When is it worth it to terraform a planet?

[Urza1234]

Terraforming should be a titanic task, you are telling me changing the entire biome of a 25 size planet is less challenging than building a huge ass building in orbit of a planet?
And there's no reason for it to end up worse, ascension perks are somewhat unbalanced right now and could use a redo, yet again.

Yeah I agree. The basic premise of Stellaris does kind of feel like someone watched too much Star Trek and read too little Cherryh. At least they made it so that space is actually populated and controlled by space stations this patch, thats huge step forward.

Personally for flavor and balance I would mod in micro-habitats that would be available much earlier and cheaper, except that I dont think the AI would be able to actually handle it, and I'm against mods that are just huge buffs for the player.

 

[01d55]

It is only worthwhile if you do not go for tomb world habitability which gives you 60% habitability on all worlds. As this is a min/max topic there is no reason to avoid finishing the horizon signal chain.
There are also 4 +5% habitability techs IIRC which will give you 80% habitability on most planets. If you habe access to adaptability you get 90%.

I wouldn't take Horizon for granted. In my current game I found the signal in the L-cluster after beating the grey tempest, and wound up completing my synth ascension without starting the project.

I find that I only use terraforming to turn uninhabitable worlds habitable. I find that synth ascension or the resilient trait from bio ascension solve the habitability problem more reliably than terraforming.

 

[trojan1234]

Imo, when you have terraforming candidate planet around you, it worth try. The result is random in terms of size and planetary features. my experience is 1/3 are over 20, rest are 13-20.