Habitable Planet Frequency

Unless it changed, you also want to set "Planet Frequency" to abundant. And a higher Star Frequency cant hurt either.

If im remembering it correctly what the game does is spawns the star, then adds the class 0 planets based on frequency. At which point it will swap some of those class 0 planets to higher class Habitable planets, followed by swapping some to extreme planets.


Therefore if your 'Planet Frequency' is low no matter how high you set your other settings if there isnt enough planets on the map to convert to Habitable or extreme they wont spawn. The game also tries to keep a minimum % of class 0 planets in the game.

I think this is why generally Habitable planets have had issues spawning as well as the issue of little to no extreme planets in a game. They have been tinkering with this over the patches but IMO the map spawning system is very flawed. Especially when it comes nebulars and asteroids with resources.

I really hope map generation is really looked into especially with how important resources will be in crusade. My last game (huge map) had only 2 Thulium across the entire map, where I had like 20-30 antimatter. And I believe, unless i missed them somewhere, i only had ONE extreme planet. Sure i could up the chance of extreme planets but reducing Habitable but then you get a similar issue where you have little to no Habitable and tones of extreme where races with extreme planet traits or tech have a unfair advantage. Its kinda ridiculous lol

Thulium and Promethion are minable planets, so if you set habitable planets to abundant you will naturally have way less thulium and promethion,

since there are less not-habiatable planets to turn into them,

antimatter is just dependant on black holes, so more black holes, more antimatter

        <HabitablePlanetChanceDivisor>3</HabitablePlanetChanceDivisor>

This technicaly keeps Habitable planets at a 1-3 ratio to Class 0's (Not that I think it works as intended). Which should give you ample planets to convert to Resources, regardless of ingame settings.

I really hope this has been changed in Crusade. Imo all these things should be independent of each other when spawning. As it is now everything seems to override the chances of everything else spawning. If they made them spawn independently of each other then you could get the kind of maps you want based on the settings as opposed to just hoping the settings work out. If they were independent it would also allow for better planet and resource distribution as well as balance. Has there been any word on if these needed changes are coming in? If not I can see Crusade being extremely hindered since resources are going to be such an important factor for building ships. How can you balance a game if in one game you have tones of a resource and the next you have none, both with the same map settings :/.

Thanks for the help, I guess I'm just going to end up trying until things seem good.  Come to think of it, there was a mention of a nerf to planet frequency around 1.03 and that guide was probably from before that.