Here to throw my apparently non-burning fuel on the fire. I would rather find a system with only one planet, and have it be class 4 then find a system with 5 class zero planets. THEY DO NOTHING. Why are they even in the game??

that and to add atmosphere to the game, not every planets going to be habitable and there is plenty of planets out there that are just frozen rocks or huge gas giants that serve no use

The are mostly useless but some of them can come into play during the game as random events cause them to become habitable or as homes for emerging minor races.

Well, I'd be happy with the PQ 0s to not being present at all in the game. If you can never use them, they don't serve a purpose. I personally don't find them adding much to the game. But that's just me. Other people like seeing all those minor dots on their maps. Go figure.

There is a real point to the fact that if only useful planets were on the map, then you'd know where to go to find colonizable worlds. I suppose that would eliminate a bit of the exploration fun. But as it is now, if you are the humans, you send scout craft to all star dots (and after Stellar Cartagraphy, world dots). If you are an alien, you just send your scouts to world dots.

But as it is now, if you are the humans, you send scout craft to all star dots (and after Stellar Cartagraphy, world dots). If you are an alien, you just send your scouts to world dots.

Actually, Star Pilot, I believe the other races now start on the same level as the humans in terms of knowledge of the other stars/planets. Here is the relavent quote from Brad's dev journal (The AI in GalCiv II, Part 1):

Because in GalCiv I the AI got to know where the good planets were, some people would say "Well sure the AI in GalCiv is lethal -- it gets to know where the good planets are!". So we've decided to eliminate this. The AI colony ships no longer know where the good planets are. They have to go out and explore the galaxy just like a human player would.

Now given that you have Diplomat status and I don't even have the beta (didn't pre-order the game soon enough), I realize you may know something I don't. But last I heard, *all* the races now start on a level field as far as everyeon's knowledge of stellar cartography is concerned.

Just out of curiosity, what would you say is the approximate percentage of star systems that have nothing but PQ 0 planets? I'm just trying to get an idea of how many I should expect to run into when I'm playing the game.

Actually, Star Pilot, I believe the other races now start on the same level as the humans in terms of knowledge of the other stars/planets. Here is the relavent quote from Brad's dev journal (The AI in GalCiv II, Part 1):

Well, not all: the Torians have an incredible sensor bonus (+20 in the latest beta I have played) that allows them to clear the FOW for at least the range of their colony ships. Isn't that nice?

IMO a lot of these class 0 planets should be from class 1-10. You NEVER see any of those in game, why do they even exist?

Sure they are useless but they should exist.

Just started a game on Gigantic map, with number of stars, number of planets, etc, all set to "common", and then when I got to the map, pressed Ctl-U (unhide), and then pressed the planets list, and selected all, sort by class. Here are the results:

Class	Count
19	2
18	5
17	2
16	5
15	11
14	3
13	0
12	15
11	23
10	25
9	15
8	12
7	15
6	16
5	15
4	4
3	2
2	0
1	0
0	286

A good scientist would make sure the counts were accurate, and would not consider it even a guestimate until there were a group of five samples for each class. I am not a good scientist, I am a curious gamer.

I may not realize this, but have any of the Devs replied to this? Excuse me if they have, not familier with all the peeps working on this game

GW

Yes, When was the last time that you looked at a map of the solar system and saw that all of them looked even remotely hospitable?

First off, you certainly could set up research stations on any planet or gas giant's moons in the solar system. Mercury is not a useless hunk of rock. We are studying most of the bodies in the solar system and there is something to learn from all of them.

Secondly, with sufficient technology (plausible given that we are accepting interstellar travel here) even venus could be terraformed. If I can melt a ship a light year away with a plasma beam, I can gently warm the surface of a cold planet. If I can build a battleship, I can build a solar shade. If a planet is an uninhabitable 1-3 (marked as zeros currently) at the beginning of the game, tech should make it colonizable later.

And thirdly (and most importantly), this is a game, not a galaxy colonization simulator. A bit of realism in a game where stars are equidistant from each other's furthest planet is nice and all, but this line of reasoning is irrelevant. We'll have the ability to find earthlike planets in the next few decades and I guarantee you we will not find 1 earth with a breathable atmosphere, liquid water oceans, tolerable gravity and steady comfortable temperature in a sampling of only 450 some odd planets. Maybe in 100,000 stars we will find one close to earth. And that's not to say we can't colonize the ones that aren't exact earths. We could colonize mars if we wanted to. We just couldn't walk around outside without a suit.

The only relevant point is if I want to play on a small map where every star has a few good worlds, I don't see why I can't.

Terraforming Venus is really just a matter of time. Heck, we've got the tech to do it ourselves in reality. Although the amount of time it would take is so long that we humans (as a species) probably wouldn't be around to enjoy it.

In terms of the game (which only last a few decades), it might be out of scale, but hey... it's a SF game, so why not?

Venus is a very hot planet with up to 500C - mostly because of more than 95% CO2 in the atmosphere.

Well, I don't know about "dead". There are certainly processes that occur on Venus. We can find examples of life that live in very extreme conditions on Earth, so the slim possibility does exist that it could have life. But that is a far extreme.

However, we could terraform Venus, if we wanted to. We could shade it, move its orbit out, crash a bunch of comets and ice-bearing meteors into it ... we could get it started into becoming very earth like (although it would take a very long time). We won't, because their is nothing to gain by doing so, not even being remembered in the future. But we already have the technology available. We just don't have the polictical will.

Now, if you wanted to terraform it in something reasonable, well... that's completely a fantasy at this time. But I wouldn't be opposed to making it a "do-able" thing in GC2. Could be fun to have planets that you could send "Terraformers" to, to slowly move them out of PQ 0 and into something like say PQ 6 or PQ 8 (after many such terraforming ships). Then you'd drop a colony ship on it, and have a nice little frontier. Of course, it would be a pain to keep the AI off them long enough to refine the planet to a profitable size, but hey, thems the breaks.