Expanding Atmosphere Types

[Raapys]

Wouldn't Gas Giants argueably never be 'un-domed' if one were aiming for that kind of realism?

[Fyron]

Lots of space for floating cloud cities?

[dmm]

For binary systems, the game could allow travel from one sector to the other without warping. Of course, in that case, if one star went nova it would need to wipe out BOTH systems.

I didn't realize that the temperatures go down with distance as you say. But that doesn't affect gameplay in the slightest, right? Could one, in principle, set a formula for conditions so that planets with nice conditions would always be located within a "habitability zone"? Then conditions would automatically be bad for frozen or scorched planets.

[Captain Kwok]

Unfortunately, conditions are determined outside of the formula for temperature, gravity, and radiation.

[Fyron]

I think I'll make binary stars at 3,3 and -3,-3 instead of 2,2 and -2,-2. The difference in distance isn't very big, but there is a huge visual difference between such systems.

Sadly, there is no moddable formula for conditions.

[dmm]

Fyron said:Sadly, there is no moddable formula for conditions.

Wow, really? Not to be disrespectful to Aaron (who has made some great games that have given me kilo-hours of pleasure), but that's pretty lame. I was hoping to make a pseudo-realistic mod where the "outer" planets were numerous but cruddy, airless, and tiny. Then I could have a non-threatening race that ekes out a living on the fringes of everyone else's systems. (Maybe crystalline?)

I like your compromise idea for locating binaries. I would go one further, and put them way out at the corners.

[Raapys]

Lots of space for floating cloud cities yeah, but wouldn't most people consider creating a floating city 'a bit more difficult' than an atmospheric dome?

Just trying to find the logic with Gas Giants being habitable, on a huge scale, for Rock or Ice planet natives.
I can see it working with 'energy beings' and the likes, something akin to the Vorlons of B5 and such, but making cloud cities to support (alot of) facilities( and several billion people ) appears a little strange. Then again, so does Mineral mining on those 'planets', I guess.

[Fyron]

Raapys:
Maybe... but there isn't really anything that can be modded about that, short of maybe making gas giants all have a different set of "atmosphere" types than rock/ice planets. This would make gas races always domed on rock/ice, and vice versa. Not sure how atmosphere converters would work in that case.. Might work out in another mod, but it would pose some serious gameplay changes and is beyond the scope of FQM.

[dmm]

Raapys said:
Then again, so does Mineral mining on those 'planets', I guess.

Gas giants are generally thought to have a solid core. But mining it would be a high-pressure job.
Maybe storms churn up the surface and put mineral dust into the gas??

Which brings up another question: Is it possible to mod facilities so that they only work on certain planet types or in certain atmospheres or only under certain conditions? For example, organic facilities (farms) that work on an Earth-like world would need considerable changes to work on a world with poor conditions. In a way, the existing mod (?name?) that makes population very important has that effect, indirectly, because planets with poor conditions would have small populations and thus low production. But there's no research involved -- none allowed and none required. (Yeah, OK, you could research organic production generally.)

[dmm]

Also: present way of doing binaries would be fine for white dwarfs closely bound to red giants. Just don't put any planets real close, or else: gobble! yum, yum! burp!