PLANETARY POLLUTION

While military operations cause collateral damage that might inflict pollution, here we will focus on ‘self inflicted’ pollution from economic production.

The Pollution Creation Variable is a "Tuning Variable" set at one (1).

Note, that a planet will not absorb more pollution than it generates that turn.

For example, it is near the beginning of the game and our home world is generating the following pollution so far: 9 from twelve population points + 5 from five mineral units produced for a total of 14 pollution units produced before any manufacturing is added it.

Our home world has six regions (one of each different Ecosystem Density Level with two that are Average). Thus, the total planetary pollution tolerance works out to 21+15+10+10+6+3 = 65. Naturally, at the beginning of the game, there are no pollution buildings are available.

So, the planet can stomach 65 pollution units, less the 14 that are certainly being generated, leaves it a tolerance for 51 more pollution units before there will be any clean up costs incurred. So, up to 51 AUs can be spent in manufacturing on our home world this turn and not one bit of pollution will be generated from all that economic activity!

Now, the last piece of the puzzle is to see how much cement the planet generates, and that is 51 units this turn (36 from people and 15 from a Manufacturing DEA). How convenient. Our home world can invest 1AU per point of cement and create up to 51 production points that way and still generate no pollution that the planet can’t naturally tolerate.

But let’s say that the full 51 plus an additional 41 production points were produced this turn. That would cost 51 + 82 AUs = 133, for which the planet can tolerate 52. So 133 – 52 = 81, and that means that 81 units of pollution would have been created this turn in such a case.

So, now you have pollution on a planet and the cost to clean it up. If the full cost isn’t paid, the remaining pollution accumulates.

If there is pollution on a planet at the beginning of a Planning Phase (i.e., "left over" from the previous turn, which will always be the case with collateral damage which is inflicted during the Combat Phase), its Mess Level is determined as follows:

The Mess Level is then applied to the following formulas:

For example, if you have 150 units of pollution on a planet with 6 regions, it’s Mess Level is 150 / 6 = 25. That means the efficiency loss multiplier from pollution will be 0.50 ^ (25 / 100) [which is 0.50 to the ¼ power] = 0.84. Thus, there is a 16% drop in DEA efficiency because their values will be multiplied by 0.84.