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My gas smells better than your gas

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Safehold said:
Tundra, Ocean, Desert, Gaia, Temperate/Continental, it seems to be they are going for visual/archetypes that aren't split along attributes. That way they can unify art vision with game mechanics, probably.
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That's the problem i'm trying to bring up with this thread. A Desert planet with a Methane atmosphere would be completely uninhabitable to us. Under the current system (as evidenced by the screens below) there is no distinction between that and a planet like say Tatoine (to use a famous fictitious example) which is also a Desert planet but could be readily colonized (lightly at least).
 
Strager said:
That's the problem i'm trying to bring up with this thread. A Desert planet with a Methane atmosphere would be completely uninhabitable to us. Under the current system (as evidenced by the screens below) there is no distinction between that and a planet like say Tatoine (to use a famous fictitious example) which is also a Desert planet but could be readily colonized (lightly at least).
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Would a planet with all the other characteristics of Tatooine at all likely to have a methane atmosphere?
 
Chat said:
I suspect that it will be simply covered in the terraforming section as habitability. As the atmosphere gets replaced with something more conducive to your species' survival on that world, they can start removing the domes and expand across the world easier. Diplomats, tourists, invasion forces, etc can always wear rebreathers/have implants/be genetically engineered to survive in alternative environments. Policies could allow the construction of alien sectors on planets or bases, dedicated habitation domes for them to reside in; easing diplomacy/subversion.

I wouldn't be surprised if your species' favoured atmospheric composition isn't explicitly mentioned either, since I'm not sure how much you would really gain beyond asthetics. Take two worlds for example, one with your favoured hydrogen sulfide atmosphere but with too much water lying around and one with a carbon monoxide atmosphere and your favoured lava pits scattered across the surface. They could be equally costly to terraform and equally limiting on expansion, leading to the exact same outcome. You could split terraforming technologies into atmospheric, gravitational, land/water centric technologies, but it would probably become a frustration when you don't have the right combination of terraforming technologies for the worlds around you.
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Well yeah, but that's actually how it is. Sure you could change the atmosphere, but in the process probably kill all biodiversity on the planet and end up with a rock that needs to be recultivated with your own biosphere, hugely increasing cost, and time, as well as loosing any economic exploitation of biomass that the planet have held.

It's well possible that the first planets humans find that looks very habitable won't be because the atmosphere will kill us, and changing it would kill everything else on the planet. "Near misses" make things a lot more exiting imho.
 
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Strager said:
That's the problem i'm trying to bring up with this thread. A Desert planet with a Methane atmosphere would be completely uninhabitable to us. Under the current system (as evidenced by the screens below) there is no distinction between that and a planet like say Tatoine (to use a famous fictitious example) which is also a Desert planet but could be readily colonized (lightly at least).
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The thing is, the 7 or so species archetypes are close to bipedal humanoids so... they aren't going to simulate like all the possibilities. Since it wouldn't fit. Maybe that's for the Elder threats to the universe to consider. Scripted events in which methane breathers threaten oxygen civilization.

Maybe all 7 are oxygen or at least carbon dioxide civs. Just as the pics of the 7 archetypes are all bipedal or standing upright. If they have a working system to expand upon that, I can't envision what it might be. It's certainly not on the species summary or creation screen yet.

To address the problem directly, Methane vs Hydrogen vs Gas Giant vs oxygen breathers can done via event scripts. Miniature stories of the truly "alien" and foreign. But putting it as a planet description might actually detract from the gameplay mechanic side of things.

This is good timing, I just read the new dev diary.

Goosecreature said:
BORLAND
Other times, the outcome can be disastrous, like when the colonists of Xianyang activated that ancient abandoned terraforming equipment, only to discover that the aliens who built it breathed ammonia!
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I seem to recall from one of the videos we've seen there was a planet that had something along the lines of a "toxic atmosphere" that could be terraformed away with the appropriate techs, and it said as much in the description

EDIT: Just looked, its in the Polygon video, it says the planet is habitable but needs the "atmospheric filtering tech." I dont beleive it shows why you would need that specifically.
 
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Korashy said:
Well yeah, but that's actually how it is. Sure you could change the atmosphere, but in the process probably kill all biodiversity on the planet and end up with a rock that needs to be recultivated with your own biosphere, hugely increasing cost, and time, as well as loosing any economic exploitation of biomass that the planet have held.

It's well possible that the first planets humans find that looks very habitable won't be because the atmosphere will kill us, and changing it would kill everything else on the planet. "Near misses" make things a lot more exiting imho.
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Terraforming in general is going to do that. Planet too hot, too cold, too wet, too dry, hostile microbiome, etc. You're probably going to want to change something about the planet, otherwise you wouldn't need to terraform. And if you're changing something, you're going to wipe out much of the life on the planet. We've wiped out a decent chunk of the biodiversity on Earth just terraforming one Earth biome to another (forest to farmland or cities for example).

I'd imagine they will be different colonisation policies and some techs might encourage different styles. Quickly convert the planet into one you like, costing more up front but producing a fully productive world faster. Slower/assisted integration, allowing the native lifeforms time to adapt to the changes, costing more in the long term and taking longer for a productive world, but the native life that survives may prove useful. Adaptation, your species modifies themselves to suit the planet, potentially encouraging an official sub-species and all the problems that may entail.
 
A shame, I was hoping that there could be some semi-complex terraforming system, I really loved the terraforming system in Aurora, and, when I was feeling grumpy with a certain obstinant race occupying a planet that breathed a different gas to mine, I took great pleasure in establishing a blockade and over time changing their atmosphere to oxygen and basically poisoning / suffocating the foul xenos beneath. Which was, while a longer way of commiting intergalactic genocide, pretty effective because it meant that stuff wouldn't get damaged and you could conquer planets with fully functional facilities.

It would also be nice to see if the ways you conquer / colonise planets might have effects on its habitability. Such as conquering a planet via orbital bombardments with gorillions of nuclear weapons, which would make it (or at least parts) pretty uninhabitable for at least a while. A nice little consequence of your actions, could even be done just by a planetary modifier which will change in severeity based upon how much you messed up the planet in your xenocidal crusade.

Aurora of course is a spreadsheet simulator and I would not recommend it for the casual space fan.
 
While it would be nice to have in vanilla, I wonder if it's possible to pass changes to a planet type by event or decision. If so, a complex terraforming system could be created whole cloth for a mod by defining each individual planet type (e.g., "methane-atmosphere" "high-pressure" "high-gravity" "garden world"), then creating routes to path through based on technology, infrastructure, or the like. If there's already a dedicated terraforming system in-place, it may be even better, as we may be able to do such a thing ourselves. Hoping for an Aurora-style (or even MOO3 style) terraforming system might be a bit much for the initial release.
 
Culise said:
Hoping for an Aurora-style (or even MOO3 style) terraforming system might be a bit much for the initial release.
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Aurora-style? Waaaaaay overkill..... but SOME system is absolutely needed. Simply putting a "Toxic" modifier is not right..... s One of the best parts of an atmosphere system is that a planet that might be a Paradise for my race, could be toxic to yours. I would be extremely disappointed if Paradox didn't put in at least a few different types of atmospheres.
 
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RebelScum88 said:
I seem to recall from one of the videos we've seen there was a planet that had something along the lines of a "toxic atmosphere" that could be terraformed away with the appropriate techs, and it said as much in the description

EDIT: Just looked, its in the Polygon video, it says the planet is habitable but needs the "atmospheric filtering tech." I dont beleive it shows why you would need that specifically.
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That's just a little too basic. One generic tech for filtering atmospheres is over-simplified. There should be a specific type for each gas!
 
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Strager said:
Aurora-style? Waaaaaay overkill..... but SOME system is absolutely needed. Simply putting a "Toxic" modifier is not right..... s One of the best parts of an atmosphere system is that a planet that might be a Paradise for my race, could be toxic to yours. I would be extremely disappointed if Paradox didn't put in at least a few different types of atmospheres.
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Well to be fair... Aurora's terraforming system isn't as complicated as people make it out to be...
Just remove all lethally toxic gasses,
Add 30% or below oxygen,
Adjust temperature with greenhouse/anti-greenhouse gasses,
And try to get a total pressure as close to 1.0 as possible,
(If you need to then fill the rest of the atmosphere with a non toxic gas like nitrogen to get the pressure up)

The only thing kinda unnecessarily annoying with Aurora's system is the way "atm" works, wish i could just set it to be like "okay guys, add oxygen until you hit 20% THEN STOP YOU DUMB FUCKERS! >:C )
 
Strager said:
One of the best parts of an atmosphere system is that a planet that might be a Paradise for my race, could be toxic to yours. I would be extremely disappointed if Paradox didn't put in at least a few different types of atmospheres.
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You mean, like in Space Empires where empires can actually live "inside eachother" because they breathe different atmospheres? That'd be awesome! Also, genetic engineering would be way more useful, as you wouldn't have to build domed cities on your colonies but instead let an artificial sub-species live there.
 
SolarGuy said:
You mean, like in Space Empires where empires can actually live "inside eachother" because they breathe different atmospheres? That'd be awesome! Also, genetic engineering would be way more useful, as you wouldn't have to build domed cities on your colonies but instead let an artificial sub-species live there.
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I'd go either with domed cities, terraform the whole planet to an atmosphere the majority can breath or genetically engineer the minority to breath what all others do.
Imagine what my Imperial Task Force would look like if all breath different atmospheres and need different suits to be able to do their job on my ships... hilarious!
 
Strager said:
Isn't the nitrogen more or less ignored and just used to dissipate the oxygen? I'm sure we'd have very little effort terraforming a mostly oxygen atmosphere into something breathable.
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pretty much. it's an inert gas that has no effect on humans, minus inert gas asphyxiation.
 
aruon said:
pretty much. it's an inert gas that has no effect on humans, minus inert gas asphyxiation.
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Not really.

While it's true that the nitrogen is generally inert and doesn't really have much effect on the body as you breath it in at normal pressure, the presence of all that extra stuff that we basically don't care about turns out to be pretty important. It's not the ~20% concentration of oxygen that's important, it's the ~0.2 atmospheres of oxygen. The partial pressure is the important bit, the amount of pressure that can be attributed to the gas, in this case oxygen. What this means is that you're going to be perfectly fine on a 0.2 atmosphere planet as long as ~100% of the gas is oxygen. For a 2 atm planet, only ~10% oxygen is required to survive. Exposure to high partial pressures (~0.5 atm) of oxygen is toxic in the long term. So on out 1 atm world, that filler gas is pretty important to us.
 
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