Originally posted by /u/cat_sword
I feel like there should be a small, early way to combat pollution. I think that the best thing would be to add an effect to pastures and catnip fields where they reduce pollution by a very small margin as by planting more plants, the plants should consume carbon dioxide. Because they would reduce by such a small amount it allows carbon sequestration to still be useful after you have ramped up production using factories.
SanAequitas
I forgot to mention, there is a challenge for getting 0 pollution in midgame, but that’s really it.
SanAequitas
It really doesn’t do much at all. Catnip production is the biggest hit, but the only time you’re really hurting for ‘nip is when you’ ll have almost 0 pollution anyway. By the time the effect is noticeable, you can beat it by putting one or two more kittens as farmers.
Likewise it does hit happiness, but at that point you have enough happy boosts. My current heavy pollution is dropping happy from 646% to 619%… Who cares?
It does hurt kitten baby-making, but again, that really only hurts when you open up a bunch of housing at once, which doesn’t happen very often.
The only time pollution might do something is if you stack the food-deficient challenges, and somehow get a lot of pollution before you can complete a couple of them. Maybe.
cat_sword
It wrecks havoc on your catnip production and can lower happiness. Currently my catnip production is down 44% because of it.
Studstill
When and how does pollution affect the game?
I’m on reset 2 and picked Environmentalism both times, idk if thats super relevant but I haven’t noticed any pollution effects.
Scryser
First time I actually like the suggestion in a pollution related post.
While we are at it, I’d like to repeat my point that currently the scaling is very steep at first, which is scary to new players, but the levels off and becomes pretty much irrelevant. I’d rather have it in a way that it scales moderately all the way through, so that new players see that there is something “bad” happening and try to take action rather then become scared, but on the other hand that if left alone for too long, pollution can really screw over your Cath based production.
yuje
That, and perhaps an upgrade to biolabs. Initially, biolabs convert catnip to oil, but maybe an upgrade could make it so that biolabs consume CO2 instead or in addition to catnip, and maybe at a cost of using more energy.