO]

Originally posted by JustSmile:

All deposits in this game are on the surface so all mining is strip mining. ♥♥♥♥'s nasty.

Exactly. Surface-level strip-mining is very, very polluting.

[Iraneth The Goat]

It's more like dirt clouds and dust from the drilling then it is pollution

[knighttemplar1960]

Originally posted by Iraneth:

It's more like dirt clouds and dust from the drilling then it is pollution

Copper ore has toxic impurities in it that when mixed with air spread over a large area and rain fall spreads and concentrates those toxic chemicals. Copper ore has radionuclides and their decay products like uranium and radium. Copper deposits also contain pyrites, sulfides, lead, arsenic, and asbestos. Copper dust it self can build up to harmful levels in plants and animals. Dust in confined areas can become toxic when inhaled and if enough oxygen is present when a spark occurs can cause a dust explosion.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/o2tmTkx53V4

Most copper deposits are only about 1% copper ore. The rest of the material is waste rock and other compounds. The waste products are removed at the mine and only the ore is shipped to smelters.

That's true of most types of ore deposits except for coal deposits, which are from 50-70% carbon. Coal is shipped in chunks and the waste products like cinder, fly ash, bottom ash, and boiler slag are produced where its burned rather than where it is mined.

[Mencho]

Could be?

[Chindraba]

I suppose that there are plenty of real-world ways to explain the in-game pollution from mining drills. Some of them might even have been under consideration by the devs when they set the pollution levels. I think the final answer, however, is simply for balance. The devs decided to use pollution, in a non-defined generic version, to take the place of any and all byproducts and wastes associated with production and use the pollution as a factor in the evolution and attack rate of the bugs. Up until the late game, with super advanced tools, like the spidertron and the infinite tech research blows everything apart, the balance of costs for production, pollution generated, defensive measures and potential damage from defensive weapons tends to keep reasonable balance of power between the factory and the natives. Evolution is even tied to time so that if you go super slow with ultra-low pollution, the evolution will progress based on time and you'll still be fighting similar battles.

[Vyndicu]

Originally posted by Flytrap:

I get that burning coal creates a lot of it, but im on electric, why's it making pollution to begin with? Am i mining copper ore so coarsely that its particles are being spread into the air or what?

If you atleast made the argument that im mining uranium and the pollution is the liquid im pumping into it to be able to extract it, then sure, but im not introducing any pollutants into my copper veins, wtf

If you want to use electric miners and slightly reduce pollution simultaneously, there are two methods. This is, of course, assuming that you are playing vanilla Factorio. There are fun mods that let you consume pollution through a tree nursery or a building that scrubs the pollution from the chunk it is on.


Productivity modules and mining productivity researches let you mine the same amount of ore for less pollution.

IE: An electric miner without a mining productivity bonus will produce X products in exchange for Y pollution per minute. The same electric miner with Z mining productivity will reduce the ore-to-pollution ratio by Z value.

It is feasible to raise the mining productivity value so high that a single electric miner can quickly fill a train cargo while producing the same pollution value at the beginning of the game minus the mining productivity bonus.


The efficiency module lets you mine more ore while reducing power demand. The electric miner's pollution value is tied to how much power it consumes, and lowering the power demand also reduces the pollution value.


I would be okay with Factorio's game mechanic being an abstraction of how mining causes pollution in real life.

[Peter]

Originally posted by Flytrap:

I get that burning coal creates a lot of it, but im on electric, why's it making pollution to begin with? Am i mining copper ore so coarsely that its particles are being spread into the air or what?

Noise pollution is a thing.

[Blake]

Switch pollution off. Switch biters off. Switch cliffs off.

Enjoy your peaceful, spacious factory builder

[chairman_mentos]

Part of the game balance is biters and pollution

[brian_va]

Originally posted by chairman_mentos:

Part of the game balance is biters and pollution

some may enjoy the game without biters, pollution and cliffs. you might even go as far as to say some wouldn't play if you couldn't.

sometimes figuring out why you were running a X science per minute, and are now only running at X - Y per minute, when you intended to run at X + Z a minute, is more important than sending artillery at some bugs that are largely meaningless since the devs removed the token they dropped as a requirement for a science pack.

you play how you want, others will play how they want.

[Chindraba]

Originally posted by chairman_mentos:

Part of the game balance is biters and pollution

Part of the game is deciding how to adjust the myriad of settings the devs made available. I might want, this time, cliffs at 600%/600%, water at 600%/17%, and tress at 6005%/300% with a starting area of 400% on seed 478352425. Lucky for me the devs made that possible.

I might even turn pollution up, enemies down and evolution off. Who can guess what's in my mind when I have so many sliders to play with. I've spend single sessions of over 2 hours just playing with sliders and picking numbers for seeds out of my head. (Mush less random than the button is, of course.)

It's all "part of the game" for me.