I had a set of ideas on my drive in to work today. Summarized they are:
1) Change planet quality to be a function of gravity, atmosphere, and temperature values.
2) Each race has its own function for determining planet quality.
3) The lowest planet quality is 1 or 2, not zero.
The terrans prime planet would be an oxygen atmosphere, 1.0g gravity, and temperate climate. Drengins might prefer oxygen atmosphere, 1.4g gravity, tropical climate. Yor would have some flat function that would allow them to use any planet, but only at quality 4-6. You could introduce methane breathing aliens that prefer planets with a methane atmosphere. This would really change the game, since suddenly the races value planets differently. If you invaded a very different species, you could wipe them out, but you'd only have a very minimal outpost colony in a harsh environment. Aliens that preferred gas giants could checkerboard around your empire. Pretty cool, huh?
The big downside is that this would ruin influence. If I occupy all the earthlike worlds, and the AI occupies all the gas giants, how are we going to flip each others worlds? If you did flip it, what use is it to you? Why would methane-breathing floating gas bags be interested in nikes and hamburgers anyways?
--Brad
