Making planets and species more interesting

[Sebor13]

So I have a list of ideas on how to make planets and species from specific planets far more interesting.

I love Stellaris but I have a bit of an issue on how uniform so much of it is. That's no fault of the developers, who successfully made a massive game beyond the scope of what Paradox has ever been able to achieve before. I just believe that, now that this has been accomplished, we need to work on making every experience so diversified that you can keep getting fresh, new experiences long after the release of the game.

I'm going to start with planets first and then get into how they can help make species much more diverse and interesting.

Planetary Environments: I do not believe that planets should have a single, uniform type of environment with the catch-all diverse environment being the only alternative (with that environment being Continental and the only type that is proven to actually support life). I think that the types we have now as somewhat ok, but we need to have them all feel like they have diverse, unique regions to them.

What I mean by that is we should have arctic, desert, and tropical regions of continental worlds all feel distinguishable from one another and there should be similar biodiversity on different types of planets. For example: A Tundra world should have equatorial regions that are forested and have an alpine-like climate and a mix of snowy plains, cold mountains, and icy oceans throughout the world. These would be randomly generated and placed on the Planet Surface tab (where we currently just have the tiles). This would almost be an expansion upon the blocked tile system already in place in the game, with areas not blocked off and areas that were previously blocked off still being of that environment.

These environments have a variety of potential effects depending on the species that is attempting to settle on it, the process of colonization, and planetary modifiers. To continue with the Tundra example, there may be a Lush modifier on the planet and you are currently settling a Tundra species onto its equator. This could result in an event where an explosion in crops could be used to either have the population growth on that planet permanently get a +15% modifier or a +2% modifier for your entire empire. Another possibility is having a planet with high gravity having low, if any mountains.

There should be many types of unique environments that have all sorts of positive and negative effects on those regions. Swamps, forests, and deserts can give an abundance of certain resources and alien pets, but they can also make building any kind of resource building or capital incredibly difficult to the point of being useless.

I also suggest a redesign to go with this, making the tile grid more planet shaped, with more tiles towards the center.

Planet Types:
There are currently three groups of planet types (as of the coming update):

Dry Worlds: Deseret, Savannah, and Arid
Wet Worlds: Tropical, Continental, and Ocean
Cold Worlds: Arctic, Tundra, and Alpine

I believe that, for my ideas to work we would need to add a couple of new planet types to make the groups of three extend to life extreme enough to live in extreme hots, colds, or toxic environments: (from most to least severe)

Scorching: Molten, Volcanic, and Fiery

Frigid: Desolate, Frozen, and Glacial (Glacial replacing the current Cold Barren world)

Noxious: Toxic, Poisonous, and Septic

Carbon based species (as in all that currently exist in game) can be modified to fit the lowest tier of the scorching and frigid worlds (Glacial and Fiery), but cannot reach the higher levels or any of the noxious worlds due to the basis of their genetics.

Barren worlds would remain uncolonizable due to the name being so vague that it could refer to hot, cold, or just dead planets. Barren planets can appear anywhere in star systems and would be a catch-all term.

Terraforming worlds that are not your homeworld should be necessary to at least some extent. Technology to terraform worlds of entirely different types should be unlocked later and maybe taking it a step further and unlocking the ability to terraform worlds of different groups towards the end of the game.

Planetary Bases:
We have only ever experienced life based around water, however there could be life based around: Ammonia, Sulfuric Acid, and Methane.

These can all be used to fit in with the current types of planets, but give that more diversity. Life that survives around one type cannot survive around another, limiting species from certain worlds but also allowing more diversity in the universe.

• Ammonia - Ammonia would be most suitable for Frigid, Noxious, and Cold worlds, but can on rare occasions, also be the source of life for Wet worlds.
• Sulfuric Acid - Sulfuric Acid would be most suitable for Scorching, Noxious, and Hot worlds, but can on very rare occasions, also be the source of life on Dry worlds.
• Methane - Methane would be suitable for Frigid and Noxious worlds. On rare occasions, they can also be the source of life for Cold worlds.

[edit]

• Water - Water would be suitable for Dry, Wet, and Cold worlds.

[/edit]
Terraforming worlds of different bases should be impossible due to the length of time it would take.

Source of Life:
I believe that we need to expand the types of species that can inhabit these planets. Carbon based life should be restricted to what they are currently restricted to, but life with an alternate base could (and often have to) inhabit worlds of temperatures so much higher or lower that they would be lethal to Carbon based life. These alternate life forms could be made out of Silicon, Nitrogen, Sulfur, Phosphorus, and Metal-oxide. Each of these species types would get special modifiers due to their specific origin.

• Carbon - The life that already exists in the game. They can be native to Hot, Wet, or Cold Worlds but cannot be native to Noxious, Frigid, or Scorching worlds. They can be modified to live on Frigid Worlds if they are native to the Cold worlds group, they can be modified to live on Scorching worlds if they are native to the Hot worlds group, or they can be modified to live on Noxious worlds if they are native to the Wet worlds group.
• Silicon - Very similar to Carbon-based life but can only live in more moderate temperature groups. They cannot be native to Desert or Arctic worlds due to the physical difficulty of Silicon life developing in temperatures that are too hot or cold, can be modified to fit these worlds though. Similar to Carbon-based life, they cannot live on Frigid, Scorching or Noxious Worlds if they are not native to them. Unlike Carbon-based life, they cannot be modified to live on these worlds.
• Nitrogen/Sulfur/Phosphorus - Due to the unstable nature of these substances, species made of them can only live on very cold worlds. They can only be native to Frigid and Cold worlds. They can be modified to live on Wet or Noxious worlds but do not naturally do so.
• Metal-oxide - Due to the immense heat needed to support such lifeforms, they are uncommon, and are inhabitants of Scorching and Hot worlds. They cannot inhabit Cold, Frigid, or Noxious, even through modification.

This different sources of life would make it so planets across many solar systems can be more unique and have more unique life coming from there. As it stands in the game right now, you look towards the middle worlds for life but with these additions, species can live very close to their star or very far from it. This should not allow the issue of having every planet settled. If anything, this combined with the other distinguishing features of species should make it so less solar systems are suitable for your primary species, but potential gold-mines for an incredibly diverse empire.

Other Visual Distinctions:
Species of different sources: (there could be a spectrum of color fitting into these categories)

• Carbon-based species are generally brown or tan
• Silicon-based species are generally gray or blue
• Nitrogen-based species are generally white or light blue
• Sulfur-based species are generally yellow or green
• Phosphorus-based species are generally brown or red
• Metal-oxide-based species are generally dark gray or black

Planets with different bases: (there could be a spectrum of color fitting into these categories)

• Water - blue or white colored
• Ammonia - brown or black colored
• Sulfuric Acid - orange or yellow colored
• Methane - brown or gray colored

Plant Life: We could have a randomized color-wheel to make tropical, continental, and alpine worlds yellow, orange, or red instead of just having green. Blue and purple could be possible but much rarer.

If you have any comments, questions, criticisms, or things to contribute, please comment below. I plan on making another post in this thread on how to make species traits and their ethos as well as how planets are settled and developed more unique. Thank-you so much for reading.

Sources:
http://worldbuilding.stackexchange....ased-or-other-non-carbon-based-life-realistic

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypothetical_types_of_biochemistry

 

[Sebor13]

Species Groups:

• Metallic (made for the Scorching Worlds but available for any group)
• Stone (made for the Scorching and Frigid Worlds but available for any group)
• Gaseous (made for the Noxious Worlds but available for any group)
• Titanic (made for the Frigid Worlds but available for any group)

Expand on: Mammalian, Fungoid, and Reptilian groups (include more for each of the new planet types)

Also make minor visual differences: different face shape, physical stature, and color of your species as visible differences for a species (genetic modification and changes over time allow these differences to come about during the game as well). I think that can all be divided up into five categories:

• Face - Decide from a number of pre-designed faces which one you wish to put on your species
• Color - Decide from a spectrum of available colors (with the recommended colors being based off of your source of life)
• Stocky/Slender Scale - Decide from along a scale whether you want your species to be slim, wide, or somewhere in the middle
• Tall/Short Scale - Decide from along a scale whether you want your species to be tall, short, or somewhere in the middle
• Predator/Prey Scale - Decide from along a scale where you want your species to look more predatory, with fangs and claws, or more like prey, with a less dangerous appearance, or something in the middle

Even though the player can pick and choose which portrait and basis of life they want without a care, I think that the AI should be more limited. I think that species that fit more into certain types of environments and planet types should be limited to portraits from those environments and planet types. There would still be a level of randomization of course, the portraits used by the AI can only be taken from those not picked by a player and they have a randomized color, size, and facial selection based off of their Source of Life and various other factors. This would take the 109 unique portraits currently available and (assuming there are at least 5 different faces, 8 different predator/prey appearances, 6 different tall/short appearances, 6 different stocky/slim appearances and not counting color at all) would make over 150,000 unique appearances. This would be incredible and, if properly paired with my ideas for ethos, could make each experienced combination even more unique.

New Traits:

I would like to say first that I would really like it if there were more traits that had positives and negatives. They would generally only cost one point and have very strong positives. Here are some examples:

• Ironclad: This species is clad in a natural armor exoskeleton (+10% Army Damage, +50% Garrison Health, -25% Migration Speed) - Opposite of Thin Skinned
• Thin Skinned: This species has no natural defenses (-25% Garrison Health, +75% Migration Speed, -50% Resettlement Cost) - Opposite of Ironclad
• Mischievous: This species is conniving and often untrustworthy (-1% Other Species Happiness, +25% Energy Credits) - Opposite of Charitable
• Charitable: This species is very open and charitable to others (+1% Other Species Happiness, -20% Energy Credits) Opposite of Mischievous

Species Origin:

I have never really loved the ethics system as it currently stands. It feels too game-y and simple. I would really like if there were in-game reasons for the ethics that each species has.

For example: Humans originate from the jungles of Eastern Africa, being descended from greater apes. This informs many aspects of how we developed. Our hands are shaped the way they are because we developed them to grab onto tree branches, as opposed to raccoons who have very round shaped paws that can grab onto things from all the way around them. We used our hands to make spears to hunt, which developed into us being materialistic.

Place of Origin:

• Swamps: Species that developed in swamps are generally spiritualist due to the nature of living in such a mysterious environment.
• Mountains: Species that developed in mountains are generally xenophilic due to the night sky hanging high above them.
• Jungles: Species that developed in jungles are generally materialist due to the need for greediness to survive.
• Underwater: Species that developed under the sea are generally individualist due to the need for self-preservation to survive.
• Plains: Species that developed in plains are generally militarist due to the need to defend your food on open plains.
• Underground: Species that developed underground are generally xenophobic the fear of the mysteries beyond.
• Islands: Species that developed on islands are generally pacifist due to the relaxed lifestyle they generally enjoy.
• Caves: Species that developed in caves are generally collectivist due to the communal nature of their social structure.

Type of Society:

This is meant to give a general overview of how a society acted throughout its history. Notice, this is meant to be the defining characteristics of a civilization, most civilizations touch upon all categories but few are actually defined by them. Two are chosen for the species.

• Righteous: A society defined by its religious characteristics [Spiritualist]
• Accepting: A society defined by its acceptance of different ideas [Xenophilic]
• Consumerist: A society defined by its greed-filled economic model [Materialist]
• Self-Reliant: A society defined by its emphasis on singular accomplishments [Individualist]
• Martial: A society defined by its military prowess [Militarist]
• Intolerant: A society defined by its opposition to different ideas [Xenophobic]
• Passive: A society defined by its attempts to avoid conflict [Pacifist]
• Interdependent: A society defined the reliance everybody has on one another [Collectivist]

I want all of these put together to define the game beyond a nice little introductory text that we get when we start the game and other in game texts (maybe an event chain later on charting the origins of your empire). I want the place of origin to define the appearance of the buildings (both in the background images and the ones that the species buildings and uses) and I want the type of society they formed to be used to decide what special buildings and actions they can undertake.

For example: Lets say that you are beginning a game as a species that originates from caves. Their society is Righteous and Martial. Their buildings will be purposefully rather short, but reach well underground. They can build Mausoleums (like the Grand Mausoleum but can only gives a -5% ethic divergence modifier and can be built freely once per planet - Mausoleums and Grand Mausoleums cannot both be present on the same planet) and Combat Arenas (like the Virtual Combat Arena but, again, it's weaker +2% Happiness, -3% Ethic Divergence, +5% Army Damage). They would not be able to build Collectivist buildings despite that being part of their ethos, due to it coming from before they were actually a society. It's a deep-seeded sentiment, which has different bonuses.

Firstly, ethos coming from your Place of Origin are significantly less likely to be altered and almost never will without trying to. This is due to them being a core part of who this species is, making it play a special role in every aspect of their life. Next, your species's core ethic is often much more likely to go fanatical than any other ethos your pop might hold. There would also be a significantly stronger opinion bonus between species who have the same core ethos as opposed to a societal ethos (all ethos count as core ethos for Fallen Empires).

My last point would be the biggest gameplay change. I believe that, over time, you should be able to change your government's ethos to reflect the change in your society. The only change that would never waver is that of your single core ethic.

For example: You are playing a species that is Individualist and Fanatically Spiritualist, with a Theocratic Republic government. Your species is from swamps, making one point into being Spiritualist your core ethic, while the other two, Individualist and Fanatically Spiritualist, are societal (Righteous and Self-Reliant). Over time, with a concentrated effort in the form of an edict, you can transition your species into becoming Xenophilic as well. When this change occurs, the chance of you losing one point in Spiritualist or Individualist goes up considerably, but does not necessarily happen. You will not be able to enact these through opposing ethos, but you could potentially transition to opposing ethos over time, as you lose your former ones.

How species design would work:
You would now pick your planet's base of life (Water, Ammonia, Sulfuric Acid, or Methane) and your species base of life (Carbon, Silicon, Nitrogen, Sulfur, Phosphorus, or Metal-oxide). For save games to carry over, all species before these were options would have Water and Carbon as the bases.

So it would work like this:

1. First you pick your portrait and species name
2. Next you pick the traits and ethos of your species
3. Then you pick the type of world your homeworld is (Scorching, Hot, Noxious, Wet, Cold, or Frigid), then the specific environment of it
4. Next you pick the source of life (Water, Ammonia, Sulfuric Acid, or Methane) and then the basis of your lifeforms (Carbon, Silicon, Nitrogen, Sulfur, Phosphorus, or Metal-oxide), with certain sources of life and basis of lifeforms being locked out depending on the type of planet you pick (your portrait, traits, and ethos do not have any affect on what is available)
5. After you pick that, customizing your portrait becomes available, allowing adjustments to the appearance of your species (stocky/slender scale, tall/short scale, predator/prey scale) and once you've got the appearance down, your species is all set
6. Next you choose the Place of Origin out of the environments available on your home planet (deciding your single core ethic)
7. After that you pick two based off of you Society (deciding your other two ethos)

The AI should go through a similar, randomized process to allow for a great number of species variety to be available.

 

[Dalinski]

I think you are better off making Molten, Toxic and Gas capable species have a special racial trait that gives them balanced bonuses for JUST that type of planet. They are then encouraged to terraform.

This also varies the game up which is probably a good bonus.

 

[mergele]

Very interesting ideas. Though due to the additional work for all those visual distinctions the paradox artists will probably kill you.
I could definetly see something along those lines, but it might be we need to wait for Stellaris 2 for that.

Some inconsistencys you might wanna clean up:
Underwater: Species that developed in forests are generally individualist due to the need for self-preservation to survive.

Caves: Species that developed in caves are generally collectivist due to the communal nature of their social structure [...] Lets say that you are beginning a game as a species that originates from caves [..] They would not be able to build Xenophobic buildings despite that being part of their ethos, [...]

 

[Sebor13]

I think you are better off making Molten, Toxic and Gas capable species have a special racial trait that gives them balanced bonuses for JUST that type of planet. They are then encouraged to terraform.

This also varies the game up which is probably a good bonus.

I feel like that could maybe work. I've just read up about that stuff a lot and those materials really could not survive under our world's conditions.

But Stellaris isn't hard science fiction, so maybe it could be done.

Very interesting ideas. Though due to the additional work for all those visual distinctions the paradox artists will probably kill you.
I could definetly see something along those lines, but it might be we need to wait for Stellaris 2 for that.

Some inconsistencys you might wanna clean up:
Underwater: Species that developed in forests are generally individualist due to the need for self-preservation to survive.

Caves: Species that developed in caves are generally collectivist due to the communal nature of their social structure [...] Lets say that you are beginning a game as a species that originates from caves [..] They would not be able to build Xenophobic buildings despite that being part of their ethos, [...]

Fixed that, thanks.

I think the recoloring is a lot more likely to be done (hell, I could do it), and I'll make sure to avoid any Paradox artists if somebody from there sees and likes this idea.

 

[ilikegoodfood]

Unfortunately, as I have been rediscovering in my recent attempts to outline a similar system, I haven't gotten to creating it yet as I haven't yet learned to mod Stellaris, there are a number of overlapping systems that all effect habitability. For game play purposes though, it may be better to simply assign somewhat arbitrary categories based on composites of those factors.

Physical Makeup - Generally only separated into Gasseous, Gas and Ice Giants, or Terrestrial, small and rocky.
Atmosphere - The atmospheric composition of a body radically alters it's habitability, however, for game-play purposes I would reduce to this to "Has Atmosphere", therefore suitable for aerobic lifeforms, and "Does Not Have Atmosphere", therefore suitable for Anaerobic lifeforms.
Temperature - The temperature range of a planetary body has a very large effect on the chemistry that occurs there, its atmosphere and its overall suitability.
Unusual Chemistry - Certain worlds will be highly Radioactive or Toxic, may have corrosive atmospheres or destructive microbes. These worlds must also be taken into account.

I'm trying to separate my system into a series of simple categories, each of which then contains a set of worlds for each of 7 temperature ranges, Frigid, Cold, Cool, Moderate, Warm, Hot and Scorching. This way the player only has to handle selection by category, as colonizing a world of another category would require terraforming, and temperature range.
If I went for a Ocean start, that is a Moderate Terrestrial World. I would have 80% habitability for other Ocean Worlds, 60% for other Moderate Worlds, 40% for Cool or Warm Worlds, 20% for Cold or Hot worlds, 0% for Frigid or Scorching Worlds and N/A for other categories.
On the other hand, if I went for a Molten start, that is a Scorching Terrestrial World, I would have 80% habitability for Molten Worlds, 60% for other Scorching Worlds, 40% for Hot Worlds, 20% for Warm Worlds, 0% for Moderate or colder, and N/A for other categories.
World with unusual Chemistry will probably be on a different scale, from Radioactive to Corrosive or some such.

I am hopeful that I can populate the list enough to make it both simple and comprehensive, while not being quite as complex as your own interlocking systems.

There is a balancing issue with the initial world choice, as picking an outlying temperature group gives you more limited access to worlds than picking Moderate. To counter this I would distribute resources so that a world categories closer to the edge have more resources, until the outliers have nearly double, as they have access to about half the worlds.

 

[Sebor13]

I really like the insight you brought to the idea.

I think that your system of having cool, moderate, and warm worlds could be interesting. How would they operate differently from just the Wet category that is going to exist in the new Stellaris DLC? Are these worlds going to have the same amount of resources available as the default worlds or will they have less to really strengthen the extreme environments's resources?

I'd love to hear a response and what you think if I were to try to implement a tenth of a % point atmosphere system where anything within +10% regarding the gases or temperature of the world are completely acceptable but anything more maxes inhabiting the planet slightly more difficult (not a strong penalty until it gets to pretty significant differences). I think this would also have the added bonus of making terraforming actually important, by making you have to mold the worlds to your species more often than you mold your species to these worlds.

 

[ilikegoodfood]

At present my list of worlds only includes terrestrial planets, and I am still missing all three Frigid, one Cold and one Scorching world type. of those. The default 9 Planet types are all distributed into Warm, Moderate and Cool, except for Arctic which is Cold, although in slightly different groupings.
The further out you go the richer the resources, but the harsher and more limiting the conditions, thus the central worlds are by far the poorest. I would also like to implement a much more severe Habitability system to the current Maximum Happiness, as even a slight increase in temperature causes mass heat strokes, requires cooling systems to be built into a property and so forth. I would probably do this by having Habitability directly effect BOTH happiness, as it currently does, and Resource Generation with the following formula; TileOutput+((1-Habitability)/2). This would mean that a 0% habitability world will only provide half of the resources compared to a 100% Habitable world.
I would then add a branch of "Lesser Terraforming" technologies and special projects, to raise the habitability within a planetary type. Frontier Clinic may be +5%, but you could also introduce species native to your homeworld, raising it 5% more and so un, untill, with sufficient spending, you could make any Homeworld-type planet 100% and any Homeworld-Group Planet 80%, a net 20% buff that becomes more expensive to achieve the further from ideal the planet it, something like BuildingCosts*(1-Habitability*2). This woulod make it cost 140% on a Homeworld-type planet and 180% on a Homeworld-group planet and so on.

Yes, I know that there aren't arithmetic operators in the soft-code yet, so I'm going to have to wait for them, but that gives me time to learn everything I need to for my total conversion anyway, which is everything.

Anyway, these are my current planet types:

Spoiler

• Barren - Small Rocky Objects without atmospheres
  
  
• Chemically Extreme - Irradiated, Toxic or otherwise inhospitable worlds
  
  
• Gaseous
  
  
• Terrestrial - Small rocky worlds with atmospheres
  
  
  • Frigid
    
    
  • Cold
    
    
    • Arctic
      
      
    • Glacial
      
      
    • Snowball
      
  • Cool
    
    
    • Tundra
      
      
    • Alpine
      
  • Moderate
    
    
    • Arid
      
      
    • Continental
      
      
    • Ocean
      
  • Warm
    
    
    • Dessert
      
      
    • Savannah
      
      
    • Tropical
      
  • Hot
    
    
    • Scorched
      
      
    • Fiery
      
      
    • Volcanic
      
  • Scorching
    
    
    • Molten
      
      
    • Burning
      

My Biology Tab on the Race creation would grant a choice of chemistry's with their own limitations. For example Carbon is the default with no bonuses but is limited to a Warm, Moderate or Cool Homeworld. Silicon has some bonuses but is limited to Moderate Homeworlds and so on.
You would also then be able to choose a signle Biological Trait, which defines which Planetary-Cluster(?), the Terrestrial, Gaseous, etc. These then have minor positives and negatives too, including the unequal distribution of worlds, i.e. Gaseous Worlds are always large, minimum 20 or so, but there will usually be only up to one or 2 per solar system, and they also have their own types to manage.

Lastly, I would allow races to colonize other Planetary-Clusters if and only if they have researched Self-contained BioSpheres. With this technology, they can colonize a world of any Cluster, but if it isn't their own, it will build the Biome version instead, which produces less and has more maintenance costs, maybe a multiplicative 0.75% Production Modifier, a 1.5% Energy Maintanece Modifier and a 0.5% of Energy Maintenance as Mineral Maintenance. The exact figure need balancing.
If a pop that is of that category moves to a tile, you can upgrade the Biome to the none-biome version, but that locks the pop in place, causing some unhappiness, until all biomes have been removed. I'm not yet sure how these mechanics are going to interfere wit the inability to move or remove pops, but I may simply have to allow any government to move or "disband" a pop at will.

Oh, yeah, Atmosphere points on-top of habitability and planet types and such.
Trying to generate a scale like that may make the colonization of space too limited, as it can currently be very difficult to find a suitable, strategically place world now as it is, much less with the Planetary bases, or Cluster in my case, and other features. Also, certain world types can't happen in very low atmospheres.
Ocean is a good example:
Europa is a low or no-atmosphere Ocean World, but only because it is frozen over. That technically makes it a Glacial World, not an Ocean World. Thus Anaerobic lifeforms, that may have evolved on an asteroid, comet, or Pluto-like planetoid could never happily live on an ocean world. This means that, to keep the world numbers balanced, I'm not sure if I can manage that for Gaseous Worlds either, you would have to fill something else in instead, such as Dustball. How does the code handle that? Would you have to set it to generate Ocean Worlds only down to 10 or 20% atmosphere and then generate loads of Dustballs below that?
There are a lot of very odd edge-cases that could crop up and it makes it so much harder for the player than "This is a Terrestrial World" or "This is a Barren lump of rock".
I'm all for realism, but in this particular case, this play-type(?), it could cause more harm than good.

Also, while you are correct that the current Ethos system is gamey, it allows for any possible combination, which is hard to do in presets. This may also lead to conflicts if a player plays one fictional race or empire accross all the games that they play, where possible, as those empires will already have their own complex backstories, histories and so forth. I always play under one empire, an empire than spans from the equivalent of 12,000BCE, The Taal Imperium, which is suitable for everything up to the space-age including fantasy games, to infinityACE, The Masterate, which is suitable for almost all Sci-Fi Games. It is one empire, and it has an entire history, form of government that I have never seen anywhere else, education system, economic models and so forth. It is only limited by my entry-level knowledge of these topics and the fact that most games don't support all of its features. This is why in Stellaris I play as the Hi-Illyon.

I suppose I should have warned you up front, I ramble through elaborate, half-constructed thought processes in thousands of words when I write complex responses.
I hope you like reading as much as you like writing.

 

[Sebor13]

Spoiler

At present my list of worlds only includes terrestrial planets, and I am still missing all three Frigid, one Cold and one Scorching world type. of those. The default 9 Planet types are all distributed into Warm, Moderate and Cool, except for Arctic which is Cold, although in slightly different groupings.
The further out you go the richer the resources, but the harsher and more limiting the conditions, thus the central worlds are by far the poorest. I would also like to implement a much more severe Habitability system to the current Maximum Happiness, as even a slight increase in temperature causes mass heat strokes, requires cooling systems to be built into a property and so forth. I would probably do this by having Habitability directly effect BOTH happiness, as it currently does, and Resource Generation with the following formula; TileOutput+((1-Habitability)/2). This would mean that a 0% habitability world will only provide half of the resources compared to a 100% Habitable world.
I would then add a branch of "Lesser Terraforming" technologies and special projects, to raise the habitability within a planetary type. Frontier Clinic may be +5%, but you could also introduce species native to your homeworld, raising it 5% more and so un, untill, with sufficient spending, you could make any Homeworld-type planet 100% and any Homeworld-Group Planet 80%, a net 20% buff that becomes more expensive to achieve the further from ideal the planet it, something like BuildingCosts*(1-Habitability*2). This woulod make it cost 140% on a Homeworld-type planet and 180% on a Homeworld-group planet and so on.

Yes, I know that there aren't arithmetic operators in the soft-code yet, so I'm going to have to wait for them, but that gives me time to learn everything I need to for my total conversion anyway, which is everything.

Anyway, these are my current planet types:

Spoiler

• Barren - Small Rocky Objects without atmospheres
  
  
• Chemically Extreme - Irradiated, Toxic or otherwise inhospitable worlds
  
  
• Gaseous
  
  
• Terrestrial - Small rocky worlds with atmospheres
  • Frigid
    
    
  • Cold
    • Arctic
      
      
    • Glacial
      
      
    • Snowball
  • Cool
    • Tundra
      
      
    • Alpine
  • Moderate
    • Arid
      
      
    • Continental
      
      
    • Ocean
  • Warm
    • Dessert
      
      
    • Savannah
      
      
    • Tropical
  • Hot
    • Scorched
      
      
    • Fiery
      
      
    • Volcanic
  • Scorching
    • Molten
      
      
    • Burning

My Biology Tab on the Race creation would grant a choice of chemistry's with their own limitations. For example Carbon is the default with no bonuses but is limited to a Warm, Moderate or Cool Homeworld. Silicon has some bonuses but is limited to Moderate Homeworlds and so on.
You would also then be able to choose a signle Biological Trait, which defines which Planetary-Cluster(?), the Terrestrial, Gaseous, etc. These then have minor positives and negatives too, including the unequal distribution of worlds, i.e. Gaseous Worlds are always large, minimum 20 or so, but there will usually be only up to one or 2 per solar system, and they also have their own types to manage.

Lastly, I would allow races to colonize other Planetary-Clusters if and only if they have researched Self-contained BioSpheres. With this technology, they can colonize a world of any Cluster, but if it isn't their own, it will build the Biome version instead, which produces less and has more maintenance costs, maybe a multiplicative 0.75% Production Modifier, a 1.5% Energy Maintanece Modifier and a 0.5% of Energy Maintenance as Mineral Maintenance. The exact figure need balancing.
If a pop that is of that category moves to a tile, you can upgrade the Biome to the none-biome version, but that locks the pop in place, causing some unhappiness, until all biomes have been removed. I'm not yet sure how these mechanics are going to interfere wit the inability to move or remove pops, but I may simply have to allow any government to move or "disband" a pop at will.

Oh, yeah, Atmosphere points on-top of habitability and planet types and such.
Trying to generate a scale like that may make the colonization of space too limited, as it can currently be very difficult to find a suitable, strategically place world now as it is, much less with the Planetary bases, or Cluster in my case, and other features. Also, certain world types can't happen in very low atmospheres.
Ocean is a good example:
Europa is a low or no-atmosphere Ocean World, but only because it is frozen over. That technically makes it a Glacial World, not an Ocean World. Thus Anaerobic lifeforms, that may have evolved on an asteroid, comet, or Pluto-like planetoid could never happily live on an ocean world. This means that, to keep the world numbers balanced, I'm not sure if I can manage that for Gaseous Worlds either, you would have to fill something else in instead, such as Dustball. How does the code handle that? Would you have to set it to generate Ocean Worlds only down to 10 or 20% atmosphere and then generate loads of Dustballs below that?
There are a lot of very odd edge-cases that could crop up and it makes it so much harder for the player than "This is a Terrestrial World" or "This is a Barren lump of rock".
I'm all for realism, but in this particular case, this play-type(?), it could cause more harm than good.

Also, while you are correct that the current Ethos system is gamey, it allows for any possible combination, which is hard to do in presets. This may also lead to conflicts if a player plays one fictional race or empire accross all the games that they play, where possible, as those empires will already have their own complex backstories, histories and so forth. I always play under one empire, an empire than spans from the equivalent of 12,000BCE, The Taal Imperium, which is suitable for everything up to the space-age including fantasy games, to infinityACE, The Masterate, which is suitable for almost all Sci-Fi Games. It is one empire, and it has an entire history, form of government that I have never seen anywhere else, education system, economic models and so forth. It is only limited by my entry-level knowledge of these topics and the fact that most games don't support all of its features. This is why in Stellaris I play as the Hi-Illyon.

I suppose I should have warned you up front, I ramble through elaborate, half-constructed thought processes in thousands of words when I write complex responses.
I hope you like reading as much as you like writing.

I really like a lot of these ideas. I think that it could add a lot to the game to flesh out so many different planetary types. Perhaps, to suit and expand upon the current system that will be added with the new update, Moderate worlds can be separate from Wet worlds, bringing the total number up to 24 or so.

I think Moderate worlds could be dominated by a series of rather simple biome types, like Prairie and Steppe Planets, which would be dominated by these grasslands with a lot in the way of open tiles but little in the way of resources. These would not be one biome planets, but by far the dominant biome type would be grasslands.