Starting Planet Type question.

[Talenn]

Hi all,

I'm still chugging through the game and making my own heavily modified dataset...enjoying this game very much!

Ok, another question for the masses: What advantages do 'Rock' or 'Ice' have over 'Gas Giant'? It seems that nearly every Gas Giant planet found is Large or Huge. Not so for the other two. And Gas Giants dont seem especially rare either.

Sooo, it seems that starting on a Gas Giant is the way to go. It gives you a massive jumpstart in the early game if when you can put 20+ facilities on nearly every world you can breathe on.

True the Rock and Ice have the moons, but this is small beans and requires far more up-front cost to realize a benefit.

Anyone find a good reason to be on Rock or Ice compared to Gas?

Side note...Most of the current AI races are Rock or Ice, so that just means even more competition for your planet type.

Thanx,
Talenn

[Tomgs]

The only reasons I have found for Rock or Ice planet colonization is that you can pick "none" as your atmosphere type. For some reason Gas Giants can't be without an atmosphere . And to get bases in almost every system since they almost all have at least a moon of rock or ice.

But I usually pick Gas Giant myself because the headstart on a huge world or 3 is ... well its huge.

[great.throwdini!]

The gas giant "head start" is a bit unfair to the computer ... even with the opening homeworld, the player can lead in population (and all of its production bonuses) over all rock/ice cpu-controlled empires for a healthy chunk of time.

Does it seem unreasonable to start each empire off with the same population and facility counts? Although gas giant homeworlds would permit for future growth beyond that available to rock/ice homeworlds, it would blunt the huge headstart already present in the game.

Or, perhaps, start every empire off on the same *size* homeworld?

I know that part of any game in this genre is luck (some spacefaring races are more fortunate than others in terms of locale), and that is acceptable, but the current set-up for gas giant races is a bit much in the early game and not discounted greatly by the distribution of gas giants throughout the play sector.

[Jubala]

I have always wanted an option at game setup where you choose the size of your homeworld(s). From tiny to huge. All players get the same. I also want the option to give some players more homeworlds than other players to give the AI or newbies advantages.

[Elmo]

I have been picking Gas Giants lately myself. It is an advantage early, but certainly not a game breaker in a game against other people whether they also pick Gas Giants or not.

However on a related note, why does your homeworld always have "Unpleasant" conditions to start? Presumably this is the world on which your species evolved. Seems like your species ought to be pretty compatible with the conditions by the time you are evolved enough for exploring the galaxy. Admittedly we only have one example to go on, but I'd say Man is pretty compatible with conditions here on Earth. The conditions aren't perfect, but I wouldn't say they are "Unpleasant" either.

Elmo

[Taqwus]

One bit -- you may need to claim more systems to have an equal number of Gas Giants as another player has rock planets, which gives you a much larger border to defend.

If you don't have the same number of planets, you have fewer colonies on which to build, meaning fewer facilities/ships being built at one time. Hrm.

I'd still pick Gas Giant, but it might be more feasible to pull off a really, really hyper-growth start with Rock or Ice.

Seconded that luck plays a HUGE part of the early game -- started up a 3-planet medium-tech high-race-pts game in a Large galaxy, something like 11-12 AIs allegedly evenly distributed... and within 10 turns (literally) I'd conquered two neutrals [one of whom started in one of my systems], one of whom had Rock and the other Ice. Getting all three colonization techs that fast, plus the extra pop, basically provided a most likely insurmountable head start (well, except by even more outrageous luck, or sudden attack by cloaked fleets with Tectonic Bombs who bypass the minefields...).

And in a mid-tech game, you can reach Mines pretty quickly -- and if you're in a "dead-end" system near a fellow with mines, he can cut you off from the rest of the galaxy ASAP. Done that to AIs, heh...

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-- The thing that goes bump in the night