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[Weezer]

Greetings from the Galatian Academy! We're busy here making descriptions for colonies settled by various factions in the outer systems, such as this one for Barren Worlds settled by the Hegemony:

Radiation from the nearby star ravages the surface of this world due to the lack of an atmospheric ozone layer. No significant geological activity. No indigenous life forms. These worlds are usually small mining outposts and serviceable way stations for passing fleets. Barren world colonies are composed of interlinked hab-blocks connected by mag rail, protected from incoming asteroids by a point defense system manned by Hegemony military personnel. Colony security is composed of veteran personnel at the end of their careers and fresh recruits on their first assignments. The majority of civilian contract jobs here are provided by the Ko Combine.

Better than just Radiation from the nearby star ravages the surface of this world due to the lack of an atmospheric ozone layer. No significant geological activity. No indigenous life forms. once its settled right? But we need your help to complete our library! And for that we need planetary survey data, which I'm sure you've gathered plenty of while out exploring the outer systems. Simply give us a snapshot of the traits on a single planet type, such as barren worlds, terran worlds, gas giants, and so on, to help us make accurate descriptions that won't be so specific it doesn't work for some planets of said type. The Academy greatly appreciates your help in the scientific pursuits, and wishes you good hunting!

Pictured below, typical planetary survey data grouped by celestial type.

[Apfelkuchenbemme]

I didn't really know if you want the stuff via PM or whatever sooo yeah ... knock yourself out I guess:

Folder with all planets of my current playthrough

The Hegemony and the Luddic Path are errm playing baseball over there and the seed for this universe was MN-6943595531913352991. The planets tend to be:

Arid

- all are habitable
- many have organics and farmland
- almost all are hot
- ores are a good mix
- for some reason, many in this universe also have high gravity

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Barren

- none are habitable
- none have organics nor farmland
- most are hot or even have "extreme heat"
- ores are quite common
- none have an atmosphere
- quite a few ruins

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Barren-Bombarded

Pretty much the same as "normal" Barren.

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Barren-Desert

(there are only 8 )
- only a few are habitable
- resources heavily lean towards normal ore
- all have a thin atmosphere

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Cryovolcanic

- none are habitable
- organics are extremely rare,
- farmland nonexistent
- many have both "normal" and rare ore
- many have volatiles
- almost all are extremely cold
- tectonic activity everywhere

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Desert

- all are habitable
- organics are extremely rare,
- farmland is here and there
- almost all have normal ore
- all but one are hot
- most have extreme weather
- quite a few have high gravity
- quite a few ruins

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Frozen

- none are habitable
- only one has organics
- farmland is nonexistent
- many have both types of ore, but many deposits are sparse
- almost all have volatiles
- almost all are extremely cold
- many have poor lighting or are in pure darkness

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Gas Giant

- none are habitable (no ****)
- only resource ever are volatiles
- all have high gravity
- as for other hazard conditions, it goes from a tame "high gravity + extreme weather" all the way to a hazard rating of 300% with poor light, irradiated, extreme weather, extreme cold and high gravity

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Ice Giant

Pretty much the next best thing if you don't find a good Gas Giant for volatiles.
- none are habitable
- all have volatiles as the only resource
- all have high gravity
- many additionally have extreme weather, some form of cold and / or darkness

Funnily enough, "Diti" is actually hot?!

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Irradiated

- none are habitable
- many have both types of ores
- all are irradiated
- many, many are extremely hot
- quite a few have low gravity

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Jungle

(there are only 4)
- all are habitable
- all have organics and farmland
- two of them also have both types of ores
- you'd think they all have Inimical Biosphere, but only two do
- all have extreme weather

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Rocky Ice

- none are habitable,
- one has organics, none have farmland
- lots of normal ore and a tad of rare ore again
- almost all are cold, some are extremely cold
- many have no atmosphere
- a few have low gravity
- some darkness, volatiles and radiation sprinkled in

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Rocky Metallic

- none are habitable,
- no organics nor farmland
- all have normal ores, many have rare ores too
- none have an atmosphere
- more hot than cold
- low and high gravity is well mixed, many have "no modifier"
- few ruins here and there

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Rocky Unstable

- habitable = organics = farmland = nope
- many have both types of ores, many even have rich or ultrarich deposits
- all have tectonic activity
- more hot than cold
- gravity isn't a big factor here

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Terran

(no distinction between "Terran" and "Terran Eccentric" because there are only 6 in total anyways)
- all are habitable
- all have organics and farmland
- all have some type of ore
- all have ruins

Pretty solid planets (as you'd expect) but iirc most are quite far away from the core worlds (aside from those ARE the core worlds, of course)

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Toxic

- none are habitable
- none have farmland but:
Salamanca, a Colony from the Persean League, is the only toxic planet that:
A) doesn't have a Toxic Atmosphere
B) has abundant Organics

... don't wanna know what the hell they're doing with those Organics but ok
- rest all have Toxic Atmosphere
- many have ores,
- many have volatiles
- many have other hazard conditions that quickly add up to 200%+

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Tundra

- all are habitable,
- all have farmland and many also have organics
- many are cold
- many have ores
- a few ruins here and there

Again, pretty solid planets but I think they're all kinda off the beaten path.

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Volcanic

You know the drill:
- none habitable, none have organics, none have farmland
- almost all are extremely hot
- all have tectonic activity, most have extreme activity
- the atmosphere is either thin or toxic; those that have neither have extreme weather instead
- ALL have both types of ores,
- MANY have rich or ultrarich deposits

Damn good planets for ores, but it's hard to find one below even 225% hazard rating.

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Water

(Another rare kind with only 5)
- all are habitable,
- 4 out of 5 have organics, none farmland (duh)
- all have a water-covered surface (wow!)

Honestly a kinda "meh" type of planet. Like, they have a relatively low hazard rating yeah, but if you raise your "max-hazard-rating" standard for a colony to like 250%, you'll easily find some with both types of ores + volatiles + low gravity or something like that.

But colonizing them gives you the bragging rights for having a water-planet, I gues?!

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[Igncom1]

I've always wondered why, in your average non-space empire game, you'd ever really bother with colonising half the planet types.

The upkeep costs and decreased growth just hammer your finances and it makes it hard to wonder why you would really bother. The harsher planets aren't even harder to raid either which I find at least a little odd.

A lava base sounds cool, but you are really just losing more money then you are gaining from using one.

[Mondaymonkey]

But colonizing them gives you the bragging rights for having a water-planet, I gues?!

Well... no. They are rare and I suspect you just unlucky. I remember having a water planet with 125% hazard, abundant both ore and rare ore, moderate organics and the water-covered surface is equivalent to adequate farmland, plus extensive ruins, so... yeah they could be decent candidates for colonizing.

Also, TASC mod allows lobster seeding...

BTW to be not entirely offtopic, some barren world from reason unknown (bug?) can have inimical biosphere, despise not having any atmosphere or "habitable" condition.

[Megas]

Terran eccentric is a low-light or darkness terran world.  Basically the dark variant of Terran, much like Arid is the hot-and-dry variant, Jungle is the hot-and-wet variant, Tundra being the cold variant, and Water being the no land variant.

Habitable with high gravity can have lots of ore.  Those without do not get much.

The upkeep costs and decreased growth just hammer your finances and it makes it hard to wonder why you would really bother. The harsher planets aren't even harder to raid either which I find at least a little odd.

Income from Population and Income.  Still, not a great option unless player has nearly unlimited alpha cores to administrate colonies.

[intrinsic_parity]

I consider good volatiles to be enough to justify colonization almost by itself. Volatiles will make more money than all of the other ores combined, and the first volatile source also reduces upkeep on fuel production faction wide. A 200% hazard world with volatiles+decent ores and refining will make pretty much the same money at size 5+ as a low hazard world with average resources in my experience (plus faction wide upkeep reduction on fuel production), you just have a slower start. I think frozen worlds and cryo-volcanic worlds with +1/2 volatiles are somewhat high priority colonization targets. Also, beta cores really help get the upkeep costs down later in the game, and if you use those, then a volcanic world with +2/3 ore, +2/3 rare ore is 100% worth colonizing.

In my experience, people overvalue low hazard a lot in this release. I think it's way more important to have your colonies in the same system than for them to all have low hazard. I would take a system with 4-5 decent planets over a system with the perfect Terran world by itself or even with one other planet (I would probably colonize both systems eventually to be fair). You get an accessibility bonus for having colonies near each other too.

[Igncom1]

Give me a day or so and I can collect a report on the worlds in my sector by type, to show potential differences.

Just gotta survay the rest!

[Mondaymonkey]

more important to have your colonies in the same system than for them to all have low hazard.

You are correct. Once I colonized nebula system with 10 hight-hazard, but resource-reach planets. Gold mine by itself. Together with TASC stations, 32 player controlled markets with hight command on each is enormous power concentration.

And here I go again, derailing a thread.

Spoiler

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Give me a day or so and I can collect a report on the worlds in my sector by type, to show potential differences.

Just gotta survay the rest!

Well, you do not need a day, being honest. CC mod allows "survey all" command. Just create a new game -> survey all -> make some notes -> repeat. BTW you can bind that command to be launched with a single key. Once I made that over 100 times per night. Unfortunately my notes are lost.

[Igncom1]

  but but..... that's cheating! 

[Mondaymonkey]

but but..... that's cheating! 

Cheating it is indeed. 

[Apfelkuchenbemme]

I've always wondered why, in your average non-space empire game, you'd ever really bother with colonising half the planet types.

I'd say some are just there to give the universe a bit more life. And it really makes you appreciate a good planet when you have to dig through 200+ "meh" kind of planets, I guess.

If you want to put some more work into it, you could craft some story about researchers that worked on a research station in a system with 5+ volcanic planets in the outskirts of the sector and when supply convoys didn't arrive for a few cycles because AI war, they settled on a volcanic world because aeiou and developed their own tech so they can utilize volcanic planets as if they have a hazard rating of 100% and boom, new faction called the uhh ... "Hot Firefighters" with their slogan "We bring the heat, 'cause it's what we need" or "A planet on fire, is our desire" or whatever. Well ok maybe not that, but I mean if you put some "undesireable planets" out there, "they are around" and people can do something with it.

Plus colonies already make enough money if you give the Alpha AIs you pick up on the road a good home; there's no need for 90% of the planets to be category V planets.

A lava base sounds cool, but you are really just losing more money then you are gaining from using one.

Depends on when you want to pull the plug on the playthrough. That one Cryovolcanic planet, Alpha New Pandera II, has a 300% hazard rating. With like 70m credits, I don't really care if it loses some money at the start and I have to spend a few million to get all industries running because it's a planet with rich rare ore deposits, abundant normal ones and plentiful volatiles.

Just use an AI administrator (or all industry skills), an alpha in pop, megaport, mining, fuel production, install a synchroton core, build commerce and slap a beta core in all other structures, make it a free port and just like that you're earning 187k credits from a 300% hazard rating planet with 199% accessability once it hits size 6. Begs the question "why continue that playthrough?" of course, but that'd be another thread entirely.

[..] the water-covered surface is equivalent to adequate farmland [..]

BTW to be not entirely offtopic, some barren world from reason unknown (bug?) can have inimical biosphere, despise not having any atmosphere or "habitable" condition.

Completely forgot about water-covered surface counting as farmland, but one of the Gas Giants in my universe (1st screenshot of Gas Giants) is called Yggdrasil and it too has an inimical biosphere. (according to wikipedia) Yggdrasil is the tree that connects the nine worlds in Norse cosmology so uhh maybe organics would have made more sense there?

[Megas]

I consider good volatiles to be enough to justify colonization almost by itself. Volatiles will make more money than all of the other ores combined, and the first volatile source also reduces upkeep on fuel production faction wide. A 200% hazard world with volatiles+decent ores and refining will make pretty much the same money at size 5+ as a low hazard world with average resources in my experience (plus faction wide upkeep reduction on fuel production), you just have a slower start. I think frozen worlds and cryo-volcanic worlds with +1/2 volatiles are somewhat high priority colonization targets. Also, beta cores really help get the upkeep costs down later in the game, and if you use those, then a volcanic world with +2/3 ore, +2/3 rare ore is 100% worth colonizing.

In my experience, people overvalue low hazard a lot in this release. I think it's way more important to have your colonies in the same system than for them to all have low hazard. I would take a system with 4-5 decent planets over a system with the perfect Terran world by itself or even with one other planet (I would probably colonize both systems eventually to be fair). You get an accessibility bonus for having colonies near each other too.

Agreed on volatiles.  Finding a good planet with enough to meet demand (with IP2) and not too high hazard is hard.  In my last game, my primary colony was a gas giant with 150% hazard just for volatiles.  (Later, it got light and heavy industries, plus obligatory high command)  It also had a 100% tundra moon orbiting it, good for overlapping defenses.

Low hazard is good just for a place to dump costly industries like fuel production and especially heavy industry.  No such thing as too many heavy industries.  Being able to build a capital and/or whole fleet and lots of guns in a month or less is nice.

As for multiple colonies, I prefer to have no more than three in a system (preferably two) for the following reasons.
* I want an empire spanning multiple star systems, like the Hegemony or League, partly because I want multiple places to restock on supplies and fuel, especially if I focus hard on exploration or after I start killing off the core worlds.

* My computer chugs if there are too many fleets or debris fields in a system, and that starts to happen when I get about three or more colonies in a system.  One time, I rejected a great system because it had nebula and stable debris fields (that I cannot remove) that would have killed framerate if debris from defeated expeditions started to pile up.

That said, I agree that one world systems can be a pain to defend because the strongest expeditions can overwhelm a single world's defenses (or at least knock out the star fortress and hit stability hard), requiring more babysitting.

As for "surveying all", it can be done without cheating and without mods.  All it takes is Apogee start, skipped tutorial, and maybe up to an hour plus a few save-scummed games to check if a seed is worth playing.

[Igncom1]

It's not the full results of every world, nor picture of my whole planet list, but it's 90 minutes worth of counting so it'll do!

Results:

Spoiler

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Arid: Number (14) of which (decivilised 5)(ruins 6)(farmland 14)(rare ore 5)(ore 14)(organics 14)(inimical biosphere 4)(mild climate 1)(tectonic activity 1)(extreme weather 1)(hot 14)(high gravity 3)(habitable 14)

Barren: Number (207)

Barren-Bombarded: Number (65)

Barren-Desert: Number (15) of which (decivilised 3)(ruins 4)(rare ore 2)(ore 15)(organics 2)(extreme weather 2)(thin atmosphere 15)(cold 2)(extreme cold 4)

Cryovolcanic: Number (28)

Spoiler

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Desert: Number (28) of which (decivilised 10)(ruins 14)(farmland 5)(rare ore 10)(ore 24)(inimical biosphere 1)(extreme weather 28)(hot 28)(high gravity 6)(habitable 28)

Frozen: Number (24)

Gas Giant: Number (78)

Ice Giant: Number (23)

Irradiated: Number (26)

Spoiler

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Jungle: Number (6) of which (decivilised 3)(pollution 2)(ruins 5)(farmland 6)(rare ore 2)(ore 5)(organics 6)(inimical biosphere 1)(extreme tectonic activity 1)(hot 6)(high gravity 1)(habitable 6)

Proto-Life: Number (1) of which (organics 1)(irradiated 1)(Toxic atmosphere 1)(hot 1)

Red Barren: Number (1) of which (rare ore 1)(ore 1)(no atmosphere 1)(tectonic activity 1)(hot 1)

Rocky Ice: Number (16)

Rocky Metallic: Number (42)

Rocky Unstable: Number (13)

Spoiler

[close]

Terran: Number (2) of which (pollution 1)(ruins 2)(farmland 2)(ore 2)(organics 2)(extreme weather 1)(habitable 2)

Spoiler

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Terran Eccentric: Number (3) of which (decivilised 1)(ruins 2)(farmland 3)(rare ore 2)(ore 3)(volatiles 1)(organics 3)(poor light 3)(mild climate 1)(high gravity 1)(habitable 3)

Toxic: Number (21)

Spoiler

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Tundra: Number (8) of which (decivilised 3)(pollution 1)(ruins 5)(farmland 8)(rare ore 4)(ore 7)(volatiles 2)(organics 8)(tectonic activity 2)(extreme tectonic activity 1)(cold 7)(high gravity 2)(low gravity 2)(habitable 8)

Volcanic: Number (92)

Spoiler

[close]

Water: Number (4) of which (decivilised 2)(ruins 4)(ore 2)(organics 4)(water-covered surface 4)(low gravity 1)(habitable 4)

[Mondaymonkey]

Proto-Life: Number (1) of which (organics 1)(irradiated 1)(Toxic atmosphere 1)(hot 1)

Red Barren: Number (1) of which (rare ore 1)(ore 1)(no atmosphere 1)(tectonic activity 1)(hot 1)

What mod is that?

[Igncom1]

Tiandong Heavy Industries I believe.

Also note that my list doesn't include inhabited faction worlds with the exception for the couple I accidentally de-civilised when I thought I had only "lightly" raided them. And de-civilised pirate worlds but they don't count as accidents.