Arioch wrote:In the current live game, there are a few useful Planetology techs that increase the habitability of planets by 1, but the transformation techs are all at the very end of the tree, and so don't really come into play in a normal game... terraforming is sort of a toy for the endgame, but once you get there it's very cheap and easy to transform all of your planets into the optimal type for your race. The idea of this update is to break up the terraforming transformations into multiple stages that are each more expensive so that transforming a planet takes much longer, but to also make the basic ones available much earlier in the tree so that the earliest stages of terraforming can replace the +1 habitability techs. But the idea is to make the cost and investment of infrastructure high enough that it will have a significant opportunity cost to research the techs, build the infrastructure, and boost the process through projects. So except for the Gardeners, whose gameplay is centered around terraforming, terraforming will probably be limited to a few key Arid or Glacier worlds with special resources that you want to boost into major production centers, or if you get a map start with very few habitable planets, or if you just really dig terraforming. Most of the advanced transformation techs are at the end of the tree, so transforming a Barren to a Garden world will be something that happens slowly over the course of the entire game. It will no longer be a trivial matter to fill every orbital slot of every star with a Paradise world in just a few turns.
The other goal of the new system is to make the transformation stages visually distinct and progressive from the starting state through to the end state, so that you don't have the jarring snap from one planet type to a completely different planet. This presents a problem for homeworlds, as creating staged graphical transitions would explode the number of required art assets. However, except for the Yoral's Verrold, all the homeworlds are already ideal for their faction's race, so there shouldn't be any need to terraform the homeworld. Paradise world transformations require the Ecopoeisis tech, which will be difficult to get and may not be available in every playthrough. (We may need a special case for Verrold, but it's very similar to the stock Glacier world, so custom graphics may not be a problem. It'll be fun to go back to early versions of the Verrold graphic and de-ice it, and I don't think it will be a terrible thing if all terraformed Glacier planets end up looking very similar to the ice-free version of Verrold.)
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.
The projections at the rear of the Gardeners ships are related to the drive system (similar to the ships of other factions); they do not move.
Sounds excellent
I am mostly worried if this mechanic with all the effort needed to implement it will be interesting enough for players to engage with (looking at asteroid base and living quarter) and not annoying
Thus the benefits need to be signifficant, but not too huge to fource the player to micro it everywhere while being avaialble right from the start and spread out through the tech tree as stated
I imagine this mechanic being best for two occasions:
1. Barely habitable planets (for the main faction)
2. Not habitable planets (dont know if terraforming could be started though on un-colonised planets - it would make sense if you cna deplyo a soalr panel li a station for example on top of them)
Consquently home planets, garden worlds and other planets that are high-value right from the start for your race should not be a valuable terraformation target or be a target at all
If it is already the case for all races except Yoral then removing any planet bonus during terraofmr would be a logical choice to deterr from this move
The gameplay loop would look something like this:
1. Player looks for planets to colonise and sees valuable targets to colonise right away
2. Also sees planets that can be turned high value by terraformation (home planet not being one of these for lore and logical reasons . I mean they have evolved there
but is also needeed as production base for expansion and it would only be bothersome to have the option of terraforming lingering around on the UI for such planets when the player will nto engage with it anyhow). The low-level planet usualyl found in a factiosn home system should provide a medium value target for terraform right from the beginning but should also not be the most tempting target (restricted by size)
3. Once initial few colonies have been established and the empire has a stable economy going on (usually at around turn 50), they select the most promising or best lcoated planets to start terraforming them
4. Terraformation should take a lot of resources (infrastructure), reasonable time (min 6 but not longer then 20 turns in early game) and block the blanet from being used for anythign else - this already seems to be the case by the process occupying the build order slot
5. Once terraformation is complete the increased fertility and habitability provides the bonuses
- Terraforming infra should either be euto-destroyed or be useful for something else. Tearing down manually I would not recommend. Maybe if they are torn down the planet deterriorates back to previous state?
- Planet should be clearly marked as terraformed to prevent these planets from blending in with others. Low value planets are visualyl not that engaging (usually) but they do provide variety on system level and terraformaing might run the danger of evening out these visual differences and making systems look too homegeneous - keeping terraforming infra round might help in this as well as they could serve as visual queues to the fact hat a planet has been terraformed
I do not recommend splitting up shovels into different types on main UI level (Heating, Cooling, Atmosphere, Supercoral, Ecopoiesis)
Like in the above example I assume and hope that they are aggregated into a simple shovel metric on planet MGMT screen to hide the details from the player. Just like in case of other yields it can be properly broken down when selecting the yield icon:
"This planet iss producing:
+4 Shovels from Terrofarmtower
+9 Shovels from 6 Gardener pops yielding 1.5: 6*1.5=9
+10 Shovels from Solar panel"
In such a case each infra including stationsneed to communicate what their yield will be if built which varries of coruse with tech and planet
It would also be best to clearly present the terraform option for each valid planet (home planets should not be valid) to shorten the evaluation phase for the player
e.g.:
This planet can be terraformed into planet types:
x Increase max pop by +2; Remove special resource: Gold - Supported by Infra "a" tech: "A"
->y Increase max pop by +4; Increase Fertility to High - Supported by Infra "b" Tech "B"
->z Increase max pop by +8; Increase Fertility to Extreme - Supported by Infra "c" Tech "C"
Since pops can ahve shovel output as well, infra and tech are not hard criteria (like in other games) but only methods of accelerating the process
The issue might be that tech is a pre-req for infra which is a pre-req for target planet type - so covneying this chain in a single tooltip is tricky
Removing special resources would also be great as low-value planets with special resources might still be considered best left as is (not all planets should be a clearly benefitial one to terraform)