I liked the way Spore handled terraforming:
Early terraforming tech wasn't a precise science and it was a good idea to bring both forms of tech to e.g. be able to lower a planets temperature if you were about to raise it too high. Later terraforming tech could alter two things at once (think a volcano made atmosphere denser and raised temp) and the late game tech gave you precise control over what you wanted to do (those beams for temp and atmosphere vacuum / dispenser for atmosphere).
You could take a similar approach, where tech usable from the start would work, but wouldn't be very efficient. E.g. have standard Stellar Shades / Mirrors take many years to remove the hot Condition and Cold conditions, Atmosphere conditions would take the same time as Temperature and while working on Tectonic Activity would take 10+ years, you could only partially remove the "Extreme" forms of the condition and you couldn't even do anything about a planets gravity with existing tech.
Doing that quest where you return the AI to the system it originated from, would then unlock upgrades to the already available structures, that would lower upkeep and the time it takes to complete these alterations to a planets condition. This event would also unlock tech to work on an irradiated surface and gravity, both of which would be expensive and still take a long time.
Finding and installing those Terraforming Artifacts would significantly speed up the process and lower upkeep and after finishing the alteration, they'd be returned to the planets cargo holds instead of being single use.
Coming back to
"why even have a commodity requirement?", I'd say we try to crunch some numbers by having a
"natural pull towards the existing condition" and using a slider to change the amount of resources you want to pour into the operation:
Like, the Extreme Heat condition requires 9000 Terraforming Points (TP) to be removed, but decreases your amount produced by 3 per day. So if you build some standard Stellar Shade here, it'd produce 1 TP per Heavy Machinery and Metal you allocate to the operation, plus it'd cost 7.5k upkeep per point.
So if you allocate 4 HM and Metal, it'd cost 30k credits per month and take 9000 days, because it'd produce 4 TP per day, which are reduced by 3 because it's Extreme Heat, so ~25 years (9000 / 30 / 12). If you now allocate 8 HM and Metal, it'd cost 60k credits in upkeep and "only" take about 5 years. If an Alpha AI core took the normal route of "-1 demand, -25% upkeep, +1 production", you'd now only pay 45k and it'd take a bit over 4 years.
The upgraded Stellar Shade would produce 2 TP and cost 6k upkeep per Resource allocated. This way, allocating 8 resources and installing an Alpha Core would cost 36k upkeep and produce 17 TP which, reduced by 3 because Extreme Heat, would still take about 21 and a half months to clear the Extreme Heat Condition.
If you now used some Domain-Tech AI core, that doubles TP and halves upkeep per resource allocated, using the Upgraded Stellar Shade + the Domain-Tech core + an Alpha core and 8 resouces would produce 33 TP a day, reduced by 3 because Extreme Heat and it'd take 10 months to clear Extreme Heat, while costing 18k upkeep.
Because of the demand by the Structure, having a trade disruption would act as if you had allocated fewer resouces to the Structure, so it'd produce fewer TP and the terraforming process would take longer.
To give you an example of how long some endgame run would take, my planet Galahan produces 12 Metal and 13 Heavy Machinery, so I could allocate 13 resources to a Stellar Shade, if I used an AI core.
If a planet has the Extreme Heat Condition, which takes 9000 TP to remove and reduces daily TP by 3, I could:
- Allocate 13 resources to an Upgraded Stellar Shade for 26 TP per day and 78k upkeep
- Install a Domain-Tech AI core for the Stellar Shade to double production to 52 and halve upkeep to 39k
- Install an Alpha AI core to increase production to 53 and reduce demand by 1 so I can even allocate 13 resources in the first place and further reduce upkeep to ~30k
The Extreme Heat would reduce daily TP production to 50, so it'd take 9000 / 50 / 30 = 6 months to remove the Extreme Heat condition for an upkeep of 30k and very endgame-tier available resources, which I'd say looks like a pretty "believable" cost.
Regarding the Genesis, aside from increasing its cost significantly, I'd say it'd make sense for the created planet to become a volcanic planet with Extreme Heat, No Atmosphere and Extreme Tectonic Activity since all we're doing here is smack a whole bunch of rocks together, point at it and say "New planet :-D". I know that the description of a planets birth with this method sucks the heat off to ... "somewhere", but that's honestly bs if you compare this
"Lets produce a cat IV or even V planet for 1m credits" to
"Well yes we are a space faring powerhouse of a faction, but god knows how to build an array of Stellar Shades to cool this planet lmao lets build a ship that can teleport mines". Additionally, you could also vary the amount of ore in the new planet a bit because creating a new planet with Ultrarich Rare- and Normal Ore Deposits feels really unbalanced. Expanding on that, how about depending on the composition of the asteroids floating about, you could end up with a volcanic planet with the aforementioned conditions, or a Cryovolcanic / Frozen planet with Volatiles or a Barren planet that's more prone to have less Ore but more Organics?
Plus the Genesis' max burn of 4 really isn't that bad. Slap on Extreme Modifications from ... I think the Ships and Weapons Pack, install an enhanced Drivefield, get 3 Ox and the Navigations perk and boom, max burn of 10. Since we're lumbering about with a ship big enough to plop a new planet into existence, you could at least give it a hullmod that prevents any other hullmods and lowers the entire fleets max burn by 2 because "Field to stabilize the core interfering with drivefield" or something like that.