As presented in an earlier post, planets in Beta 6 have among others an environment characteristic. In the comments around this topic, Builtom asked if we intended to set up some terraforming abilities. The answer is yes. So how does it work?
Terraforming is a process which allows to increase the building space of a planet. It doesn’t impact the planet size but the number of surface units which are available for construction and, as a consequence, its base living space.
There are 6 levels of terraforming technologies. The most basic levels only allows terraforming of planets which are already in a pretty good state, and each new level allows terraforming planets with worse environmental conditions.
Terraforming a planet represents a huge investment of both time and resources. While it is relatively hard to terraform a really infernal planet into something a bit better, the difficulty decreases the closer the planet gets to being bearable; however, improving it further, while not as difficult per se, requires even more resources. In addition, terraforming can require more than just time and money: extreme conditions will require specific extra resources. The time required to complete a terraforming operation depends on the difficulty of the terraforming operation and on the size of the planet to terraform.
Two things can revert the effects of terraforming: heavy bombardments and pollution. Bombardments can occur during attacks of the planet by fleets whose aim is to destroy the infrastructure of the planet. Pollution is the result of over-exploitation of the planet with a high number of industrial buildings such as factories and mines. In both cases, the effects of terraforming are only reverted if enough buildings have been destroyed and the population is low enough.
What do you think of this terraforming system?
Yeah, I reckon it is a good concept, except that this leads me to another question… How many resources are you going to have in this game?!?! (sorry if this has been discussed elsewhere, I am on a mission too spam, hell to the consequences!)
@Yuckwitte,
In addition to plain old money, 9 mineral resources, 6 types of gases, and dark matter, all of which need to be extracted from various places (planets & asteroids -> minerals, nebulae -> gases, black holes -> dark matter). And nope, hadn’t been posted anywhere else :p
Are different races going to like different places?
For example… The ‘Velos’ (a humaniod creature slightly resembleing an elf that I just made up) would prefer a more ‘Earth-like’ planet. Whereas an ‘Freudian’ would like a barren, mountainous place
@Yuckwitte, we considered the idea for a bit, but no, won’t do that as it’s already quite complicated on this point. However, since species take different amounts of living space, and possibly rely on other species being present to grow (some are predators for others, and some “transform” into others depending on laws), the way a species react to a combination of “other species present on the planet + size of the planet + pollution on the planet + laws” can vary widely.