Ismara's Sling
Giant mass drivers that can launch water from cryovolcanic, frozen and water planets to desert planets that need more water to be terraformed.
The name comes from Ismara orbiting Penelope's Star in the vanilla sector where Eridani-Utopia built these to terraform the desert planet Ithaca.
Suggestion: Change this to something more general, like "Mass Driver Array" as the description of the Penelope's star project implies that this sort of operation was business as usual for Domain era terraforming conglomerates.
If you're capable of building a
mass driver complex it doesn't make sense that you wouldn't be able to get more general use out of it, an elctromagnetic sling is an electromagnetic sling. You'd be able to launch fluids, gas and cargo with it, or at least figure out how to build one that can.
This means the building could be used for getting rid of the dense atmosphere
market condition on worlds and removing no/thin atmosphere conditions on other worlds. This is a proposed method of
terraforming venus and mars simultaneously in our own solar system.
Making this the add/subtract atmosphere building would also help differentiate it from the drone nexus. Adding a accessibility buff to the building would also set it apart and reflect the
cargo/commerce applications of mass drivers
This makes it so the mod has systems in place to adjust the 3 pillars of terraforming. Atmosphere, Water, Temperature. Which means you could link the buildings to the changing market conditions (hot, extreme hot, cold, water covered surface, etc) and have the planet type change if the conditions have been met long enough rather than what buildings have been used. After all, shading a desert world wouldn't make it into a wet terran world, it'd just make it a cooler desert world.
This would also give you more flexibility and allow the introduction of chance in the terraforming process.
Start - Extremely hot, no-atmosphere barren world: Shade->Hot, Mass Driver->thin Atmosphere->Normal Atmosphere, Drone Nexus->Water
Possible Results - Desert World(75%), Terran Eccentric(20%), Terran(5%) (could include unknown skies worlds)
Possible chance-based conditions added upon planet-type change: Habitable, Mild Climate, Inimical Biosphere, Extreme Weather, Water Covered Surface, Toxic Atmosphere, Pollution. (could include unknown skies conditions)
Terraforming is playing god, and the mod sort of implies that we're just slapping old schematics together without much consideration or research done beforehand so unanticipated consequences would make for nice flavor, reflect the massively complicated nature of terraforming and fit with the theme of the other terraformed planets in the sector (only a few turned out 100% nice), though negative effects would have to be balanced so that doing the projects are still a net gain for the habitability of the world.