Is this a biter evolution bug?

[+|A.O|+]

Playing Railworld intentionally with the idea of keeping spawners outside my pollution cloud.
Regarding modifications for biters, I have the Combat Mechanics Overhaul mod[mods.factorio.com] applied for a little more dangerous acid hits

However, I see these weird evolution calculations from... https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3204465025

...despite my all-time pollution annoyance to biters being zero
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3204465247


In case there's some doubt about how many spawners I've killed? Well I've only ever killed them before the pollution cloud could ever reach them and here's the numbers:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3204468117

[Hurkyl]

If I understand the mechanics, evolution only cares about pollution generated. Pollution reaching (and being consumed by) the spawners is only relevant to generation and launching of attack parties.

[+|A.O|+]

Originally posted by Hurkyl:

...evolution only cares about pollution generated...

Oh dear, didn't know that...
Isn't that a queue to switch to nuclear/solar ASAP?


However, I just read that energy consumption also modifies the amount of pollution made by an entity. Which means setting up "green power" but over-juicing one's assemblers/miners/refiners/chemical plants/rocket silos would amplify their pollution generation unless efficiency modules are in the mix.

[Tarquin]

Solar isn't more green than nuclear, what you're looking for is efficiency modules, those really lower the amount of pollution you create.

[Fel]

Well, it isn't really a way to push you towards less pollution.
It is a way to scale the evolution factor to your factory's scale to some extent, so that people that know their way around the game and rapidly scale up still get bitters that evolve a bit before they launched hundreds of rockets already.

In vanilla settings at least it isn't too bad unless you go to very large scale while neglecting military technologies and defenses.

[Chindraba]

Evolution, as pointed out, is influenced by how much pollution you generate. That also includes what is absorbed by the land, or trees, to prevent it getting to spawners. The Pollution tab on the Production graphs will show your totals if you use the far right tab. The other tabs will let you compare "now" to "earlier" in different time frames.

Reducing pollution output can be accomplished many ways. Solar is a long-term solution with a short term cost. It takes a bunch of production, with the pollution that makes, to get it built. Then, and only then, it makes no more pollution while making the power. Efficiency modules, which reduce the energy cost, and pollution, of machines is another option. Surprisingly, however, it is often just as effective to use speed modules and productivity modules together. The pollution per minute might go up, but the pollution per item made can go down.

Another hidden cost is the time it takes to do things in an eco-friendly way. If you look at that screenshot you'll see that time is currently only 18% of your evolution. Reducing pollution output will make things move slower overall while building, so time will replace pollution as an evolutionary factor.

There is another tactic, often used. Out tech the biters. 99.9% evolution isn't a threat if you have good a good defensive setup. My choice is flamethrowers, but in truth, anything will work if you have enough of it with good support and good repair bot coverage. Even landmines, the forgotten defense, are really good. As long as you 'wall' can handle the biters, evolution becomes just a number. Artillery turrets are good - but - they come at the cost of getting extra strong retaliation waves whenever a nest is hit. They clear out an area real well, and then there's no more attacks for a long time, but the first attacks can be worse than a long series of smaller attacks.

The other tool is just keeping nests out of your pollution cloud. You've done very little clearing of nests, with only 6% of the evolution coming from destroying nests, so you've done well there. Maybe now is the time to start clearing out area as your pollution grows so there are no nests in the cloud. As long as a nest never absorbs pollution it will never send out an attack party. Random chance with expansion parties can still be a small problem, but easy to manage.

Lastly, none of this is an either/or option set. You can do some of this and some of that, and maybe even a bit of the other. What ever works for you, works for your map, and fits into the plans you have for this factory.

[That Fish Guy]

Originally posted by Tarquin:

Solar isn't more green than nuclear, what you're looking for is efficiency modules, those really lower the amount of pollution you create.

I'm sure someone has done the calculations on this, do you have them at hand? I found my 1 km solar+battery farm to only have created pollution by the electric mining and furnace, which are also needed for nuclear, along with sulfuric, which creates a much larger pollution cloud.

[Fel]

Most machines produce some pollution, but solar does tend to produce less than nuclear because nuclear requires a large amount of resources, and the assembling machines doing the steps also produce pollution doing it.

[+|A.O|+]

I guess the argument between solar and nuclear is about when you stop relying on boiler aka "the most polluting entity in the game".

Sure, nuclear does produce pollution while it is active via centrifuges, but then again you'd probably want it for "nuclear arms" unless you want to just turtle up after reaching ungodly amounts of mining productivity (infinite research).
Meanwhile solar is about how much time you've spent on boilers until you become able to sustain power with panels and accumulators alone, of course with the added cost in military (which also leads to pollution) since you need to claim and defend a large area.

Also, since nuclear uses less space than solar, I think it's neat to slot it into your main base. The mining outposts can be powered by solar. You could even smelt in place with a good combination of productivity, efficiency and speed (tier 3, if possible) to ensure pollution and power stays minimum while your train throughput improves.

[Chindraba]

Originally posted by That Fish Guy:

Originally posted by Tarquin:

Solar isn't more green than nuclear, what you're looking for is efficiency modules, those really lower the amount of pollution you create.

I'm sure someone has done the calculations on this, do you have them at hand? I found my 1 km solar+battery farm to only have created pollution by the electric mining and furnace, which are also needed for nuclear, along with sulfuric, which creates a much larger pollution cloud.

I did run a few numbers. I ignored a few things, such as the cost of building the solar fields, typically done by robots which have there own power needs, as well as making the power poles, of what ever size is used. With an ideal solar farm of 100 panels and 84 accumulators you get 4.2 MW of power.

The pollution produced in making the parts for that will produce enough pollution that it will take 4.75 hours for the new power to save that much from not needing the boilers.

If you build more, in a step fashion, each will take the same time to 'payoff' the costs. If, however, you have the production capacity to build several at once, their payoff time will run at the same time and only be 4.75 hours total.

The secondary costs are also ignored. One of which is the pollution created making the munitions to clear the space this solar farm will need, as well as the future pollution increase created by the evolutionary bump created by a) the extra pollution created, b) the time spent making and building the solar farm and c) the spawner destruction factor from removing nests to claim the extra space. There's also the opportunity cost of how far you could have progressed towards your goal, rocket launch or megabase, or what ever else, if all that copper and iron had been used for something else and the increased need to tap new resources. The 4.2 MW solar field is going to need nearly 13k ore (iron and copper) as well as 11k crude.

However, once it does pay off the debt, your power is pollution free and if you switch to electric furnaces, a huge chunk of your factory's space, the smelting will be 75% cleaner as well. The other benefits are hassle free power - there is absolutely nothing to do to keep it running while steam needs to keep loading coal, or other fuels and nuclear has to be fed with fuel cells. Unless you cut a wire, or let biters in, the power grid will never go out. It is also nearly free in processing power for the computer - provided you keep it all as one power grid. A couple, or even dozen power grids wouldn't really be an issue. If, however, you get crazy, like I did, and have hundreds of power grids, it will hurt the UPS as well.

My power grids were from not thinking. I build independent solar-powered radar stations all across my claimed, but otherwise empty territory. It was easier than dragging poles all over the map. Well, each one of those observation stations was a separate power grid and needed calculations. It was nearly 10 UPS saved when I connected it all into one grid.

[+|A.O|+]

Originally posted by Chindraba:

However, once it does pay off the debt, your power is pollution free...

My argument is that you cannot pay off the debt that quickly since the region claimed to place so many panels and accumulators incur a defence upkeep that requires you to pollute continuously. I think that pollution is lesser than the pollution caused by pursuing infinite research, but I have a suspicion that nuclear power would have a lower pollution upkeep due to less space needed than solar power (comparing by pollution caused via military pressure).

[knighttemplar1960]

Originally posted by +|A.O|+:

Originally posted by Chindraba:

However, once it does pay off the debt, your power is pollution free...

My argument is that you cannot pay off the debt that quickly since the region claimed to place so many panels and accumulators incur a defence upkeep that requires you to pollute continuously. I think that pollution is lesser than the pollution caused by pursuing infinite research, but I have a suspicion that nuclear power would have a lower pollution upkeep due to less space needed than solar power (comparing by pollution caused via military pressure).

When you are expanding into infinite researches the limiting factor switches from pollution to UPS consumption. In this case you have to achieve a balance between the number of active chunks used for solar power and fluid calculations for nuclear. Nuclear power takes up far less space but constantly mining uranium ore produces more pollution.

This produces 1.18 GW of power and takes up 136x78 tiles:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3047676994

An equivalent amount of space producing solar will generate ~40 MW.