Pollution

## About

### Main information

Pollution is a game mechanic that describes how much you have polluted environment around this location.

Each location have is pollution limit (Similar to a gas tank, it has internal value that fills up with polluting material you throw into the environment)

### How to check

pollution can be checked in the top-left-corner-menu, by hovering your mouse over lightning button, it will be shown in the bottom of the menu if you have more than 1% pollution, and the outpost you are in have a laboratory.

Also with pollution 15%+ a grey smog will start to appear, and around 50% you will get constant "surprise attack" effect, so it has some benefits too, but they are not worth it.

## Dangers

pollution has consequences, and some are devastating.

### Vision

On pollution 15% smog will start to appear.

On 50% pollution the smog around the base will become so thick, that you cant see other side of your base if it is large, you will only see silhouettes of things.

From around 50% you will get constant "surprise attack" effect, which increases your damage by 25%

### Generators

Starting from the most easy-to-deal-with problem, some generators like solar panels will start to produce less power, the more pollution you have.

### Laboratory

The more pollution you have, the less effective and fast your laboratory will become (for example basic laboratory speed is 10/s, but on 50% pollution it is about 3.5/s, but it uses the same amount of resources/s, so your resource cost for researches will get around 3x more expensive.

### UFO

after 25% pollution (can be changed in world settings) theres a chance you will get attacked by UFOs, *i did not see this event for myself, so this information is only based* ***on rumors and other wiki pages.***

> *UFOs and PROTECTORs are kind of alien machines roaming the world. They are neutral until you attack them or violate their rules. They don't like if you grab an item they are just scanning a will attack you if you do it. But what they really hate is pollution. Tier 3 UFO - Protector with flaming red tentacles will sometimes visit your outpost and check the pollution. If it is high, it may attack you and try to destroy your Outpost.*
>
>

I saw one of these tier 3 ufos on 50%, but it did not attack.

## Sources of pollution

pollution is generated if the storage for polluting material is full and material is still generated. This material will be stored in the environment and remain here creating pollution until it is not removed one way or another.

### Gas

In most cases polluting gasses will be CO and CO2, but methane and other gasses can pollute.

CO2 and CO can be absorbed by trees, but other gasses need to be manually collected back from the environment using gas collector.

### Liquid

Liquid polluting materials are less common, but are still available, such as octane or diesel.

They work the same manner as gasses, but cannot be absorbed by trees and need to be collected by liquid extractors.

### Solid

I cant remember any of solid pollution materials, but i think there are some.

I think they can be collected similarly to other, using drills.

### How to prevent

You can build storage for any polluting material and convert it to something safe using chemistry.

**Gasses** are better to just be converted using chemistry.

All **liquid** pollution materials can be sold to merchants, for pretty high prices, so this can be a very good way to get credits.

**Solid** can be just thrown away far away from the base, because they are easy to transport.

### Dealing with already existing pollution

CO2 and CO can be absorbed by trees, so you just need to wait, but around 10% of pollution (atleast in my playthrough) will not be absorbable by trees, so you will need to remove it by youself. You can use extractors for this.

When you have collected polluting material you must build a storage for it, or convert to something safe. for this you can use methods listed in the paragraph "How to prevent" above.

## Disclaimer

All data on this page is collected from my singleplayer experience, and may differ between versions and gamemodes.

Also data is incomplete, and may be false in some occasions, so feel free to correct me and add your information.