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[PTTG??]

I really wish planets had mixed terrain. Think about it.

Oceans, temperate, and desert could be mixed, and three species could cohabitate the same planet! Developing new colonization techs could help develop existing planets!

[Neonivek]

I really wish planets had mixed terrain. Think about it.

Oceans, temperate, and desert could be mixed, and three species could cohabitate the same planet! Developing new colonization techs could help develop existing planets!

The idea is that the planets are "Overall".

Though I often find these whole colonization aspects in 4x games to be kind of... incredibly stupid.

To the extent where it often feels like we are colonizing these planets with present technology instead of super sci-fi tech.

[GiglameshDespair]

Yeah, it's just like all that planet colonising we're doing these days.

[PTTG??]

Yeah, it's just like all that planet colonising we're doing these days.

Or worse tech. I'm pretty sure people can build cities in deserts today. It's not impossible. All habitable worlds have nitrogen-oxygen atmospheres.

[IronyOwl]

I really wish planets had mixed terrain. Think about it.

Oceans, temperate, and desert could be mixed, and three species could cohabitate the same planet! Developing new colonization techs could help develop existing planets!

Also a good way to segue into mostly but not entirely inhospitable planets. And from there, letting you spend obscene amounts of resources colonizing worthless rocks.

Yeah, it's just like all that planet colonising we're doing these days.

Or worse tech. I'm pretty sure people can build cities in deserts today. It's not impossible. All habitable worlds have nitrogen-oxygen atmospheres.

It's worth noting that there's a difference between building an individual city in a desert, and building a fully functioning, productive civilization people are happy to inhabit in a desert. Ditto with lifeless rocks: Building stuff on barren/toxic worlds or in asteroids is totally possible, and even done with mining/research stations. But that's not the same as having an 8-pop colony able to feed itself plus produce excess resources, all with its citizens living in relative comfort.

[IronyOwl]

I really wish planets had mixed terrain. Think about it.

Oceans, temperate, and desert could be mixed, and three species could cohabitate the same planet! Developing new colonization techs could help develop existing planets!

IIRC that was the original plan. Can't recall why they dropped it.

Never heard this, neat.

Not hard to blindly guess possibilities, though. Patchwork terrain ruins attempts to easily classify planets (and thus, where a given species likes to and is good at living), which is kind of important in preventing everything melting into one giant soup of "it's a planet." Plus the danger of favoring the middle-ground options if you try to mix things sensibly, and of raising strange questions if you don't.

There's ways around those issues, of course, but especially given the way they handled the rest of the game it's not surprising they just said screw it and made planet types monolithic and exclusive.

[PTTG??]

I really wish planets had mixed terrain. Think about it.

Oceans, temperate, and desert could be mixed, and three species could cohabitate the same planet! Developing new colonization techs could help develop existing planets!

Also a good way to segue into mostly but not entirely inhospitable planets. And from there, letting you spend obscene amounts of resources colonizing worthless rocks.

Yeah, it's just like all that planet colonising we're doing these days.

Or worse tech. I'm pretty sure people can build cities in deserts today. It's not impossible. All habitable worlds have nitrogen-oxygen atmospheres.

It's worth noting that there's a difference between building an individual city in a desert, and building a fully functioning, productive civilization people are happy to inhabit in a desert. Ditto with lifeless rocks: Building stuff on barren/toxic worlds or in asteroids is totally possible, and even done with mining/research stations. But that's not the same as having an 8-pop colony able to feed itself plus produce excess resources, all with its citizens living in relative comfort.

Fair enough, but a border colony on a marginal world could easily provide a casus belli between two nations.

[Wiles]

I have always assumed that planet types were more than just different terrain types. I thought the atmosphere and such would be slightly different too. Which would make it more complicated than just settling in a desert. Although Gaia planets mess with that theory a bit.

[forsaken1111]

I like the way Stars in Shadow does it. Each planet has a number of habitable zones of various types, and each race has a rating for each type of zone. An ocean world might have very little tropical land (islands) but lots of Ocean and deep see Vents. Well races that can colonize oceans will be happy there obviously, while humans might just live on a few islands. Some races from planets with subsurface oceans thrive in the geothermic vents and would also live well in an ocean planet with deep sea vents.

Each race's maximum population is calculated by how much they 'like' the habitation zones. I'm probably explaining it poorly but it's a fun system and means that importing some races will boost the maximum population of a world massively.

[TalonisWolf]

I really wish planets had mixed terrain. Think about it.

Oceans, temperate, and desert could be mixed, and three species could cohabitate the same planet! Developing new colonization techs could help develop existing planets!

The closest I can think of are some of the Planet Diversity Mods, and even then it's not even close.

Space geckos.  Will save you up to 15% on spaceship insurance, but it'll still cost you an arm and a leg.

You get better rates if you have already seasoned the arm and leg in question. If you're lucky, you can trick them into paying for your prosthetic!

[Mephansteras]

I like the way Stars in Shadow does it. Each planet has a number of habitable zones of various types, and each race has a rating for each type of zone. An ocean world might have very little tropical land (islands) but lots of Ocean and deep see Vents. Well races that can colonize oceans will be happy there obviously, while humans might just live on a few islands. Some races from planets with subsurface oceans thrive in the geothermic vents and would also live well in an ocean planet with deep sea vents.

Each race's maximum population is calculated by how much they 'like' the habitation zones. I'm probably explaining it poorly but it's a fun system and means that importing some races will boost the maximum population of a world massively.

Does seem like a really good system.

[Man of Paper]

I feel like the plots represent the locations your people can settle on a planet, even though it is supposed to be representative of the planet's size, at least as far as I am aware of. It makes more sense in my headcannon.

[Flying Dice]

Still works. Bigger planet, more locations suitable for settlement.

[Karnewarrior]

I feel like the plots represent the locations your people can settle on a planet, even though it is supposed to be representative of the planet's size, at least as far as I am aware of. It makes more sense in my headcannon.

In a sense, both apply if you think of the plots being the total landmass on the planet, with Ocean Worlds having cities be built on archipelagos like Venice. We don't really have proper aquatic civs, going by the view from the window.

Besides, you can't increase the earths surface area too much before gravity gets pretty out there. Certainly not enough to nearly double the SA, without making the planet out of some exotic substance, like a planet of Styrofoam.

[PTTG??]

That's something that bugs me, since we can remove volcanoes but not make an 8-tile high-g world more productive.