Sponge bastions can be used as sponges that don't need to be dried

[okx-code]

If you place down a bastion that is represented as a sponge block, it will remove water, but without turning into a wet sponge. This should be fixed such that sponge bastions do not remove water.

[COSMOJYNX]

So several issues that can come from this that was pointed out in the general* channel: This would make water bombing flying machines more impactful, since you need to wait to dry sponges with a furnace. And it will be a lot of waiting if you have more than 16 sponges. If sponges have their own factory recipe that is not costly, you would likely see a good amount of rivers lose their water from a very dedicated greifer late at night. If the factory recipe is costly, the returns on sponges would be not that great since you have to wait to dry a bunch of sponges. The best way in my view to buff a costly sponge factory is to prevent wet sponges from forming. Which is essentially what we have now with vbs

edit: i said where the issues was pointed out in the feedback channel, which was wrong

[JuniorTide]

I think Mechanical hit the nail on the head here. This has become a feature on civ used to deal with grief removal, and removing this will further nerf cities as water bombing will become even easier. With the prevalence of flying machines to water cube cities, it has become increasingly difficult to deal with issues like this.

The cost of bastions currently makes this only an option for concerted nation cleanup efforts instead of for random griefing. I would prefer to not have to city bastion our entire territory to prevent our rivers from being dried up.

[Solitaire7]

If you place down a bastion that is represented as a sponge block, it will remove water, but without turning into a wet sponge. This should be fixed such that sponge bastions do not remove water.

This functionality of vault bastions should stay. Vault bastions are incredibly expensive blocks to produce so allowing them to act as upgraded versions of sponges that automatically dry makes sense. If this functionality is removed from vault bastions then an alternative expensive auto-drying sponge should be added, although if this is added it should be cheaper than vbs as I'd say it just being an auto-drying sponge wouldn't warrant being anywhere near as expensive as a vb.

I think normal sponges should also be added but should be much cheaper. Maybe some combination of coral with other blocks.

Either way vbs should retain their auto-drying sponge capabilities or an auto-drying sponge that costs more than a normal sponge but nowhere near what a vb costs should be added at the same time as the auto-drying capacity of vbs is removed - if it is removed ever