Adding Pollution to the game

[Shodan]

What if you we added the concept of pollution to the planet and instead of adding a new minable resource to the game we could add recycling centers? The recycling centers would absorb the amount of pollution that the player’s smithore mines would create; in exchange the player could produce a recycled luxury good that could be sold off world at the store.

To further expand, the mining restrictions could be removed from the river valley, players could mine for crystite but this would slowly poison the water supply and make it harder for food to be produced. Eventually the soil and terra would degrade to the point where it would lead to planet quakes that’s could disrupt the mining on the colony. If the player was using as “slash and burn” mining operation the colony would eventually fail because food could no longer be produced. If a player waited until the late game to try this then it would lower the total colony score.

This would prevent players from strip mining land and would allow for more of a more interesting end game strategy to play for.  It would also may even the playing field for the player who chose to only go into smithore and ignore crystite because they would have the ability to produce luxury goods through recycling. The trade off with recycling is that they would have to forfeit extra mining operation, food or energy because the recycling center would take up a whole plot. The player could even have the option to recycle all smithore into luxury goods, the cost would have to be either 2 to 1 or 3 to 1 to prevent players from simply cornering the market by creating a cash sink that would be safe from other players tampering. The luxury good price would also have to rise and fall per turn similar to crystite. But, it too many players were producing luxury goods the price could be set to stay low since the good would be so widely available in the intergalactic market place. Crystite could be modified the same way for balancing purposes.

The pirates would never be interested in luxury goods, but other random events could be setup to only affect the recycling centers. These way players would have to weigh the risks of producing the good for either luxury resources or crystite. If you produce crystite, pirates may rob you. If you produce luxury goods you run the risk of other specific random effects.

The pollution could be even setup up as a trade able commodity called “Toxic Waste” it would never be sold to the store but could be sold in the auction to another player for cash. So if you were running a smithore operation and were sitting on your toxic waste to cut costs, eventually you would have to pay a higher disposal fee or risk killing your entire production or even the rest of the colony. This would also players to have a “go green” strategy in the rare instance where all 4 players actually worked together to make a healthy, balanced colony and economy.

Any thoughts?

[Karawane]

Took me a while to notice this post - and took me a while to understand the mechanics 

I am not sure if the mechanics works well exactly the way it is described above ...BUT the idea IS intriguing. It seems that this mechanics just adds new dimensions to the game while not cutting too much on the existing ones. It would challenge players betting on pure Crystite or Smithore strategies and most likely make the end-game more volatile. I once had a similar idea adding water to the game but this idea here actually seems more in tune with the game balance.

From my understanding, this mechanics seems balancable in a way to add substantial fun to the game. And I am sure the idea of being ecologically correct would have been an idea Dan Bunten had loved, too