removing low quality worlds

[Evrett]

Is there a way to force the galaxy creator to not create worlds under 60% quality. Nothing is more annoying than nice planets in great locals I cant colonize. I dont like to be forced to cheat.

[ehsumrell1]

ORIGINAL: Evrett

Is there a way to force the galaxy creator to not create worlds under 60% quality. Nothing is more annoying than nice planets in great locals I cant colonize. I dont like to be forced to cheat.

If you mean not having ANY colonizable planets (Continental, Marshy Swamp, Etc.) created at galaxy
startup with quality from 0 to 60%, no.

[Unforeseen]

It is highly annoying, i wouldn't mind it at all if the AI were to have some sort of programming to utilize them as outposts.

[Tehlongone]

I wish there'd been some sort of terraforming/facilities to make use of bad planets. It bothers me when a WATER planet with ISLANDS is completely useless, it would have to be a very extreme environment to make it completely useless.

Also that anything under 50% is guaranteed to never be profitable no matter how high tech you get, anything above is a net profit from the start.

It'd be awesome if techs unlocked buildings that increased planet quality up to 50% at max tech so eventually all planets would be useful, allowing 100+% quality planets would be fine with me. It'd mean that a high tech civilization could generate higher revenue by virtue of being very advanced. Makes sense to me.

[Mansen]

A true terraforming facility would have been neat for sure - High maintenance cost for those few planets that you just -have- to make habitable for an outpost or such.

[joeyeti]

All of this is also for performance reasons - if nearly any planet were colonizable and playable in the game, the game itself would grind to a halt.

[Mansen]

That's never a good enough reason from a modding perspective - It should be up to the community to push the limits of the engine, not hardcoded restrictions as such.

Besides you could simply turn down the number of stars and planets if performance was an issue - you don't see me complaining about slowdowns on a abundant 1400/15x15 map [8D]

[joeyeti]

I only know that the engine itself is quite old by today's standards - and with that it brings many many restrictions that we got used to throughout the years of DW existing...

These would be questions for DW2 then.

[Dd_01]

+1 to Evrett. It's a pain to see precious, nice-looking and totally useless world.
Well, I can suppose that Desert planet has no atmosphere at all; this Volcano world is filled with radioactive dust; Ice moon consists of frozen methane; water world is filled with toxic liquid. But in the same time they can support organic life (organic resources), and every Continental or Marshy planet is 85+ quality. That's not fair [:(]

[Hannable]

Well, you do have to wonder how steel is being produced on an uninhabited volcanic planet that is too low quality to colonize.

[joeyeti]

You use your imagination and stretch a bit...
Say there is a huge steel mill constructed there, but a large settlement would not be feasible... whatever.

[Dd_01]

Well, you do have to wonder how steel is being produced on an uninhabited volcanic planet that is too low quality to colonize.

Well, at first there's a mining station on the orbit. Station may excavate iron ore by itself or send down mining teams. Ore then can be refined at the station and smelted into bars.

[Mansen]

ORIGINAL: Hannable

Well, you do have to wonder how steel is being produced on an uninhabited volcanic planet that is too low quality to colonize.

I like to think they just don't want to colonize something so hostile to mass colonization. You're not just landing a couple hundred colonists, but an entire Earth or more (in time)

Maybe the fields are too barren to grow crops on their own? The air is filled with something you can't breathe. Doesn't stop you from deploying robots and machinery and remotely excavate what you need.

[Tehlongone]

ORIGINAL: joeyeti

All of this is also for performance reasons - if nearly any planet were colonizable and playable in the game, the game itself would grind to a halt.

If that was the case the solution could be to just reduce the amount of habitable planets to compensate, I don't care how many barren planets there are.

The argument weren't that barren planets should be made colonizable, it was that low quality ocean/desert worlds should be made terraformable or somehow able to matter as anything more than outposts (which the AI doesn't make use of btw)
.

[Unforeseen]

The planet quality is a good simulation of various aspects that would prevent settlement. For instance, take a Mars and give it a breathable atmosphere for Humans. It is still farther from Sol than Earth. This means that it will be colder and thus the living conditions will be harsher and lowering it's "quality". This isn't properly simulated in Distant Worlds because the generator does not factor Distance from Star in planet generation.

There is also the question of geography. We have think about how the actual landscape and how suitable it is for colonization/settlement. Not even Earth is a 1OO% quality planet, we have deserts all over the place which are not exactly ideal places to live. Even in the case of an ocean planet we need to think about what that ocean is made of and if all of it is made of the same thing. A portion could be acidic for instance. The islands could be volcanic or undeveloped.

Another condition is atmosphere. How thick is the atmosphere, can it protect from harmful sunlight, is it breathable in all areas planet wide? Perhaps their is no ozone layer, or there is one but it does not properly cover the entire planet?

The generator should have been programmed to consider position in relation to the sun when determining the types of planets it was going to generate. Terraformation should have been added to the game with restriction on where it could be used. Not being able to terraform an ice planet into a continental planet for example, but being able to raise the quality of a planet...albeit slowly. The CPU AI should have been given the intelligence to utilize low quality worlds as outposts, as well as terraform them to higher quality. There should have been two terraforming techs. One ship bound, and the other a planetary building with enchancement techs to improve the rate in which they do their job.

[Tehlongone]

That's only a problem at our current tech level here on earth. For a civilization capable of casual space travel there need to be a significant reason why a planet would never be profitable. Stuff like our deserts are actually perfectly fixable if we had an abundance of energy and the will to make use of it, especially when we are more advanced.

[Unforeseen]

Right thats why i'm saying that basic terraforming should be in the game, the planets should never start out at a 1OO% quality and surely many should be very very low.

[Shark7]

On this issue, every planet out there isn't going to be suitable for colonization. This is what the quality setting does. Now that said, you CAN colonize those worlds, but they end up costing you in extra resources.

Think of the quality setting as more of a guide to how expensive it would be to tame the world. Lets say humanity goes to the stars and finds a nice juicy continental world...there is a catch though, it is covered in very large, very voracious predatory animals for which humans are the perfect size for an afternoon snack. So...is it worth trying to eradicate all those predators, or do we just find a better colony world? When you think of it in these terms, the quality setting makes more sense...some planets just aren't worth the trouble.

[Unforeseen]

Yeah but what your missing Shark7 is that these worlds are worth more than just as colonies. Such semi habitable worlds are ideal for outposts, research stations military installations etc etc. It would be similar if we landed on mars and built some basic buildings, sent a team there and used it as a research outpost.

[ehsumrell1]

Now THESE are the kinds of discussions that I'm certain Elliot and Erik love to
read and consider as ideas for Distant Worlds 2.

I certainly do. Good discussions people. Please keep these coming!