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Terraforming Mars? Sounds like civ 3 will be like Sim Earth something I DONT want to see. Maybe you could produce large "domes" which cover 4 or so squares which you could put in plant life, and let humans work the mines etc.
I like smilo's idea, where you could greatly decrease the cost of a spaceship if you had mines on other planets. But instead of using the rare mineral idea, I suggest that you somehow had to get the building materials to the orbiting manufacturing plant where they build the starship. If you wanted you could send them from Earth at a very high cost, it's expensive to launch anything from Earth because of the gravitaion. Or you could send the minerals from mines on the moon, Mars or an asteroid where the gravitation is much smaller than Earths.
In game terms you could have an SS structure cost 1000 shields when build on Earth, 200 shields when build on the moon, and 100 shields when build on an asteroid. If you had the space elevator wonder it would be much cheaper to build the parts on Earth too.
This wouldn't force you to build off-world colonies, but it would help a lot if you did.
I think the terraforming thing is a bit too futuristic. I mean, something like that probably won't happen before the end of the third millenium. And it's a bit too much like simearth.
But still, I really hope that they let us have colonies on other planets, even if they are very small.
I would be happy with some huge spacestations in near earth orbit, and a dozen off-world mines with only a small staff (one-population point or so) around the solar system, sending building materials to support the orbiting spacestations.
Somebody (ember I think) had an idea in the radical ideas thread, where you split production into man-hours and minerals. If you used this idea, the minerals could be sent from the off-world mines to the orbiting spacestations, where the workforce would produce something useful from the minerals.
So if you wanted spacestations you'd either have to build off-world mines or send minerals from earth at high cost (something like: every four minerals sent, only one arrive)
By the way M@ni@ac, I don't see why humans should add warmth points to mars. Any heat artificialy introduced to Mars would quickly dissapear again. One way you could warm mars in an effective way would be to put a lot of CO2 in the atmosphere. Because of the greenhouse-effect the Sun's heat would be trapped and slowly begin to warm the planet. You could still have the 120 mb oxygen needed for humans and animals to survive, but you'd have to have a lot of CO2 too.
<font size=1 face=Arial color=444444>[This message has been edited by Westergaard (edited August 05, 1999).]</font>
Maniac -- sorry, my response was too ambiguous. Yes, I was paying attention.... Let's try again.
I don't like the proposed terraform Mars ending because the victory conditions are too arbitrary. At what point do we draw the line? From one turn to the next, we may have raised the temperature by 1 Celsius degree, or increased the partial pressure of oxygen by 1% (of an earth atmosphere) -- how does that little change mean the difference between struggle and victory? If humans can survive at (say) 20 degrees C and 0.20 atm O2, then they'd probably do OK at 19 degrees and 0.19 atm O2, wouldn't they?
This is different from the spaceship options in Civ1/2. In those games, if your spaceship is missing a drive, it will go slower; if it's missing life support, some people won't make it. Each component you add to the spaceship serves some specific *purpose* -- it's not just a matter of collecting N spaceship points (for some *arbitrary* number N). The victory is accomplished by the actual arrival of the spaceship -- an instantaneous and indisputable event. When this event occurs, the game ends. But with the proposed terraforming ending, there's no single event -- no point on the timeline -- when you can say "Mars has now been terraformed by the Babylonians". It's just a sliding scale of percentages.
The other problem (as someone else pointed out) is that if two or more players are simultaneously terraforming, then there's no clear winner when the terraforming is "done" (whatever "done" means -- see above). All you've done is extend the competition between civilizations into another realm -- you haven't established a condition which clearly spells VICTORY.
I think within the next two hundred years terraforming Mars could be possible.
It isn't that futuristic. A spaceship to AC is much more futuristic.
I don't know simearth.
I am 37 degrees. You not? Humans do produce warmth. Also the human installations, bases and factories.
Perhaps with a thicker armosphere the warmth would stay.
BTW, I think Mars is too far away to cause a greenhouse-effect.
Gordon the Whale :
wearing a (winter) jacket (with electric warming)is off course enough to solve the warmth problem for humans, but the warmth is still necessary to melt the ice to water.
So warming is absolutely necessary for a successful terraformation.
Genetically engineered land algae can also reduce CO2 or add oxygen.
No, I suggest the game to end in 2200.
Then you should have terraformed Mars.
New way of bringing water to Mars.
Let crash small ice asteroids on Mars.
I want AC as a victory condition, but also Mars.
And I don't care a damn about the sweep of time trilogy. For me Civ3 doesn't need to be a prequel.
PROBABLY won't happen by the end of the millenium!! hurry up, guy, we've got to terraform Mars in the next 5 (or 17, depending on how you look at it) months, so we can put it in Civ3!! I think EVERYTHING in this thread assumes the game to extend into its 7th millenium. Ther could be a TI, the Pressure Dome, which allows some food to be produced on inhospitable terrain (you COULD build them on Earth, too, but they wouldn't be that useful. Maybe on the poles or underwater, to supply food to mining colonies. fo those of you who've read the thread(s) on villages, a Pressure Dome is like a village that can be built ANYwhere, but also takes more than 1 turn (I'm thinking 5 or 10.) these allow you to set up a resource base on Mars/the Moon/Europa/Venus, wherever. The things you have to do to terraform each planet would be different. Mars, I maintain, does NOT have too much CO2. It has too little oxygen. CO2 is not really a toxic gas. There would be 4 atmospheric conditions for a "terraformed" planet:
Atmospheric Pressure, the #1 requirement (in terms of which you'd have to work on first). The planet has to HAVE an atmosphere. If you went to Mars or the Moon without a spacesuit on, you wouldn't have time to worry what the Oxygen content was or whether the atmosphere was toxic. You'd pop first. In our solar system, there are no rocky planets suffering from too much atmospheric pressure. Such a planet would have really heavy gravity, anyway, and so would be largely uninhabitable by humans.
Temperature, the #2 requirement. Venus is a toasty 400 degrees. C02 would freeze on the moon at night, and water would boil during the day. Mars is chilly, but within the realm of really cold places on earth. If you can get an atmosphere on the moon, it's temperature would be fixed pretty well... After all, it's the same distance from the sun as the Earth is. Adding CO2 to Mars would help, but it's going to have to be cold there. Always wear a jacket. Venus needs its awful, heat trapping clouds destroyed. For anything past Mars, you're just too far from the sun to get a planet with a habitable temperature, so you are limited to people in space suits, no matter what atmosphere you can build up. This makes a big minus to growth, of course, but if you develop the right techs, you can grow bacteria farms and such that will provide foor outside a Dome. Jupiter's moons are an od exception, because they are kept internally heated by tidal forces from Jupiter. Io is not a terraforming option anyways, being highly volcanic, but Europa _may_ have a liquid water core. This would allow some sort of colonization. Another problem with planets/moons past Mars is the lack of sunshine. Mars, even when fully terraformed, should get -1 to food in all squares for this (Venus gets +1?) Speaking of Heat trapping clouds on Venus...
Getting rid of toxic atmosphere is #3. I don't remember air pressure on Venus, but I think it's similar to Earth. It's made of all sorts of nasty things though. Have to get rid of all that before you do anything else. This is also a sort of problem on Saturn's moon Titan, which is covered in Methane sludge.
Lastly, once you have an atmosphere made of innocuous gasses like Nitrogen, Argon, Helium, CO2, and water vapor, you've got to put in some Oxygen. Not too much, of course, since Oxygen is also a toxic gas. More than 30% and you can't really live in it for extended periods of time... And I wouldn't reccomend driving your car, either. Require 10% oxygen for human life, with minuses to growth up to 20%, then give bonuses up to 25%, and minuses after that, with toxic levels at 40% or so. Also required, for outdoor farms, is CO2, in levels of at least 1%. Plants will grow much better in a low-oxygen environment, so under 20%, where there are growth penalties, make food bonuses.
So, there are the requirements; How are they attained in game terms?
Air pressure can be obtained by releasing gasses stored either in the rocks or deeper in the planet core. Build Gas Production TIs to release gasses. It can be assumed that no one is stupid enough to put toxic gasses into the air, which they will later have to get rid of, so these will put out oxygen, nitrogen, argon, helium, water vapor,and CO2.
Temperature is partly a factor of distance from the sun, and that can't be helped. It's also dependant on the Greenhouse effect. Put a denser atmosphere on Mars, with lots of CO2 (remember, Mars currently does NOT have lots of CO2, it just has more CO2 than anything else) and you'll warm the place up a bit. Get rid of all those pretty clouds on Venus, and you'll cool it down. Gasses can be removed by building "filters" which react undesired gasses with whatever, binding them into a solid. These act much more slowly than the gas releasers, and take a higher technology and more time to build.
Filters are also used to take out Toxic gasses.
If building up atmospheric pressure didn't give you enough Oxygen, you can convert CO2 to Oxygen by planting Forests, putting Algae in the oceans (If you've ended up with the right temperature and more than minimal water in the atmosphere, you'll get oceans), or moss all over, whatever will survive. Remember it took hundreds of millions of years to build up Earth's oxygen supply... This is a slow, slow process, that might need to be augmented with more big machines.
There's how to terraform planets in Civ3, or A way, in any case. Here's the next question: Why? Is it necessary? The question has been addressed before, by myself as well as others. End result: Unless the Moon or Mars have some massive, isolated store of frozen atmosphere, as the Moon at least may, this can't be done in one fell swoop, that could be done as a wonder and end the game. Terraforming would take HUNDREDS of turns, otherwise. Do we want to add hundreds of turns on to the end of the game?
Next: I think that, at least in our real world, if the Moon or Mars are terraformed, it will be a multinational project. No reason for it to be anything else in Civ3, if a non-wonder terraform were a victory condition. Work it as the real, peaceful way to win the game. You get points for each bit of good atmosphere you put in, or bad atmosphere you take out. That way, whoever did the lions share of the terraforming gets the lions share of the points. All that a successful terraform is is a cue to tally up points and end the game.
However, if I went through all the trouble of making the moon habitable, you can be DAMN sure I'd want to colonize it. Add another couple hundred years on to the game. At this point, sometime in the late 3rd millenium, interstellar trave might actually be feasible, so you can win by a more realistic spaceship to Alpha Centauri. However, it's broken the plotline to SMAC, which is based upon Civ2, not Civ3 (that's the problem with writing prequels.) In the end, terraforming planets, to me, would make a fun game, but it doesn't really go with Civ. Maybe do something like in Test of Time, where the game comes with multiple play modes which can be linked together. So you can play a terraforming game, where you start with one Colony Pod and one Terraforming Engineer on an inhospitable alien planet (like the Mars scenario in Fantastic Worlds) or you can play regular Civ3 or you can link the two together. Either game could be won by sending the ship to Alpha Centauri, but if using the Tech tree from the Terraforming game, either alone or as an add-on to the historical tree (make the starting techs on the terraforming tree the ending ones on the historical tree) the tech required to build the ship to Alpha Centauri would be much higher (realistic).
Crashing Ice astroids now its getting really like Sim Earth. Colonizeing Mars? Yes We should do it by 2100 but Terraforming? that sounds abit to advanced for a ending in 2200 ,if it ended in 3000 sure. Maybe it could be a group project with other Civs with colonies on mars.
What would happen if and unprotected human walked on Mars today?
Well first he would explode because of the lack of pressure. So the first priority would be to build up pressure in the martian atmosphere. The atmospheric pressure is currently very low, just over six millibars, which is less than one hundredth of that at Earth’s surface. There would have to a pressure of at least 140 mb for humans to survive and the closer to earths pressure the better.
Suppose he did survive and didn't explode he would quickly die of radiation sickness since there is no protective ozone layer to shield the planet from the ultraviolet radiation emitted by the sun.
This could also be solved by building up an atmosphere with an ozone layer and maybe using a good sunblocker.
Third he would freeze to death. The temperatures near the equator of Mars averages about 60 degrees below zero.
This would obviously have to be solved since, it is not just enough to put on a warm coat. The plants growing on mars would at least need to be above zero degress and preferably higher. The only way to solve this would be to let plenty of greenhouse gasses, such as CO2 and CFC gas out in the atmosphere. And no, M@ni@c, Mars is not too far away to use the greenhouse effect. In fact just a little of the more active greenhouse gasses such as CFC-gas, could rise temperatures a lot. These could either be produced or you could extract them from the rocks. It is believed that the surface of Mars holds huge amounts of CO2.
On the other hand I think that the presence of humans, and their bases, would do extremely little to heat up Mars. I mean what could a few million people with central-heating do to a whole planet? Earth isn't getting warmer because of it's billions of inhabitants, but because of a slight increase of greenhouse-gasses in the atmosphere.
And finally the poor human wandering on the surface of Mars would suffocate since there isn't any oxygen on Mars.
This is one of the hardest problems to solve, but also one of the least important. If you wanted to survive you could just bring your own oxygen supply, like some sort of SCUBA-gear.
It is possible to introduce the 120 mb of oxygen that is required to breathe, put it is such a huge task that I think that it shouldn't be neccesary. Even if the entire face of the planet was overgrown with plants, and even if you had genetically engineered those plants to produce a lot of oxygen (say at 1% efficiency, which is high but not unrealistic), it would take almost 900 years to build up the 21% oxygen atmosphere. It would take such huge amounts of energy that it is unrealistic to convert enough CO2 to O2, even if you did it in huge reactor tanks it would take centuries.
As you can see it's pretty big task to terraform Mars. But it could be done. To solve the "when is Mars terraformed" question, you could say that the game didn't end when Mars was terraformed, because it could never be completly terraformed. Instead the better you made the climate the faster the growth and the more points the terraformer got(eg 1 atm pressure achieved, +50% growth and industry. 285 degrees K achieved, +50% growth and industry). In the case of multiple terraformers, they should divide the points.
<font size=1 face=Arial color=444444>[This message has been edited by Westergaard (edited August 05, 1999).]</font>
I'm serious. I have never heart of Sim Earth before.
Westergaard :
"What would happen if and unprotected human walked on Mars today?
Well first he would explode because of the lack of pressure. So the first priority would be to build up pressure in the martian atmosphere. The atmospheric pressure is currently very low, just over six millibars, which is less than one hundredth of that at Earth’s surface. There would have to a pressure of at least 140 mb for humans to survive and the closer to earths pressure the better."
Before there is an atmosphere every human should wear a pressure suit outside, off course.
"Suppose he did survive and didn't explode he would quickly die of radiation sickness since there is no protective ozone layer to shield the planet from the ultraviolet radiation emitted by the sun."
I know that, but it's not like they are gonna die directly after they set foot on Mars.
Besides, there living spaces could have some protective layer, so they only get the radiation when they walk outside.
"Third he would freeze to death. The temperatures near the equator of Mars averages about 60 degrees below zero."
I know that too off course. Until Mars is terraformed, they would have to wear electrically warmed suit.
"And finally the poor human wandering on the surface of Mars would suffocate since there isn't any oxygen on Mars."
Ever heart of an oxygen supply?
You have summarized the things why humans have to wear suits + you have just given all the reasons why Mars should be terraformed. Thank you.
Ice asteroids and comets are the primary reason that the moon, at least, and maybe Mars (Mars could have gotten it some other way, like Earth) have water ice today. Over the billions of years since they formed, they catch comets, which hit the planet/moon and leave ice behind. That said, I looked up the data from the recent Lunar Prospector mission to see the status of water on the moon right now: estimated are between 10 million and 600 million tons of ice, in craters at the poles. Great! water on the Moon, and lots of it! Then I figured out how much water that would be if you melted it all and distributed it all over the moon... The upper estimate gives 0.014 millimeters. Not exactly promising, and that's what accrued over 5 billion or so years of lunar history... Certainly, if we could condense the Oort cloud and move it to the moon, we'd get a lot of water. But that's unlikely, and the number of icy bodies at any given time in the inner solar system is pretty low, so that's not a very fast way to get water onto the planet. Then again, there aren't so many other ways, other than extracting hydrogen and oxygen from rocks and combining them, which is slow and expensive.
Whether Mars has enough water on it to melt down for terraforming is still unknown; the Mars Polar Lander is currently enroute to the Martian South Pole to find out, unless something has gone wrong with it. Mars shows evidence that it once had enough liquid water to cause erosion. If so, the water may have all frozen at the poles as Mars lost its thicker, heat trapping atmosphere, which it presumably once had. Heck, you can look at a picture of Mars and SEE the water, but that doesn't say there's really enough to cover a reasonable amount of the planet. If Polar Lander (they sure do give them creative names, these days) finds out that that's the case, putting a good atmosphere on Mars will warm it back up and melt the water. Still one problem: radiation. An ozone layer is all fine and good, but it only stops UV. There are much nastier thing out there, and only a strong magnetic field, like Earth's, will stop them. Mars does have a magnetic field, discovered in 1997, but it's less than 1/800 the strength of Earth's. No dice. you need to bioengineer radiation-insensitive crops (probably photosynthetic bacteria... yum) and live inside radiation shielded houses. Of course, the moon has even less of a magnetic field, so this is a bigger problem there.
Ok, this idea assumes that we'll have multiple maps, of different planets. There could be a simplified "mini" map, representing interplanetary space or the solar system. The map would be revealed once you discover astronomy or something. Anyway, this could represent and simulate interplanetary travel, with spaceships traveling between the different planets. That way, you could blockade a planet during a war or something. Just a thought.
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Truth is stranger than fiction, and people are weirder than both.
"And how much, my fellow warriors, can a world change in a mere 800 revolutions??!!"
-Shiplord Kirel, Worldwar:In the Balance
Maniac, you don't need to get read of the co2 in the mars atmosphere. You need all the gas you can get! Mars atmospheric pressure isn't a TAD lower, it's 1% of earth atmosphere. Mars almost have no air to breathe at all. You won't die because of the co2 if you breath Mars air: not enough co2 to kill you. No, the problem is you don'have anything to breath.
The main problem in mars is not co2 to heat up the planet ( enough is trapped in the rocks ), nor even the oxygen ( if the hyptosys about Mars under-ground ice oceans are true, we got enough oxygen also ). The problem is not enough "passive" gas. Earth atmopshere has 79% neon: even if you covert all of mars assumed neon to gas, you won't have even a fraction.
Some scientist also suggest using Argon: but still, not enough to go around. It's suggested to create an automated shuttle carrier fleet to bring argon from gynamide.
You can't, however, just dump all the co2 you can get and then wait for it to break-down with planets. First off, high portions of co2 are even toxic to plants. Besides, it would take MILLENIAS to break-down the co2.
No, you must build a solid, moderate atmosphere right from the start.
BTW, gordon, Mars is not the same distance from the sun as Earth! It's three times further!
Also suggested are giant mirros which will orbit Mars and center 25% more lift on the equator line.
In any case, terraforming mars completly would take no less then 500 years, regardless of what technology you use.
Beside, a FULL terraformation of mars is impossible: you won't never have enough neon, the tempture would always be lower ( cause of the distance ), and the G would just be wrong.
But, for the best information of Mars terraforming, read ( hell, run to buy it! ), Kim stanely robinson GRAND triology: red mars, blue mars and green mars.
"The most hopelessly stupid man is he who is not aware he is wise" Preem Palver, First speaker, "Second Foundation", Isaac Asimov
I think that it is very interesting to discuss terraforming and how it could be put in the game. But to be serious i doubt that it's going to be in the game, I have heard some people saying that they'd like Civ III to end before 2050, because Civilization is a game of history and it has to end with us going to AC before 2050 so that SMAC can begin, and stuff like that.
I think it would be very sad if Sid wanted to follow the story line that hard, because I'd really like to try to colonize space. So how about we go for a compromise, and demand a few off-world colonies and spacestations, but focus more on the near future space exploitation.
Also I doubt Mars will be terraformed before we have a huge space infrastructure, with fuel-stations and manufacturing stations in orbit etc. It is much easier to build in near earth orbit where you can be radiation-shielded by Earth's magnetic field. As Gordon said, radiation is a serious problem, and you'd have to live in huge shelters.
So for now I think I would be better if we focused on making a realistic, yet fun, way of colonizing space on a small scale.
M@ni@c
Oh, by the way M@ni@c, What I wanted to point out with my previous post was that your terraforming system wasn't very realistic because:[*]Humans don't collect warmth points[*]You don't have to destroy CO2 you have to collect CO2[*]One forest tile converting one CO2 point to one oxygen point per turn, should take some milleniums before you could breathe. It is a huge task to produce oxygen.[*]I think I did point out that you'd have to wear SCUBA gear for a long time after you built up the atmosphere.
Of course a few changes would fix that problem.
Harel
You're absolutly right that you have to build up at least 140 mb pressure, and at best the same pressure as on Earth.
You wrote that the atmosphere on Earth is 79% Neon (symbol Ne), I believe you mean Nitrogen (Symbol N). Right?
And though it is a great idea to fill up the martian atmosphere with Neon or Argon (being passive gasses they won't react) it is not realistic to shuttle it in from elsewhere, it'll just take too much time and energy.
So you'd have to use any gasses available on the planet, but I don't know excactly what these are. But I think there should be some oxygen and a lot of CO2, but I'm not sure. Do you know?
The way I see it you'd just have to settle for sufficient pressure so you won't need pressure suits, and a temperate climate with higher temperatures so you could have agriculture. This way you would still have to bring your own oxygen supply, but that's not unrealistic. They had oxygen supplies in SMAC too.
<font size=1 face=Arial color=444444>[This message has been edited by Westergaard (edited August 06, 1999).]</font>
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