Terraformation/planet conversion

The convert-to-asteroids idea is interesting, but I guess I'm not much in favor of adding a tech for colonizing the "0's," for several reasons.

First, we already have a mechanism with Extreme Colonization for grabbing more planets in the mid to late game. I'm not sure what this idea adds, that you couldn't get just by bumping up the number of planets/habitables in the setup screen. For players like me who don't really enjoy micro-managing hundreds of planets, this would just add more micro to the game.

Also it doesn't seem very realistic (and yeah, I know realism isn't everything). It makes sense that even with advanced tech, some worlds are going to be easier to terraform than others. Mars would be easier than Venus, Venus easier than Mercury, and Pluto or Charon would be rough outposts, not planets you could "grow" into more tile sizes for improvements. We'll be colonizing moons in our system before we bother with Pluto.

And then there are the gas giants, which represent a lot of the type "0's" in the game. Those are not terraformable, in the usual sense. Colonizing a gas giant basically means putting bases on the moons, or artificial habitats in orbit. The game's tile system for improvements isn't set up for that.

Finally some planets are going to be in just impossible situations, like bathed in hard radiation from the primary star, or as part of a binary system where climates won't be stable. This is partially represented by the blue, orange, white, and green (green??) stars in the game, that tend not to have the prime planets. I like the idea that we can't colonize everything in the game's galaxy. It seems more realistic, and makes us appreciate the better planets.

P.S. I do think we should have a toggle for switching off the "0" planets, since it's just screen clutter after the first colonization phase.

You can kinda already do this with the Terror Star, at least so long as all the planets the star has are Class 0.

Hmm. All good points, and I admit having an option to simply switch off class "0"'s would be just as good... unless you could asteroid them, of course . The fact that terror stars produce asteroids from planets already suggests that it should be fairly easy to build a smaller planet only destroying mechanic.

Thirteen habitable moons = thirteen tiles. The planetary background artwork would be interesting.

It would be nice to have 1 tile on 0 planets, like an outpost of some sort: reconnaissance, research, etc. Maybe even a Smuggler's Den .

Interesting yes, and also probably realistic. A spacefaring civ would have outposts on moons, on the larger asteroids, maybe even comets in addition to their main colonized planets. Plus a bunch of artificial habitats. But in game terms, I think it just adds more micromanagement. It would take forever to build anything besides early-tier buildings, since you couldn't start with a factory. Each moon would be a separate invasion target too. It would take more time and micro to capture the system, and you're not getting much in return for that effort.

Also, for systems that have only type "0" planets and nothing else, you won't have a more populated, habitable planet to provide influence cover. These single-tile outposts might flip as easily as outlier mining posts do now, so you'd have to build influence starbases to protect them. I'd like a way to reduce the time I spend having to manage starbases, not add more reasons to build them. It's not my favorite part of the game.

If Stardock could figure out a way to make it fun, and easy, to add small, single-tile outposts to a system, I'd be for it. Maybe something like clicking on the star to pull up a single window for managing all small outposts in a system, so you wouldn't have to do each one separately. And some kind of single invasion process for all small outposts. Something like that. But I still think influence might be a problem.

More macman doesn't really enhance gameplay, true.

Since "0" planets are kind of decorating the map, they might as well be used for something else, though without being too intrusive towards the actual features.

This is where, i guess, what i suggested in the post "Optimal hexagon tiles" found here; WWW Link - may come in handy.

Complex, but there is a new layer for orbital-like tiles potential within such a design.

But, then again, even that "idea" also ADDS to micman processing.

There's another possibility too; a sort of lonely espionage-type outpost which would only need a single tile for operation (represented by satellites in orbit... one may think of Saturn's relatively large network of natural moons, Oberon, etc which are big enough to provide room for such an indirect base and/or kinda facility.

All theorized but worth considering, i hope, for later version (or expansions).

- Zyxpsilon.

Seems to me the natural use for uninhabitable planets would be to act as resource sites. Just replace resource starbases with resource outposts on planets. Why resources would be floating out in space I can't imagine. Of course, extracting minerals from pluto is still different from extracting gasses from Jupiter, ferinstance.

I like the idea of putting resources on planets... seems a lot more logical than the abstract "power up" presentation they use now. OTOH, I can think of two potential problems with that idea (always looking for the downside, I guess):

Current resources use the starbase game mechanic for construction, upgrades, attack and defense. I don't know how that could be ported to a surface mine on a planet without a new UI, new combat animations, etc. Sounds like a lot of work for the devs, just to make it more logical than floating them out in open space.

Also, resources and anomalies are scattered more-or-less evenly across the map, so everyone has a fair shot at them, regardless of whether stars are widely distributed, tightly clustered, many stars or few stars. If resources are tied to star systems, then with some map setups there could be an unfair distribution for some factions (and a jackpot for others). I'm not sure how you'd get around that.

Personally, I like MOO3's idea of dealing with this - each race has its own preferred planetary type. So some races prefer a planet with stronger gravity, some races prefer a more radiated or toxic world, etc.

Additional terraforming technologies move a planet more toward the type of planet most preferred by the dominant race, making it more usable for them and less usable for other races.

Then they have races automatically migrating based on planet type - so if you conquered a Drengin planet that's better suited to your race, and not well suited to them, your own population would start to migrate there. Since MOO3 has race-specific attributes which move with each population unit this would start to modify the behavior and production of the planet over time. Similarly, their population would start to automatically migrate to your other worlds which are best suited to them.

Similarly, as you begin to conquer races, fewer worlds would show as size 0, because you're more likely to have at least one race in your empire which can use it.