Planetary or Orbital Colonization?

[King Ari]

I have a feeling most planets aren't going to be colonized by everyone, its going to be left to alot of smaller orbital/small planet based mining stations to get the resources that the scattered planets you actually colonize need. Maybe thats just me bringing to mind images of the Distant Worlds early game with certain settings

 

[Harle]

I think - for me, ideally - I'd like to see the following:

• Starting planet determines ideal conditions, based on Gravity, Atmospheric Pressure, and Atmospheric Composition. The latter can be abstracted, it doesn't need to get specific.
• Your species begins with a tolerance gradient, where you can survive in environments which differ from your home conditions, but the farther away you get, the more penalties (and in some cases, bonuses) apply, based on which condition differs from your homeworld, and in which direction. For example, the farther away you get from your ideal Atmospheric Composition, the more infrastructure costs, and the slower population growth becomes, because every person requires a larger and larger investment in structures and facilities in order to keep them healthy and, well, alive. High gravity could impose different penalties than low gravity.
• At some point, conditions vary too dramatically from your ideal, and you simply cannot have a colony in that place, and instead must build an orbital station, which has significant penalties toward raw resource production. They are not ideal, but they may be the only way to secure access to certain resources, especially early on.
• Technologies can expand your tolerances. For example, genetic engineering could allow the breathing of broader ranges of atmospheres, allowing you to occupy the same planets with fewer penalties, as well as opening up some planets that used to be too harsh for any kind of colonization. Or high pressure engineering, that allows you to not only build more efficiently in high atmospheric pressure, but also allows you to build beneath the oceans on oceanic planets, providing additional living space.
• At no point would all planets be colonizable by all races, there would always be some that are inaccessible, because the conditions just differ too much. And a large number of planets would remain undesirable for colonization due to harsh conditions, but could be, if there is some resource you particularly want to exploit, or you want to more safely dig into a border world, as orbital habitats are very vulnerable to invaders.
• Military actions would be also be penalized outside of ideal conditions, though to a lesser severity than colonization.

I doubt we'll see that, but if I were designing my own game...

 

[Atlantians]

We can't currently imagine what technologies will develop in the next 100-500 years or more; hell ~500 years ago the earth was flat and at the center of the universe.

The Jewish Bible itself describes a circular Earth.

The section that describes this is upwards of 3,000 years old.

You have bought into an old myth created to demonize ancient peoples.

 

[palomer]

In reality it isn't that easy. Humans are build to survive in a 1 g enviroment. If you go below that your bones and muscles go weak. If you go above it your joints will wear down faster and your heart might not be strong enough to fight higher gravity for an extended amount of time.

There numerous other problems: In low-G enviroments your equilibirum sense in your ears don't work as good and precise. In high-G enviroments it may not work at all.
etc.

Good points. Maybe future drugs help? We don't know what the effects of living long-term at different levels of gravity are. If Sci-fi is to be our guide, pretty much every planet has the same gravity (unless it is convenient for the plot for it to be different). What range of Gs do you think would be okay? Maybe a negative modifier based on how different the gravity is from the homeworld (did I say that before?)?

 

[I_AM_King_Midas]

The Jewish Bible itself describes a circular Earth.

The section that describes this is upwards of 3,000 years old.

You have bought into an old myth created to demonize ancient peoples.

Circles aren't Spheres. The verse you are referring to is in Isaiah 40. That's the one that says the earth is circular using the word "chuwg." In the book of Isaiah they use the word sphere in 22:18. It's " durw". The author could have said earth was spherical and he had the proper vocabulary to do that but he didn't.

People are wanting the bible to say the earth is a where but it doesn't. It's people trying to change what it actually says. The text before translation is clear. They did not think the earth was a sphere.

 

[Chat]

I imagine that some of the techs that would improve your ability to colonise would be things like gravitational or atmospheric adaption. There'd almost certainly be some level of genetic engineering to go along with colonisation regardless.

The Jewish Bible itself describes a circular Earth.

The section that describes this is upwards of 3,000 years old.

You have bought into an old myth created to demonize ancient peoples.

Depends on which part you read and of course, how you chose to interpret them. Interpret phrases such as 'ends of the earth' 'the four corners of the earth' literally, translate chuwg to mean circle/circular and read passages such as Daniel 4:11 or Isaiah 40:22, and you get the distinct impression of a flat or domed Earth. Interpret the above phrases metaphorically as we do today, translate chuwg to mean spherical (and ignore the usage of duwr whenever a spherical object is expressly referred to, particularly within the same book) and ignore certain passages or ascribe some metaphorical meaning to them, and you can make some level of argument for a spherical earth in the Tanakh, even if it's a rather weak one in my opinion. (edit: probably should have checked the new posts, and I would have seen that King Midas already pointed this out )

Regardless, the first recorded objectively described spherical earth comes from the 6th century BCE in Greece and by 1st century CE is was pretty much universal, at least around the Roman lands.

 

[aitaituo]

Which verse says it's turtles all the way down?

 

[*Aqua*]

Good points. Maybe future drugs help? We don't know what the effects of living long-term at different levels of gravity are. [...] What range of Gs do you think would be okay? Maybe a negative modifier based on how different the gravity is from the homeworld (did I say that before?)?

I would go with the usual safty margin: 10%
That means 0.9 - 1.1 g should be ok.

But I'm not sure if this makes a good number for gameplay.

 

[Harle]

NASA has run experiments that suggest that humans could probably survive and adapt to planets with 2.0g. Which actually covers quite a lot of planets; a planet twice the size of earth, with a similar density, despite having a mass 8x higher than Earth, would only have a surface gravity of 2.0g, from what I have read on the subject (I got curious and started looking it up). Twice the size of earth gives us a lot of room for planets of different sizes, and that doesn't even account for lower-density planets, which do exist.

It wouldn't surprise me if 2.0g would cause longterm medical problems (heart having to work harder, etc), but it's probably safe to say that the medical requirements to handle that would be within reach.

NASA also stated that at around 4.0g, human physiology begins to fail. Basically your body isn't equipped to either pump the blood to your brain or to handle the pressure required to do so.

In a funny way, lower gravity may just be harder on humans.

 

[Saintrl]

It almost sounds like having a diverse array of species in your Empire might be a good thing, if you could never settle all planets types with only 1 species.

 

[palomer]

Do we think different species will be able to colonize different types of worlds? It would be cool, but I have a feeling all species will have similar world habitability parameters.

 

[aitaituo]

Do we think different species will be able to colonize different types of worlds? It would be cool, but I have a feeling all species will have similar world habitability parameters.

Each race has a preferred planet type based on their homeworld, but nothing has been said directly about colonization. It also hasn't been said what type of planet earth will be considered, so humans by default may prefer ocean worlds.

 

[CocoCincinnati]

It depends on how artificial gravity is being created. If you have the ability to create artificial gravity in space through some kind of gravity plate or similar techonology then you can just as easily create the proper gravity for most of a city on a planet as you could for an orbiting station.

 

[General Karthos]

It depends on how artificial gravity is being created. If you have the ability to create artificial gravity in space through some kind of gravity plate or similar techonology then you can just as easily create the proper gravity for most of a city on a planet as you could for an orbiting station.

I agree with this, though I would suggest perhaps doubling maintenance and construction costs on planets where gravity plates are needed (or are constructed. You could go without them on planets that don't differ too radically, and to save on construction costs, you could just go without them).

 

[Saintrl]

Do we think different species will be able to colonize different types of worlds? It would be cool, but I have a feeling all species will have similar world habitability parameters.

I have a sinking feeling that if all of Stellaris's species are humanoid there may be a shared spectrum of planets that are considered "rich" for colonization. This would leave no niche to exploit exotic environments, or indeed make one species preferable over another when colonizing. I don't think they'd make the races that shallow though.

 

[jackalope81]

I'd imagine a species capable of interstellar flight would have the biotech to deal with microgravity bone density loss and enough mechanical knowledge to improve mobility in high gravity. Suits already exist to help regulate blood flow and wearable mechanical assist devices are here to stay shortly. Chemical composition of the air and soil would be more expensive problems to deal with since they require large and continuous fixes.

 

[Chat]

I have a sinking feeling that if all of Stellaris's species are humanoid there may be a shared spectrum of planets that are considered "rich" for colonization. This would leave no niche to exploit exotic environments, or indeed make one species preferable over another when colonizing. I don't think they'd make the races that shallow though.

Just because they're all humanoid, doesn't mean that they'll have the same preferences for atmospheric parameters or gravity. Even within Star Trek, where 1G, 1 atm oxygen-nitrogen breathers were the norm by far, they had different species that had to use respirators within an oxygen environment and had species from low-G worlds using augmentations to operate effectively on Starfleet installations. We might not see shorter, stockier aliens that originate from high-G worlds, but we can always pretend.

 

[palomer]

You know, we are all excited trying to figure out how to make this a super-realistic space colonization simulator, meanwhile Paradox stated they are excited to finally have the freedom to make a fun game without worrying about accuracy. We are going to have to come to terms with this eventually.

 

[Saintrl]

Mods, all the mods or riot!