Terraforming mechanics

[bjg]

How does the terraforming work?
Have learned the "Atmosphere generation" (promising limited terraforming), and now it's offering "Arid terraforming" on "Island" word. What will it do?

[sven]

How does the terraforming work?
Have learned the "Atmosphere generation" (promising limited terraforming), and now it's offering "Arid terraforming" on "Island" word. What will it do?

Switch the climate type of that planet to "Arid". Which, if you're playing as Ashdar, will increase the allowed population slightly. (As Ashdar colonists do better on Arid worlds than they do on Islands).

[bjg]

But there are already other (aquatic and shore) races on that planet. Wont it actually decrease the effective planet size?

[sven]

But there are already other (aquatic and shore) races on that planet. Wont it actually decrease the effective planet size?

Yes, it will. What terraforming options are open to you are determined by the ruling species of your empire. As you tech up, the number of possible conversions gets pretty large, but you're only shown options that improve the habitability of the planet from the perspective of your dominant species.

This probably isn't ideal -- as once you get into late game, you probably will have situations where Island worlds are better for your empire than Arid ones -- even though the Island type is actually worse for your original species.

We should probably change this.

[bjg]

Showing some projected "after the terraforming" results for all species currently on the planet also would be nice.

[echo2361]

Showing some projected "after the terraforming" results for all species currently on the planet also would be nice.

I second this.

[bjg]

Learned the Terraforming, and things became even more confusing. Some planets have the option to terraform, some (with the same climate) - don't (or don't yet). Is it possible to shed some lights on the "mechanics" details?

[sven]

Learned the Terraforming, and things became even more confusing. Some planets have the option to terraform, some (with the same climate) - don't (or don't yet). Is it possible to shed some lights on the "mechanics" details?

As it exists in game right now -- terraforming is a feature with some interesting mechanics, but, which lacks the UIs to properly integrate those mechanics into the game.

There are two variables, which otherwise don't have much direct impact on the game, that suddenly start to matter when you're trying to terraform a planet. One is it's "temperature" (which will either be Hot, Warm, or Cold), and the other is size ("Small", "Medium", or "Large").

Adding an atmosphere to a small planet is often impossible, while hot or cold worlds are difficult targets for most terraforming types.

During older versions of the tech tree, there were additional technologies that would reduce most of these restrictions -- right now, the only such is "orbital mirrors", which allows for expanded terraforming of hot worlds.

[bjg]

Thanks. Hope you expand that (the mechanics, not the explanations). The MOO approach (all planets become Gaia in the late game) is somewhat boring, but you need to be able to do something with every planet (including Gas Giants).

[mharmless]

Thanks. Hope you expand that (the mechanics, not the explanations). The MOO approach (all planets become Gaia in the late game) is somewhat boring, but you need to be able to do something with every planet (including Gas Giants).

This right here. Please, please, do not let us terraform everything to the same 'best' type. One of the edges this game has right now, in my opinion, is the way my star systems can stay distinct for so long. If there is going to be lots more terraforming, then please try to make multiple end goals; perhaps hives for money/economics, gaians for food, and other types for science, industry, and mining. And without the ability to switch between these end-types. An end game that descends into a mass of a single world type would be far less interesting than what we have now.

[bjg]

It's quite interesting even now. Island seems to be able to fit one more (billion?) than Garden, but not necessary the species you like the most. Hive fits a bit (one or two) less than Garden, but agnostic to species type. It's too bad that not every cognizable planet can be terraformed - cold Barren, some Ice worlds (but not others), cold Inferno (sounds oxymoron).
Food is becoming a problem in the late game. You have to have about 3 farms per planet (in average) - out of 7 slots. Please raise the maximum number of slots for planets with over 20 population (just extend the formula you already have), and/or make one more farm upgrade (is it only 2 levels now, unlike others?) . A food reserve (like with metal) would also be nice - even now we can store (some) food almost infinitely.

[mute]

If you've got orbital mirrors you might as well add things like Dyson swarms to increase the population cap etc. What has been bothering me is that the first time into terraforming it was in an attempt to solve food shortages hoping there would be more farm related technology in that path. I always have food issues late game and wind up wasting all my garden slots on farms. Having read through some of the threads I notice others also have this issue but there seemed to be some hand-waving about hive worlds needing to import food.

I have a bone to pick with the food system.

The idea of shipping food between planets is interesting, but if you're shipping food across the stars that means you have foodstuffs which are stable enough to be stored for transit. Man has been preserving food since he first figured out how to build a fire. Ergo if you're going to kill my settlers for running out of food, provide a stockpile for food in the same way as metal or money that they can live off of when my farms get dusted from orbit.

More to the point however, in a game where you have black hole projectors and molecular forges the idea that farming is restricted to a particular area of land or even particular biomes is absurd. Between cloning, sheet meat, vertical farming, ocean fertilization, concentrated proteins, automated growth systems, engineered fungus / algae etc. any planet would have little difficulty producing an abundance of food. The only question is how much energy you would need to produce it, and given that tech ingame allows access to zero point energy there is no practical limit to energy. We will never face a Malthusian catastrophe here in the real world because the above food related technologies are both concrete and feasible. Why limit the SiS tech tree and force a virtual one on my poor settlers? If the game is going well, every planet ought to be allowed to hit its population cap without having to sacrifice other worlds simply to feed them.

[sven]

More to the point however, in a game where you have black hole projectors and molecular forges the idea that farming is restricted to a particular area of land or even particular biomes is absurd.

Well argued! I have certainly considered adding in more food-related late game techs, in particular, something like a "food replicator" ability that would let your planets implicitly convert production points to food, if needed. (And I've thought about doing the same with metal -- I was going to call the tech "matter replicators", but, "molecular forges" might be a better name.)

The problem, from a game design point of view, is that once you give players abilities that let them effectively ignore the food/metal pools, those mechanics become superflous.

This isn't necessarily all bad -- but, it does mean that the strategic game is going to change dramatically, once you unlock those technologies.

In the case of metal -- I think we could manage a tech-unlocked strategic balance shift in a way that it would actually end up being a positive. I've been meaning to rebalance the hull metal costs for a while now -- and if we make things like Dread Stars require huge amounts of metal, but relatively small amounts of wrenches, then gave people a late game "matter replication" tech that let them start producing metal on most of their secondary worlds, rather than ships or research, then you could end up in a late game situation where most of your empire is combining it's productive potential to make a relatively small number of truely extrodinary warships. That, I think, is an outcome we want.

(Edit: Implementing the "mater replication" feature well would require some care, however, as we'd need to think about just how, exactly, mine improvements would differ from factory improvements once matter replication is unlocked. Maybe the simplest approach would just be to say that all mines automatically become factories, and factories start behaving as mines, in addition to their normal abilities?)

tl:dr, "matter replication" is certainly something I'd like to experiment with.

Getting back to the topic of food: Even in late game situations, I think having some worlds that are valuable, exactly because they're the "bread baskets" of your empire, is a nice game-play consequence. But, I also think we do need to work harder to make the food resource feel plausible in the late game. Arioch and I will certainly be experimenting with some more mid and late-game mechanics around food production -- it's worth noting that the food/metal mechanics are both still relatively young ones, and the tech tree, especially the late game techs, is still very much a work in progress.

[mharmless]

Getting back to the topic of food: Even in late game situations, I think having some worlds that are valuable, exactly because they're the "bread baskets" of your empire, is a nice game-play consequence.

I think the core problem with food is that it isn't like metal. The metal output per mine is based on the world's mineral richness, but the food output per farm does not appear to be tied to the world's fertility. Fertility only appears to enable farming at all, and changes the base food yield of the world by a small number.

Like metals, food does not receive any kind of base yield from population, either.

Due to these two factors, I actually find myself devoting arid and glacial worlds to farming, and airless/inferno/etc rich/normal worlds to mining. The facility mechanics give these world types far more slots-per-person, which benefits the flat yields of these two resources, while the high population worlds like gardens tends to favor specializing into wrenches, wealth, or science since that's what your population can yield.

If fertility impacted farm output much as richness impacts mining output, this problem would likely not exist. It would remove the current perverse incentive to farm on the most marginal worlds, and remove the later game problem where such worlds are rarer and population is much higher due to teraforming.

[sven]

I think the core problem with food is that it isn't like metal. The metal output per mine is based on the world's mineral richness, but the food output per farm does not appear to be tied to the world's fertility. Fertility only appears to enable farming at all, and changes the base food yield of the world by a small number.

Technically, this isn't true. Farm output on a garden or island work is higher than on an arid or glacier world. But, still, point taken.