[MOD] The Final Frontier
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The upfront cost for terraforming seems really high, in particular higher than the reserves, so you can't actually do it.
I mean, technically there are the silos but they're tiny and specific to each gas (and planet-unique!), so they're not really useful. I think you should either get rid of them completely or make them work on all gases at once and be ten times as effective, so that plopping down one of them somewhere would at least let you do the basic terraforming that the vanilla game allows.
Divvying up the cost by folding some of it into blockers seems like a neat way to get around that, actually. Although you'd want to make sure that Mastery of Nature didn't cancel the cost, and that terraforming-speed modifiers sped up clearing them.
Also haven't even seen the tech for 'seed life farms' come up. Maybe this should just be part of the basic farm tech, since certain planet types get it for free from the start?
That said, I'm only 20 years in, but I don't even have enough habitable planets in the area that I've explored to put down the ten(!!!!) silos for methane that I'd need to terraform a desert world into a savannah which still wouldn't give me the extra seed-life capacity I need since you can't build silos for that.
I'll keep playing for now and see if this somehow becomes manageable, but it's not looking good.
I mean, technically there are the silos but they're tiny and specific to each gas (and planet-unique!), so they're not really useful. I think you should either get rid of them completely or make them work on all gases at once and be ten times as effective, so that plopping down one of them somewhere would at least let you do the basic terraforming that the vanilla game allows.
Divvying up the cost by folding some of it into blockers seems like a neat way to get around that, actually. Although you'd want to make sure that Mastery of Nature didn't cancel the cost, and that terraforming-speed modifiers sped up clearing them.
Also haven't even seen the tech for 'seed life farms' come up. Maybe this should just be part of the basic farm tech, since certain planet types get it for free from the start?
That said, I'm only 20 years in, but I don't even have enough habitable planets in the area that I've explored to put down the ten(!!!!) silos for methane that I'd need to terraform a desert world into a savannah which still wouldn't give me the extra seed-life capacity I need since you can't build silos for that.
I'll keep playing for now and see if this somehow becomes manageable, but it's not looking good.
Thanks for the feedback. I am facing the same problems. There is a bit of an issue with cost... (mainly with water and dessicant). I will be adjusting those two. However, that isn't really the problem though. Their really isn't an issue with storage either. I did both of these things that way on purpose (after all the focus is realsim).
The problem is with the technologies that come in handy for big jumps in storage of the materials your race needs AND as you say... seedlife farms. They need to be tier one or early tier 2 technologies not mid-late tier 2 techs. The game switched the timeline for terraforming while I was working on the mod and so many of the original techs got moved close to the beginning of the timeline. I adjusted some of the techs but apparently I didn't do as much as I needed to. The techs required for seedlife farms and for the shipping and storage network will be adjusted in a patch I can put up tomorrow. These should make it much easier to get things done.
The problem is with the technologies that come in handy for big jumps in storage of the materials your race needs AND as you say... seedlife farms. They need to be tier one or early tier 2 technologies not mid-late tier 2 techs. The game switched the timeline for terraforming while I was working on the mod and so many of the original techs got moved close to the beginning of the timeline. I adjusted some of the techs but apparently I didn't do as much as I needed to. The techs required for seedlife farms and for the shipping and storage network will be adjusted in a patch I can put up tomorrow. These should make it much easier to get things done.
I posted the patch I mentioned yesterday. Unzip it inside the final frontier mod folder.
Two more things about this statement (in light of my first response to it). I said that this is partly on purpose. I only mean that for big changes... for example going from a completely dry world (such as desert) to a completely wet one (such as an ocean), Changes that are closer should be much easier. Second, I haven't actually changed those values yet however, because I encountered something odd about terraforming. EIther it doesn't use the resources right away or once you have saved up the right amount, it doesn't require saving up again... (it is behaving like it didn't spend the resources on the first terraforming and I can already terraform another world without saving up). I want to look into this further before I start changing values because if that is so... it seems to be a freebie and I don't want freebies. If the game is glitched that way I will keep values the way they are.
Here are my own thoughts and actions after playing a game for the fun of it. Please let me know what you think.
- NOTE: remember that you may not need as many storage buildings as you think since you can expand your capabilities of ALL resources at once when you discover the freight management tech (end of first tier). Just build the raw materials shipping port station module and then the raw materials branch hq on the accompanying planet. This will double your original capacity for all materials.
- Even with the above benefit, I felt that the storage buildings needed a little extra something because of the potential need for so many of them in the beginning of the game. So I have added bonuses for every storage unit type for the next release. Each of the basic resources of the game is given with at least one of the storage units. Each storage unit either directly gives you an associated resource... OR it gives a +2 adjacency bonus for a specific resource. Some give both a resource and a +1 adjacency bonus. The benefits are generally connected with industrial and research uses of the material IRL (in real life).
- To me it feels like energy and minerals are REALLY well balanced now. Slightly fewer energy resources and slightly more mineral resources. I may have went a tiny bit too far with minerals but at this point I am not convinced that is the case.
- Note that you still may have trouble building the seedlife farm because it requires a capital (like the hydroponic farm). I have removed that requirement for the next release.
- Technologies are now fairly well placed in the trees though there are some minor changes that I have implemented for the next release.
- I think that habitable planets are a bit too frequent. However this will change with the proposed new habitability system. See the next post.
New Habitability System Discussion:
I would like to introduce a new habitability system that adds a new component to the habitability of terrestrial worlds and opens the door to “new kinds” of life. This system is based on atmospheric composition. What is nice about this system is that it fits in very well with the system “zoning” mechanism done by my system initialization utility. So before I get into details of the new system, a little background is in order.
I would like to introduce a new habitability system that adds a new component to the habitability of terrestrial worlds and opens the door to “new kinds” of life. This system is based on atmospheric composition. What is nice about this system is that it fits in very well with the system “zoning” mechanism done by my system initialization utility. So before I get into details of the new system, a little background is in order.
The Planetary Initialization Script Utility
This post is only FYI. It serves as background information for the main post (next) on the new habitability system. Feel free to read (if you want to learn something) or skip it. My utility divides a planetary system into regions and zones and uses those zones to determine what planets are possible. The temperature (mass) of the star determines both the type of star and how far away from the star those regions are. This is why so many scripts are necessary in the initailizer files. There are 3 basic regions and two of those regions are further divided into sub regions (which I am calling zones). Here is an outline of regions and subregions as we move further out from the star. I am also listing the possible planet types for each region. It should be noted that when the software determins locations of planets, it uses real distances to determine what kind of planets exist in a system. Unfortunately due to the massive down-scaling that partly result from the current limitations of Stellari's planetary systems, one cannot see a difference in some of these distances because those distances are so small that they have been made "equal" in the habitable zone.
Terrestrial Region:
This region is usually home to terrestrial/rock planets. However three possible gas giant types may replace terrestrial planets in this region: Puff Giant, Brownian giant, and Warm Gas Giant.
Jovian Region:
Solar winds drive much of the gases of a solar system to this region. This is why it abounds with gas giants. Terrestrial plants can exist here though they are rarely found by themselves. When they exist by themsellves they will either be cold barren or icy greenhouse.
Kuiper Region:
There is very little "heavy" material out this far from the star as the result of several laws of physics. Minerals are extremely scarce. Planets, where they exist are composed of small rocky cores and lots of ice on the surface. The most abundant of ices are water and methane. Possible planets in this region are Kuiper (frozen) dwarfs (Ice dwarfs), Frozen worlds, and the very rare large frozen world.
This post is only FYI. It serves as background information for the main post (next) on the new habitability system. Feel free to read (if you want to learn something) or skip it. My utility divides a planetary system into regions and zones and uses those zones to determine what planets are possible. The temperature (mass) of the star determines both the type of star and how far away from the star those regions are. This is why so many scripts are necessary in the initailizer files. There are 3 basic regions and two of those regions are further divided into sub regions (which I am calling zones). Here is an outline of regions and subregions as we move further out from the star. I am also listing the possible planet types for each region. It should be noted that when the software determins locations of planets, it uses real distances to determine what kind of planets exist in a system. Unfortunately due to the massive down-scaling that partly result from the current limitations of Stellari's planetary systems, one cannot see a difference in some of these distances because those distances are so small that they have been made "equal" in the habitable zone.
Terrestrial Region:
This region is usually home to terrestrial/rock planets. However three possible gas giant types may replace terrestrial planets in this region: Puff Giant, Brownian giant, and Warm Gas Giant.
- Extreme Temperature Zone Planets in this have extremely hot days and very cold nights. Hence a very wide range of temperature exist on a planets surface within this region. Planets in this region are usually small. Possible Planets: extreme barren
- Hot Zone. Smaller planets in this region are generally "hot" barren planets (though that name isn't used). Larger ones are hot greenhouse (such as venus).
- Warm Zone. Larger planets in this region will be either toxic or hot greenhouse.
- Current Habitable Zone: This zone usually contains planets that have liquid water. It is further divided into sub-zones
- Warm Terrestrial Zone: This zone is ideal for planets a bit warmer than Earth which host liquid water. Possible planets: Desert, Savannah, Tropical, Warm Greenhouse, Toxic, Barren
- Terrestrial Zone: This zone hosts planets with Earth-like temperatures. Possible planets: Arid, Continental, Ocean, Greenhouse, Toxic. Barren,
- Cool Terrestrial Zone: This zone is ideal for planets that are a bit cooler than earth. Possible planets: Tundra, Alpine, Arctic, Cool Greenhouse. Barren
- Warm Terrestrial Zone: This zone is ideal for planets a bit warmer than Earth which host liquid water. Possible planets: Desert, Savannah, Tropical, Warm Greenhouse, Toxic, Barren
- Cool Zone. Smaller planets are cold barren. Medium sized planets can be Fringe (semi-barren), Iced Ocean. Large planets can be Cold greenhouse or Iced Ocean.
- Cold Zone. Smaller planets are cold barren, Larger planets are Fringe (semi-barren).
Jovian Region:
Solar winds drive much of the gases of a solar system to this region. This is why it abounds with gas giants. Terrestrial plants can exist here though they are rarely found by themselves. When they exist by themsellves they will either be cold barren or icy greenhouse.
- Cool/Terrestrial Rich Zone: This region is still rich in terrestrial resources so planetary bodys can still become sizeable; however since gases dominate in this area, larger worlds will draw in large quantities of gas, becoming the giants we are familiar with. Close into the gas giants, it is possible (and commonplace) for tidal forces to create molten planets. Further out, tidal forces aren't quite as strong so it is an ideal place for iced-ocean moons. Further still, we have cold barren worlds.
- Cold/Terrestrial Poor Zone: Saturn is an example of a planet in this region. Here terrestrial materials are fairly scarce so they rarely get big enough to form the larger worlds that can form tidal heating. Terrestrial worlds will exclusively be found around gas giants and they will be relatively small. The only non-barren type planet that can exist here is the icy greenhouse (such as Titan).
- Ice Giant Zone. Terrestrial material is scarce enough and the temperatures are cold enough that most planets here are made of lighter materials. Even heavier gases are becoming rare in this region so the gas giants are smaller and cold. Uranus and Neptune are in this region. In general most moons here are Kuiper objects (see below). In this region. larger moons and medium sized moons close to the planets they orbit may have active geysers (water volcanoes).
Kuiper Region:
There is very little "heavy" material out this far from the star as the result of several laws of physics. Minerals are extremely scarce. Planets, where they exist are composed of small rocky cores and lots of ice on the surface. The most abundant of ices are water and methane. Possible planets in this region are Kuiper (frozen) dwarfs (Ice dwarfs), Frozen worlds, and the very rare large frozen world.
The Proposed New Habitability System
I will frequently refer to information presented in the last post but you may be able to understand it without having read it.
The suggested system below would effectively get rid of cold greenhouse worlds and significantly reduce the occurrence of hot greenhouse (sulfuric-land based worlds would replace many of these) and toxic planets. (The only remaining toxic world types would be halogen rich and phosphorous rich). It would also incorporate the "warm zone" and the "cool zone" above into the "habitability" zones because of the new types of proposed life.
The benefits of this new system are as follows:
PLEASE NOTE: This new system is largely fictional and mainly added to make game-play both more interesting and challenging. There isn't a whole lot of evidence that currently supports the existence of sentient life on worlds with the chemistry suggested (though we have discovered "extremophiles" (bacteria) that exist in similar conditions).
Atmosphere/Life Types:
In the new system there would be three basic atmosphere types capable of supporting life plus 3 new environments capable of supporting life. All new life types are in bold.
An Important Note about Ocean Worlds
I am at a loss to explain exactly what Stellaris had in mind when they came up with the "ocean" world. Originally, and even today I have the tendency to believe that an "ocean" world is exactly that... a world with almost no land. Think of the movie "Water world." This would be a world where sentient life lives in the oceans. However, the way Paradox has implemented their "habitability" system and even the environment pictures (on the planet screen) themselves suggest that this is not the case. It looks to me that these "Ocean" worlds are in fact "Archipelago" worlds... worlds with a few long stringy continents and lots of tiny islands with mild environments. This belief is consistent with their parallel "Arctic" and "Tropical" world types. Therefore the new habitability system would re-classify these "ocean" worlds as "archipelago" worlds and create a new "ocean" world planet class that is truly a world that is nearly completely ocean. These new "ocean" worlds would largely not be habitable by land life. I would also rename 'Alpine" to "Boreal" because technically what Stellaris considers an "alpine" environment is actually a Boreal environment. "Alpine" refers to biomes that are at a high elevation which is clearly not what Paradox intended.
The New Classification System Planet Types:
Neutral Atmosphere Land Planet Types (Traditional Stellaris Environments):
Essentially this would amount to a habitability system where each starting world type would have 9 environments that were "friendly" to the species and the rest would basically have zero habitability.
I will frequently refer to information presented in the last post but you may be able to understand it without having read it.
The suggested system below would effectively get rid of cold greenhouse worlds and significantly reduce the occurrence of hot greenhouse (sulfuric-land based worlds would replace many of these) and toxic planets. (The only remaining toxic world types would be halogen rich and phosphorous rich). It would also incorporate the "warm zone" and the "cool zone" above into the "habitability" zones because of the new types of proposed life.
The benefits of this new system are as follows:
- Introduces 5 "new" types of life
- Further qualifies the overgeneralized planet types of "toxic", "warm greenbhouse", and "cold greenhouse"
- The above benefit results in a larger variety of planets.
- Expands the overall habitable zone around a star.
- Adds "oceanic" sentience to current paradigm, resulting in addtional worlds types in both the "traditional" life classes and the new life classes.
PLEASE NOTE: This new system is largely fictional and mainly added to make game-play both more interesting and challenging. There isn't a whole lot of evidence that currently supports the existence of sentient life on worlds with the chemistry suggested (though we have discovered "extremophiles" (bacteria) that exist in similar conditions).
Atmosphere/Life Types:
In the new system there would be three basic atmosphere types capable of supporting life plus 3 new environments capable of supporting life. All new life types are in bold.
- Basic (Nitrogen/Oxygen/Ammonia based atmosphere) - exist in cooler than average zones. Includes only the "Cool Terrestrial Zone" and "Cool Zone" as a largely habitable zone from the Neutral category. Very limited habitability in the "Terrestrial Zone." The warm terrestrial zone and beyond have zero habitability.
- Neutral (Nitrogen/Oxygen/Water based atmosphere) - exist in average environments. Habitable zones includes 3 sub-zones within the current "Habitable zone." Worlds outside this zone have zero habitability.
- Acidic (Nitrogen/Oxygen/Sulfur based) - same idea as Basic type except it exists in warmer than average zones. Includes only the "Warm Terrestrial zone" and "Warm Zone" as a largely habitable zone from the neutral category. Very limited habitability in the "Terrestrial zone." The cool terrestrial zone and beyond have zero habitability.
- Oceanic Sentience - in addtion to the different types of atmospheres, this system would also separate ocean based sentient life from land based sentient life.
- Basic Sea Sentience - the basic version of oceanic sentience.
- Acidic Sea Sentience - the acidic version of oceanic sentience.
An Important Note about Ocean Worlds
I am at a loss to explain exactly what Stellaris had in mind when they came up with the "ocean" world. Originally, and even today I have the tendency to believe that an "ocean" world is exactly that... a world with almost no land. Think of the movie "Water world." This would be a world where sentient life lives in the oceans. However, the way Paradox has implemented their "habitability" system and even the environment pictures (on the planet screen) themselves suggest that this is not the case. It looks to me that these "Ocean" worlds are in fact "Archipelago" worlds... worlds with a few long stringy continents and lots of tiny islands with mild environments. This belief is consistent with their parallel "Arctic" and "Tropical" world types. Therefore the new habitability system would re-classify these "ocean" worlds as "archipelago" worlds and create a new "ocean" world planet class that is truly a world that is nearly completely ocean. These new "ocean" worlds would largely not be habitable by land life. I would also rename 'Alpine" to "Boreal" because technically what Stellaris considers an "alpine" environment is actually a Boreal environment. "Alpine" refers to biomes that are at a high elevation which is clearly not what Paradox intended.
The New Classification System Planet Types:
Neutral Atmosphere Land Planet Types (Traditional Stellaris Environments):
- Tropical*
- Savannah*
- Desert
- Archipelago*
- Continental*
- Arid
- Arctic*
- Boreal*
- Tundra
- Marine
- Ocean
- Iced Ocean
- Iced Archipelago**
- Frozen Continental**
- Frozen Tundra**
- Basic Archipelago**
- Basic Continental**
- Cold Desert
- Cold Jungle**
- Nitrogen Rich Savannah**
- Nitrogen Rich Desert
- Basic Ocean
- Basic Iced Ocean
- Basic Warm Ocean
- Tropical Inferno***
- Acidic Inferno***
- Sulfuric Inferno
- Acidic Jungle***
- Acidic Savannah***
- Toxic Desert
- Acidic Archipelago***
- Acidic Continental***
- Arid Inferno
- Acidic Ocean
- Acidic Marine
- Oceanic Inferno
Essentially this would amount to a habitability system where each starting world type would have 9 environments that were "friendly" to the species and the rest would basically have zero habitability.
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And I'm guessing no gene mod between basic/acidic/neutral because without the same fundamental chemistry they can't use the same DNA-equivalent?
You bring up a good point. I would say that this is a good assumption, though the entirety of the implications aren't all clear to me because I am not sure what game specifics are related to DNA. I know there is a gene tech. Is that what you are referring to? As far as I know though, that wouldn't matter because the DNA research is done by the species... so I would assume they are researching their own DNA.
Currently you can change your preferred habitability type using genetic modification. That makes sense between desert and arctic or ocean, but less sense between water-based life and ammonia-based life.
Ah. Ok. I would have to look into the code for that to see if changing the behavior is possible
I checked the code out. I was worried it might be hard coded but it appears to be an event called pop self modification. I would have to replace this file and put limitations on it but it ilooks like it may be possible to do.
Given that the rules would be as follows:
Honestly this is a second priority though. Right now the first priority is getting the monster code up and running. I am nearly ready to do that. Implmenting these habitations changes will be a very large project (though not as large as it was originally). The main time sink would be writing all the terraforming requirements for so many world types.
Given that the rules would be as follows:
- Pops CANNOT change their genetic code to allow themselves to live in a different atmosphere type.
- Pops CAN change their genetic code to become an aquatic species of the same atmosphere type.
Honestly this is a second priority though. Right now the first priority is getting the monster code up and running. I am nearly ready to do that. Implmenting these habitations changes will be a very large project (though not as large as it was originally). The main time sink would be writing all the terraforming requirements for so many world types.
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I really like the alternate habitability idea. It sounds neat. n.n Having the monsters exist is a worthy first priority, though.
And yeah, the way the terraforming is implemented it's an n-squared problem. I noticed at least one mistake where some planet type (arctic?) could be terraformed to tropical or tropical instead of tropical or savannah.
Possible solutions: reduce the number of different types of habitable worlds? Desert, Tundra, (Jungle, Temperate), Arctic, Ocean?
Or maybe you could bring back multi-stage terraforming? Only allow terraforming between atmosphere types to go to the corresponding type in the new atmosphere type? (acid ocean -> neutral ocean, needs an extra step to go to neutral desert)
Or... automate the generation of terraforming files using a perl script that reads from a CSV?
Oh, also -- are pre-FTL races excluded on purpose? Because they don't seem to show up at all with this mod.
Edit: I finally saw one but it was in an FE home system?
Edit: I finally saw one but it was in an FE home system?
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Automating generation sounds like a good idea. The way I figure it out is pretty formulaic so that shouldn't be too hard; though I would use C# instead. In fact I will probably just integrate it into my already existing utility by adding "atmosphere types" to the planetary features since my utility already has a definition for each type of planet. Thanks for pointing out the terraforming issue. I will probably finish the monster code in 2-3 weeks.
Oh, also -- are pre-FTL races excluded on purpose? Because they don't seem to show up at all with this mod.
Edit: I finally saw one but it was in an FE home system?
They exist. They are just more rare than they used to be. That was not on purpose. One of the fine points of the utility is fine tuning the frequency of things since the way the code is done in the original game is rather obscure because of all the modifiers they have added to accommodate the expansions. Personally I have encountered two pre-FTL worlds in my own territory. The frequency should be raised a bit.
The basic-neutral-acidic distinction seems interesting but also a huge undertaking. In addition to getting them to work, I see a lot of problems getting them to mesh well with other game features like primitives, anomalies, events, etc.
I don't know much about chemistry beyond a high school level, but I imagine a combustion engine wouldn't be the same on a basic or acidic planet. There's a lot of primitive lore that references real world technologies, so for immersion's sake, you'd have to either create primitives specific to these worlds or make the lore incredibly general.
There are also random things like one of the Fallen Empires having a reserve for sentient species. I don't know how that would work unless they were set not to ask for species of a different atmosphere type than the planet that their reservation is on.
This would be awesome to see, but it sounds like a lot of work to get it to mesh well with other mechanics. I'd like to see monsters, terraforming, and whatever else you're currently working on fleshed out first.
I don't know much about chemistry beyond a high school level, but I imagine a combustion engine wouldn't be the same on a basic or acidic planet. There's a lot of primitive lore that references real world technologies, so for immersion's sake, you'd have to either create primitives specific to these worlds or make the lore incredibly general.
There are also random things like one of the Fallen Empires having a reserve for sentient species. I don't know how that would work unless they were set not to ask for species of a different atmosphere type than the planet that their reservation is on.
This would be awesome to see, but it sounds like a lot of work to get it to mesh well with other mechanics. I'd like to see monsters, terraforming, and whatever else you're currently working on fleshed out first.
There really isn't any visible difference in how chemistry works to complete mechanical tasks on these worlds to justify this as a concern. The only differences would be invisible to the realm of the game. Let's use combustion as an example.
Combustion relies on the presence of oxygen in the atmosphere. So long as the oxygen concentration is at a level where combustion can readily happen in controlled amounts, there is no real change to combustion technologies. Although this isn't necessarily true, we can assume for the sake of the game that while the level of oxygen in a habitable acidic or basic atmosphere might be different, they wouldn't be different enough to cause an issue. In general, life is very sensitive to the amount of oxygen in the atmosphere... 19% is too low and 22% is too high. Any levels outside this range would be deadly to life on earth. However the margin for combustion is much wider. Given that, the details of this amount however are beyond the scope of the game as it is assumed that a habitable world has the correct amount of oxygen for that type of life.
Other aspects of technology such as electro-chemistry and the equilibrium in pH necessary to accomplish the tasks needed for an advanced civilization are assumed to be possible and hence the details are irrelevant. So ultimately the technologies are moot except when it comes to terraforming and biotechnology. So far though, asside from genetics and terraforming, I haven't noticed any technologies that need significant changing
Now this IS a valid concern. Are the preserves artificially created structures or are they assumed to be planet wide?
I agree. These things will take priority.
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They're Gaia planets.
You can sometimes get an event from a neighboring Fallen Empire where it asks you for a Pop to put in its nature reserve which, at game start, is full of random species.
You could change it from a planet into a space habitat, I guess.