New DLC

[PrivateHudson]

I'd completely forbid to terraform homeworlds (or even all non-standard planets) to simplify things.

Yes am all for it: hints are needed for the planets on how tehy can be terraformed but these would be just be botherwsome to have on homeworlds
They should instead say something along the liens of: this planets biom is ideally suited for our people

Or outright "Don't touch - it's sacred!" depending on the race.

[zolobolo]

Or outright "Don't touch - it's sacred!" depending on the race.

Exactly: hands and tanticles off from the sacred circuits of Dzibix

[Arioch]

The earliest available terraforming techs will be Terraforming Stations (these are essentially atmosphere processors similar to those seen in Aliens) which allow you to thicken or this the atmosphere, Solar Mirrors which allow you to raise the temperature, and Solar Shades which allow you to lower the temperature and/or mitigate the Irradiated special from the planet. These and improved versions of these are most of the tools that will be available in early to mid-game.

What you can do with these tools is to move an Arid planet a few steps towards a Garden, or move a Glacier planet a few steps towards a Garden, or perhaps melt the ice caps on a Garden to move it a few steps toward an Island world. Except for the Yoral, who start on a Glacier variant, these early tools will not do anything beneficial to the factions' homeworlds. The more radical transformations are only available at the end of the tech tree, and so really will be more of a toy for the terraforming enthusiast like the current system is.

Balancing things to that they're neither too cheap and mandatory or too expensive and a waste of time will be a challenge, and you guys can help with this when it comes time for testing. My preference is to err on the side of the latter. Terraforming should be an option for a given planet, and not a mandatory step in the development of a planet.

WIP: Verrold as Garden, and the current Garden world devolved to Arid

verrold_and_garden_wip.png (1.15 MiB) Viewed 33118 times

[gaerzi]

Terraforming buildings and stations have all the properties of normal buildings and stations -- they occupy a slot for their type and can be destroyed or scrapped. Colonists that have shovel yields will continue to provide those yields as long as they are content, just like any other colonist yields. Shovels have different types (Heating, Cooling, Atmosphere, Supercoral, Ecopoiesis), and there may a number of different population types that yield different shovel types.

I could see the Gaiads producing ecopoesis shovels. It could even make them interesting to implant on other planets.

Or outright "Don't touch - it's sacred!" depending on the race.

That really depends on the race, though.

I could see Phidi and Gremak being attached to their original ecosystem. The Ashdar clearly aren't; they turned their homeworld into a hive planet. Humans also aren't because they have lost their homeworld anyway. Most of the Yoral would want to undo their current ice age, as for the Orthins they live in the depths and the icy surface of their world is of little interest to them.

[nweismuller]

Would I be right to guess, based on that terraforming chart, you can also try and move a glacier closer to an island with terraforming stations? Of interest to me, given how I mostly play Phidi, and increasing the population cap of Eluz a bit is fairly important to increasing its productivity. Also, will the Phidi have any tools to make Ocean planets more habitable with early terraforming? Again, given their fairly limited options for colonisable planets.

[Arioch]

Would I be right to guess, based on that terraforming chart, you can also try and move a glacier closer to an island with terraforming stations? Of interest to me, given how I mostly play Phidi, and increasing the population cap of Eluz a bit is fairly important to increasing its productivity. Also, will the Phidi have any tools to make Ocean planets more habitable with early terraforming? Again, given their fairly limited options for colonisable planets.

It will most likely be a two-stage process, melting the ice to turn the Glacier into a Garden, and then melting it more to create an Island world.

Iceball and Ocean worlds are kind of in a different classification, because the water is so deep that heating it up or cooling it down doesn't really make much of a difference to the Phidi; the water is still much too deep for their ecosystem.

We are still trying to figure out how to work Machine worlds and Hive worlds into the new terraforming model, but one option is Arcologies, which would be buildings that increase the population cap in addition to other yields (they're essentially factories, labs, farms and markets that you can also live it). Floating arcologies for the Phidi might end up being a thing.

[Serenitis]

Iceball and Ocean worlds are kind of in a different classification...

For this it might be worth considering how the game will 'flow' in play and what the player is likely expecting to see, and then rationalising the in-lore process behind it. Rather than starting with the process and trying to make the gameplay fit around it.

For instance, having an ocean world change into an island world is not 'realistic'. But it's also something the average player will expect to be able to do because it lines up with the expectation of being able to change worlds from one type to another in a 'logical' progression.
If oceans are left as an oddball classification which the player can't really do much with, it is likely that players could become frustrated with this aspect of the game because it's not behaving consistently to them.

If I were doing this, my approach would be to ignore the hard 'realism' in this instance in favour of looking at what kind of hab zones these worlds had.
And then linking them to the next closest type so there are no isolated 'special cases' that the player can't really do anything with.
So iceball I would link to glacier (vents + airless -> vents + ice) via some means of generating an atmosphere.
And ocean links to island (vents + ocean -> vents + ocean + reef) via some means of tectonic manipulation.
The former being more 'realistic' than the latter.

The endpoint being, that given a full tech tree the player can eventually make use of and develop all worlds, regardless of which race they use.
It is still quicker and more efficient to secure different population types and use those, but it's possible to do it alone simply to provide those toys (and a reason to use them) for the terraforming enthusiasts.

/rambling_nonsense

[Arioch]

Working on a planet asset that's designed from the ground up to be transformable from Arid all the way to Island, and to also have a Swamp world phase.

The colors represent separate elevation layers.

pontus1.jpg (238.77 KiB) Viewed 33003 times

[zolobolo]

Working on a planet asset that's designed from the ground up to be transformable from Arid all the way to Island, and to also have a Swamp world phase.

The colors represent separate elevation layers.

pontus1.jpg

Very cool

Could this be used to generate unique planets by seeding different starting water elevation levels even within the same class of planet?

Or to dynamically generate the devastation level?
e.g.: There would be two sea levels and coloring, one representing overall sea level (blue) and the other the levle of devastation which makes its way into shallow water (broen, green and/or glowing)

Too bad this system will be hidden under the hood (just like hte max pop system based on bioms) as there is likely no way to show off the dynamic increase of waterlevels

[Arioch]

Could this be used to generate unique planets by seeding different starting water elevation levels even within the same class of planet?

Yes.

Or to dynamically generate the devastation level?
e.g.: There would be two sea levels and coloring, one representing overall sea level (blue) and the other the levle of devastation which makes its way into shallow water (broen, green and/or glowing)

We are planning to add bombardment damage, but that's not something that would be visible in the water.

[zolobolo]

Yes.

Exquisite - Dont even think there is another space 4x out there where all the planets are actually unique in a galaxy

[nweismuller]

Have been continuing to check in periodically, am hoping work is continuing well. Haven't been playing SiS much recently, just because I'm waiting for future updates at the moment. Here's hoping that our patience will be rewarded with more news sometime soon.

[zolobolo]

Have been continuing to check in periodically, am hoping work is continuing well. Haven't been playing SiS much recently, just because I'm waiting for future updates at the moment. Here's hoping that our patience will be rewarded with more news sometime soon.

+1

[10JML01]

Same. I am checking back regularly for new updates, patches. Not necessarily new content, but more importantly bugfixes. Annnny news?

[Arioch]

No recent build news to report.