Aquatic Species Pack is Broken!?

[Firehawk11]

How crazy will it be to allow people to increase planet size? Can you imagine learning terraforming just so you can make Cold planets, just to mine to make your Homeworld bigger? God, that sounds REALLY stupid but what's this 100 super powerful clones from Clone Army but no more room, just make them aquatic and add more space to your planet, the ultimate 1 planet megacorp challenge or even one of those crazy Warmongering Empires that declare wars just to capture ice asteroids so you can expand or Cold planets to tear apart.

Goodness, I can't wait for the craziest Species pack yet, Necrophage Lithoid Aquatic Species here I come! (Yes this seems to be a thing, since you gain Aquatic trait from Ocean Worlds, Lithoid from choosing the portait and Necrophage from the Origin...~) Make your Capital a paradise for all other species, expand, raid other pop, buy slaves, get migration treaties,,,,,,,I kinda want to do the ultimate Egalitarian Ocean World challenge now where I want to be the bastion of the universe, the last safe heaven.

Future, Galatic Emperor?

 

[Methone]

I thought it was only Frozen planets that let you mine ice? You know, like, the uninhabitable ones? Not just 'it's a bit snowy' habitable planets.

 

[Zagreb 887]

Is there a cap on how much you can "enlarge" your planet?

 

[Dragatus]

Note that Arctic and Frozen are two different categories.

 

[Xyre255]

This mechanic doesn't seem well thought through. Water in all of its forms is extremely common in the universe. Having to search for ice asteroids and ice worlds. You could start colecting solar winds or stripmining gas giants for hydrogen and oxygen.

And just adding more water to a world doesn't seem to create a lot of living space. Unless the cities are floating on the surface there would be huge negative effects of increasing the water pressure. Making living on certain depths go from normal to uninhabitable.

In my opinion it would be best to create a new planet category of ocean worlds alltogether. Seperating them based on depth.

 

[mial42]

In theory, you could make a size 60+ Ecumenepolis without the Worm + Clouds Dance now. Toss in the Memorex for the huge production buff. Ultimate one-planet build.

 

[M@ni@c]

One person's Broken is another person's Fun.

 

[Oculument]

I want to make a size 69 world and then terraform it to Gaia, or pave it over and make it an ecumenopolis. Then rename it to Nice, after my favorite city in France.

 

[Blackadder23]

How crazy will it be to allow people to increase planet size? Can you imagine learning terraforming just so you can make Cold planets, just to mine to make your Homeworld bigger?

Can you imagine actually reading the description of something before starting a thread to complain about it? It requires frozen worlds (or ice asteroids), which you can't create through terraforming.

 

[Ryika]

To be honest, nothing about the effects added by the species pack seems all that "broken" to me, since it's all outside of the things that are "meta" right now. Increasing the size of a planet in particular doesn't seem all that impactful. When it comes to raw efficiency, what's really the benefit of having a size 60 planet when you can just conquer a bunch of planets?

The thing that's actually interesting about the species pack is that it will likely open up a bunch of new playstyles, but I don't see any of them really entering a top slot in the meta. And that's a great thing in my opinion. The draw of a DLC should be the variety it adds, not whatever needlessly overpowered effects the devs stuff into it.

 

[metalosse]

You still pay 50 influence for 1 planet size. It does not seem much stronger than habitats, or simply building another ecumenoplis.

 

[Celulthor]

You still pay 50 influence for 1 planet size. It does not seem much stronger than habitats, or simply building another ecumenoplis.

It is by no means over powered, but it does provide ways to more fully utilize unique planetary bonuses. Imagine for instance the Lost Colony homeworld bonus combined with Memorex. Turn that planet into ecumenopolis and you have like 55% bonus to resources from jobs. With Hydrocentric you employ all the metallurgists you ever need on that single planet.

Of course all this assumes that the decision to increase planet size can be repeated multiple times. If it isn't possible, then Hydrocentric is basically a weaker Mastery of Nature with cheaper influence cost and some extra steps. I really hope the decision is repeatable and the ice required doesn't need to be in the same system, because that would actually allow a fresh way to play the game.

 

[DeanTheDull]

The +1 planetary seas decision is honestly mis-understood. It's not something you'd use on large planets to make them better, but on small planets to make them better resource-world pop-mills.

The planetary seas decision, at 50 influence a district, is 1/3rd the influence cost of making a Habitat (4 district), and 1/5th the influence of making an Ecumenopolis. For the influence cost of building a planet up 5 districts before making an Ecu, you could... just turn another planet into an Ecu instead. Even a small size-6 ecu would be better.

Where the planetary booster makes sense is to adjust worlds that are on the cusp of having the capacity to be both resource wolds and breeder worlds, so that when you set up your Ecumenopoli centers, you can keep funneling them breeder-world growth.

 

[Methone]

This mechanic doesn't seem well thought through. Water in all of its forms is extremely common in the universe. Having to search for ice asteroids and ice worlds. You could start colecting solar winds or stripmining gas giants for hydrogen and oxygen.

And just adding more water to a world doesn't seem to create a lot of living space. Unless the cities are floating on the surface there would be huge negative effects of increasing the water pressure. Making living on certain depths go from normal to uninhabitable.

In my opinion it would be best to create a new planet category of ocean worlds alltogether. Seperating them based on depth.

I dunno, is it THAT common? Just look at our own solar system. There's your frozen worlds like Europa, your frozen asteroids aka comets, and then... what? A pittance on Mars? Nothing at all on Venus?

The Solar Wind, last I checked, is nothing more than charged protons streaming outward, and the gas giants like Jupiter, as far as I can find, have little to no oxygen in them at all.

I also don't see how it wouldn't make more living space, since you're flooding the islands. Water pressure also doesn't work the way you seem to think; water is 'noncompressible'. Adding more pressure doesn't increase its density by any appreciable amount. This is how most deep sea creatures survive; they're filled with water, so when the ocean crushes in on them, the water in them crushes outward just as hard. Humans, with air pockets in the form of lungs, get absolutely wrecked.

But if an ocean species's civilization, naturally, contains water filled structures, I don't see how there'd be much pressure problems at all.

So... yeah, the 'flood the world to expand it for ocean dwellers' seems to check out for me.

 

[OldEnt]

It's not even out yet.

 

[Bezborg]

This mechanic doesn't seem well thought through. Water in all of its forms is extremely common in the universe. Having to search for ice asteroids and ice worlds. You could start colecting solar winds or stripmining gas giants for hydrogen and oxygen.

And just adding more water to a world doesn't seem to create a lot of living space. Unless the cities are floating on the surface there would be huge negative effects of increasing the water pressure. Making living on certain depths go from normal to uninhabitable.

In my opinion it would be best to create a new planet category of ocean worlds alltogether. Seperating them based on depth.

Absolutely agreed.

Though, the dolphin-head humanoid in normal clothes seems to have a surface city in its background, so... another opportunity wasted for something truly different *sigh*

 

[Dr. B]

Is there a cap on how much you can "enlarge" your planet?

Do you have a small planet? If you buy the Aquatic species pack, you can enlarge your planet to twice the size in only 30 days! Full satisfaction is guaranteed.

 

[hart30]

I really doubt that xou will be able to increase the planet size by more than 2 or 3. As i do not believe that the edict allows u to mine ice planets/asteroids in systems where u have no ocean world. They more likely will be a systemwide ressource and no galaxywide. So a planet can only be increased if it has some frozen worlds in its own system, those from other systems most likely do not count.

 

[M@ni@c]

I also don't see how it wouldn't make more living space, since you're flooding the islands.

On Earth the most lively parts of the ocean, are the low depth seas. The open ocean contains just as little biomass as the Sahara desert.
Why? Because the base of the food chain in the oceans, is, just like on land, photosynthesis.
The sun shines brightest near the ocean surface. So if you're a rooted plant, you can only grow in a low depth sea. Raising the sea level will create some extra low depth seas, but at the same time also destroy some.
You could say the food chain is based off of photosynthetic organisms just floating on the ocean surface. However they still need to get their molecules other than H2O from somewhere. On Earth that's the ocean floor, or erosion: rain and rivers bringing minerals from land to the sea. If you flood all the islands, you remove erosion as a source of minerals.

Personally I don't think flooding planets, that are already have an Ocean climate, makes much sense. However I'm willing to suspend disbelief, since it adds more gameplay variety.

 

[Me_]

I can't stand such lack of realism. I think I will go feed the space dragon to calm down.