First off, I love this idea! Second off, don't worry about "balance"; think of this as a way to test out mechanics that Alex might well want to put into the game.I'd actually make nearly all of the terraforming structures you suggest here permanent. We all come across those 175% valuable-but-unprofitable planets. Having permanent terraforming would allow us to make use of such worlds (and potentially make them very good) without breaking the game by allowing players to colonize willy nilly.
Things I'd like to see:
Atmospheric Processors: Temporary. Huge machines convert no-atmosphere / bad atmosphere (Toxic, Polluted, Radiated) to a neutral state. Should take 1 year and 5 million Credits to build.
Soil Creation: Temporary. Nanotech devices gradually build a layer of viable top-soil, allowing a planet to be farmed. Improves farming by +1 or sets to 0 if less than 0. Requires a planet with a breathable atmosphere, 1 year and 5 million Credits.
Planetary Intelligence Agency: Permanent. Eliminates Path incursions and greatly improves resistance vs. Pirate raids. 3 months, 1 million Credits to set up, costs 25K+ thereafter (whatever's roughly balanced for a Size 5 Colony, essentially- by Size 7, it shouldn't be a big cost).
Gravity Control: Permanent. Installs grav devices throughout the Colony, removing the penalties from Gravity. 6 months, 5 million Credits, but 10K (i.e., cheap) to maintain thereafter, as it uses up an Industry slot.
Tectonic Stabilization: Temporary. Using hypervelocity kinetic strikes, the tectonic plates of the planet are carefully shattered in a controlled way, greatly reducing earthquakes and other problems. Removes "unstable" penalties. 1 Million Credits, 2 months to build. (should be pretty cheap, this isn't terribly common).
Biocide: Temporary. Masers and massive sunlight reflectors are used to burn away harmful flora and fauna, along with the use of nanotech biocides, to make the planet 100% compatible with human-friendly lifeforms. Removes "biohazard" penalty. 2 million Credits, 3 months.
Oort Cloud Bombardment: Temporary. Drones are sent to the Oort Cloud to collect water ice chunks and drop them on the planet, greatly improving the amount of surface water on the planet. 5 million Credits, 6 months. Removes "arid" penalty, or if the planet is normal / Terran, can convert to a Water World!
Manufacturing Ring: Permanent. Builds a ring of manufacturing facilities orbiting the planet, greatly improving Accessibility and production. All Industries get +2 production and Accessibility is improved by +2 as well. 10 million Credits and 1 year; costs 100K+ (whatever feels reasonably balanced for Size 7 Colonies; this is an end-game item).
Hyperspace Detectors: Permanent. Builds sophisticated new Hyperspace detectors, greatly improving the sensor reach of fleets in this System. Basically, a planet-based way to build the same sensors usually installed in space. 500K to build, 15K to maintain.
AI Farm: Permanent. Uses "tamed" Remnant tech to gradually replicate AIs left in this planet's inventory, for an endless supply over time. 20 million Credits and 1 year to build, 500K to maintain. 3 months for Gamma cores to replicate, 6 months for Betas, 1 year for Alphas.
Military Construction Yards: Permanent. Special high-speed manufacturing facilities are built for purely military use. Accelerates production of military vessels for local fleets by 100%, reduces D-Mods by 2, increases fleet sizes. 5 million Credits and 6 months to build, 200K to maintain.
Marine Training Facilities: Permanent. Trains Marines and other ground forces in large numbers. 1 million Credits and 3 months to build, 100K to maintain. Builds 100 Marines / month, plus Armaments / Heavy Armaments. 50K to maintain.
Cloning Center: Permanent. Clones and artificial-birthing facilities greatly accelerate population growth. Gives Colony a constant growth-rate of 2% before any other factors are considered (i.e., additive). Improves growth, but the clones are harder to integrate into society. 10 Million and 6 months to build, costs 25K and -2 Stability to maintain.
Basically, put in tools so that players can:
A. Gradually fix up their worlds, at a cost in time and Credits.
B. Use their Credits to build end-game content.
C. Prepare for the final form of this game, where we're hoping that the Factions are dynamic and also able to make use of these kinds of things.
First off, I love this idea! Second off, don't worry about "balance"; think of this as a way to test out mechanics that Alex might well want to put into the game.You have good ideas for new structures, Also i would love to spend my credit on end-game as well
Things I'd like to see:
Atmospheric Processors: Temporary. Huge machines convert no-atmosphere / bad atmosphere (Toxic, Polluted, Radiated) to a neutral state. Should take 1 year and 5 million Credits to build.
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Purge Center icon is very joyful :)Thank you, the video fascinating !, i am already half in
If you have some free time and wish to learn about more plausible ways of terraforming planets, I recommend watching Isaac Arthur's video on terraforming. His "Colonizing Space" series is quite amazing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikoNQNj9ZnU
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I have been mulling over something similar for a while and I may have had a couple of useful ideas.That right, and i also want to add blue-print from the domain-era as your pass to build those (in the future)
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This is exactly the type of mod i was looking for! Amazing stuffI happy you like it ! yes i do, even so this mod is about lower hazard, and less about production, but maybe we will see such things. feel free to add more
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Great idea!I agree, Its impotent for me as well to make it a lore-friendly as possible
I'd personally like a lore friendly terraforming mod with the feature set of:
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Cool mod, looking foward to more features.
I've sent you a private message, please let me know if you haven't received it, as it's not showing up in my "sent messages".
Thank you for the heads upCool mod, looking foward to more features.
I've sent you a private message, please let me know if you haven't received it, as it's not showing up in my "sent messages".
You need to check this option in your forum profile settings.
"Save a copy of each Personal Message in my outbox by default."
Make sure the planet is "habitable". Won't show up otherwise. Also does NOT work on extreme hot/cold. It only works on normal hot/cold.
A lot of yall are talking lore, and how we only see solar shades and the like.
But think about this:
The sector we are in is a absolute backwater; so much so that the only battlegroup the Domain sent to our sector was a disgraced one that was sent with only lightly moddified ships. And even back then such ships were extremely powerful. On top of that they sent out Drones, which even to this day are powerful enough to give the factions a run for their money (Mothership anyone?).
So think about it; the Domain had enough resources to send minor terraforming technology onto several worlds, a battlegroup that used its resources to create an entire faction into itself after the gates shutdown, and several drone / survey / cryosleeper ships into what is considered the ass end of nowhere, galactic scale wise.
What do you think the Domain has in its home worlds or core sectors? They'd probably have the tech to completely terraform a 300% hazard planet into a lush 100% hazard oasis, they just don't have the resources to send such powerful technology to our sector before the Gates collapsed considering we are a slum, galactic wise.
So it wouldn't be a surprise if attacking Remnant fleets allows us to find classified blueprints that Tri Tachyon might have stolen and secretly hidden from the Domain before the Gates shut down, and then hid again within the Remnant fleets when they still thought they could control them in the AI wars.
Or maybe a quest to find them, who knows. It'd make them properly end game and still require massive resources to do.
A lot of yall are talking lore, and how we only see solar shades and the like.
But think about this:
The sector we are in is a absolute backwater; so much so that the only battlegroup the Domain sent to our sector was a disgraced one that was sent with only lightly moddified ships. And even back then such ships were extremely powerful. On top of that they sent out Drones, which even to this day are powerful enough to give the factions a run for their money (Mothership anyone?).
So think about it; the Domain had enough resources to send minor terraforming technology onto several worlds, a battlegroup that used its resources to create an entire faction into itself after the gates shutdown, and several drone / survey / cryosleeper ships into what is considered the ass end of nowhere, galactic scale wise.
What do you think the Domain has in its home worlds or core sectors? They'd probably have the tech to completely terraform a 300% hazard planet into a lush 100% hazard oasis, they just don't have the resources to send such powerful technology to our sector before the Gates collapsed considering we are a slum, galactic wise.
So it wouldn't be a surprise if attacking Remnant fleets allows us to find classified blueprints that Tri Tachyon might have stolen and secretly hidden from the Domain before the Gates shut down, and then hid again within the Remnant fleets when they still thought they could control them in the AI wars.
Or maybe a quest to find them, who knows. It'd make them properly end game and still require massive resources to do.
Lore-wise, that makes sense. Just not sure if the game actually supports "Colony" blueprints in that way.
That being said, removing some of the issues aren't probably that hard. Like Decivilized is mostly an issue of spending the time, manpower and resources to really root out the troublesome holdouts.
I'm of the mind that these modifiers should apply slowly over time. Perhaps a series of self-upgrading buildings that replace modifiers over time. So instead of completely negating the Hot modifier it gives a reduced hazard rating that improves over time as the building upgrades itself over time.
I'm also of the mind that planets should have orbital and surface slots that limit how much stuff you can reasonably have in orbit. In the same way a space station gets added to a planet's orbit, solar shades and mirrors should be visible in-orbit. Orbital and terrestrial industries could be differentiated by orbital facilities having immunity to terrestrial hazards like weather, biome, and gravity. Imagine, finding an orbital gas mining platform that can only mine organics and volatiles
As a side note, I believe new products should be added to the marketplace to reflect the idea of active terraforming: Terraforming Liquids and Gases that would be specifically mined from ice and gas giants.
Terraforming should take a very long time and happen gradually, in my opinion. There should be high tech and low tech versions. High tech should be more efficient and effective but walled behind discovery of blueprints while some low-tech versions should be available but very expensive and only achieve results very very slowly.
Like I mentioned before, I believe the processes these buildings go through should be gradual. You could make each have 4 extra self-upgrading tiers. The upgrades happen after each other and instead of completely negating a penalty, they give a habitability bonus of +5% per tier (with 5% at the starting tier) until they complete their last upgrade which would either remove the effect completely or give a habitability trait that negates the effect of the base trait. By adding this granularity to the terraforming system the projects could be very long term but with immediate partial results to give the player some benefit in the meantime.I agree with this sentiment here, making these take a long time, then have their pay off, but attracting attention would make it so the player had to think on their toes or something like that. But unfortunately that requires a ton of work from the modder, I think.
I would suspect that terraforming actions would attract the attention of the Luddic Path so having long project times would give them the opportunity to sabotage them or send raiding fleets.
First off, I love this idea! Second off, don't worry about "balance"; think of this as a way to test out mechanics that Alex might well want to put into the game.
Things I'd like to see:
Atmospheric Processors: Temporary. Huge machines convert no-atmosphere / bad atmosphere (Toxic, Polluted, Radiated) to a neutral state. Should take 1 year and 5 million Credits to build.
Soil Creation: Temporary. Nanotech devices gradually build a layer of viable top-soil, allowing a planet to be farmed. Improves farming by +1 or sets to 0 if less than 0. Requires a planet with a breathable atmosphere, 1 year and 5 million Credits.
Planetary Intelligence Agency: Permanent. Eliminates Path incursions and greatly improves resistance vs. Pirate raids. 3 months, 1 million Credits to set up, costs 25K+ thereafter (whatever's roughly balanced for a Size 5 Colony, essentially- by Size 7, it shouldn't be a big cost).
Gravity Control: Permanent. Installs grav devices throughout the Colony, removing the penalties from Gravity. 6 months, 5 million Credits, but 10K (i.e., cheap) to maintain thereafter, as it uses up an Industry slot.
Tectonic Stabilization: Temporary. Using hypervelocity kinetic strikes, the tectonic plates of the planet are carefully shattered in a controlled way, greatly reducing earthquakes and other problems. Removes "unstable" penalties. 1 Million Credits, 2 months to build. (should be pretty cheap, this isn't terribly common).
Biocide: Temporary. Masers and massive sunlight reflectors are used to burn away harmful flora and fauna, along with the use of nanotech biocides, to make the planet 100% compatible with human-friendly lifeforms. Removes "biohazard" penalty. 2 million Credits, 3 months.
Oort Cloud Bombardment: Temporary. Drones are sent to the Oort Cloud to collect water ice chunks and drop them on the planet, greatly improving the amount of surface water on the planet. 5 million Credits, 6 months. Removes "arid" penalty, or if the planet is normal / Terran, can convert to a Water World!
Manufacturing Ring: Permanent. Builds a ring of manufacturing facilities orbiting the planet, greatly improving Accessibility and production. All Industries get +2 production and Accessibility is improved by +2 as well. 10 million Credits and 1 year; costs 100K+ (whatever feels reasonably balanced for Size 7 Colonies; this is an end-game item).
Hyperspace Detectors: Permanent. Builds sophisticated new Hyperspace detectors, greatly improving the sensor reach of fleets in this System. Basically, a planet-based way to build the same sensors usually installed in space. 500K to build, 15K to maintain.
AI Farm: Permanent. Uses "tamed" Remnant tech to gradually replicate AIs left in this planet's inventory, for an endless supply over time. 20 million Credits and 1 year to build, 500K to maintain. 3 months for Gamma cores to replicate, 6 months for Betas, 1 year for Alphas.
Military Construction Yards: Permanent. Special high-speed manufacturing facilities are built for purely military use. Accelerates production of military vessels for local fleets by 100%, reduces D-Mods by 2, increases fleet sizes. 5 million Credits and 6 months to build, 200K to maintain.
Marine Training Facilities: Permanent. Trains Marines and other ground forces in large numbers. 1 million Credits and 3 months to build, 100K to maintain. Builds 100 Marines / month, plus Armaments / Heavy Armaments. 50K to maintain.
Cloning Center: Permanent. Clones and artificial-birthing facilities greatly accelerate population growth. Gives Colony a constant growth-rate of 2% before any other factors are considered (i.e., additive). Improves growth, but the clones are harder to integrate into society. 10 Million and 6 months to build, costs 25K and -2 Stability to maintain.
Basically, put in tools so that players can:
A. Gradually fix up their worlds, at a cost in time and Credits.
B. Use their Credits to build end-game content.
C. Prepare for the final form of this game, where we're hoping that the Factions are dynamic and also able to make use of these kinds of things.