Landing on planets, moons, etc...

[Ozymandous]

Hi!

This may have already been covered over on at moo3.com but I haven't finished reading all of the stuff over there yet (especially the forums, good gawd at all the posts!).

Anywho, my question is this... Will players be able to land on any planet as soon as it is discovered? I remember fondly back in MOO how you'd find a great world, except it was radiated, toxic, barren, etc so you had to wait until you had the technology to land there.

In MOO2 the player could land virtually anywhere right off the bat, which to me took some of the "exploration" spice out of the game.

So how will this be handled in MOO3? Since it is supposedly taking place after the first two games I would think the ability to land anywhere would still be there (since it was in MOO2) but I am hoping there will be some difficulties a player has to overcome before they can just land a colony ship, pod, etc on any planet and start a new city/colony.

Anyone know for sure?

[Stormhound]

I'm going to try to keep this answer brief, which will be tough because the system is SO different in MOO3.

First off, the terraforming: forget everything you ever knew about terraforming from MOO1/2. Yes, EVERYTHING. Even that. And that too. Got that mind empty? Good.

There is a two-dimensional grid in MOO3, one dimension for temperature, and the other for atmosphere. Each planet occupies a specific point on that grid. Each species has a preferred point on that grid. Ranging out from that point are multiple zones: green, yellow, red. A planet in the green zone is good for your species, and can be settled without any problems. A planet in the yellow zone will require some additional support; a planet in the red zone will require extensive extra support (like domed cities). Thus, a perfect planet for you could be a real hell-hole for your neighbor, and some technology will be required to colonize certain worlds (though it won't follow the same system as MOO1).

When you terraform a planet, you drag it across the grid toward your preferred point. The planet will tend to resist this, which means that you'll have to pay (increasing) maintenance to keep it from reverting (the possibiliity of changes becoming permanent is under discussion as to whether and how). If someone else took over the planet and started to terraform it, they'd drag it in their preferred direction.
That's the very basic answer.

[Thue]

Please make it possible to make permanent changes. Changing things permanently is the very soul of a builder-type player . If you think it is unbalancing then just make it expensive, but please make it possible to make it permanent.

[pchang]

No Permanency

I disagree. Planets should revert to their normal mode. Besides, under the present system, the changes are permanent, as long as you pay the maintenence fees.

[pchang]

It would also be great if you could blockade planets. Planets which could not afford to pay the terraforming maintenance fees on their own would slowly revert back to their natural condition.

[ravagon]

This 2d grid system sounds a lot like that in Pax Imperia. Those blasted rock people ( ) will have very wide ranges and most of the planets they colonize will be green/yellow.

Question: Can you choose which aspect of the planetary environment you wish to terraform (Temp/atmos)?
If your race were nearly finished researching a tech for some form of thermal shielding for example, you would probably wish to concentrate on terraforming atmosphere rather than temperature knowing that temp would become less of a problem in the future. Or am I assuming to much about the research/tech tree?

[Ozymandous]

Hmm, sounds interesting!

I will admit I am surprised that gravity wasn't a third point on the chart. Yes I know that it would be virtually impossible to change gravity (at least hard to me, but then again I don't have a degree in geology, etc) but wouldn't gravity also contribute on how habitable a planet is?

For example, if your race is used to a wet type atmosphere/(think Amazon rainforest except it never STOPS raining ) on a hellishly hot world (like mercury maybe) but low gravity, then it wouldn't matter if you found a perfectly temp and climate planet if the gravity was 5 times what you were used to.

This would make a difference IMHO, question is, does anything like this exist now, or is gravity considered part of the "atmosphere"?

[Stormhound]

All races will have bands of the same width, and the galaxy creation has already been set up to give every races approximately the same amount of prime real estate.

There isn't a 3rd dimension largely because you can't display three dimensions on a two-dimensional screen in a way that gives you the information at a glance. This is a place where "game" trumps "realism". Effectively, gravity is a part of atmosphere.

So far as selecting which dimension one changes...I'll have to see what info I can pry out of the guy who's working on those details.

[TCO]

Perhaps you could make gravity an unchangeable feature. (off map so to speak wrt the 2-D graph. Would be a good idea for MOO4.

[Bleyn]

Re: No Permanency

Originally posted by pchang
I disagree. Planets should revert to their normal mode. Besides, under the present system, the changes are permanent, as long as you pay the maintenence fees.

I dunno. I think it sort of depends on what sort of changes you made.

For example, if we were to use a solar shade to fimbulwinter Venus, then ran the former atmosphere through some processing units to remove enough of the greenhouse gases, we could probably remove the solar shade with a pretty good chance of the planet not running into the out of control greenhouse effect system that it is now. Though I think the rotational period might give us a few fits in the process.

But hey, even if it didn't work out too well, just the thought of fimbulwintering Venus is sort of cool in its own right. I wonder if we could get NASA to pay for it?

[u972163]

I really like the new consept of colonizing/terraforming.
I think it should be possible to make the changes permanent if the planet is in your green/yellow zone. If youre colonizing a planet in the red zone, well, youre asking for trouble..

[Stormhound]

I'll also point out that terraforming will be a MUCH slower process than in prior MOOs.

[pchang]

Much slower or much more expensive? I like expensive better. That way, if you really want to empty the treasury to speed things up a bit, you have that option.

[Stormhound]

Both, actually. It will certainly take more than just a few turns to convert planets from hell-hole to paradise, no matter how much money you throw at it.

Alan's fond of pointing out that just because it takes one woman nine months to make a baby, you can't get the job done in one month by assigning nine women to it. The principle shows up in various places in MOO3.

[Master Marcus]

So I guess the "deterraforming" or reverting process, natural or not, within the game or not, is also a very slow one ( the first time i enjoyed that concept for some reverting planets was in Asimov's Foundation and Earth ).